:durtle_hello: Let's Durtle the Scenic Route šŸ¢

Iā€™ve been here three years, and never noticed that the pictures change.

How many stress levels are there?

ā€” Dave

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Curious cats were wondering the same thing in 2020. Hereā€™s a post in thread where someoneā€™s gathered them all. Canā€™t imagine itā€™s changed.

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so I think the last time I posted in here was around February 2022 (!!!) Over the last year, Iā€™ve moved to japan and started a new busy job so wanikani totally took a backseat resulting in me becoming an EXTREME scenic durtler boasting level up times in the exclusive 100+ day club (shout out to @Need2Read @rilakkumacafe and @Karakayn for also being in this club!)

Iā€™m probably going to level up in the next day or two and finally leave my longest ever level (and hopefully it stays the longest!) Hopefully Iā€™ll be able to post more frequently in this forum because everyone is so friendly here and Iā€™ve really missed it :pleading_face: congrats on everyoneā€™s accomplishments while Iā€™ve been away!! Happy durtling :yellow_heart: :yellow_heart: :yellow_heart:

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Congrats on the move to Japan, thatā€™s awesome! Iā€™d say that counts as a valid reason for some slow levels. :smile: Welcome back!!

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finally!!! first level up of 2023 - level 27 babyyyyy :>
crazy how in the first half of 2022 (january-april) i levelled up 10 levels and then in the second half i only managed 2 haahaha hereā€™s hoping for quicker level ups in the next few months! donā€™t get me wrong, circumstances necessitated going slower on wanikaniā€¦ but iā€™d still like to try and avoid another 118 or 160 day level if i can!
anyway, hereā€™s to level 27! letā€™s goooo!

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Level 55!

It was a standard fourteen day level, but there were lots of huge milestones for me! I finished Minna no Nihongo (the beginners series, at least) and took a full length practice N4 test, which I think I passed pretty soundly! So I am considering myself to have officially graduated out of the beginning phase!

I also technically finished my first novel in Japanese, if we count the MNN novel as a ā€œrealā€ novel, haha. I finished the book I was reading in Spanish as well (an actual real novel), though itā€™s far from my first book read in Spanish. So far, havenā€™t missed a day yet on the read every day challenge!

In addition to my normal Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling translation workload, Iā€™m also in the process of translating a bunch of stuff from Big Japan Pro Wrestlingā€™s deathmatch Shakespeare shows from 2008-2011 (my rare wrestling DVD white whale :smiling_face_with_tear:). Hereā€™s a post with all of the info I managed to gleam about the first show (King Lear) and some stuff I translated, as well as a bunch of screencaps from the DVD.

After finishing MNN, I started Tobira! Havenā€™t got very far yet, but Iā€™m hoping to do one chapter per WK level (so, finish one every two weeks). I guess Iā€™ll report back on if this pace works for me or not, haha.

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"Big Japan Pro Wrestlingā€™s deathmatch Shakespeare shows " --whaat? Thought you could sneak that by us and we would not want to ask?? :laughing: I am neither a pro wrestling or Shakespeare fan, but the two together sounds fantasticā€¦

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I made it through Level 16 in 31 days!! :grin: I can see the Sudden Death levels or whatever the 20s are called, looming up in the near distance.

Here we goā€¦

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If you want to see/hear more about those shows, I recommend reading that post I linked, which has basically all that I know about the first one (King Lear), haha, including a translation of the back of the DVD, the cast list, and a bunch of screencaps! Romeo vs Juliet and the two Macbeths are still forthcomingā€¦

One of my professors in undergrad actually specifically studied martyrdom in Shakespeare, so Iā€™m planning on eventually emailing her and telling her about these shows, because deathmatch Shakespeare is really doing the whole martyrdom thing on another level :sweat_smile:. These shows billed themselves as the first Shakespeare productions to contain real bloodā€¦

Iā€™m probably going to put a lot of stuff about them up on my wrestling translation blog eventually, even though theyā€™re slightly off-topic haha (BJW isnā€™t under the umbrella of companies my blog was created to cover :smiling_face_with_tear:). I guess I can say ā€œhey, check out these shows featuring TJPW guest stars Jun Kasai and Abdullah Kobayashi!ā€ Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling, which is what I translate for, is, uh, pink princess-themed womenā€™s wrestling, which is a slightly different vibe than Big Japan Pro Wrestlingā€™s gory deathmatches. However! Several of the TJPW wrestlers idolize BJW wrestlers (hence why Jun Kasai and Abdullah Kobayashi have both come to TJPW to fight the joshi wrestlers there), so there is strangely a genuine connection there, despite the vast surface-level differences, haha.

