Another double day, because I had a test this morning and had to study for it, but I still read some (excellent time management skills, you see).
These two days I’ve finished this week’s 夜カフェ chapter. Most of this was done today, around 70% of the whole chapter I’ve read last night (time management, again) and just now. I’m impressed at how quikcly I can read, though not sure, which part of reading got easier (and I hope to god it’s not just the one where you find out most things from context).
I didn’t manage to set aside time yesterday for reading — and today I have to work on my assignment for Japanese class. If skimming Japanese search results and reading blogs (in Japanese) about tourism counts as reading, I did a bit today
I may read a bit of かがみの孤城 before going to bed later if it’s not too late. I’ll have to sleep early since I only got 4 hours last night though lol.
A travelling trader is lost and starts to hear the cries of a child in the mountains. He finds the child but when he picks it up he sees that it has the face of a grandpa. It won’t stop crying nor will it let go no matter how hard he tries to get rid of it. Luckily this guy is a sweet-seller by trade and pops a tasty candy in the baby’s mouth, it stops crying but demands more. He tries to flee but seems to black out.
When he awakens he finds that his entire sweet-stock has been eaten.
Japanese found in the tall grass
New Things
何処からともなく「どこからともなく」ー Randy Orton Out of nowhere; from who knows where
How to cry like a baby in Japanese:
エーン、エエーン！
The “I didn’t know you could stick a repeater on the end of that to make it a thing” category 恐々「こわごわ」ー Fearfully; timidly
Today I read this week’s section for Week 5: 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん 👵🏼. The book isn’t really grabbing me, but it’s a book club so I think I’ll stick with it because the discussions can be interesting
I’m reading kinda slowly today. Another tired day. Made it a little past 6000 characters and I’ll call that good, still managing to treat that as my new minimum. Things weren’t that hard but at the same time the new word density was just abnormally high (and, you know, it’s always high to begin with). It didn’t take long beyond the 1000 character mark for me to have 20 mined words, and they were basically all common, useful ones. There are so many words!
I realize now I even forgot to grab a screenshot at all today. It’s just a sleepy day. Probably doesn’t help that my reviews are coincidentally piling near their upper limits recently. Which means they’re about to go down but yeah, I have had upper end times in Anki and WK together. You know what, have this cropped image of angry Tsumugi I took ages ago, and imagine this is how I look when thinking about what I forgot to do:
This route is really holding Shiroha’s whole story at a distance, so I can tell it’s still going to be a while most likely. Just having more summer adventures. Although, I had one moment of bringing back terrible personal memories, heh.
So, two characters were discussing being able to handle bugs, and one mentioned that the exception that freaks them out are かまどうま. Those being camel crickets (or cave crickets, spider crickets, whatever you prefer). Now, I used to live somewhere where these would show up in the house, and they are the worst bugs I’ve ever dealt with. They get pretty big for bugs, but what’s worst, is they jump. Like a lot, and a few feet high. Directly at things that they find threatening. So you’ve got these giant bugs erratically, aggressively hopping at you. Truly the worst. キモイ
Interesting new word: 傷心旅行 (しょうしんりょこう) - “travel to relieve heartbreak”
Oh, right, and I’m also still slowly making progress (alongside the audiobook listens) on スマホを落としただけなのに . Since I’m reading 2 books and the VN at once it’s not getting a ton of attention, but I finished section 8 (of 60…) last night, so that at least shows some continued forward progress. It’s indeed a mostly relaxed read.
On Tuesday’s I often have a call with a friend to read together. Previously we were reading Fullmetal Alchemist, but after completing the first chapter we decided to move on to something that uses more everyday vocab. So today we started reading the Tsubasa Bunko edition of 君の名は together. We read the first page - we only read a little each week so that we can really dig into understanding the grammar …though part of the reason for the slow pace may also be that we keep on getting sidetracked and chatting.
This post is probably going to be huge so I think it’s best if I divide the replies so it doesn’t get too messy. Hoo boi, here I go:
Replies
Daisoujou
Yeah I think this could be a nice experiment. I guess it comes down to the old need to have everything perfect, I feel very uncomfortable with uncertainty sometimes. I managed to work a lot on my perfectionism with these challenges, I remember being annoyed when I missed a day and then by Winter’s challenge I was fine with it. Now I need to work on being fine with not doing things optimally.
