Reb's Study Log

First off, puppy is okay! (My pillow has been disemboweled, but that’s nothing in comparison to daydream-nightmares of someone breaking in and murdering the puppy. I am not mentally okay :slight_smile: )

JLPT. Obviously I can’t say anything about specific questions/answers. But even outside of that it was a lot. Even things that shouldn’t matter were getting to me, like the ginormous cemetery between the train station and the uni. I mentioned in the JLPT thread, but I spent the last two minutes of the first test desperately refilling in all my answers in panic that I hadn’t pressed my pencil down enough to completely obscure the numbers. I realised when starting the second test, that I forgot to refill the numbers for my DoB and registration number. This is fine :smile:. Oh, and my middle name is long and difficult to spell, so I for every test the invigilator said to start before I finished filling in all my details.

Listening was a nightmare. At first they played the recording too loud, and even though it got turned down during the audio test, I was still flinching a bit every time the bell played. In the middle of one of the questions, the CD just stopped. Even with practicing on my breathing I felt like a panic. Like, “oh no, it stopped, that’s not a normal pause between words, do the invigilators realise it’s stopped? All the screens are blank, has there been a powercut? how long is this gonna last? Am I gonna be late getting home to Betty? It’s already been over 6 hours, what if she’s had an accident, or she got hurt? My breathing is too obvious. Will I get disqualified if my breathing to calm down is too obvious?” and just on and on and on. It was fixed within a couple minutes. Betty is alive and well.

I’m confident I got enough on the non-listening sections to pass, I’m just worried whether my test sheet is valid. Listening… If I have passed, it is only because I practiced with so many penguin videos.

There was a water fountain at the place. This was useful because tap water at home is currently not safe to drink :grin: I wish I’d brought a loud of empty bottles with me. The walk back to the train station felt a lot shorter than the walk to the exam, probably because I knew which was to walk and wasn’t having to keep an eye out for road signs. (For reference, this wasn’t a complicated journey. It was turn left when leaving the train station, turn right onto University Road, keep walking straight until I find the Bob building.)

Anyway, onto my weekly update. And by “weekly” I mean both this week and last week because I was having a nothing last week.

SRS

WK Lessons:
対策:じっくり対策考えてよ。
価値観:人間の価値観が通用しない生き物だから。
応援団:応援団の方がいらしてますよありがとうございます。
製:製品・制作・木製
受:
担ぐ:消防署員は人を担いで助ける。
閉:I’ve seen this in 閉める and such
床:今床に座っています。
Can’t copy paste this radical, but it’s the last one of Lv24!
井戸:all the anime sentences come from someone who’s name is 黒井戸
燃:looks very firey
違い:動力の性能が違い過ぎ

Listening

penguins #57 & #58.

Listening is an absolute pain, because adverts, but I decided that’s what I’m doing today so that’s what I’m doing. I’m starting with penguin #59. I finished with penguin #66. The new(ish) format of giving the answer immediately after asking the question has made me better at answering quickly, which will be good so that I can focus on the next question almost immediately as well. I hope.

Watching episode 3 of とんでもスキル. I made spaghetti yesterday and have plenty of leftovers, but I already started defrosting my maccy cheese for tonight. I’m not sure how much of this anime I’m properly understanding, but it’s probably fine.

Next, listening to some Comprehensible Japanese videos:
紙を使ってする動作 - more interactive than expected. I now know やぶています.
アリとキリギリス
動物当てクイズ - へびがかっこいいよ

Listening penguins #67 to 70.

Listening (which I’m supposed to be doing everyday but I have not been doing that) to penguin videos. From #71 to #75.

Finished with penguins #76 to #83. It was a pain. I keep having issues with youtube (even after I turn adblock off) and it wouldn’t load videos and then one was quiet so I turned the volume up and the next tried to deafen me. Not fun. However, I heard a cat in the background of #81, so that is fun.

I did not realise #83 onwards were such longer videos. They normally have 2-4 questions. This one had 20. My brain is melting and I’m hungry. But I got them all right, so even if I’m hungry and my brain is melting on Sunday, I will be okay.

