I have no idea on which days I read during last week. It got… busy.
Slightly lengthy rant on what happened
Mostly because of work and everything else was a bit hazy due to exhaustion. We changed systems at the hostel, both the reservation software and the key system - we have keycards now! - and it was a bit stressfull. Both learning the new software while handling customers (we did learn it beforehand but using it during the job was a bit different then just the theory) and learning the keycard system was… a challenge. Which we kinda screwed up because we had trouble. Lots of trouble. As in, people locking themselves out, forgetting their card, conveniently ignoring the signs that the locks will be changed and then complain about dust and the sounds… Lovely, really. Led to an impromptu night shift on my part and my boss was also kept busy at night. Poor guy basically lived at the hostel for the past week or so, both supporting us and making sure it goes half-way smoothly.
As for reading - I didn’t read yesterday for sure (and god knows when I read during the past week) because the only point on my to-do list was to take a break. I succeeded. I chilled. I slept. I definitely did not do anything that involved a large amount of brain activity. And who knew a break worked because I felt definitely good today. I gave my offerings to the Crabigator, learned my vocabulary, did my laundry, heck I even did sport! Breaks. Revolutionary, I tell you. We should have breakdays every week.
And today I read the entire 4th chapter (part?) of もえる. All 14-ish pages of it. Without looking up vocabulary and most of the chapter felt a bit like a recap so it was an easy read for sure. Granted, I think I already read some pages during my nightshift but my memory is a wee bit hazy concerning that point in time.
My summary of もえる Chapter 4 without looking up unknown words
Yugawa and Kusanagi visit the place of the crime and kinda reconstruct what happened and what items/persons were where
Yukawa figures out it wasn’t plasma like most of the press and Kusanagi’s superior thinks
They take a ride around the part of town the crime took place in, just so Yukawa can get a feel for the place
They plan to visit a cafe later for some coffee so Yukawa can mull over what he figured out during the reconstruction
We find out that Yukawa hates children because he finds them illogical (?) and finds it exhausting to deal with them
They drive past the girl that searched for the red thread in Chapter 2 and which Kusanagi helped up after she fell
Kusanagi mentions the red thread she searched for and Yukawa (riding shotgun) apparently pulls the hand break (?)
they head back to the girl to ask her again about her, her mother comes out and they talk - with Kusanagi having to ask the girl Yukawa’s questions which is just hilarious
The red threat was very straight (真っ直ぐ) and no one except her saw it, including her mom
Yukawa is pensieve and tells Kusanagi that he has to go for a walk - something about the red thread is bothering him and he has to think about it
Haven’t updated these last few days. I’ve been keeping up with FF7 and it’s been going great, making more and more progress. I’m glad that the difficulty of the language hasn’t gone up overall even in plot development parts; it’s really, really accessible. I just arrived in Rocket Town, about 30 ish hours in.
I also ended up getting the Zero Escape bundle @natarin ! I’m not sure when I’ll start it exactly, probably on a whim some random day, but I could manage to get Textractor working in advance so that’s nice. Thank you for mentioning game2text as well, I didn’t know what it was and it’s amazing, I got it working with Anki already. I love that it automatically adds a picture on top of everything else, which is something that Textractor can’t do (I think?).
Also, I’ve been giving it some thought after the discussion last week, and this is how I’ll approach things from now on:
New plan
I’m dropping Houhou. I think part of what was contributing to the burnout was the WK-like SRS approach of having 4h and 8h steps before the 24h review. I just literally can’t be bothered to do that many frequent reviews any more. At this point I think those steps are just virtually useless to me, and it’s so boring to finish a group of reviews only to see another group coming up later. Now, this is something that can be customised and edited very easily in the app files (even someone like me, I have very little coding knowledge), but there’s also something that bothers me and I don’t think can be changed, which is not having a max number of new words per day. Everything you add comes up later for reviews, and you have to stop adding words at some point if you’re aiming for a max number of words per day. This contributed to the urge I felt to stop doing any Japanese once I got 20 words.
