KnightsMercy's Study Journal

[knightsmercy]

36日

お久しぶり
I’ve been working on the usual so far. Had a few rough days thanks to illness but otherwise putting my best feet forward when I’m not busy playing Steins;Gate and Mars First logistics.

In other news, my roommate has started WK themselves! It’s pretty exciting for them, though they’ve already said they’re going to take it at their own pace. I won’t be reporting on them so much, but maybe we will see them around on the forums soon enough.

WK

Didn’t know there was a crabigator emote lol. I’ve managed to keep on top of my 20 lessons per day goal whenever it has been physically possible to do. On some occasions there are fewer available items than that cap, which I simply take a blessed reprieve from the usual pace. It’s a good feeling when it does happen since it means I may only need to do eg. 4 new lessons. Much lighter throughout the day, and a worthy reward for hard effort.

Book work

I’ve finished みんなの日本語の第1課 and have started work on 第2課. These are mostly review so far, but there are plenty of good reminders I keep encountering such as politeness in speech and certain reminders of things which may and may not be omitted in statements. I will eventually get to new territory, but for now the less intensive busywork is appreciated. I am still making sure to write out as many of the answers as I can.

A lot of the business-specific talk is less useful to me specifically, so I’m not overly worried about retention of that vocabulary, but I’m genuinely trying to where I can. Still, can’t stress the SRS system too much, otherwise I won’t be able to retain everything quite so well I think.

Edit: Actually, I think there was a small issue in one of the audio samples for lesson 2? When I was listening to it, one of the characters introduced themselves as 「４０８のサントスです」, but it was said as 「よんまらはち」. I don’t think this is correct since that should be 「四百八」. I couldn’t find an answer to the discrepancy…

Video Games

I want to talk about these things and this is my blog so I’m gonna do it. Mars First Logistics is an incredibly fun game that I’m enjoying immensely. It’s a combination of Banjo & Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and Death Stranding, where it asks you to build ridiculous robots in order to deliver all manner of objects across the surface of Mars, eventually unlocking more parts to work. It’s a hoot, sometimes you build a robot just right to carry something only to find that the terrain disagrees or you didn’t account for the fact that the thing you’re carrying needs to be stacked up again, and so you have to go back to the drawing board to figure out a new solution to a new problem. Love it.

I think it’s especially fun with friends since you can all go about in your own bespoke avatars of problem solving and sometimes see a really clever solution to a problem you weren’t quite aware of. Do recommend.

[knightsmercy]

38日

レベルが上がる！

I think it took a little longer than I anticipated because I messed up a kanji review. Regardless, this marks ~10% progress which I think is very good. We’ll see how that turns out here in a month when more long-term reviews come back around, but right now things feel at a good pace.

[hrudey]

@knightsmercy

I think it took a little longer than I anticipated because I messed up a kanji review. Regardless, this marks ~10% progress which I think is very good. We’ll see how that turns out here in a month when more long-term reviews come back around, but right now things feel at a good pace.

That’s a ridiculously good pace, IMO. The accuracy is tremendous as well. You’re off to a fantastic start.

[knightsmercy]

Thanks! It’s a lot of effort, but it definitely feels like I’m moving at a blazing pace. Though, I’m not sure how long I will be able to keep it up for. I’m sure that sooner or later I’ll have to back off on the lessons for at least a little bit, but for now I’m trying to stay on top of my 20 lessons/day target no matter what.

Still, I’m proud of the progress I’ve made so far and welcome the challenge for as long as it will last

[knightsmercy]

４４日

Took a short birthday break, but that doesn’t mean the studying has stopped

WaniKani

I generally like the new interface and appreciate that I can customize it with the widgets I care about! I just wish I could create 2 heatmaps for reviews and lessons separately…

Somehow this level worked out so as soon as my potential lessons dipped below my target 20 (not an issue but I like consistency) I finished up all the radicals and had more items to work on. I’ve now got the full second set of kanji for this level unlocked; starting half today and the other half tomorrow, then pushing through vocab while I work with the SRS system. I estimate that I can be finished with this level in another 5 days, keeping up that pace I’ve kept thus far.

Well, almost all the radicals. Technically Radical 東 was moved to level 6 today, so I have to push that one through now as well… I’m hoping that it doesn’t prevent me from continuing to push Kanji 東 so I can work on the content I was already pushing through, but at the worst it will simply be 休止、 suspended.