Reading

I decided to read some クーク today.

The page before the contents panicked me with it’s lack of furigana. I have now realised it is a message to the guardians of the kids who read this book. As an adult, I am my own guardian, so therefore this is addressed to me, and therefore I should read it. From the first sentence it’s just copyright stuff (though I misparsed 転載 as 転戦) so I cannot be arsed to translate it in full XD

Today is reading day, and I’ve not yet done any reading this week, so I gotta catch up with all my book clubs. (Though, techinically I’ve got time for that tomorrow and Saturday as well).

フリーレン notes:

Read the first panel, looked up 海峡, realised I never asked any questions about last week. I should. I know I should. Can’t be arsed right now though.

Page 150
So, we’re at a beach where shipwrecks often wash up. There used to be a group of people from the village who would maintain the beach together, but recently there hasn’t been enough people so that got neglected. The old guy is sad because the water used to be very beautiful.

(I’m alternating between reading a page and looking at last weeks thread, my first question was answered already.) Just keeping tally here. Questions on 133 (x2, first answered), 135, 137, maybe some others

Page 151
All of the old people in this shrink, so Heiter was weird for being an exception.
At first I was thinking, clearing this beach for some magic sounds like Frieren’s MO so far, but would she even do it for a fake magic? I’m not sure, I guess I’ll find out.

Page 152
I kinda stuck on the first panel. First it looks like Frieren is saying she’s heard about this person’s studying before, but then saying this book is a badly made fake? Argh, let’s do this line by line.

Frieren: was said, [this] street/passage/route the ships sailed down, is studying, right?
Frieren: It’s great/awful, Fern.
Frieren: To Franme (Flanme?)'s writings, without real thing.
Frieren: This is also a bad quality forgery.

For that first sentence I’m thinking [This route that was said, someone is studying it] perhaps implying that Fern should have been studying what people have said about this route. The second is not helped by ambiguous contradictory words. The third maybe suggesting there are no real versions of this Franme’s work. The fourth calls this book a badly made fake. I’m a little stuck on how these sentences connect to each other. ASK ABOUT THIS

Fern: But then why did you agree to do this?
Frieren: Because it looks like they were troubled, right?

Fern: [it is just good intentions] doesn’t appear likely.

Clunky, but Fern is saying Frieren has an ultireor motive.

Frieren: Yes.
Frieren: This is for my own sake.

Fern: We’ll be staying here for a long time again, won’t we.

Page 153
Three month time skip?

Page 154
Fern’s having a little grumble over how she tidied up just yesterday and it’s already a mess again.
:joy: Frieren is not a morning person

Page 155
So, Frieren is sleepy head and Fern is calling her undisciplined I think is the most appropriate of those meanings.

I’ve spent an hour and a half reading this far and making questions for last week. Pausing this there for today.

Read しろくまカフェ, learnt the very important word 共食い.

Then ごくまのクーク物語. Actually read actual pages, hooray. However, I didn’t quite process that this would have many more words than manga. Each individual sentence was easy enough, though every time I turned the page my brain kinda went “AH! More words!” I didn’t finish it, but I read a good chunk

Intensive Reading

お買い得品どくひん = good bargain. 買い from 買い物 makes sense. The word is お+買い得+品. お for politeness, 買い得 is bargain (shopping benefit → it’s beneficial to buy something you need when it’s cheaper → when it’s a bargain), and 品 is the product. I’ve overcomplicated this.

掃除 is the kanji form of そうじ = cleaning. It’s level 31 on wanikani. The kanji are 掃 and 除. 掃 is a level 31 kanji that means sweep. 除 is a level 31 kanji that means exclude. Dirt is excluded from the house, so you sweep it away. That process is cleaning.

詳しく is from 詳しい which is level 17 on wanikani and I should have already known it. It’s enlightened and up for review in 4 days. I may or may not fail it on purpose.