I’m taking up Anki instead, for multiple different reasons. You can add as many words as you want, it will only give you up to the max number you set per day, so you can keep consuming more Japanese if you want. Another reason is that I’ve been researching tools for a bit again and they’re seriously good. I don’t need to make my own cards other than editing a few things here and there if I need; Yomichan or game2text automatically add them for me with audio, context sentence, definition, pitch accent, etc, even pictures in the case of game2text. I knew these things existed but wow, now that I’m using them they save up so much time and effort. Also lastly, I don’t need to worry about reviews coming up later, because the number you see is the number you have that day, period. Once you’re done with that number, you’re done for the day. I don’t even think it matters at what time you do them or if you do them separately, as long as you do them they’ll all be counted the same at the end of the day. I also like that the review intervals automatically get longer or shorter depending on how well you remember (if you press easy, good or hard), and that cards still come up for reviews even long after 6 months (I personally never liked the concept of “burning” words, I can still forget words after that if I don’t see them for a long time), they can get multiple year intervals and I like that, especially if you’re aiming for a long-term deck. Probably not super useful to be honest, but still nice to have.
I’m swapping to a more immersion-based learning approach with less reliance on SRS. For this I’m going to discard the need to add any number of words altogether. I won’t be aiming for X number of words a day any more, I’ll add as much or as little as I feel like, even if that means not adding anything for days or weeks. I’m hoping that most of my learning will come from consuming more and more Japanese as opposed to doing more and more reviews. Reviews will be secondary and purely supplementary.
I’m taking the leap to JP-JP cards exclusively. This is something I mentioned I was going to try a few weeks back and honestly I’m enjoying it more, and I think they are proving to be more effective. This goes with my previous point as well, since I only add words whose definition I can read and understand completely. For now I can’t add everything I come across because I don’t understand every definition, so it will also be good to get used to adding very few words. I’m hoping that gradually, as I learn more vocabulary and understand more definitions, I’ll be able to add more words if I want to. But since my approach will be based on immersion and not SRS, this doesn’t bother me at all. I will still be looking up words in English if I don’t understand them in Japanese, of course, like I’ve been doing all this time, but only JP-JP cards will make it to the Anki deck.
About a sick mother who is on her death bed and wants to eat octopus. Her son finds one and it makes her better.
Japanese found in the tall grass
Octo octo, octopus!
経本「きょうほん」ー Sutra book
This word looks a little lonely so here’s the kanji for octopus, I’ve seen it before but it took awhile for me to link it with octopus, so here it is with some other friendly タコたち to hopefully let it sink in better.
Glad you’ve come up with some ideas! Sounds great, and I hope it all works out for you. I just want to comment on this part, not to in any way argue because what works for people is fairly individual, but because I’ve been thinking a lot about this point recently. I’m kind of in a midway zone of sometimes using Japanese definitions but largely still relying on English ones, but I’ve got a few Japanese dictionaries on Yomichan and at times I’ve gone “hey I can read all of this one, I’m going to put it in Anki in Japanese!”
But I have to say, at least for the step in the process that I’m on, and my own personal preferences, I’ve been kind of leaning away from it. In certain communities (that don’t intersect with Wanikani too much) the whole “monolingual transition” is a real sacred thing people shoot for early but it feels… slightly overrated to me? Like, if someone really wants to know exactly what a word means, there’s no beating Japanese definitions. Certainly can’t argue against that. And if someone’s Japanese is at a level where they can comfortably read most definitions, by all means, more exposure and better definitions are perfect.
But I get the impression lots of people force it at or before my level and I’m starting to feel like the Japanese definitions are slightly a trap, at this stage. If someone has the patience and energy to fight through them it can only be beneficial, but personally I’m going to burn out on the thing I want to read much quicker if I spend half of my time struggling to read words I don’t know in the dictionary. And controversial as it may be, most of the time I really feel like the English glosses, if looked at together, tend to be good enough to make the word make sense within the real context you’re reading it in. I just want a brief vague idea and then to let the stuff I read hammer out the details for now, and that seems to be fine. The Japanese definitions give me a little more reading practice (at… the dictionary, which is hard to be TOO excited about), but at the expense of taking a little energy I could’ve used on the thing I’m trying to read, and for the benefit of a level of nuance I’m usually not going to benefit from when I’m unlikely to even remember the word that well just yet.