I think it’s not so much that they’re not working per se, only that I think they’re taking an extra effort that could go to just relaxing my approach and going through more things in the meantime, with a bit more varied context and a fresh mentality, with no “x number of words max” per day “limit”. I guess I’m looking for a more comfortable approach. Making cards is not actually huge work because usually it’s only a click in Houhou or in Yomichan, but… I’m not sure, I guess the issue is that I burn out on SRS after a while, because it’s straining to think about what to add, what not to add, how many words, “am I doing enough words today? Oh I barely added anything today, oh today again, oh I already added 20 words so have to stop (Houhou sadly doesn’t have a new cards per day limit, that’s probably a big downside)”, and so on. Too much mental gymnastics and technicalities sometimes. I’ve been testing with JP-JP cards with Yomichan+Anki and I think these are working much better, actually, so that’s good, though still fairly limited for me because I don’t add cards whose definition I don’t understand fully. An approach could be to only add these types of cards whenever I can and leave it at that that would also reduce the daily reviews and overall tediousness.
windupbird
It often does feel boring, truth be told. It can get so… lifeless. It’s of course probably not pointless, because the method definitely works overall, I’d say. It just seems to be sold as the only valid method to learn a language “properly”, often coming from the Japanese learning community. I sometimes browse /r/languagelearning and it gives me the impression that there are many people there who advocate for the “read, read, read a lot” approach, among other things, even if the SRS population is still very prominent, though not as noisy as in the Japanese community. I wonder what makes Japanese different from other languages, if it’s something inherent to the language itself or the population that learns this language in particular. Sorry this is a random train of thought .
I think so too. I left the language school back then because it felt a bit slow, but the truth is that even if it was slow we did reading, listening, writing and speaking, and it was a much more effective and varied approach, looking back. Over time I’ve come to realise that if I hadn’t left the school I would have achieved a much higher level by now, not worrying about trying to find the best approach or the best pace. Though I wouldn’t go back to the school now, I think I would benefit from returning to my mindset of back then of just keep going, however slow or fast, while maximising fun and curiosity. I’m not sure when the other mentality started to take place, probably when I started researching (and potentially misunderstanding) self-study methods in the online community.
That’s really reassuring .
wiersm
Yeah that’s my thought as well. I’m not sure why I thought Japanese would be different, I suppose it just looks more intimidating than English ever looked for me . Probably because English already shared a lot of things with Spanish so I felt much more confident, whereas Japanese feels like a completely different beast.
natarin
That’s a funny coincidence
I like that reasoning. I’ve seen it before, people using SRS to acquire a first set of “critical” vocabulary and then off to the battlefield.
Do you still learn kanji like in WK or do you just acquire more vocabulary? Ever since I finished WK I’m not sure of how I should approach kanji learning, I’ve only been adding words while having a look at each individual kanji’s meaning and that’s about it, but no formal learning.
Honestly that sounds amazing. I hope I’m not mistaken, but I think I’ve seen you spend multiple hours many days with whatever you’re doing, simply because it kept pulling you in, and I always thought it was impressive. I wouldn’t be able to do that myself with my current approach because of that pressure you mention. English never felt like studying for me, either, because I never sat down to study it. I absorbed it in exactly the same way you are approaching Japanese, only over a long period of time.
I think this is really good advice, and reassuring at the same time, tysm!
omk3
It’s exactly the same for me. I encounter words from WK all the time that I don’t remember studying at all, and I burnt about 70% of them. Which is kinda disappointing if I think about the hundreds of hours it took me to reach Lv60 in total that could’ve been used to learn things more in context, but if anything I’m really grateful that at least the readings seem to have stuck very well, and now I’m able to guess correctly the reading of most words I encounter, if I know their kanji.
I think that’s a great way of expressing it. I feel the same, I learnt to associate many words with their meanings, but I never internalised the idea behind them. I learnt to “get correct answers in a software”, as opposed to learning words. And it’s because I never got emotionally invested in them, nothing happened with them, it was purely going through a word list. Though, again, at least a portion of them stuck after all.
That’s interesting! I think I’ve seen the takoboto list approach other times around this community, possibly coming from you, I can’t quite remember. Also thank you for reminding me I hadn’t installed it when I changed phone . I’ll keep the lists idea in mind.
You’re right. It’s reassuring to know that other people use other methods and still learn just fine, even if not in the most efficient way. I don’t care much for efficiency either, which is a contradictory thing to say considering my post from the other day. I guess I could say I care about not getting stuck in a place where I feel I’m not going forward, and it’s good to see that that’s not necessarily bound to happen at all.
Redglare
Yeah I think you’re right. I have been doing the same thing with the same approach for a long time and I don’t know what it feels like to change direction and walk a different way, especially when most people seem to be walking the other way ;-; . Though ultimately all paths reach the same point, even if some take a bit longer.