I’ve vaguely come across Vながら before, but I’m not comfortable with it yet. Read Tofugu article. There are two articles on different uses, but this is the one that matched context. The bit at the end about how it can’t be separate people is important so I will try to remember it. The other important thing is that the ながら is an aside to the main part of the sentence.

音楽を聞きながら、勉強します。
While listening to music, study. However, the focus is on the studying, even though that part of the sentence is shorter. It’s not just “I’m studying and listening to music at the same time,” it’s “I’m studying, and while I study I’m also listening to music on the side.”
勉強します =/= 勉強しています。So more accurate would be that “In general, when I study, I do so while listening to music.”

コーヒーを飲みながら、仕事をしています。
Again, the focus is on the working. The order of the sentence makes it feel like “I’m drinking coffee, and while I do that I might get a bit of work in.” I need to remember it is the opposite. “I’m working, and while I’m working I’ll drink some coffee.”

Error in the book (!)
Sentence: I talk while taking a walk.
Translation: わらいながら、はなをした。
First let’s attempt to see what the Eng->Jap should be. 散歩しながら、話します。Personally I think the focus should be on the walking, but this is the pattern the other (English) sentences in the book took, with the main action first and the ながら action second.
Now the Japanese sentence. 笑いながら = while laughing. はなをした doesn’t seem to make sense. はなをした is past tense of to have a talk / to tell a story. Then it becomes, “I tell a story while laughing.” Only the 話 kanji and ながら grammar pattern are in common between the sentences.
At the very least, the extra effort should have this in my brain now.

Grammar

Did the next bunpro lesson. This lesson had more grammar points that I kind of know but am shakey on, so I went over them extra carefully. I like that bunpro explains how it got there rather than just, this is the meaning now remember it.

Finished going through all the N5 bunpro grammar. I need to go back to making my own flashcards while I study because this isn’t really working. I should probably just drop bunpro now. I’m being stubborn about wanting to keep at it until the free trial is over.

I watched 1 grammar video this evening Absolute Beginner’s #19, so now I can watch 5 tomorrow and 5 the day after.

Japanese Ammo with Misa videos AB#20, AB#21, AB#22, from the Absolute Beginner Playlist.

N5 cram video. It’s called a cram, but it’s just a load of JLPT style questions. I mixed up 閉める and 閉まる but other than that all good. Then this ない form one I tried to pay attention to but I was getting tired.

More Japanese Ammo with Misa videos. ない, かなった, すべて vs ぜんぶ vs みんな vs ずっと, Verbs, Zodiac. I don’t think that last one was too relevant for tomorrow but it was the last one in the N5 playlist.

Daily Rambling

六月月曜日:
My support worker helped me figure out trains to the JLPT next month, so that’s one less thing to worry about.

六月火曜日:
GOOD NEWS! My house application got accepted so (as long as I don’t fail references, fingers crossed) I’ll be able to move out of the house my current landlord didn’t get the planning permission for! HOORAY! I’m a little too hyped to get back to reading so I’m taking a short break to be happy and get all the paperwork stuff sorted and may or may not return.

六月水曜日:
Today is busy busy. Mostly good news, but I’m too restless to sit down and study properly.

got wk done, also annoyed my sister because I kept saying random Japanese words outloud while watching anime with her.

六月木曜日:
Brain melting, technically did everything I set out to do. Gotta finish フリーレン and クーク tomorrow and after.

六月金曜日:
I did not study. I binged Dungeon Meshi. Now I want to read the manga, which I own, but is difficult. (Future me here to say I read the manga in English, I binged the second half yesterday)

七月月曜日:
no

七月火曜日:
ill

七月水曜日:
25 wanikani reviews

七月木曜日:
I got through over 100 of my wanikani reviews, and I don’t think 86% accuracy is bad considering I took several days off. I’ll have about 60 to finish off tomorrow morning. Good thing about going slow is I don’t get thousands upon thousands of backlog if I take a break.

Anyway, I was thinking, as I often do, and I was spending far too much time on SRS. I would like to not do that. The 15 minutes I did today felt like plenty. But that could just be because I’m tired.