And similarly, I’m kinda leaning away from J-J cards (or maybe just put both languages and read whatever I want when I review, I guess) because my anki time is already on the high end and I don’t think the benefits match up. But you and I are using approaching anki fairly differently, and this is only me musing about how I feel like doing things at the moment. I just liked the excuse to get some thoughts out there heh. I mean I’m not totally confident; maybe I’d come out the other side much better if I just buckled down and forced myself to use the Japanese a lot more right now and moved away from Jisho. Most of the people I hear about with ridiculously fast progress did the monolingual thing early, but at some points you have to wonder if it really made a big difference or if they simply did well at the entire undertaking because they’re the kind of person willing/able to trudge through a Japanese dictionary so early.
Still, again, I think your plan sounds good. This is me using it to entirely ramble about myself and my totally different position. Best of luck with the new methods.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Part 2 - A few more chapters
Listening
3 grammar listening
1+ casual listenings
Actually, I started and finished Happiness Vol.2 Ch.6 rather quickly. If the book club decides to go slow, I would need to think how to best learn.
Regarding Night Cafe, it’s quite the opposite - reading is a struggle.
Death Note is just right. (And just-right pace due to book club, albeit not so prolific discussions.) JoJo might not be too hard, if not for self-paced, and temptation to read lots. Yuru Camp might be a little stretch, but not too hard.
Nonetheless, in order to go for a more extensive reading, I decide to read at least good enough to write book reviews (which of course I had to express in Japanese); and take note of fun parts in every chapters. My full reading list, with my note taking is here. I might also create another private (i.e. hidden) repo for exploring some non-public series.
There is also a thing about Kanji learning pace - currently mostly completed level 13.
I don’t yet know how fast really is my pace.
I might also learn Hanzi (and Chinese vocabularies), as an excuse to relearn Kanji, along with 異体字, 許容字体, 旧字体 and Chinese variants (which are not necessarily “font differences” only).
Yay, more discussion! Don’t worry at all, I really like these so I appreciate it . I tend to write very little in my updates lately so I make up with these!
I think you raise very valid points. Personally for me it just seems like a fun thing to do right now, like… I see that I enjoy “researching” the dictionary and nuances a lot, so it amuses me. But if I had to give a more proper response, I think the idea that drives me towards doing a monolingual transition is wanting to learn a language through that language, a culture through that culture. I feel like if I always resort to English, I’ll end up “learning English in Japanese”, does that make sense? I’m not sure if I can explain this successfully without being extremely abstract and ambiguous . In my mind, words represent ideas, and different cultures have different ways of expressing those ideas. If I use another language to learn how one culture expresses one thing, I get the impression that it might affect my perception of that language and/or culture, that it might be influenced by the other one (which is inevitable in the beginning). Does that make any sense? Damn this is so hard to express . I think some words are extremely easy to translate from one language to another because it has a direct equivalent, like let’s say a tree, but many times this is not always the case and often it’s because both cultures have different ideas of the same thing or ways of looking at it from different angles, so a translation in that case is an approximation (English’s “have to” and Japanese’s “～なければならない” comes to mind, though probably not a good example to represent what I mean exactly). I think J-J dictionaries really help in this regard. Ever since I made that change many many years ago from SP-EN to EN-EN I don’t resort to Spanish any more, and I think that made me start seeing the language from a more culture-based perspective, I started “living” English. I’m not entirely ready to do that in Japanese yet because I’m still lacking a lot of vocabulary, so as I mentioned it will be fairly limited, but my reasoning is that if I can start making that change gradually, why not do it?
Another reason, that you also mention, is just simply more exposure. At the same time, the definition is there to assist if you don’t remember the word (i.e. failing a card), but if a word comes up and you remember the meaning or the idea that it represents then there’s no need to read the definition. You can always do, of course, but you can also just pass the card and on to the next one.
In my case I’m not overwhelmed because I make however many of these cards I feel like (I think right now I have like 30 in total, since I just started), but if I had a much more strict plan like I did, it could get very overwhelming very quick. I can only speculate, though, I’ll definitely report back in the near future!
Also about this, yeah I agree completely. In this case I don’t bother with the J-J dictionary and just look an English one. It’s only when I understand all words in the definition or the absolute majority of it that I bother with the J-J dic.
I’m sure I’d be doing my position more of a favor if I typed out a tremendously long paragraph with lots of goods arguments, but am lazy and kinda wanna go to bed :')
You already seem to have a fairly healthy mindset about it anyways, I guess I just wanna add some kind of minuscule reassurance(?).