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Woo! Youā€™re almost to 60! Have you been thinking about what you want to do after wanikani? Youā€™re already doing so much, so enjoying be able to not take on a new thing is also exciting :grin:

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Hey guys, I think I gonna join. Iā€™m realy slow at leveling up right now. Using many other ressources at the moment, so I take my time with the lessons and stuff. I have around 150 open lessons after my level up at the moment XD This will take some time.

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Oooh, interesting! If you have a chance in the future, pls post back about Tobira here once you get a ā€˜first impressionā€™ sense of it.

I remember looking at it a long while back but it was way ahead of where I was (and was one of the inspirations for me to learn kanji first), so I would be interested to hear what itā€™s like from someone whoā€™s just starting out with it. Just a basic impression would be great, nothing too detailed needed (unless thatā€™s your jam, I guess! :sweat_smile:).

Iā€™ve done Genki I and started on Genki II, but switched over to just using BunPro, and Iā€™ve gotten roughly to mid/late-N4-ish I would guess. Iā€™m wondering whether trying Tobira again would be a good match for me at this point.

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Welcome back!! Itā€™s good to see you post again. Congratz on the move and other life things going on for you. Cheering you on your durtling journey :durtle_love:

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I have thought about it a lot, actually! Iā€™ve honestly already started transitioning into the next phase of my studies. Iā€™ve been using Anki to learn additional kanji and vocab from my immersion for over a year now, though Iā€™ve kept the number of cards Iā€™m adding pretty low so that itā€™s not too much along with the WK cards (in addition to my textbook vocab, which Iā€™m also learning via Anki). I only just recently broke 1,000 wrestling words added, haha.

So my main plan is to just transition more to Anki. As the time Iā€™m spending on WK decreases, Iā€™ll be ramping up the number of new cards Iā€™m learning there, and just increasing the overall amount of time I spend daily on Anki. Iā€™ll be learning textbook vocab there from premade decks (first Minna no Nihongo, currently Tobira, probably eventually N2/N1 Shin Kanzen Master), but I am largely moving away from premade decks and moving toward mining vocabulary from immersion.

So I donā€™t think Iā€™ll really be getting my free time back after WK :joy_cat:. Though my schedule will open up a lot more because Anki is much more relaxed in terms of scheduling. I only do one Anki session daily, compared to the minimum three WK sessions.

Iā€™m hoping to be about a third of the way through Tobira by the time I do my last set of WK lessons, assuming a two weeks per chapter pace is doable for me. I think a big part of the reason I was so successful with MNN was because I built my schedule for it around my WK leveling pace, and the pressure to complete at least one textbook chapter every level kept me from slacking, so Iā€™m going to try to do something similar for Tobira even when I donā€™t have the framework of the WK level system anymore. If two weeks per chapter works, then Iā€™ll keep holding myself to that deadline and probably transition my study log update schedule to match haha.

The things that will remain the same are: 1) my wrestling translation workload, because TJPW will keep doing shows regardless of whatā€™s happening in my studies, haha, and 2) the read/listen every day challenges, which Iā€™m planning on continuing as usual.

Iā€™m not sure if Iā€™ll exactly move to spending more time doing immersion than I already am, but Iā€™m hoping that as I get better at Japanese, I can make better use of my time to get through more material with less time/energy required for it. Right now, the translations are the biggest time suck for me, and to a certain extent, theyā€™ll always take up time, but I definitely get faster at them the better my Japanese gets, and the question becomes ā€œhow do I word this in English?ā€ instead of ā€œā€˜what does this sentence mean in Japanese?ā€™ and then also ā€˜how do I word this in English?ā€™ā€ :sweat_smile:

So thatā€™s the goal, basically! Getting good enough at the language that I can casually read and watch a lot more stuff on the side without having to devote more time than I already am spending on Japanese each day. But at least right now, and probably for the next few years, itā€™s unlikely that the total amount of time Iā€™m spending each day will decrease.

I sort of have a tentative five year plan, which Iā€™m currently about two years into. My goal is to get through about one JLPT level every year, and then assuming I make it all the way to N1, at that point Iā€™ll stop doing intentional study with textbooks and such and will be able to just read and watch stuff for fun and do Anki. By that point, Iā€™ll probably have burned everything or nearly everything in WK, haha.