Speaking of, the new dashboard says I ingest words too well, with a 98.38% retention over the last 28 days (selected because I don’t have nearly a year, but maybe I should make another 365 day widget). WKStats agrees that I have a very high retention rate, though I am sad to see my Vocab reading dip to 96% (96.95% but it’s the big number that matters). I recall staff made a comment on this somewhere, but it’s funny to think that high retention =/= angry at learning too good? I’m sure this will dip as I reach things I’m less familiar with and the long term SRS comes back around for Mastered items, but that is how it goes for now.

I’m on PTO this week which for sure influences that factor since I have very little else to apply myself too.

It’s also interesting to see the Mastered items catching up to Guru’d items. I think I’m right around Guru equilibrium; the approximate number of items which float within Guru at a single time. I don’t believe I have a long term record of this data to check, but I will probably include the below screenshot for my own historical reference as I continue this journal.

みんなの日本語

I’ve continued this a bit, but I was quite busy last week with work and other things so didn’t make quite as much progress as I would have liked. I finished 第2課 and all relevant extra work, plus I’ve started vocab pre-load for 第3課 which I will start either today or tomorrow. I’m currently planning a trip to Japan tentatively slated for ２０２６年４月 and I have no illusions in which I believe I am some Japanese-learning genius, but I would like to get as much of this complete as I can prior to the trip. I’d also like to solve for speaking so I can at least reply to most basic questions and phrases, but that may be slightly more difficult without a native speaker as a guide. At worst this will be an excellent test of everything I’m able to learn up to that point.

A worthy challenge, if I do say so myself!

ゲームをする

Steins;Gate continues to be very good, no notes. I’m approaching the end of Chapter 9 and have most of the alternate endings, I can probably finish this one off pretty quickly once I get through the 0-flags ending and restart. After that it’s just cleaning up any missed achievements and CG’s.

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy also continues to be good. I sit in camp “I can’t talk about this game unless I know you’ve played it at least a bit”, but suffice to say I believe it deserves the Award for Excellence and believe it a worthy contender for the Golden Joystick’s Best Narrative award. I’m happy at least one of my friends picked it up, but it’s very niche so I think that award will be taken by Expedition 33.

I put down Pheonix Wright Original Trilogy Collection a while ago, but I’ve picked it back up to continue the story of the second game. Reunion and Turnabout was a pretty good case, although it wasn’t difficult to see the solution after the second day or so. I’ve started Turnabout Big Top, and while I can’t see a definitive solution to the case, I have 2 working theories: either the clown killed Mr. Berry or Mr. Berry attempted to fake his death somehow and either left a dummy body in his place or died in his attempt. I’ll probably learn more in Investigation 2 and after the second testimonial, but until then these are the personal theories I’m working under.

[knightsmercy]

48日

WK

Level 7 at last, just when it was feeling like 6 was becoming stale. To be fair, I’ve basically just been cleaning up vocab as it becomes available, so this will be a good change I think.

This past week:
１０月０６日 110 reviews, 20 lessons
１０月０７日 102 reviews, 20 lessons
１０月０８日 150 reviews, 21 lessons
１０月０９日 101 reviews, 20 lessons
１０月１０日 128 reviews, 25 lessons
１０月１１日 125 reviews, 20 lessons
１０月１２日 113 reviews, 12 lessons

I did a few extra lessons on the １０日 as my Apprentice items were getting a little low, but it pretty quickly fixed itself. It also seems that I’ve officially hit the Guru equilibrium. Until other items fall back into it, it will probably continue to be somewhere in the 430 range, meaning that my Master count will exceed it in the very near future, possibly tomorrow.

Bookwork

I was slightly incorrect about my completion of みんなの日本語 第２課 as it appears I wasn’t quite done with the C or 問題 sections. I’ve fixed that and have finally started 第３課 only slightly later than I would have liked. Chapter 3 is mostly about demonstratives, so this should be another quick chapter once I start writing.

I do think I found an answer to my previous observation re. the apartment numbers in the 会話 sections: the wording is 四まる五 and the room is ４０５ (or something like that) so it’s not much different than saying “eight-oh-three” in English. They just use 丸 instead of ゼロ or れい. It’s obvious in hindsight.

Movie

My local cinema was doing a special showing of Battle Royale for the 25th anniversary, so myself and a few friends went to see it. It was very good! They had a little preamble from the producer’s son before the showing that explained it’s relationship with Japanese culture at the time that was very informative for both study purposes, but as well as to help understand under what cultural pressures the movie was made it.

