What is this? 
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Congrats on the 60!! 
I’m patiently waiting for the cake the celebration post 
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You’re possibly including this in the post but what now, do you have plans of continuing WK for a while? At some point if you decide whether to keep doing it for a long time or drop it soon, having no WK srs frees up so much energy and time I’m sure you’re going to love it. Even if you decide to continue the daily items will decrease from now on once you finish your Lv60 lessons so it’s a win-win situation nonetheless. Definitely comes in timely for all the reading that is coming soon right? 
Can confirm, mine took a few hours 
.
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I think it might be called “my hard work”, but I’m a bit unsure. 
Thanks! I will probably write about it there, but I don’t mind answering now too.
I plan to review for a while. Not sure how long, possibly forever because I have lifetime anyway. But I’ll reduce review sessions to one a day sometime in late December, early January.
Indeed. 
I didn’t do it for the reading, but the timing fits super well for that too. Lucky me. 
(I think I’ll be fine, but I’ll probably have to keep my higher volume of hours reading.)
If I can, I might start composing it when I have time. Some of my plans are gonna make it a bit of work to do.
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And here you go, everyone, the ultimate update (but not the final one!):
Also, anyone who wanted it long (looking at all of you!):
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So because I’m rushing towards the end of Orange, there was no way I was gonna be able to wait another half week and then another week on top of that to finish Orange.
I just finished next week’s reading (and I’m starting the next one as soon as I finish this post).
So I will write my impressions here, as is my wont and move it to the right thread later.
Chapter 21 of Orange thoughts are now here: Orange 🍊 Chapter 21 - #2 by MissDagger
Couldn’t stop there, could I?
And now my chapter 22 thoughts are also in the right place: Orange 🍊 Chapter 22 - #2 by MissDagger
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So because I can’t leave well enough alone , I went looking for resources on listening and learning grammar with Japanese only for N3 and up. I also remembered that we at my Japanese language school would have finished N3 at the time I was graduating.
For some reason, I thought we weren’t quite finished yet, and then I thought more about it and we actually were. However I can’t remember if we actually got to the end of the Try N3 book we used. Close enough for sure. I also did not take that with me home.
In fact, I got rid of the textbooks because I didn’t have room for them in my luggage. I didn’t even fit everything I wanted to take home, throwing out a couple of things I wish I hadn’t needed to, but not really regretting it long term.
So the two skills beyond just reading that I want to develop more next year is some more grammar study, but mostly my listening ability. It is definitely my weakest ability. I could even write and speak better than I could hear when I left Japan in 2020. Now, I suspect my writing ability is pretty much gone, and my speaking ability is probably on par with my listening (or worse… 
).
When I went looking for grammar youtube channels, I looked for N3 (having forgotten I “finished” that at language school) and could still be a good place to start, otherwise I’ll just go looking for their N2 lists. Youtube channels to check out and potentially start watching regularly:
Apparently I only found three I wanted to check out, and I can’t even remember how I found them. 日本語の森 I’ve heard of for as long as I’ve been on this forum, but the other two? Maybe I just searched youtube? Turns out these are also from a Tofugu articles. xD
Listening practice things. So podcasts and similar. Some things that have been hanging around as tabs forever and ever. A lot of these will also be from Tofugu’s articles on podcasts for listening practice, focusing on the later beginner part of the beginner article and intermediate articles. I’m more intermediate, but late beginner is a spot where I should be able to listen where distracted and still follow along. Not sure that would be true for even lower intermediate.
Couple of random ones
Upper beginner
Intermediate (ordered by difficulty order decided by Tofugu)
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Easy Japanese, note to self: not a solo show!
Speed picks up here but still intermediate:
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Nihongo Con Teppei (regular podcast link, aka intermediate)
Upper intermediate and beyond (according to Tofugu still):
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Japanese with Teppie and Noriko, I guess if I like their individual podcasts, I’ll enjoy this? xD
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Let’s Learn Japanese from Small Talk, also two people talking
Also for those interested, I have already listened to a few episodes of The Bite Size Japanese podcast, it probably falls in beginner since she explains some terms with English.
So yeah, that would be it. I wanted to put all these links together so I wouldn’t have to keep the tabs open or let them disappear into the void that are my bookmarks. 
Hopefully once my early busyness at the beginning of next year eases, I can start the listening ability practice! 
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For grammar other than 日本語の森 I really like 三本塾 (which you most likely already know) and also ゆみせんせいの日本語ch（yumi ura）. I should work a bit more on grammar this year too so hopefully I post this as a reminder for myself as well 
.