Sorry for the long answer! One lesson I feel like Iā€™ve learned throughout all of this is that itā€™s really helpful to transition in and out of new study habits gradually, so Iā€™ve spent a lot of time basically laying the groundwork for my post-WK intermediate studies so that it wonā€™t be a very big transition for me. Iā€™m not planning on taking any real break, or quitting and starting a bunch of different things at once.

My immediate first impression of it is in my latest study log update! There definitely will be more detailed impressions given later in my study log, haha (ā€œtoo detailedā€ is in fact my jam :sweat_smile:).

I have a hard time evaluating the difficulty of it kanji-wise now that Iā€™m coming at it from level 55 haha (Iā€™ve found only one single unfamiliar kanji so far), so your mileage may vary there! Grammar-wise, Iā€™d say that Iā€™ve benefited from coming into it with a very solid N4 base. I just read the first reading exercise last night, as well as the grammar points for the first chapter, and there was nothing in there that I struggled to understand. My vocab is also very solid, largely thanks to WK and also thanks to MNN (and thanks a little bit to pro wrestling as well), but even so, there were a few words that were new to me that werenā€™t in the vocab list.

I think if youā€™re very dedicated and donā€™t mind doing lookups, you could probably try it again at this point! Itā€™ll be a steep difficulty change compared to Genki, but if you take it sentence by sentence, itā€™s really not too bad. It feels downright easy to me compared to reading pro-wrestling post-match interviews :joy_cat:.

Have you been reading native material or graded readers or anything like that as youā€™ve been doing BunPro? If so, youā€™ll probably have an easier time with Tobira. If not, you might find it helpful to try reading some N4 level material first to sort of help solidify everything youā€™ve learned. The first Minna no Nihongo novel might be worth picking up for that, honestly.

Iā€™ll report back with more details after Iā€™ve finished the first chapter :blush:!

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Hi! I canā€™t remember if I ever posted here, donā€™t think so, but Iā€™ve been reading this topic for a while since I fit here just fine, as you can see next:
imagen
Almost a year and a half and still on level 7 xDDD (didnā€™t study for about 8 to 10 months, canā€™t really remember, did a reset as the reviews where too much to bear for my couple of remaining neuronsā€¦
My typical level up is close to 2 weeks, but I just checked that on WK level 7 you already have like 90% of the kanji needed for JLPT N5, and Iā€™m thinking I might try it, that means focusing in all the other departments, and my listening sucks as my real goal is to be able to read, I just want to understand whatā€™s written tbh, so kanji has always been what I fear the most, since memory, well, has never been one of my strenghts.
So, I might write once in a blue moon, lurking in the forums takes away waaay too much time once I start reading and reading and readingā€¦

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welcome !!!

I totally recommend going for N5 and throwing yourself into grammar now! It will give you a goal/deadline/incentive to actually encourage you to start practicing listening/reading/grammar as opposed to solely focussing on wanikani like I did whoops! I regret not prioritising grammar and native immersion at the start bc I truly believe the sooner you start the better!
My biggest reason for learning Japanese is also because I want to read. But practicing listening, speaking, writing, and grammar will all help you with reading! Theyā€™re all related!

that said, if youā€™ve just come off a 8/10 month break, itā€™s okay to delay this for a while until you get back into the habit of consistent Japanese study :slight_smile: you donā€™t want to overwhelm yourself too quickly!

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Welcome aboard the Durtle Train (Scenic Tour Line)! :joy: And welcome back to the forums!

Feel free to write whenever you feel like it. No pressure either way. Always glad to hear from a fellow durtler.

Good advice! :+1:

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5 days late to update that I got to level 19 after 16 days and 21 hours. The last three level ups were between 10 - 13 days which felt wayyyyyyy too fast for me. I think this current pace is good keeping my apprentice items below 100 at all times. I will probably durtle at an even slower pace because of some travel plans, challenges joined, a job hunt, and other language learning endeavors. :face_with_spiral_eyes:

Congrats on finishing MNN and your first novel @fallynleaf . As usual, I enjoyed reading your study log and super amazed at your sheer determination and will!

And welcome to the newcomers and returnees!

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Iā€™ve been lurking here for a while and definitely think I quality for going the scenic route lol. Iā€™ve been on my current level for 12 days now and am not even close to reaching the radicals in the pile of old vocab lessons. These past two weeks have been rough for me due to school plus dealing with some health issues. My energy for language learning was zapped, but itā€™s slowly coming back. I feel proud of myself for mostly staying on top of reviews, but itā€™s hard sometimes to get out of that hyper productivity mindset.

Does anyone else have times where you only do reviews for a while because you donā€™t have the energy for lessons?

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oh heck, yeah!!

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