100% and it always help solidify it way more than just doing some JLPT exercises! What kind of cake did you make btw?
Main Post
January 17th:
Read chapter 4 of それでも歩は寄せてくる.
The moment near the end when Ayumu almost says 大好き but stops himself and only says “大好-” actually caught me off guard and I had a good laugh about that. Also, realized that I could recognize the complete word even though it was cut off and I haven’t learned the second kanji. I guess I have anime to thank for that.
I think I’m further than I got on the English version of this right now. So, the rest will be new to me. Looking forward to it.
Vocab Learned
用事 (ようじErrand
夕飯 (ゆうはん) Dinner
Here's my Yotsuba attempt for today! Pg. 22, 23, 24!
Page 22 - 1/17/22
わっきた
Waah!! (I couldn’t figure out the きた)
なー
Hey! (getting the girl’s attention)
あれなんだー?
Do you see that over there?
え?
Yes?
あれって
That over there…
ブランコのこと?
What’s the matter with that swing?
Page 23 - 1/17/22
きーこ
“Screech / squeal / squeak”
こう
Like this.
こうやって
It works like this.
あそぶの
to enjoy it.
あ
Surprise.
ああーっ!!
I see!!
やる!やる!
I want it!
よつばもやる!
Yotsuba wants to have it!!
はい
Yes
おして おして!!
I can push I can push!!
はいはい
Yes Yes
Page 24 - 1/17/22
おー
Oh! / Ah!
キー
Screech / Squeal / Squeak
自分で反動つけたら動くから
Push by yourself to keep the swing moving (?)
あはははは
Ahahahaha
それじゃあね
Well see you later.
It’s a great feeling, isn’t it? Very nicely done! Developing that sort of contextual knowledge is a great step.
Occasionally I’m playing the original Paper Mario “extensively” on the side (not looking up almost any words and just reading what I can manage), and last night I came across a new character who is meant to speak like a baby, and that featured a lot of sound shifts that I’ve never come across, but being able to frequently work out not just what the text said but what the words were meant to be, was immensely gratifying. (I’m leaving out the many times certain characters’ speech left me dumbfounded, haha)
Hi all! I didn’t know this was a thing so I’m belatedly joining late…
I’m planning to read:
- レベル別日本語多読ライブラリー:
- このドア開けてくれよ:A short horror story my friend wants to read.
- ときメモGS4:Planning to make my way through Honda’s route!
Jan | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
01 | 02 | |||||
03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 |
10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
Feb | ||||||
:—: | :—: | :—: | :—: | :—: | :—: | :—: |
月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | |
07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
28 |
I’m gonna give it a try. I started reading on the 14th and so far have been reading every night since. (I can’t really say every day because sometimes I only read after midnight… but I’ll count that for the previous day)
Jan | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Week 52 | 01 | 02 | |||||
Week 01 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 |
Week 02 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | |||
Week 03 | |||||||
Week 04 | |||||||
Week 05 |
Currently reading:
- 黒魔女さんが通る!! (Part 4)
- デスノート
- with the Beginner Book Club!
Finished:
- 時をかける少女
- started 14th Jan, finished 11th Feb
- see also the old Book Club Threads
- My final rant can be found here
!!!
Excited to see someone else paying GS4! I have done very badly on my dates with Honda (but I’m trying to do Daichi’s route so that’s okay haha)
Glad to have you aboard! Also:
If you wear green and poke his hair/face if think you’ll be safe! :'D Daichi’s super cute though, I’ll look forward to your comments on it - you’re a stronger person than me to brave all that kansai-ben!
@anon33985902 Nice to be on board!
January 17
君の名は , 7 pages.
Being very lazy with adding words to my posts lately, gomen ne.
Super long response to Zakarius
Honestly that actually sounds terrific! I know nothing about Nioh, but it’s definitely something I’d like to play eventually. I really enjoy Dark Souls-esque games. Sekiro is also in my wishlist.