Right. I have just a few days until the exam so actually I should really go onto N5 revision mode. Meaning. Penguin N5 practising videos. N5 grammar playlists. That N5 sentence book I was intensively reading. Technically wanikani is not necessary, but I’ll do a little of it anyways.

So, in the next two days (and maybe a little this evening) I have 11 grammar videos, 20 penguins, and 35 pages of sentences.

七月日曜日:
Today! I did JLPT. I read N5 sentence book on train away, not intensively, but I finished it. I did wanikanis on train home.

In Summary
12 Wanikani Lessons :arrows_counterclockwise:
27 Penguin Videos :arrow_double_up:
1 Anime Episode (w/o eng sub) :arrow_down_small:
3 Comprehensible Japanese :arrow_up_small:
54 Pages of Reading :arrow_double_down:
25 Bunpro Grammar Points :arrows_counterclockwise:
11 Japanese Ammo With Misa Grammar Videos :arrow_double_up:
Time: 18 hours :arrow_up_small:

Counting these two weeks as one makes it look a lot better than it is. If all that was halved, it’d be terrible. I’ve got a lot going on next week, so I’m just gonna focus on wanikani, and reading, and listening. (Why did I join two daily challenges and start a “book” club?) My point is, I’m not gonna stress about trying to study 5/6 hours every day.

June finished at some point. I completed all but one of my goals within June, and finished the last this past week. For July, my goal is to catch up / keep pace with book clubs (and anime club, and 軌跡 club). In August I’ll probably go back to JLPT先生 for grammar, it doesn’t annoy me like Bunpro did. I probably will want to take the N4 at next year, even if it is stress. ANYWAY I’ll figure all that out later. I think I’ve rambled enough here :sweat_smile:

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So, it may or may not have been obvious by now, but I am rather stressed by life in general and many individual things in particular. This week has been rather busy personally speaking. Mostly good things. But the few bad things have been extra stressful as I worry about the good things falling through.

SRS

Lessons:
天井:天井から光が降ってきた!
豚:have I really not done this yet?
違う:already know this
担当:ヒューズ中佐この事件の担当かね
半額:半額の日も人間でない
肩:
閉店:よく日曜日は閉店です。
可燃ゴミ:可燃ゴミは火に焼いてもいいです。
負担:烏間の負担を減らすために…
多額:多額の借金まで背負ってしまって
輸:輸出、輸血、輸入
家:already know it, the radicle moved
更に:下の者が更に下を守る
製品:革製品って食えるんだぞ
規則:NPCの女の子の動きには 規則性がある
開閉:星霊魔法の門は互いの同意のうえなら開閉できる!
年額:self explanatory
製作:つまり我々で自主製作映画を撮影し
腕:腕時計
規律:ぐずのE組は規律を守るために
不燃ゴミ:this is not a sorting method I’m used to
豚:豚は豚です。
閉める:なんで鍵を閉めるんですか? TRANsitive
月額:self explanatory
腰:just gonna have to remember this one
木製:私のベッドは木製です。
祝う:今年誕生日をレーンボーケーキで祝った。

Listening

将来の夢 listening for today done.

Listened to Comprehensible Japanese videos on サッカー観戦 and 朝すること while cooking.

平日と週末

Listened to four Nihongo con Teppeis. Rather boring tbh.

Today’s listening was 私の町.

Watched episode 4 of とんでもスキル. I’m feeling a contradiction of feeling like I don’t understand anything but also getting the gist of things. Like the map conversation, I did not understand basically any of that conversation, but I was able to figure out he got scammed into paying a gold coin for the map when he could have got one from the guild for like a copper or something.

Comprehensible Japanese:
紫陽花
紫陽花=あじさい
かたつむり=🐌
ラーメン

Reading

For reading, week 3 of 玉藻の恋. It was just 10 pages but my brain does not appreciate having to do anything.

Read a little スーと鯛ちゃん while eating breakfast and got wanikani done.