I am one of these “Went J-J fairly early (with help tbf) and has stuck with it ever since”-people. No English look ups while reading, either I get the monolingual definition or I move on. And at this point, I’m very glad I stuck to it. Am sure you’ll be too :3
Yeah totally, everything you’re saying is pretty valid. It’s not like I’m totally lacking in the same feelings. I just come at the same idea from a different side I think. Like I’ve had the thing about more deeply learning word meanings on my mind too just cause it’s cool, haha. Kinda paraphrasing from a guide I used getting started in Japanese learning but it’s like, when you’re mapping birthday = 誕生日 , yeah you know what a 誕生日 is, but it doesn’t really feel REAL to you. You have to encounter it over and over and over and reach the point where a 誕生日 is the thing that you better not forget for people close to you, and you’ve got your own nice memories of past ones or feelings of anxiety about getting older and just tons of weight that personally colors your reaction to any given word.
At least for a while I’m not going to be having the chance to personally use much Japanese and have it used at me but I’m doing my best to get the same concept through media, y’know? The dictionary use is something I just wanna quickly do and get through to get me to have more and more of those experiences, so the English works well when I have to unless it really seems to be not fitting the given use (which has happened!) and then I go search further in Japanese. And times come up too where for whatever reason I want to get a more exact picture and I try the Japanese too. Eventually I’m going to move to using it more cause it’ll naturally get easier, I’m just feeling like what I want more than anything is to be able to read and listen to more, and the mostly English definitions keep that more painless. I guess my “defense” (not that I think it this is an argument haha) of my side of it is that I’m thinking, or at least hoping, I’m not learning words from the dictionary regardless of what language I read that in, so English is ok. I’m just using the dictionary to get a foothold to then learn to understand them in the sentence I find them in, and future sentences. And to be be honest even if I read a definition in Japanese I’ll still mentally attach “oh it’s like X English word” and I don’t think I can stop that, haha.
And in Anki I’m starting to push near 180 reviews some days (still going through WK at a good pace too…) so it’s about time to hit the brakes a little.
But your way makes sense too! It’s a different sort of immersion to see how Japanese is explained in Japanese for sure. I think I initially had that sort of excitement but it quickly felt like a too-long distraction from the thing I’m trying to read that has the word I’m looking up. Obviously it varies and I still sometimes use easy definitions though. We’re just approaching it a bit differently, which I think is fine and good. Though if I was suddenly convinced it would really make a big difference I’d bite the bullet and fight through the transition harder, probably.
That’s been my experience too - I usually try to get through SRS sessions fairly quickly (since they’re not that fun and basically just a means to an end) so if I know the meaning, I usually just quickly glance at the definition or context sentence without reading all of it, just to confirm if I’m right. That totally works - I thought Japanese definitions would make reviews take longer but turns out they barely do at all in my case. That was a nice surprise
Generally I have a somewhat similar approach as you - I use both dictionaries to look things up but on Anki I mostly use JJ definitions these days (still make exceptions though for really long definitions that I can’t be bothered to read…). Baby steps.
Though I also definitely don’t disagree with @Daisoujou either, I had/have similar reasons for not switching to JJ (like, wanting to read my book rather than a million dictionary entries) and I still think that also makes sense. Also agree with the actual immersion sentences probably being more important in the long run compared to the definitions.
I mostly just made the switch on Anki at least because of people around me being contagious but I do actually quite like it. I think my favorite things about JJ dictionaries aren’t even the definitions themselves, but the little extra bits - like those small example phrase segments at the end that give you an idea of how the word is used. Or even very occasionally little notes e.g. on what the kanji have to do with the meaning if it’s not obvious
Anyway, this was also mostly pointless rambling - good luck with your new approach, I hope things work out! Also
yay!! @natarin also got me into that, definitely love that happening to more and more people
Wow that sounds hardcore! I suppose you already had a fair amount of previous vocabulary for that, but at the same time you mention switching early. Do you think it has limited you in any way or on the contrary it has pushed you further than English lookups ever did?
Yeah honestly, I think the real work is not learning through the dictionary but through a lot of exposure. The context alone makes every puzzle piece fit, at the end of the day. Even if we look up things in English, the brain adjusts slowly to the Japanese feel. From my side, I’m hoping that using J-J dic will hopefully make things clearer for me or easier to internalise, but it’s only my wish. Honestly I’m just guessing at things for the most part . At this point I’m just hoping that at the very least they serve me well for more exposure in the long term or less lookups.