I recognized several words and phrases, but it’s no surprise that the majority of the dialoge went over my head. I might fair reasonably well with Japanese subtitles and a dictionary handy, but nothing native speed in theaters just yet That said I did recognize a few words in the background! I even saw a word I had just learnt this level, 安全, at the back of one of the sets. Neat!

What I didn’t expect was a death game movie to be funny? It had a good sense of humour and played off its absurd scenario well. I can also see the direct lineage of ゲームお姉さん (I guess she’s credited as Training Video Girl) to Monokuma (Danganronpa, which I need to play), and maybe even from Kitano (Battle Royale) to Sirei (The Hundred Line), though that one is more tenuous. Otherwise it’s plain to see how this was such a seminal work for the Death Game genre as a whole.

[knightsmercy]

４９日

I’m gonna try something a little different this level: If I recognize something even halfway, I’m going to do it as soon as I am able to even in excess of 20 lessons. The goal here is to remove easy and known items from the rotation as soon as possible with the theory being that these should be near-zero effort on my part. In that effort I’ve done 32 lessons today (20 radicals, 5 kanji, 7 vocab). This isn’t really a speed thing so much as it is a “do the easy questions first” thing.

Eg. 死ぬ and 家 are items I’m pretty well familiar with from my time prior to WaniKani, and while I may not get their use right 100% of the time, I can pretty readily understand how and when they are used in most contexts. Therefore, these are almost no effort on my part to remember.

Another example, kanji 映, I already roughly know from 映画 and just need to learn the specific meaning, but not the On-reading.

[knightsmercy]

４９日 第２つ

Unusually large volume of reviews aside, I made a few silly errors today.

合う - I forgot this wasn’t かい.う since the only context I’ve seen it in in like a week is the on’yomi (貝社員、会議室、会社。。。）
村 - I learned 付 today and reviewed that literally 2 items before this one. Needless to say I instantly went for the kanji my brain was primed on.
年中 - Forgot this was “year round” and not “within the year”. Minor issue as well, I can never remember the rendaku. It just doesn’t make sense to do and so I don’t ever recall it.

[knightsmercy]

５７日

Oh no it has been too long. I’ve had a really busy week so I haven’t been able to update her as I would have liked and will try to work on an update tomorrow, but for now:

And I have my first few sets of Enlightened items. According to my calendar, these should come back around as the first burned items in February. Exciting!

[knightsmercy]

６１日

Kweh…

The week continued to be immensely busy and I just couldn’t find the energy to make an update.

WaniKani

I’ve been continuing to stay on top of my studies here at least. Keeping up to that 20/day. A few days ago, I finally got 100+ Enlightened items which is very exciting. Additionally I’ve hit 500+ Master items.

Sadly I did make a few silly mistakes recently.

人口 - I just completely forgot this one. So it goes.
来る - I put tried the reading きる and I really just should know better by now…
(I swear there were a few others but I didn’t record them…)

Finally, wkstats to-date. Still looking very solid, and I brought the reading up above 97% again

Wagotabi

Recently updated with a new area! I’ve traveled there but I haven’t done anything. Seems to have a few new bugs when I did reviews last night.

みんなの日本語

I finally cleared section A (Lessons 1-3)! I’d like to do a review of grammar points and review/correct my work (I am very bad at this particularly) before moving on, but I’ve started on the Lesson 4 vocabulary.

[WeepingWeeb]

@knightsmercy

I finally got 100+ Enlightened items which is very exciting

Congrats on your milestone!

[knightsmercy]

64日

Today marks the first mandatory rest day for me, I think. I had to work well into the night and couldn’t muster enough energy to get up this morning. I’ll do reviews and continue work on みんなの日本語の第４課, but no new lessons from WaniKani today.

[knightsmercy]

６５日

レベルが上がる！
でも数と他所が難しいだね? They’re kicking my butt…

[knightsmercy]

68日

こんにちは！

Still busy it seems, but I’ve kept up on most of my major items.

WK

20 new lessons a day since the last update, though I didn’t do the radicals as an additional set this level and instead incorporated them into the 20 (if I stuck to my pattern it would have been 40 lessons on 66日). Mostly this was to save myself the additional work as I can feel the changing season creeping into my bones.

第9レベルは難しいだよ！

客、表、相、苦 are all a little tough for me, and I even messed up on a radical (in all my life never have I seen or heard of a ‘yurt’). Thankfully I think I’ve got them more or less down today.

Silly mistakes:

近日 - The meaning for 近 in regards to time appears to change in nuance between nearly every iteration I’ve seen it in. I struggled with it to start, but while ‘recent years’ for 近年 was fine, this one speaks only of future dates for ‘in a few days’. That got me, so it was a mistake.