Yeah you don’t know how much I relate to this. It’s something I’ve been integrating these past few months and still am. I think it’s natural to feel prressured to think that after a long time doing something, you would expect a much higher level if you haven’t achieved it by then, and the more time passes the bigger this feeling gets.
I started learning Japanese in late 2014. Anyone would say that after so long I must be very proficient already, but no, that’s sadly not the truth. To be fair, since I started until today, there have been different periods with varying degrees of motivation and commitment, periods when I was diligent studying, and periods when I did so litle I got nowhere. My first three years until 2018 I did them in a language school, and that accounted for only N5 and N4 content. After that, unhappy with the school’s slow pace, I went with the self-study route with Tobira, which I never finished ーI only did 3 or 4 lessons. It wasn’t until I commited to WK that I started taking it more seriously, and even then it wasn’t after finishing WK last year that I started studying properly again… and even then! It wasn’t until recently that I’m happy with my current pace and plan. So one could even say I have barely just resumed the Japanese journey I left back in 2018 when I left the language school.
Having said that, I’m happy I never quit. I barely improved my level, other than learning a lot of kanji, but I kept the interest in the background and refreshing what I knew. Of course I’m just a tiny bit sad that I had gotten nowhere after so many years, but also I don’t think I (or we) should care about past time, because that time is simply gone. What’s important IMO is how we approach things right now. And I think you and I both, and everyone in this challenge, are doing a serious and diligent effort to improving our language knowledge. And I think it’s also worth saying that, despite the pervasive hardcore aura you typically get from Japanese learning communities especially, when it comes to hobbies or interests, there is no deadline at all. Whether someone gets to their destination in 5 years or in 25, it does not matter to anyone else than to the person that enjoys that activity. As long as you enjoy the process and what you do, or get any satisfaction from your efforts, who cares how fast or slow you go? I think it’s important to not lose track of what you are already able to do ーwe’re reading in a compleeeetely different language. But yeah, just know that I understand your feelings a lot, as I feel this way frequently too.
As a last note, video games are just plain hard. Not all of them, of course, but these ones we seem to like playing are a special kind of hard (have I already talked about how ridiculously hard FFXIV can get?). I think it’s natural that we struggle with fiction that is intended for an audience that already has a lot of cultural background and well, obviously, vocabulary. We are in the process of acquiring that cultural background, and especially you much quicker than me, judging by all the things you like to read and talk about in this thread ^^.
If you are ever bored (and with 40 minutes of free time, oof), I watched this video today that talks exactly about learning through playing video games. I liked it quite a bit, it’s a pretty relaxed approach. The channel seems also pretty cool, though I can’t personally vouch for it. I know I discovered it last year when he was releasing the first videos of a playthrough of FF7 Remake, and I redescovered it today. But many people love it, so might be worth to give it a try!
Day 17
Today I read Chapter 13 of レンタルおにいちゃん. It was another really sweet chapter today. I’m enjoying having a few more uplifting chapters in a row, but I suspect that its all going to build up to a sad final chapter for the volume…
January 17 update:
Read 3 pages of 時をかける少女 today. Weekdays make me feel like I’m not doing anything with my Japanese (even though I know I am, at least judging by the time spent reading and doing WK/Anki, and the resulting consistency, for whatever it’s worth). Today was especially wearisome, so by the time I got to reading I was barely functioning. The story is currently at a slower paced scene, thankfully, so I managed to mostly understand it. I hope that this consistency pays off eventually and that tomorrow is a better day.
I really should try to somehow fit my reading earlier in the day – this weekend’s success speaks for itself loud and clear.
Nothing pays off better than consistency.
I think it’s normal to not feel progress for a long time, then a rush of understanding…and then nothing for a while again. I’m several years into learning now so the hills and valleys are very familiar and when I find myself doubting progress I look back at my learning notes I’ve taken (saying X was hard or I couldn’t understand Y) or read some of a book I read before and go, “oh, this is easier now.”.