To be fair I don’t even know how it works myself either . I just add what I want, with context sentences in the backside in the case of Yomichan and that’s about it. But yes, I think it’s good advice to get rid of whatever that doesn’t seem to be working. I don’t owe these artificial cards anything, after all, they’re only a tool. I could aim for only a small number of cards when I feel like it, as you do, and leave it at that. Perhaps a break from SRS altogether is due for a bit nonetheless.
sycamore
That’s honestly a good and tricky question. The honest answer is that… I don’t really know specifically. I started learning out of pure curiosity. I thought it would be really cool to learn because I liked a lot of Japanese things in my childhood and still do to this day, so I applied to a language school many years back and got admitted. And I absolutely loved it, it always felt so much fun. It was never a specific thing that drove me, but more like… everything? It’s kinda complex to express, or I’m just very tired . It was similar with English, it wasn’t so much one specific thing but many at the same time. I wanted to watch movies, play games, read books, interact with the English and international community, and so on. I feel like with Japanese it’s similar, I want to be able to enjoy books, play Japanese games, connect with Japanese people, travel to Japan again, and a big etc. There’s a big aura that pulls me in and brightens my life a little bit, and it’s a struggle to put to words what exactly it is what I want to do. Is “everything” and answer? Video games are definitely a big factor, though.
Yeah it’s exactly the same with English for me so it doesn’t really bother me. I don’t feel the need to quantify my vocabulary, I don’t even know how many words I know in Spanish. It’s not something that I think is worth keeping track of . The number of words growing in the SRS is mostly so I could see that I’m indeed being exposed to a wider and wider range of vocabulary, but ultimately I’m happy deleting them at any time.
That’s one nice option, though I don’t usually feel like doing anything else when my energy has been spent scrutinising one thing already. Honestly I think I’m walking in circles to allow myself to drop the SRS and I’m trying to rationalise this a lot when in fact it’s so easy to just stop using it . I guess I was just afraid of doing so and not getting anywhere, but everyone’s responses are giving me a lot of hope.
I think it’s exactly because of not seeing Japanese as straining study that you all are improving a lot over time. I definitely need to return to that mentality . And also I hope I didn’t misunderstand the sarcasm, but I wish you very good luck with the JLPT!
GrumpyPanda
I think I’m starting to realise that overall I’m just burnt out of SRS and need a change of tactic, at least for a while. Replying to you all has made me realise that I’m trying to convince myself to keep pushing a study method that I’m not really enjoying very much, when I can just drop it and try something else for a bit. It has been very enlightening to me .
Yeah definitely, I think I need to be more selective of what I add, but also most importantly of when I add it. Sometimes it’s a word that seems to be important or common enough to learn, but in a context I don’t care about. I’m just usually not inclined to let it go, because it feels important to know.
I think that sounds great, honestly. I think I’ve also had moments when I felt I enjoyed SRS a bit, but it might have been very dependant on mood. I would definitely benefit from adding less words, or better put, reducing or eliminating the pressure to add words overall.
Yeah definitely, flashcards are very efficient and effective with the right method and the right mindset. It just seems so easy for them to be super boring, though ;-; .
MissDagger
That sounds extremely painful . I commend your dedication It’s so weird to think that these comfy tools haven’t always existed, now that we are all so used to them. I’m so grateful.
Thank you for linking this, I’ll definitely give it a read soon!
Yeah that seems familiar. I mentioned it in a reply before, but I get the impression that sometimes I was learning how to type the correct answer, instead of internalising what the words meant, so the natural progression was to forget a lot of vocabulary after a while.
This is definitely my experience as well. I burnt some words in WK that I kept having doubts about, and then I encounter them somewhere else with a very strong context and suddenly they click.
You are completely right. I’ve also mentioned it in another reply but I think I’m subconsciously looking for reassurance and validation to quit the SRS, perhaps temporarily or permanently. It’s definitely food for thought, thank you so much.
Okay that was a lot . Again thank you all so much for your input, I really appreciate it <3 .
On a side note, I mentioned Game Gengo the other day. Coincidentally, he released a video today with a list of video games currently on sale for the golden week (linking in case anyone is interested in any, again it’s a veeeery long video but there’s no need to watch it completely, can just skip to see if there’s anything that catches your eye, though the first minute and a half is important). So anyways, one of them was Team Zero Escape bundle, which grabbed my interest both from Game Gengo’s introduction of it and the price. If I remember correctly I’ve seen some of you play them, @natarin , ZTD is one of them, right? I know absolutely nothing about these games, but they seem interesting enough for a first contact. I… might consider getting it . So uh, thoughts? Is the language there too obscure or difficult to get into, or is it manageable?
