Adding to what I read yesterday - one more page from my biography on 雪舟.
I’m more than half way through with this one and wooheee, it’s like going back in time 9 months of comprehension. It’s the 9th biography in my second grade biographies book, but the first one of a non-Westerner, and the first one where I have no background knowledge or cultural context. At least with Seton, whom I had never heard of, I could connect to the location of the great outdoors and there was a lot of crossover with vocabulary from Kona’s adventure (Satori) that I coincidentally read at the same time. For 雪舟, a buddhist monk, India ink painter from 15th century Japan - there’s not a lot of resonance with my daily life and other reading! Though, it’s been very educational and interesting, which is what I enjoy about reading this book.
Jan 17
Two episodes of Akiko (Satori) - this was meant to be a short break from work, but it got extended because it ended on such a cliffhanger!
Introducing 奇術の紳士 and his mysterious box
That he’s smuggling into the port by a high-speed motorboat under the cover of nightfall… I need to remember that this is a children’s story and not the plot of some 80s action show about uncovering an illegal drug smuggling ring via luxury yachts that’s (surprise!) secretly run by the government all along and that this was all a set up so our hero ト二イくん would take the burden of the blame.
Another chapter of Dungeon Meshi, up to date with the show now (…just in time for a new ep).
Still doing no-lookups based off my memory of the last ep, which is working… okay?
I really really like being able to just pick up and read something and not being interrupted all the time but I think a work needs to be either at or just below my ‘level’ (心のヤバい) or I need to have already seen it/read it/know the story (Dungeon Meshi) otherwise it would be incomprehensible.
Circling back around on intensive reading, I went back to 心のヤバい7 and went through again with lookups. I honestly think it might have taken longer to read it again after the extensive reading, but I’m not sure – certainly I felt way more drained than even usual. That said, praise be for the restorative power of sleep.
Judging by my SRS, I’m starting to forget words from stuff I read further in the past like Flying Witch (nearly a year ago at this point) that I haven’t seen elsewhere, which is understandable but a bit depressing (though this was from the time where I was mining everything instead of what was statistically more likely to appear). I know if I’m not actually seeing them anywhere it’s not really that efficient, but it is a little sad.
So I got hooked by volume 2 of 老女的少女ひなたちゃん. Honestly, this manga has definitely exceeded my expectations. Given the natively level and plot synopsis, I kind of expected “My First Reincarnation Manga”, and picked it as another thing of “seems neat, and easy enough at my level” like continuing オオカミちゃん。But honestly when it has sections that focus on the main plot and not the slice of life (don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of cute slice of life too), it can pull out some great feels like this one:
I’d gotten to that scene during yesterday’s reading, and it motivated me to get back into this despite my original plan for this being the “backup/easy reading” manga and instead I finished out the volume.
I cracked and ended up reading the final chapter of Volume 14 of Shadows House.
I’m usually pretty good at not reading ahead of any bookclubs, but I really wanted to know what happened next. Obviously it didn’t help at all because now I just want to know what happens in the first chapter of the next volume.
Okay so the ‘issue’ with the no lookup method so to speak is that it becomes very hard to stop reading and now i’ve finished another volume of 僕の心のやばいやつ and i very well may read the last volume available tonight and then there will be no more volumes to read. what a curse!!!
After 2 years of studying Japanese, with my kanji knowledge thanks to WaniKani, my vocabulary and grammar knowledge, and of course my trusty Google Translate and Japanese input keyboard I completed chapter 1 of Harry Potter in less than a week (about 3 hours on different days). This is my first Japanese novel. I still have a long way to go but my past self would not have seen this but she would be proud.
I started school and work again so I don’t have much time to read. So I’m ok with just reading at least a few sentences each day for consistency, like sentences in Bunpro etc
Some more casual reading of Bungo last night to finish off chapter two. Tried to keep look-ups to a minimum (when they felt plot essential or if they were made up of kanji I already knew but didn’t know the combined meaning).
After nearly 3 weeks of adding a lot of new vocab to Anki, I’m definitely finding I’m struggling recalling readings of new words when they’re made up of unfamiliar kanji, even if I can remember the meaning. So I’m going to create some Anki cards specifically for the kanji and their readings to mimic the way Wanikani works and see if that helps.
I’m also finding that for things like conjuctions/expressions, I’m having a lot of trouble with these because they’re mainly just hiragana and so there’s no kanji to gain any meaning from. So I’m putting a bit of time aside to study these separately, focusing on a few each week. This week I’m going to look at:
I finally tried out Satori reader and read the first episode of The Jam Maker. LOTS of words I didn’t know in that one. I also looked at the Nutshell Grammar series out of curiosity and ended up reading the entire first episode, oops.
Jan 17 cont 雪舟 - 1 more page in this biography. A really interesting account of his travels to China in search of an India ink master to learn from. Discovering that he is already the equal of living masters of the art, he discovers that painting the expansive nature scenes on his travels to and from 北京 (the capital) is his greatest teacher now. I love biographies, even at the second grade level!
Jan 18 ふしぎ駄菓子屋 The mysterious sweet shop - finished Ch 2 and started Ch 3 (about 10 pages). Now that I’ve opened the floodgates on this book I just can’t stop reading it. Lesson learned - next book club I better not start in advance! I love this book
Dungeon Meshi and extensive reading
I’ll be interested in your review, I’m curious about that one.
Do you mean, those words come around at longer intervals, and then you find yourself missing them? If it makes you feel better I definitely see this - but in spite of that constant fogetting I still see my overall vocab going up. I don’t SRS a lot of words, but I see words coming around in Satori and I know about how long ago due to when I read the series the sentences are from, and I definitely get waves of longer interval cards where I’ve either come across the word again and it’s easy or I’m totally clueless. So maybe similar? But like you said, you’re more targeted on cards now, and anyway, eventually it’s ok to delete or leech out cards - and I suspect the extensive reading is the ultimate solution to this. Although, I’m also finding this issue :
thanks araigoshi
ooh I found your review on natively, too, thanks! on my wishlist
January 17 
2024年1月17日 
Previous
老女的少女ひなたちゃん2
Manga
9 chapters
135 pages
January 12th - 18th 
I also looked at the Nutshell Grammar series out of curiosity and ended up reading the entire first episode, oops.
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