Read 玉藻の恋 while waiting for my last therapy appoinment, so that’s one club caught up on.

Played 空の軌跡 for a little over two hours. I decided that instead of playing through the intro scene (again) I’d continue where I left of, which is essentially next week’s stuff. And now my rambling yesterday where I was debating where to put the stopping point seems really, really silly. It’s going to have to be the sooner option.

Finished chapter 6 of フリーレン.

I finished the first story of クーク though I didn’t have anywhere near complete understanding. I looked up a couple words, but mostly just said the sounds to myself. There was a bit where I was losing track of who was saying what.

I’m kinda suprised this book was suggested for ABBC because it’s a lot more text dense that the ABBC manga I’ve read and the first week was 20 pages all at once when previous books it was half that if not less.

I’m not really able to keep pace with the club is what I’m saying, but I’ll get through it at my own pace probably.

Read this week’s 玉藻の恋.

I didn’t make notes for the rest of Chapter 6 of Frieren, I just read it loosely. And today I intend to finish the volume, though I’ve a couple weeks before volume 2 starts. I actually need to check if I own that or if I need to buy it.

フリーレン notes:

page 168
俺の村が魔族に襲われてな。
At first I thought this sentence was saying demons attacked the village, but the に particle means it was the family of demons who were attacked, right? And 襲われて is passive so somebody was attacked, not did the attacking. Unless it’s that the village was attacked by demons, and the demon family is not this family whose graves they’re looking at?

人は死んだら無に還る
I think the gist of this is that the people are dead so they can’t come home, but I don’t understand why Eisen uses a weird kanji for 帰る

page 169
top right, Frieren repeats the thing and says it was a what most people thought for many thousands of years, and something about it being a Dwarf tradtion? But how can it be a tradition? I am confussion.

top left, here Frieren says she doesn’t believe in Heaven and that magic at the moment can’t sense souls so they have no proof that there is anything after death. So maybe Heiter’s praying for these dead people to go to heaven is part of what she was saying the Dwarf tradition was?

Then the rest of this page is Himmel and Heiter saying they don’t mind either way, with Heiter being told off because a priest should mind.

page 170
必死に生きてきた人の行きつく先が無であっていいはずがありません。

必死に生きてきた人 = people who lived frantically
人の行きつく先 = [those people] before they arrive

無で = with nothing
あっていい = it’s okay to exist
はず = should be
が = particle
ありません = to not be
it should not be okay to exist with nothing

So… is Heiter saying that whether or not such a place as Heaven exists, people should act like it does because they shouldn’t just live their lives frantically and then show up to heaven with nothing to show of their lives?

Then the next sentence is him saying he thought it better to indulge in all the luxuries while he’s still alive. No, he’s saying it’s not better to think that you can indulge in all the luxuries while you’re in heaven. I think. (With the implication that therefore you should indulge in them now?)

172
Frieren still doesn’t understand time for other people…

Also, I only just figured out that this is Eisen’s family.

174
Okay, the joke of how long ago it must have been for Frieren of all people to call it a long time ago was pretty funny.

175
Ah, Flamme was mentioned before! We’re looking for a real one this time?

I’m glad I recognised the め particle after 生臭坊主, that means I’m remembering things! Hooray!

176
Oh dear, Fern looks like she wants to say something…

Luckily for her Frieren noticed and it looks like she’s going to make an effort to not spend a decade on this task?

stopping on page 178 as it has no words and is therefore a good stopping point. I think I’ve got about that much again to read another day.

Daily Rambling

火曜日:
I need to get my shit packed today. I have made a list of things to get done, I’ll be making an ongoing list of what goes in each box, and I’m listening to YouTube people while doing this. Not in Japanese because I don’t want to get distracted from either task.

Got 10 boxes packed, labelled, and inventoried.

水曜日:
Got some burns in this morning.

Brainstorming myself for questions to put in the top post DO NOT OPEN THIS SPOILER TAG! Which NPC interaction did you most enjoy? Find most intriging How do you like the view from the top of the clock tower? So about that exposition dump?