That sounds a bit rough indeed. Not particularly from the Anki side because 180 could be manageable, if I think back on myself doing around 150-200 WK reviews per day, even if they were a bit much sometimes. But mixing both together, I could definitely not be doing that at all, so I think that you doing it is really impressive.
I’m really curious though, as a few others have mentioned about this: since you’re doing a lot of daily exposure, do you think of WK as a hindrance or less useful thing, or on the contrary you see it as more beneficial? I haven’t done WK in more than a year already and my perception has changed since then, so I’m not sure how I would do things right now, but I didn’t do much exposure back then. If I were doing WK with the exposure I’m doing right now, I think I would definitely cut significantly on speed personally. How’s your perception of doing both at the same time? Especially now approaching the last levels.
I have a massive fear of those words with a thousand meanings and each definition being a long paragraph . Hoping to acquire those through exposure, there’s no way I add those to Anki . For now.
Same! There’s a lot of useful info between parentheses all the time and the example sentences are always so welcome. I like it when it’s a verb that can be written with different kanji and each definition tells which kanji it applies to.
@rikaiwisdom
Sounds like you’ve put together a plan to try out. You sounded very happy with it, so that is always a good place to be.
Changing to monolingual dictionaries feel exciting to me. I didn’t use ones for English until I was basically already fluent. But as told in previous stories, I come from a time before internet in your pocket.
I actually switched to Eng-Eng because the Swe-Eng/Eng-Swe online dictionaries were limited (this was also before dictionaries came built into Windows/MacOS). This was before google translate, or at least before it became somewhat useful. (Yes, it was worse before. )
Man, I feel old writing those sentences. The internet have moved on. Lol.
Anyway, so I didn’t switch for English until those dictionaries were easy to read. I have no idea when I will switch for Japanese. Dictionaries online (and built in) are just so much better than they were in the olden days, but I definitely find it preferable to use monolingual ones when I can.
I’m personally not at all close when it comes to Japanese. I do in fact have a monolingual dictionary installed on this computer for example, but I have to resort to Jap->Eng about 99.99% of the time.
If someone is further along than me, it certainly doesn’t hurt to check monolingual first, Jap->Eng/YOUR LANGUAGE is always available after that.
So yeah, good luck with the new plan, @rikaiwisdom!
May 8
Another chapter of 坊っちゃん, so another 4 pages read. The pictures I mentioned yesterday? I now know why they are the way they are.
Also the country side can be a nice, relaxing place to move to (I did about 2 years ago!). It doesn’t have to be full on intrigue.
So, around the early 30s on WK I did make a brief effort at dropping it and learning solely through what I’m reading, so that can tell you something about how I feel hahaha. But I mean that was a bit of a slump all around so I was looking to shake things up, and getting annoyed at getting Wanikani words wrong I felt like I had no real actual “knowledge” of compared to things I read. But after about a week I just felt more pressure, wasn’t really happy, and decided to go back to WK. So at this point I’m most likely sticking it out… but word reviews were annoying me even earlier today.
I think for kanji itself, Wanikani is extremely beneficial for me. Barring the occasional slip, I remember them super well. There are kanji I’ve come across a bunch in reading that I also just casually learned without even studying, but I have to accept that they’re the outliers right now. Cause words that I add that use non-WK kanji, of which I have a pretty sizeable chunk (or ones I want to learn early for whatever reason) are a real mixed bag. Often by around the time they become mature they roll back around and I wonder what the hell they even are. I definitely need to somehow get better at independently learning that stuff.
So I stick with WK because I very much like getting my hand held with kanji and bootstrapping off that teaching is seeing huge gains. I think I need WK’s vocab to reinforce said kanji and not be mindlessly memorizing unusable chunks of info, I’m not into stopping at standalone kanji… but at the same time, when given WK teaching alone, I assume I outright do not know a word at all if I haven’t read it. I’m also a bit more willing to cheat with double check with most people, either getting it wrong then going “no wait I know this!” or thinking I was close enough on the overall meaning of the word. All I want WK to give me is the chance to recognize stuff and remember it better when I read, and it gives that to me. I’d go crazy trying to drill into the nuances through WK itself like some people do, and be as picky as the system is at times about correct glosses. But I don’t literally cheat in the sense of marking something I truly don’t know as right, ever.
