Yesterday was a bit of a flop, so today is day one of my shiny new studying schedule.
09:00-12:00 - focus on SRS and grammar
13:00-16:00 - focus on reading and other stuff
21:00+ - more SRS and a little reading before bed
Obviously stuff will get in the way of that, so things’ll need to move around to accommodate appointments, but those are like studying for life if I squint my eyes and tilt my head, so it’s fine.
ワニカニ：
脱金・税金 these are NOT the same word. ARGH!
If I’m right, the lessons I’ve chosen for today are “demon,” “to configure,” and “committee meeting.”
鬼：Why on’yomi?! I know the kun’yomi is おに！ Just let me have this.
確認する：多分暇ですが、ちょっと日記を確認しますね。
委員会：委員は委員会に行きました。
(I was more than half right, hooray)
While they are not currently listed in my leeches, I’ve decided to write out 脱金・税金 so hopefully I don’t turn them into leeches. You know those moments when you write out your intentions, confident you will do the thing, then when you try to do the thing you can’t? 脱金 isn’t even a word on wanikani. The heck did I get that from? I’ve mentally given in the meaning of “fine” and reading of 「だっきん」which for the record is how I was able to type it. Did my brain actually just merge 罰金 and 脱線 in my head because I misread 税 as 脱 and I tried to pull a meaning out of it?
jpdb:
I managed to get through the leeches I was having trouble with. The main problem with this is all the kanji I haven’t learned through wanikani and so I have to just brute force it. It’s not going great. And many of the kana words I keep getting mixed up with each other. And I think it thinks some grammar points are words and I’m not sure if it’s useful to learn them as if they’re words or if I should blacklist those and learn them as grammar later.
暗記：
At the moment I’m mainly focusing on prepping for the フリーレン book club, and I’m glad to say the vocab I added when that was announced is cycling round nicely. I’ve also started unsuspending the grammar cards I made, and I made some sentence cards for those grammar points. I still need to decide whether to fix or delete a lot of my older cards. Also, I know I’ve made duplicates of grammar points at some point, so I’ll want to narrow that down a fair bit.
Unfortunately my morning got interrupted by a surprise inspector, so grammar has to wait until this afternoon.
文法：
Went over the various question words. There were patterns for 何・何も・何か type stuff, which is better than trying to learn them individually.
Also, lots of interesting tidbits, like the kanji for いつ being 何時. Or the いくら「動詞」ても and どんなに「言葉」ても patterns. Or the いつの間にか expression.
It’s also been great to finally get some distinction between all the various “how” and “why” words. (The fact that “how come”=“why” does not help my brain).
I also came across a few new vocabs. 値段・距離・蚊 I don’t expect these to all be immediately relevant.
聴聞：
I now recognise the 聴 kanji as it showed up in jpdb! That reassures me that I haven’t been typing the wrong word all this time.
Anyway, I decided to watch some comprehensible Japanese videos.
Video 1 - ３匹の子豚
Very easy video, did not have to turn on the subtitiles even once. Probably helps that I know the Three Little Pigs story very well already so even the words I didn’t know I knew what they were supposed to be.
Video 2 - 金の斧銀の斧
By contrast, I’ve never heard of this fairy tale before. Despite that it was still easy to follow. The one line I rewound and turned the subtitles on for was 別の木こりです and that was because I’d forgotten 木こり, but the drawings made it clear what was meant shortly after.
Video 3 - 図書館でのマナー
I think if I knew less vocabulary I would struggle with this one. Some phrases like 「していけないこと」I had to take a moment to process, but I was able to understand the whole video without turning on the subtitles. I also practised making sentences. 先生の図書館は厳しいですね？私の近く図書館はあまり厳しくないです。紅茶を飲んでもいいです。時々、クーキーを食べてもいいです。図書館の員が持っていますから、いいです。紅茶は無料ですがクーキーは£1です。二百円ぐらいと思います。私は毎水曜日行っています。いつも紅茶が飲んでいます。お金が忘れなければ、クーキーを食べています。
空の軌跡：
I decided to not keep updating my vocab sheet and just play. The first text I came across I was able to understand all of, so that makes me happy, and I don’t want to bog myself down taking meticulous notes right now.
Still, I’m making a list of all the words I’ve looked up:
数日 - すうじつ - few days
ロクに - potentially a kana/adverb form of 碌な
たまった - past/kana version of 溜まる
整理 - せいり - putting in order
クビにならん - neg/kana version of 首になる
程度 - ていど - amount; standard
イマイチ - not quite right
休憩 - きゅうけい - rest; break
丸太 - まるた - log
Argh I’m getting so giddy just looking at these little sentences and realise I can understand them! That と is an if! That 何か is a something! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
clears throat Anyway, that list of vocab.