Also for podcasts you might be interested in this thread, you might find something useful!
And lastly allow me to lure you in to the new Listen Every Day Challenge starting soon . Doesn’t even need to be a challenge anyways, I know I don’t do listening every single day but I do it very frequently and hang out there pretty much everyday (until I stopped posting again recently). Even if it’s just for listening discussion it’s pretty useful.
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Thanks for the additional recommendations!
I definitely have in the plans to join the listen every day challenge. Probably more definitely for the spring challenge. But I might join for February through March on the winter one. I’m just gonna be so busy early to mid January, that I already believe I’ll be doing reading catch up on the VN clubs when that eases, that I have no plans to try and keep up with an additional challenge too.
My plan is to get caught back up with the VNs by end of January, and then hopefully add in listening regularly at that point. By then, my WK reviews should be much lower too, so that will help too. ^^
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In my experience, putting things from tabs into lists and then revisiting and resorting those lists into new lists without ever doing anything actually productive with them is half of the Japanese study experience…
But, godspeed for your listening practice! I should probably get more seriously into that too. Maybe I’ll find something fun from your post there.
By the way, does that include Loopers? How far along did you get? I’m thinking of getting back to it too. I get reminded of it every time I see your profile picture 
Also, a tiny bit belated: Congrats on reaching level 60! That’s such a huge accomplishment! 
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I honestly found most of it at Tofugu where they also talked about what the different podcasts covers. I also know there are tons of good resources and options to be found in the listen every day challenge, since I’ve sometimes peeked at it.
I finished chapter 8, and I believe I just barely started chapter 9. And for now, I expect that catch up will purely be the two active VN clubs (BU$TAFELLOWS and 9-nine-), but whenever I’m caught up with those, my plan is probably to read Loopers, unless I really crave reading something other than a VN. xD
Thank you! I’m not sure I’ll ever get tired of seeing the golden 60 by my profile pic, so it is always appreciated. ^^
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Haha, I bet! The only thing my profile got going for it is being 
mysterious since I found out that I can hide the badge
That’s pretty much where I stopped too! When you have time to start again, do you maybe want to read it at the same pace? With Loopers I really enjoyed talking about what’s happening with others who are at the same point in the story.
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I’m like such a curious person and that mysteriousness pokes at me so bad sometimes. Like I totally respect people’s right to hide it, but man, I just wanna know.
So true, yeah I’d love to read it together. In the later half of January some time, I should know better how much Loopers I can fit in each week. So let’s reconnect about Loopers then.
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I stopped doing WK around level 10 somewhere around early 2020, and started hiding the badge when it lead to misunderstandings about how good I am at reading for a WK L10. People sometimes assume WK level = ability level.
Nice, looking forward to it!
If you’re on Discord, we can talk about scheduling there then! Or if not, here I guess. It’s a pity WK forums don’t have private messages…
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I know and it is a true shame. 
While one can assume/guess a minimum level of kanji and vocabulary knowledge for someone at a certain level, it sure don’t tell the extent of their knowledge.
That is actually one of the reasons I’m glad people can hide their badge, whether it is for conflict between their knowledge and their level, or just because they don’t think it is anyone else’s business.
I’m an adult and I’ve learnt I can’t learn everything I get interested in, but it doesn’t stopp the curiosity from being aroused.
Thanks for sharing.
I don’t use Discord much. I don’t currently have any servers I’m active in, or any people I regularly talk to there, but I don’t mind.
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December 28, 2022
Big Reading Update for 2022
So as the year comes to a close, I wanted to review how reading have gone this year.
I started the year with a stated goal of reading 12 things. Books, bundle of 5 booklets, volumes of manga. Didn’t matter, but at least 12 things total. I knew full well that a book would have more words and probably take longer than a volume of manga, but I didn’t want to restrict myself to x volumes of manga and x number of books.
Honestly I wanted to be open to books while knowing I’d probably read mostly manga. Also the Ask Graded Readers I still had left over, counted more as book than manga, so that also made me not want to restrict what kind of thing I read to reach the goal.
My Result, aka Stats!
4 Books:
- Ask Graded Readers level 4, volume 2
- Ask Graded Readers level 4, volume 3
- 夜カフェ１
- 夜カフェ２
13 Manga:
- よつばと１
- よつばと２
- 美少女戦士セーラームーン(完全版)４
- 渡瀬悠宇 The Best Selection 2
- ホテル・メッツァペウラへようこそ１
- ホテル・メッツァペウラへようこそ２
- Orange 1
- Orange 2
- Orange 3
- Orange 4
- Orange 5
- 耳をすませば
- 神さまがまちガえる１
1/2 Visual Novel (VN):
- ルーパーズ (technically less than 50% but close enough)
What a nice long list. I hit the goal with only manga, and also did a third of it in books.