氏名 - Forgot meaning, thought it was last name (clan name) instead of full name. I’ll have to remember it as ‘last name first name’, or something like that for this context.

時 - This is read as じ so often that when I don’t see 時々 I forget that とき is a valid reading…

I should probably get better at recording mistakes. I think it’s a good practice. These were just the ones in my recent mistakes section right now.

Bookwork

Still not progressing as fast as I think I would like, but at this point I think it’s an energy and time-in-the-day thing. I would have to pull time from one activity into another. Theoretically this shouldn’t be too hard (I have been watching too many videos) but energy is another.

Still, I managed to get through the 書いて見える文型練習帳・第４課の文型 yesterday. This has been a good chapter to practice in since the constructions have been a little bit more freeform. I’m still missing up when 分 is ふん or ぷん for minute, so that would be worth practicing. I’d like to do at least a few more sections today before my evening plans if possible.

Also, here are some writing samples. I do my みんなの日本語 work in a Midori notebook, and usually do miscellaneous kanji practice in a 和のノート. Writing tiny kanji is good practice for keeping it legible at such a small scale, but even my 0.38 pens can struggle with the space available with even moderately complex kanji. The Japanese notebook is much easier, but the brush pen I use can also push the bounds on occasion. Still, I think writing has been the best thing I can do for retention so far and is an enjoyable pass time when trying to drill new kanji into my brain.

[knightsmercy]

８９日

おひさしぶり！

I took a little bit of a break this month while a friend from out of state visited. We had a lot of fun escaping from our regular routines and making the irresponsible decision to restraunt-hop. My wallet will continue to feel the ramifications of that for a bit, but at the very least we had a lot of fun and I feel well refreshed! A much needed reprieve from my usual routine

Over our shared vacation, I’ve had another 2 friends say they’re interested in learning Japanese, with one of them starting WaniKani and Wagotabi themselves! (Shoutout to Necro if you somehow find this while lurking.)

ワニカニ

I’ve made sure to at least continue my studies to a degree, but I think that the pace I was going with WK was finally catching up to me. I’ve been doing 8-16 lessons a day where I can with a trend toward the lower end while keeping on top of reviews. Since my last installment 3 weeks ago, I’ve leveled up twice (Level 11 now) and somehow also managed to rack up a lesson count exceeding 250! This was mostly comprised of Vocab that had been accumulating as the settings I have in my app prefer Kanji lessons. I’m taking the opportunity to work through the Vocab for reading reinforcement until I can bring the queue down to a more respectable level, at which point I’ll continue with the Kanji in this level (though I did the Radicals already).

みんなの日本語

I’ve just complete Lesson 5 yesterday. To be honest I’m not proud on my pace on this and would like to be able to apply more effort before the Japan trip in April. Granted, I wasn’t really able to do a lot while hosting my friend, but even so I think I should be a bit further. I’m hoping to use some of the time gained back from slowing down on WK to apply my energy here while avoiding burnout. Hopefully I’ll have a bit more of a schedule this week.

ちょっと日本語の部分

俺の町に、すごい和食のレストランを見つけた！その食べ物はおいしいだよ！うまい！俺は魚があまり好きじゃないけど、お寿司が好きだよ。

[knightsmercy]

93日

みんな、こんばんは！
I’m coming up on 100 days with WaniKani, which is a pretty exciting milestone! This is my total and consecutive to date, which feels pretty good overall. The last few levels have had some genuinely challenging items, and I’ve had to redo a number of radicals, kanji, and especially vocab several times. It’s been good to slow down and try to take my time with them before resuming new items for this level. I think I will be able to resume on at least a few kanji a day later this week.

ワニカニ

I’ve kept working on the vocab backlog. I realise that the last time I reported it may have sounded like I had 250+ items at that time, but it was closer to 210 at that point, though 250 or so is still the highest I’ve seen yet. At present, I now have 182 lessons in the backlog (36 kanji, 87 earlier-level vocab, 57 level 11 vocab). Still a lot, but no insurmountable. がんばる！

みんなの日本語・第６課

I did a lot of bookwork recently, and now 第６課は近く終わる。。。 I don’t know if that’s the right verb inflection for the sentiment. Anyways, it’s just the りょうしゅん問題集の第６課 remaining. I’ll probably do that and start on the vocab for 第７課 on the same day.