This is the pack (they can also be bought separately)
Just have to say that I had a particularly good reading day today! I finished chapter 1 of 夜カフェ２ then read chapter two in one sitting! (And at a fairly nice pace, too.) Then I picked up Asuka and read a chapter from ブナの森のアリア, in which a reclusive witch who seems to live with a talking wolf goes to a supermarket for the very first time. She cut her finger earlier while she was peeling potatoes, so when she sees a salesman pitching peelers (which she has apparently also never seen before) her eyes get all huge and adorable. So anyway, reading that chapter convinced me to grab the first volume on bookwalker (I couldn’t find it on paper, and there is something magical about being able to instantly read) and then I read 30ish pages of that.
I will try to upload a picture from the supermarket chapter later.
P.S. I really wish I could justify getting a subscription to Asuka. Maybe someday …
I skipped yesterday (2nd March) and I’m going to skip today as well. Yesterday was a public holiday so I used that as an excuse to continue reading this new web novel that I found. I ended up staying up whole night still reading it and now I need sleep too badly to concentrate on Japanese practice. I thought this would be the challenge where I get a perfect score but ah well. At least, I got one full month.
Read chapter 2 of this today. The girls made their way to the school for the 合宿 and Kaho seems especially excited. They had a meeting about some stuff they’d like to do like play tag, have a campfire, etc so the next few chapters should be some fun slice of life stuff I imagine.
Haha, you know, I was thinking about language difficulty more than anything, but I still stand by it. I’m more than desensitized to crime and horror for entertainment – in a way I find old slasher movies and the like sort of a comfort pick for movies. I’ve not been saying anything about what I think, but it’s pretty good. I’m interested to see where it’s going. Feels like it’s written to be a warning about data security at times, but it’s all good .
Yeah I feel you on that. It’d be unnerving for me to disrupt my routine at this point. Part of the idea came from me having that thought not too long ago that I wanted to try dropping Wanikani, and within a week I was just feeling bad about it. I don’t think it was even enough evidence that the new approach wasn’t working, I could just tell it made me more worried so that settled it. I think I tried it at the wrong time but, you know, it’s when things feel worse that you want to shake something up.
Ahh ok, I see! I wouldn’t say I actually enjoy SRS either so I can definitely understand that. I think I approached it from a different angle because your perspective isn’t as much a side of it that has bothered me. Like I do find reading occupies a different mental space when I’m doing it “to learn” but that’s really about the whole process, and I find it getting better as the reading gets easier. But the cards themselves don’t bug me much. Probably because I do the usually unadvised thing of adding somewhat recklessly. I have no procedure for selecting beyond how I feel at the moment, and I usually feel like I want most things that are in a suitable sentence. So for me the only hard part is when I have to cut myself off for the day, haha. I only had to think about getting enough words when I was new enough that i+1(ish) was hard to find. Now there’s way too much.
I will say, for whatever it’s worth, I get the ideas people have about just relaxing and reading and not overly forcing it with SRS, but I guess for me I feel like I’m going to enjoy my reading so much more as it becomes further from studying and takes up a lighter cognitive load. I keep doing SRS because I’m willing to believe it’s enough of a shortcut to that point that I’ll have more fun more quickly (stressing that I’m already having some) if I keep doing it. I find that my context sentences, the vast majority of the time, do take me back to the context it was originally used in pretty strongly and reinforce one dimension in which the word can be correctly used, so for me it doesn’t feel as out of context as a lot of people expressed, in sentence mining specifically. Wanikani words though? Yeah. Love-hate with those. I think I do need them to reinforce kanji readings, but I basically assume I don’t know any WK words at all til I actually read them.
So yeah I guess simple as it is, it comes down to if what you might get out of it is worth the amount it’s irritating you. And you seem tired enough of the SRS process that if you’re having a fairly good time just reading right now, which you seem to be, that seems like an easy call.
SPYxFAMILY plots and characters are crazy - I like it. I just quickly read 2 chapters (to see the mom), and 70 pages per chapter? That’s crazy.
Thanks. I might join in.
There is this , (and you can click your own to tick, not necessary to press edit ); but yeah, it is less standing out than .
I never used SRS too; but reflecting on it, a large part is learning vocabulary roots; and more than that, a lot of rhymes. Though I tackled a lot of reading native English materials long before that. (In particular, a lot of encyclopedia articles and Wikipedia.) I also was an exchange student (pre-adolescence) in New Zealand as well.
I can easily say that I don’t believe in immersion alone; although of course, it is a big part.