This is only thanks to the Read Every Day Challenges: spring, summer, and fall (my home posts in each thread linked). And I can say this with confidence, because I didn’t read anything at all for the first three months of the year.
Bookmeter (my profile) reports that I read 3609 pages this year. For a daily average of just under 10 pages. But considering I skipped three months entirely and didn’t read every day of all three challenges (plus their off months), that number was higher on most days. ^^
Non Stats Results
Books
Finishing off the graded readers I bought several years ago had been a goal of mine for a while. The good thing with that was that I read a very simplified and shortened version of 坊っちゃん by Soseki, and I really enjoyed that. I hope to read the original later, but probably not next year.
I also read my first book book (so to say ). I think they might be considered light novels (LN), but that is more of a genre than type of book as I understand it. (I don’t really understand it at all. ) But it was nice to do. にゃんにゃん探偵団 were too much 絵本 to really feel like a book. Although I probably called it my first book when I read them.
Why not? xD
I’ll probably call finishing my first real book when I finish my first non-LN book. Which should happen next year unless I get waaaay too busy with other things I’m reading.
Manga
As for manga, I read my first few volumes of it completely by myself, no WK resources available to help (the hotel manga and Best Selection short story collection from Watase Yuu). Although I don’t think there were any resources for Sailor Moon either since it was a independent book club with not a lot of activity. But I had people to ask.
To be fair, I could ask about things in the other things too, but it would have been from people who hadn’t read the thing I was asking about.
I keep saying that the only reason I haven’t read more よつばと is because I got too involved with book clubs and had no reading time left over, and that is the truth. D: I will get back to it though, it is so much fun. I guess I just get to savor it for longer.
Orange was something I was gonna read by myself, but so many other people were interested that I started an independent club for it, that is still going strong. The last chapter of volume 5 is starting in 3 days. And that finishes the main story. (I read ahead because TOO INTERESTING!!!)
And as I started Orange, I also started reading with other book clubs. I’ve joined the Beginner Book Club for two reads (Mimi/Whisper of the Heart and Kamisama), I joined the offshoot for Night Café, and lastly I joined the VN club for Loopers (but I’ll talk about that under its own heading).
I kept up with some of the clubs better than others, but I finished all the manga (and book) club reads. I was pleasantly surprised by some of them. And I didn’t read anything I was disinterested in (for a club). (Although Night Café 2 really took a turn for the worse and means I’ll probably drop the series, I might read the third volume that I own or I might not.)
One thing that is true is that if I keep reading the same series, one after the other (or close enough), then it just gets easier and easier. Because volume 5 of Orange was so much easier and quicker to read. So I should probably do that with Sailormoon.
VNs
So this was also the year I got into VNs. Right around I was starting up Orange. @Daisoujou started up the first VN (main) book club here on WK. (A VN had been read as an independent book club before but this was gonna be an organized main club with nominations and voting for next picks, etc.)
And because I was hanging out with several VN people in the spring read every day challenge, I ended up deciding that I’d join if the VN picked was one I was interested in (and that was on Switch). And Loopers was picked.
While I didn’t finish Loopers and I fell behind pretty quickly. I did read a lot more of it in late November, but still didn’t quite hit the 50% mark. I certainly enjoyed it and I plan to finish it. Other book clubs just got in the way.
But it also lead to me nominating my first couple of things in a main book club and BU$TAFELLOWS won the vote (along with 9-nine-) as the second pick for the club. So I’m now running that one too. It has barely started though, so I won’t have read much by the time 2022 ends.
The only downside of reading VNs are that I can’t track it on Bookmeter, nor do I want to get an account at a specific VN site to track that stuff. It does mean that some amount of what I read won’t actually show in my reading stats, and I suspect that will become a real “problem” (aka my stats from bookmeter will be very inaccurate in how much I actually read) next year.
Overall
My stamina have grown so much. When before I would have had to work to read a chapter of Orange (for example), I can now easily read a chapter of it as long as I have enough time. I also don’t feel like I always want a break after finishing a chapter of manga, I can easily keep reading if I want to/have time.
It has become very clear to me that different mediums/genres use very different base vocabulary. Loopers uses a lot of words I haven’t seen anywhere else, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I saw more of it in future VNs. Night Café used a ton of onomatopoeia, making the nuance of actions hard to understand unless I looked them up.