街道 - かいどう - highway; main road
方面 - direction
反対方向 - opposite direction
寝惚ける - ねぼける - to be still half asleep
お茶目 - おちゃめ - joker; rascal
Right, difficult sentence alert.
「早すぎもせず、遅すぎもしないってとこかな。」
早い and 遅い I know, and the すぎ attached to them is apparently (according to ichi.moe) making them too much.
The weird せず bit, is for “without doing” so maybe that first clause is “without being too early.”
Then we can take the もs and the しない to suggest this is “without being too early or too late.”
The って part is Josh quoting… himself? A saying? The かな at the end is an “I wonder.” But the とこ in between I’m not sure on. ichi.moe gives 11 definitions, from context this is probably the 5th or 8th, but I’m not sure how either affects the sentence.
教会 - church
ばっかり - just (finished) (because it’s after た form)
なのに - despite this (might be grammar?)
Weird verb conjugation alert!
勉強させられる
First, it is pretty clear this is 勉強する.
I couldn’t find させられる on Tofugu but I found separate entries for させる and られる so I reckon this is a combination of both.
First 勉強する would become 勉強させる, and then 勉強させられる. So first we have “to study” and then we have “forced to study” (knowing Estelle, it’s not the permission version). Then the られる emphasises this was done to somebody?
Further down the させる page we have a section on させられる. So the distinction is 勉強させる implies somebody forced someone to study, and the 勉強させられる implies somebody forced ME (personally) to study. This also removes the possibility of this being the permission version of させる.
Now, how to interpret a positive 全然？
好きで志望したんだからこのくらいは苦労して全然だよ。
The rest of the sentence I’ve got “Because you wished for this thing you like(?), having (lit. doing) this much hardship is [completely?].” It’s not a negative sentence, so it’s not a “not at all; never” kind of meaning. Sticking it into deepl it suggests that the 全然 is saying that the 苦労 is not. So, along the lines of “Because you wished for it, this much (effort?) isn’t hardship.” I think. I reckon it’s close enough and it is time to move on to reading now anyways.
読書：
I’ve started with another chapter of ちょこちゃん. I can immediately apply what I just learned! きらわれる is a form of 嫌い (or apparently 嫌う which is actually a verb) taking the られる conjugation. So, this is “to be hated.” Poor ちょこちゃん.
Then I read another Lv3 Tadoku Book, 涙の力. I feel like I understood each bit as I was reading it but not the story as a whole. I don’t know what it’s supposed to represent. Reading it a second time, I think maybe it’s a global warming warning?
intensive reading:
隣 is the kanji for next to, or neightbour. Like となりのトトロ but kanjified.
甘いもの are sweets, from 甘 being the kanji for sweet that will not be learnt for more than 10 levels despite looking rather simple. Specifically, 甘 is sweet as in the taste, and 甘いもの is more literally “sweet things” which are sweets.
食べすぎ is convenient that I was just examining similar grammar in 空の軌跡. This is “eating too much.” It comes from 過ぎる which is “to pass” and “to be over” but it also means “to be too much” and I didn’t pay any attention to that meaning when learning the vocab. Whoops.
For プールでは, using both the で and the は shows that the topic of the sentence is “at the pool” not just the noun of the pool. (It’s not completely new, I’m just reminding myself this is how that works)
散歩 is walkies. Less cutesy, it’s the idea of going out of a walk. The 散 kanji is scatter;disperse. I think this implies a less purposeful type of walk compared to 歩く which is the action of walking.
I didn’t get much more reading than normal done. This isn’t completely due to grammar being pushed back, it also takes me longer to type up my log than expected. I didn’t notice before because I only timed the time spent doing the actual studying and not my typing up after, except for something like the intensive reading where I type things as I study them.
Still, today has felt rather productive, and I feel like if I don’t lose two. flipping. hours. in the morning, it’ll be even better.
Did all three of my SRS this evening (including a single anki card, it took longer to open the app than to answer it XD) but did not want to read. So I just did one section of my reading practice book. (I also couldn’t resist doing more earlier so deleted a load of old anki stuff and retagged other stuff and just cleaned things up a little.
it’s in 魔 and also a perfectly valid word on it’s own.
how are you liking it? I was thinking of picking up the authors other cat mangas 
this is similar enough to know them both but too similar for me to tell them apart
)
but I’m not gonna worry about it again.