Another part is grammar, there was being taught, as well as I owe a lot to my particular meticulosity.
Regarding the vocabularies, in the end, both quantity and quality are important. I can’t omit either. In my eyes, Anki, in particular, can help with quantity (and I also write my notes) and pinpointing what about to be forgotten, but that’s not the only way.
I think this basically matches my own experience. I have no plans to stop SRS anytime soon haha because I’ve already seen how much of a massive gain in comprehension it has given me. Simply nothing else works better for vocabulary acquisition, at least for me (and I’ve tried plenty of other strategies with Spanish, so I have other experiences to compare it to).
I think I’m pretty neutral on SRS as an activity. I don’t love it, and I don’t hate it. I’d rather be reading, but with as much work as reading is for me currently, it isn’t exactly the most relaxing experience. But SRS helps smooth things along so much that I feel like fluency is actually within grasp as long as I keep plugging away for the next several years.
I do think it really helps to SRS stuff directly from your reading, and to pull the context sentence along with it. I don’t stick at all to the i+1 rule haha, but I’ve noticed that many of my context sentences in Anki that had like 4+ unknowns when I added them are actually comprehensible to me now without look-ups because I’ve since managed to learn all of the words. It’s so extraordinarily cool to me to watch my own understanding develop in real time like that.
There are loads of words I’ve chosen to add purely because I found a sentence on twitter or in a youtube live chat comment that I really liked, and I wanted to use that specific sentence for it, haha. (I added 対決 so that I could use “イケメン対決だ(︎⁉︎)” for the context sentence, and I added 魔力 despite not having technically learned that first kanji yet because I wanted to use “ベルトの魔力がミサヲを狂わせる！” for my example sentence, despite not knowing that last verb either).
What I’ve found for me personally is that reading in context is great for solidifying meanings for me if I already know the word (so if I’ve drilled it into my head with SRS), but it’s not really enough for me to learn meanings from scratch unless I get absolutely massive repetition over a long period of time, and it doesn’t really get me to learn how new vocabulary is read because I end up just learning to recognize the word on sight and don’t pay enough attention to the reading when looking it up with Yomichan. So SRS is my only hope of gaining auditory comprehension of these words haha because it forces me to learn the readings.
Day 33: May 3rd
What did I read?: ダイロクセンス Vol 1
How much did I read?: 8 pages
How long did it take me?: 25 min
We’re back, sort of xD Not as much progress as I would have liked today, but honestly I’ve been behind the whole entire day and now suddenly it’s 9pm somehow, idek. At least it wasn’t as bad as yesterday.
Today I learned that Rui has been on TV a lot recently (courtesy of Sumire’s boss, who also apparently knows who he is xD). I desperately want to see whatever show that was, like idek why but I want it so badly. I want to see Sumire react to it xD
This illustration was inserted into the chapter randomly and I thought it was so cute :3 (This is Rui btw)
ただでさえ - even at the best of times; already; (even) under normal circumstances; in addition to; as it is
百聞は一見にしかず (ひゃくぶんはいっけんにしかず) - seeing is believing; one eye-witness is better than many hearsays; a picture is worth a thousand words
つべこべ - complaining; nitpicking
Reply/following the random train of thought with more random thoughts xD
I have a feeling it’s probably a little of both - the language has so much about it to learn (new writing systems, multiple readings per kanji, and then vocab and different grammar on top of it all) that I think it encourages people to look for ways to learn it in the most efficient way possible. Most people want to Get Good Fast. This is a huge generalization, but I also get the vibe that a lot of Japanese learners are a bit different from the bulk of other language learners in a way I can’t totally define (my first instinct is to say “nerdiness” but idk if that’s really what I mean I mean that in a fond way~ Like they enjoy optimizing stuff, systematizing stuff, making it neat and orderly. So SRS appeals to them. I feel like Japanese attracts that population, perhaps because it is relatively complex and challenging so there’s more satisfaction to be gained from feeling like you’ve “cracked” it)
Hello! I’m new to Wanikani and I just found this read every day challenge, I’d like to participate even if it’s late, but could somebody tell me where to find books to read in Japanese? I’m a beginner, N5 barely moving into N4! Thanks!!
Japanese found in the tall grass 
that would also reduce the daily reviews and overall tediousness.
.
. Probably because English already shared a lot of things with Spanish so I felt much more confident, whereas Japanese feels like a completely different beast.
. I commend your dedication 
. So uh, thoughts? Is the language there too obscure or difficult to get into, or is it manageable?
At least, I got one full month.
.
); but yeah, it is less standing out than 
.