So long as you’re showing up and putting in the hours of reading you cannot help but progress. You brain is making connections, even if you don’t feel it.
First I read 80 more pages of ゴールデンゴールド this manga is weird. It takes place on an island, where according to local legends the seven luck gods live. A girl finds a statue and cleans it. Later the statue comes to life and ends up living at the girl’s place, an inn. Only the girl and two guests staying at the inn see that’s it’s a statue all other people see it as just a normal human. Strange things happen, it seems like the statue brings luck.
Next I read some more lines from the Demonbane visual novel.
Home post
New week, so I should probably write down what I read the past days
14/1: 歴史366, 35min, read several entries.
15/1: 暁のヨナ, chapter 60, just went once through the chapter, then word lookup and later that day with bookclub
• also various googling here and there, mostly only 花言葉 if I recall correct
16/1: 歴史366, 28min.
17/1: こよみ📅 app, 40ish min
The 69th week season is Minor Cold-The Pheasant first calls
小寒ー雉始雊
New Words
雉 きじ green pheasant (Phasianus versicolor), Japanese pheasant
羽毛 うもう feathers
尊ぶ とうとぶ to value, to prize
重宝 じゅうほう priceless treasure; valuing highly
祥瑞 しょうずい good omen
献上 けんじょう presenting toー献上物: gifts given to or received by a shogun or daimyo (Edo period
甲高い かんだかい high-pitched, shrill
挙動 きょどう conduct, behaviour
求愛 きゅうあい courting, wooing,
頻繁 ひんぱん frequent, incessant
SOUL IS HEALED
AAAAAHHH this tanuki cuteness brigade member is at your service
Today has been pretty decent! I’ve done a little less than I’d like because my friends distracted me with playing Risk of Rain 2, but that’s ok, haha.
Ace Attorney: Still managed an hour at least. Working on getting the flow down for managing English and Japanese definitions, but I did make a few more cards out of particularly simple definitions I think I can handle. I only talked to one character in this time, so I’m noticeably slowing down, but I dunno. New words are everywhere. Might just be a thing with this case, because this one conversation got me loads of sentences of mine. It was reasonably easy to read at the least, but I haven’t gone back to the particularly difficult characters just yet.
Today’s case introduced the Blue Badger, who is my friend. I love how much this dumb, eternally dancing mascot features around this case. Turns out in Japanese it’s just called タイホくん, which unless I’m missing another joke, is arrest-kun. Not quite as welcoming as Blue Badger.
Loads of cool words today, the one I want to share is 自信作 (じしんさく), “work of art the creator has confidence in.” Very literally self confidence work.
Zoo 1: Having a great time reading this, but it’s harder to talk about without spoiling things. Ace Attorney has much more fluff. Suffice to say, though I’m slow, I’m 39% through, which isn’t bad for less than a month on my first book, no matter how relatively simple said book is. I’ll have a lot of thoughts when I’ve finished it for sure.
Because I’m reading your posts and you seem to be enjoying Sabikui Bisco, when I saw the anime on Crunchyroll, I decided to watch it. Only the 1st episode is out so far and I’m already pulled in. I’m curious about the mushrooms but I want to continue watching to figure it out so I haven’t read any synopses online.
Day 16:
日本語: I read a lot of 伯爵と妖精 31 and a bit of 冷たい密室と博士たち.
中国語
中国語: I read an intermediate entry on Mandarin Bean, one page of 擅长捉弄的高木同学, and some of 孩子最爱读的中国民间故事.
Oh awesome, I’m glad you’re enjoying it so far! Yeah I totally picked it up on a whim looking for random stuff to fill out a mandarake order and I was like “oh an upcoming anime based on a light novel? sure why not” and now I’m very invested I just checked out the first episode and it’s cool seeing what I’ve been puzzling out brought to life (and reassuring that I’m not completely lost on what’s going on lmao). The ongoing mysteries of mushrooms, who knew