This chapter had some good practice that needed me to bring together most of the previous points in the book. Now that I’m a bit further in I think I can see precisely why this series is so well regarded, and I’m happy that I picked it up

終了

じゃ、またね！

[knightsmercy]

97日

Another week has come and gone, and with it more practice. I took the last few days easy because of the holiday, but that’s not to say I have been especially idle.

ワニカニ

I now have 142 lessons available. As of yesterday I’ve been adding in a few new kanji in my lessons, which I will probably do until I start unlocking some more Vocab again. Though I still haven’t quite breached level 11 in that category just yet, I’m about half way through the vocab in lvl 10. I’ve been doing 12-16 items a day total as before, though I think I’d like to do no more than 8 or so on days where I do みんなの日本語 just so I don’t get overwhelmed.

This will certainly be the longest level to date, though it will be out of necessity more than anything. Plus, I’d rather do a good job slowly than a poor job at all.

みんなの日本語・第７課

I finished chapter 6 early this week and started chapter 7 right after, pre-loading the vocab and checking out the grammar notes in the English study guide. I also made the mistake of adding all the “Useful” words into my rotation, which I believe to have been a mistake to do as I was starting a new chapter; needless to say, I am now contending with a large number of kana-only food related vocab. We will see how long I put up with this before resorting to basic categorical words and favorites, and a small notebook for the remainder.

Moving on, I did read through the 文型 and 例文, listened to the 会話, and spoke along to 練習A today. I’ll probably use tomorrow for review then start on 練習B on Tuesday.

あれは日本語で。。。

今日、第７課の文型と例文を読んで、会話を聞いて、練習Aを読み上げた。明日は多分見直すそして、火曜日は、練習Bを勉強し始める。
あ、思い出した。今日、サケ（魚）とチーズを食べた。おいしかった！明日も多分食べる〜

じゃ、またね！

[knightsmercy]

98日

みんなの日本語・第７課

今日、第７課の練習Bを勉強した。「電話をかけます」と文はちょっと変だね？「電話をします」と言う、僕が思ったよ！一先ずわからないけど、たぶん未来にわかるね？

じゃ、またね！

[knightsmercy]

百日

I made it to day 100! Sirei would be proud, I’m sure, though in this case my work is not yet over.

100 days in and I think I’ve made some serious progress! I’m still bad at… well, all sorts of things really, but the progress has been tangible! I’m confident now at least that I can have a very simple conversation in Japanese (though this hasn’t been tested and I’m certain my poor pronunciation will show), but it’s a level of confidence I didn’t have 100 days ago!

What I can do reasonably well at is read and write (still pre-N5 level, don’t judge). Common phrases or sentence structures are understandable, and there are often at least words that I can understand within sentences I don’t fully understand. Worst case I can look up small components and piece together a better understanding of the material.

I want to work on listening more. This is really difficult for me, I think: I have an audio processing disorder, and many resources I’ve found don’t have a food playback speed modifier so I can slow them down to a pace I can actually understand. In some cases, the pronunciation of things isn’t always clear, so sounds are muddied, or maybe that’s just my own ears. Still, if someone spoke a bit slowly and clearly, I think I could understand most of what they’re saying.

ワニカニ

WKStats says I started 99 days ago, but I’m going with the review streak widget now. As of today I have: 251 Guru’d Radicals, 365 Guru’d Kanji, and 1000 Guru’d Vocabulary items. That’s a lot of review time, if I do say so myself!

I’ve also done a total of 21839 reviews as of the time of the draft, putting me at around 218 reviews each day… which makes sense as to why I started to feel the pressure.

みんなの日本語・第７課

第７課はもう近く終わるよ！This chapter went by reasonably fast. It was mostly about directional verbs, especially giving and receiving, as well as some good lessons on manners and a useful compliment. すてきですね？

I just need to finish out the 問題 and B section capstone work, then I’ll be on to section C! がんばる！

雑の部分

昨日の夜、友達といろいろなゲームを話した。近々僕らゲームをする。楽しみにする！

[knightsmercy]

105日

(スマホで書いた)

I’ve just done my lessons for the day (16) and I’m down into exceedingly manageable territory! I’ve got just 27 lessons remaining until more kanji start to Guru, which should still leave ample breathing room once I’m done with them.

I’ve also just started on the vocab for みんなの日本語•第８課. Lots of adjectives, should be a relatively fast chapter, though I still have to do the section B capstone.

Lastly, we were finally able to reserve our plane tickets for this Spring! The Japan trip is definitely a go at this point. All we have to do now is finalize our itinerary and book any accomodations. 楽しみ！