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Third month in! What a ride. Last month saw my first encounter with a manga in a Japanese/English bilingual edition, and a brush with Japanese literature. Looking forward to what this month will bring 
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Logs and thoughts
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Prioritized reading on Satori, hoping to eventually reach the point when it ‘clicks’ and I can browse through a page without getting hopelessly lost
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It’s actually harder for me right now to read Dr Slump than Hole in the Wall on Satori:
a) heavy use of hiragana means too many homophones… I need more Kanji
b) colloquial Japanese makes sense in a manga targeted at young teens, but the gulf between manga syntax and what I’m learning on Bunpro seems quite massive
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Somehow reached episode 32 of Hole in the Wall, still a while to go. The word of the day: 率直 == candour not a WK vocab, but the primary meaning of the kanjis is “percent fix”… not sure how that is supposed to make sense
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Spent time on much needed grammar today: two lessons on Bunpro and on Satori’s excellent Nutshell grammar. After that took a break with Dr. Slump and read the episode about the alien who looks like a bee with an inflated ego problem
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Back to Hole in the Wall on Satori. Word of the day: 頑張る Persevere Very fitting.
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Got through one episode of Dr.Slump where I only managed to understand one sentence, and did so only after reading the English translation. Then I could match the hiragana to what the kanji should have been. The rest of the dialogue I believe was using some slang that left me scratching my head. Could not tease out a single word. The translation is very loose which does not help, but still makes for fun reading. Just not in Japanese. Was luckier with Hole in the Wall, where I knew most of the kanji and the kana vocab was generally simple… lots of mentions of ポケット.
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Read a couple of episodes on Satori the past 2 days, it’s great I could preload content as we had no internet last night.
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Awful day, but as they say, it can always get worse. Kanji as a form of escapism is as good as any, I suppose? Put more effort into reading a particularly weird episode of Dr Slump as it had more vocabulary and long sentences than usual. Using the 10ten app and jisho to work through each sentence is a slog. Still managed to get through the whole episode
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Reached episode 40 of Hole in the wall and was very pleased to encounter several kanjis from my current WK level… always appreciate free practice
. Word of the day 心地良い == comfortable, pronounced ここちよい yep, that’s ここ rather than こころ. -
Couple of episodes from Dr. Slump vol1; the last one is about the doctor’s obsession with getting a glimpse of the teacher’s イチゴ パンツ strawberry knickers… what kids read in the 80s
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Over the last 2 days read one episode each of Dr Slump and Hole in the wall, and a couple of articles on NHK easy news; apparently the hydrangeas are doing well this year and more tourists got lost on 富士山. Encountered more vocab from my current level, incl 警察庁, which I thought would be pretty useless
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Reached episode 46 of Hole in the wall. The topic is quite depressing, but it gives a sense of the rather bewildering levels of politeness in Japanese. Finished volume 1 of Dr. Slump where Arale meets a キツネ
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Hole in the wall
The last few episodes had several sentences that I could read through without needing the in-built dictionary. Overall it took me over 3 weeks to get through the 50+ episodes. What a marathon! The storyline was perhaps less engaging than Kiki Mimi Radio, but I very much enjoyed the grammar/syntax explanations and voice acting. Next! -
Gobbled all 10 episodes of Spring on Satori in one go, with a huge improvement in comprehension compared to 2 months ago. Cute and moving story with excellent voice actors. It looks like I may have graduated from the beginner stories.
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Got through another zany episode of Dr Slump, still relying a lot on the English translation. It’s fun to spot where the translation diverges markedly from the original; one such instance has 名古屋弁 translated as “Brooklyn accent”
. Started John and friends in Tokyo on Satori, I hope it will help me get a feel for daily life, casual conversation. Episode 1 included a few kanji vocabs from WK levels above 30, but otherwise was pretty manageable. It made me wonder why 洗濯機 only appears in lvl 51, when the meaning is easy to guess from the first and last kanjis wash + machine from lvl 18 and 20?! -
Read a couple of episodes from John and friends. The style is colloquial and engaging, fairly easy to follow. I was expecting 了解 to appear at any moment, and sure enough, that’s how episode 3 ends!
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Spent a couple of days relaxing with Dr Slump, where I first read the translation and then the Japanese version. Today read through 5 episodes of John and friends on Satori. In one episode they translate 載る as “to appear in print”, close enough to some of the multiple meanings given by WK, but still different from any of them. This makes me happy that I followed @simias ‘s advice to pass WK reviews generously. Roughly right is good enough for me
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Split time between Satori and Slump. I like that John and friends is a dialogue between John and his Japanese friends, a natural setting for learning about Japanese customs and language through the experience of a foreigner living in Japan. Today’s episodes were about food, and I started to get hungry
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Enjoyed 3 episodes on Satori under our tent
in the middle of nowhere yesterday, and a couple more tonight. Word of the day 気軽に freely, readily. WK teaches 自在 which doesn’t quite mean the same thing 
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Binged on Slump for a while before ploughing through a few episodes on Satori. Lots of kana words in their shortened form makes comprehension as tricky as the manga. こないだ instead of この間 , same meaning as この前 , another of my leeches
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Reached episode 21 on Satori, and met quite a few kanjis from my current level. Sweet. (literally, these episodes were about an old sweet shop!)
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I seem to have picked yet another story with a weirdly passive character… this time it’s a poor student who got himself a selfish spoiled brat of a date (“I want champagne!”)
At least it seems that date will be a one off. -
Made it to episode 32 of John and friends. The action is about cooking a curry, and as usual the comments highlight some useful expressions and grammar points. Word of the day: 適当。
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More Satori and 3 episodes of Dr Slump, too much going on for logging.
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Read every day this month
, it seems. John and friends on Satori . Went back on Tadoku to check how my reading has improved and am ever so happy 
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