The thing I struggle with the most is definitely my limited vocabulary. Earlier in the year, I definitely found myself still struggling with grammar, but after the spring read every day challenge, and maybe part into the summer challenge, that stopped. And now, the thing that slows me down is definitely vocabulary.
And yet, I have no plans to dive into an SRS deck to try and “fix” that. For one, depending on what I read, the words I need to learn are very different. So there won’t be a deck I can use straight off. I might use koohi or jpdb some time next year for a specific book/manga/VN, to help learn that ones vocabulary. But I’m not gonna try a scattershot approach, nor am I interested in building my own deck.
Instead I want to keep going at grammar actually, because grammar gives so much nuance, and while I know the general meaning of most grammar I see, I don’t know the nuance. Some of that will come from reading more. But it couldn’t hurt to study more. And I have only studied formally up to the end of N3, so might be good to start peeking at N2 and N1 grammar, just so I’ll know it when I see it (and can look it up again at that point ).
I’m so incredibly happy about everything I read this year. I learnt I love reading together with other people. Especially mystery stories (whether crime or not) because it leads to fun speculation and predicting. Most of that will be wrong, but there is something fun about doing it anyway.
I became a reader when I was 11, but as I hit my twenties, I started to spend less and less time on reading, other things took more space. I stopped having convenient short breaks to dig into reading. (I used to read at most breaks in high school.) I’m now 30+ and I’ve been trying to reclaim the title of heavy reader for a few years now (ever since I stopped reading as much more or less…). And honestly, reading in Japanese have probably been my best success so far.
I didn’t read every day, but I kept coming back to it. And I read a lot of days from the moment I started the read every day challenges.
I hope I can use this momentum and also read more in English too (I’m a hoarder of English fiction too, not just Japanese >_>). Plus there is something magical about just being able to dive in and read. And my vocabulary is too small in Japanese to be at that stage yet, but there are manga where I am fairly close. Soon 
And since this is long enough already. I’ll write out my 2023 reading plans in another post.
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Yes, that.
When I have really tried to thoroughly and correctly understand things, nuance is often the obstacle that gets in my way.
Part of it is just reading and hearing more language, but grammar studies are part of it too.
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Also, I have a thing about setting goals a little unrealistically high, and using that more as a scale than an absolute goal. Sometimes I have reached those goals though.
For Japanese, I remind myself that my goal is to make a reasonable English translation. Maybe I will never be able to, but it puts everything into scale in my mind.
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For sure, I know I’m missing nuance a lot of the time. Perhaps more subtle nuance at times, but missing it for sure.
I know that there are nuances between similar grammar points that I gave up trying to learn while I was trying to understand their general meaning and patterns. But now that I’ve seen them many times, it is time to start understand what using X vs Y actually does to nuance.
I have a writing mentor that calls this failing to success.
I personally try to set goals I know I can hit, because I find it motivating. I will inevitable have life events come interfere in my reasonable (and occasionally slightly ambitious) plans. And I prefer to get past those events knowing I can still hit my goal because I kinda counted on that happening.
Only once have I completely smashed a goal I thought I might struggle with. People were banding about the goal of reading one book (in English/native language) a week for a whole year. This was at a time where I was very much the heavy/voracious reader I prefer to be. So 52 books in a year? I hit that before June ended. xD
When I read at an amount I am happy with in English/Swedish, I tend to read 2-3 books per week. I really want to get back to that, but I guess 1 book (in English/Swedish) per week would be fine, since I’m now also reading in Japanese a lot.
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I usually keep my unrealistic goals to myself. They are my private goals that anyone else would say are ridiculous. So then I secretly work on them so that I can surprise everyone later.
But having doable goals is a thing too. I try not to be absolutely goal oriented, but when I keep track of goals and progress, I find that I use my time in not just more productive, but also in more enjoyable ways. Like it seems I have more time in my life when I keep myself a little bit on the busy side.
I can’t recall: are you making it to Japan this year?
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I think I’ve come to the conclusion that Kiro needs me to not be gone for that long while he’s still a youngling. But I might go next fall, but I am vaguely aiming at next winter/early 2024.
It depends on work, but that is my current plan.
I’m also still trying to decide between one long trip to do a lot and then not go back to Japan for a while, or breaking it up into two shorter trips and maybe go again a year later. The latter option would be more expensive though, since flights aren’t cheap and I’m not sure I can afford that.
So definitely still in a waffling phase on a couple of things.
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