I do look forward to finishing it; I do kinda want the approximate hour I spend on it per day to do other things… but I see it as just my gateway to better and better immersion so instead of chilling and slowing down I’m keeping at 8 days per level (not gonna speed up on the fast levels, no way). And I really need to refine how I learn kanji on my own I think.
New chapter, new narrator(s). It’s very interesting to see how everyone’s preconceptions and limited information work together to lead them to different conclusions, which may not be entirely correct (or may in fact be horribly wrong). I’m convinced the exact same thing is happening to me too, as the reader, and that it’s completely intentional.
The first chapter was a lecture (as I eventually figured out), the second was a letter, and the third is (mainly) diary entries. All of them were written in the -masu form. Makes sense for a lecture and a letter, but would you write politely in your own diary? Maybe, I have no idea.
One of the words I liked today was 恩着せがましい. It means patronizing, condescending, acting like you’re doing someone a favour.
Yayyy that’s super exciting!! Glad I could be of help I also definitely started Zero Escape on a whim haha, I look forward to seeing how if goes
I’m glad you’re working stuff out! That all sounds like a really good way to go about it, still getting some of the benefits of SRS but with way less pressure than the rigidity of like “I have to add 15 words today.” I hope it goes well!
I think that’s about where I’m at. Not that I’m a model SRS user by any means, but whenever I do interact with it my whole goal is for it to be as quick and painless as possible, which usually means just getting a general idea like you said and letting context sort out the rest. For me the purpose of SRS is generally to keep words vaguely floating in my mind so when I do encounter them I’m more likely to make any kind of association with them; I definitely don’t expect to actually learn words from SRS.
Buuut if you actually like make more extensive cards and spend time studying with SRS beyond just like “okay yeah I’ve seen this moving on” then I can definitely see the value! I’m just not built for that That being said though, I’m often forced to look at monolingual explanations of things just because it doesn’t exist in jisho, or it’s a more niche construction that someone explained, etc. etc. and it’s really rewarding to be able to access knowledge like that! So I can defeinitely see the appeal
I think that’s a really good way to balance it! Especially if it’s something you’re enjoying; get the benefits and the satisfaction without burnout
Your experience makes sense and matches parts of mine too. I remember being already very tired by the 50s I wanted it done so much already. The completionist part of me wanted that Lv60 to feel like my time was worthwhile, to give it an end. Of course I was doing it to learn kanji, but by that time I started feeling like the words and or kanji I was being taught weren’t as important any more. Occasionally some of them popped randomly here and there, funnily enough.
I’ve come to realise and accept that I should probably have immersed much earlier and that a big part of the words learnt was probably forgotten because of that. But I think the most important thing that it did for me was as you say, learn kanji or at least make them a lot less daunting. I’m totally fine with having forgotten vocabulary because my objective with WK was to learn kanji alone, and that objective has been fulfilled, even if I’ve also forgotten some. Nowadays I don’t think WK teaches vocabulary in any meaningful way, but just remembering the kanji and its readings has been absolutely worth it. It also held my hand and kept me focused doing something in a period when I most likely wouldn’t have been doing anything else. I sometimes wonder if I could have achieved what I have with WK with a different method just fine or better, but that’s not the point. The point is that some way or other it made me do it, and the best resource is the one you’ll actually use.
It did free up so much time though, definitely. I’m sure you’ll feel very relieved as well. I quit relatively soon after Lv60, I had no plans at all of getting everything burned. I also was on a paid plan so that made the decision very easy.
@natarin@MissDagger Read your posts, nothing to add on my part . Thanks for the encouragement!
I read three pages of “Hikoichi and the Young Lord”. The lord has put Hikoichi to the test and called in five children who all look the same, are the same age, and are wearing the same clothes. Even the lord’s servants can’t tell them apart. Hikoichi must determine which child is the true young lord, and the child’s father is smirking at Hikoichi. Hikoichi thinks for a while, and then says"I know which is the true young lord. He is the one who has just finished shuji and has ink on his fingers."
Is Hikoichi correct? We’ll find out tomorrow.
New Vocabulary: しゅうじ calligraphy, writing practice
習字
interesting J-J discussion! I have nothing more to add that hasn’t been said (I am in the ‘mainly use monolingual definitions but if I don’t understand the definition then look it up in English’ camp. I’m not as stubborn/too impatient to get back to reading to try too hard haha) but it’s always so interesting to hear more about what works for different people!
Updates wise, I’m still on the games train I finished 13 sentinels a few days back (very fun game, would reccomend), and am now playing fire emblem 3 houses (I’m doing a blue lions route, and just finished chapter 4 I think ). I played some of this game when it first came out a few years back in English (got a little bit further than I am now in the black eagles route) so that’s probably helping a bit with remembering the overall gameplay mechanics etc.
I am having to look up quite a lot of vocab, and the fantasy setting means that quite a few ‘older style’ grammar points have come up, but it’s manageable (& fun) so far! There is this one game mechanic though that feels like a real test of Japanese skills - there is an in game ‘advice box’ and you can read notes the students have left there and then try to advise them. But it’s on a timer, so you have like 60 seconds to read the question and then pick one of three responses to give (the student can either be happy with your advice or not). It’s hard! An added difficulty is that the notes are anonymous but getting the right answer kind of depends on figuring out what student has written the note and what kind of advice they are likely to be looking for (tbh I remember not being great at this in English either ). So far I have pretty much just barely been managing to read the question and options, by which point I usually have about 5 seconds left and pick something in a panic…I have a 2/5 success rate so far lol, not too good.
I had a nice easy time reading part of this week’s 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん last night, which I think I needed. And today’s Summer Pockets was fine too! Just hit 6000 characters, but it’s more for time pressure than anything. The weather’s been nicer so I’ve been going for small walks (which luckily aren’t exhausting me as much recently…) and I need to go talk to my mother on mother’s day haha. I’ll visit next weekend probably Anyway, approaching the climax of this route – having a good time so if I find the chance, I’ll read later tonight. But I’ve been redirecting to more listening practice when I can recently.
Kinda spoilery? I love the art of this game so much
I hit another N2 grammar today, かねる, sort of “to be UNable to do” as a suffix. I actually just learned this on Wanikani with its non-suffix meaning (兼ねる), which is like “serving two functions at once”.
Favorite new word/phrase is undoubtedly 寝耳に水 (ねみみにみず), “bolt from the blue/great surprise.” Water in a sleeping ear sure would be that!
I’m very happy with myself right now for reading 13 pages of 夜カフェ and finishing a chapter today!
I also watched a few Japanese grammar videos on youtube - all in Japanese with no subtitles! (Among other things, I learned a new perspective on the subject of は VS が.) I’m pretty done with grammar videos in English, but watching in Japanese somehow makes it interesting again. It feels like I’m working out my Japanese muscles, so it’s much more satisfying. Funny that folks were just talking about J-J dictionaries – this feels related but not quite the same.
Now the big question… can I read an 18-page chapter from start to finish tomorrow? On the one hand I should have plenty of time, on the other hand that would definitely be the longest chapter I’ve read in one day so far… I’ll just have to give it a try.
Japanese found in the tall grass 
Ch.6
Vol.3 Ch.13
vol.1 - latter half
. I tend to write very little in my updates lately so I make up with these!
. In my mind, words represent ideas, and different cultures have different ways of expressing those ideas. If I use another language to learn how one culture expresses one thing, I get the impression that it might affect my perception of that language and/or culture, that it might be influenced by the other one (which is inevitable in the beginning). Does that make any sense? Damn this is so hard to express 
. For now.
)
I also definitely started Zero Escape on a whim haha, I look forward to seeing how if goes 
. Thanks for the encouragement!
I finished 13 sentinels a few days back (very fun game, would reccomend), and am now playing fire emblem 3 houses (I’m doing a blue lions route, and just finished chapter 4 I think 
). I played some of this game when it first came out a few years back in English (got a little bit further than I am now in the black eagles route) so that’s probably helping a bit with remembering the overall gameplay mechanics etc.
). So far I have pretty much just barely been managing to read the question and options, by which point I usually have about 5 seconds left and pick something in a panic…I have a 2/5 success rate so far lol, not too good.
Anyway, approaching the climax of this route – having a good time so if I find the chance, I’ll read later tonight. But I’ve been redirecting to more listening practice when I can recently.