木曜日:
Anyway, I’ve had a very productive and lucky day in terms of sorting out irl stuff, so I’m feeling pretty awesome!

Also, I tested out some new anime today and so a quick ramble about them.

The deer thing is weird af and not to my taste.

A Journey Through Another World: Raising Kids while Adventuring is actually super adorable and just made me smile.

Dungeon no Naka no Hito seems like it will be fun. I like the protagonist so far.

Yatagarasu is a lot less happy fun times and a lot more political intrigue. Which is an interesting type of fun. I’ve already chosen my favourite character, I don’t recall her name but she broke a cup and I interpret that as her being a friend.

金曜日:
Almost forgot to do anything today.

For some reason the book tracker script I was using has broken. I know roughly what I’m behind on, because I can look at what’s in progress on Natievely, but it’s annoying that I can’t click on the boxes to say which weeks I have and have not completed.

土曜日:
Played some more 空の軌跡. Struggling with deciding how to add the fantasy/sci-fi vocab to the vocab sheet. Like 導力 how is that pronounced? どうりょく? Later on 導力器 has furigana of オーブメント so do I go back and change it? I only got through a few lines despite spending a lot of time on it.

日曜日:
I’ve got a slight headache so I’m taking a slight break before continuing with 空の軌跡. I just want to finish the week 2 stuff before I post the thread, so I can include a screenshot.

Move is tomorrow. I am rather stressed. I want to talk to my support worker but can’t until the move.

Anyway, I played 空の軌跡 for another couple hours. I really need to be splitting this over more days :sweat_smile: Though to be fair to myself, the reason it is taking so long is because I can’t drop this damned vocab sheet. Plenty of lines I’d have been able to just read if I wasn’t stopping and tallying up each word.

I think I spend approximate 4/5 hours on this this week. And I’ve got another hour or so of lines I mostly skipped past so I could get to the save point needed for the week 2 thread. I’m thinking I’ll need to aim to play at least half an hour every day or I will fall behind on my own club.

Also, house things are going rather terrifyingly. There have been a couple miscommunications that feel like the end of the world but I have nowhere near an objective view of how bad things actually are yet. Tonight is going to be my last night in my current place. Which is a terrifying thought. I feel rather ill. But that could be because yesterday I forgot the tap water isn’t safe to drink and I used it to wash my rice, which I didn’t cook for long enough and the texture was all gross.

I need to shut down my computer and pack it up and not get anything lost. But if I do that too early I’ll have nothing to do but ruminate in my own anxiety for hours. But if I do that too late I’ll be causing problems for the moving people tomorrow. Hooray.

Oh, and my friends cancelled on me last minute (= 9 o’clock last night after I was already in bed, and no I didn’t get up until past 9 this morning) and so my original plan of being distracted with TTRPG hijinks has failed before it even started.

In Summary
27 Wanikani Lessons :arrow_double_up:
7 Comprehensible Japanese :arrow_up_small:
4 Nihongo con Teppei :arrow_up_small:
1 Anime Episode (w/o eng sub) :arrows_counterclockwise:
78 Pages of Reading :arrow_up_small:
~4 Hours of 空の軌跡 :arrow_up_small:
Time: 10.8 Hours :arrow_double_down:

My time may be considerably down but I’m okay taking the rest of July rather slow. I have not touched grammar. My listening is just short videos so I can say I did something in the everyday thread. This is fine.

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Potential very mild 軌跡 series spoilers

どうりょく is definitely valid for 導力, and I think オーブメント in particular is only for 導力器 but a may be wrong on that (and there are other words which start with オーバル〜) 。(EDIT: I spotted an occasion in Kuro II where 導力器 is pronounced どうりょくき - so I’d really treat all of these words that have an English-sounding pronunciation as also having a pronunciation according to the kanji that are used). There are cases where there are 2 valid pronunciations - e.g. there are definitely occasions in later games where there are voice acted lines and 身喰らう蛇 has ウロボロス as ルビ above it and is pronounced that way, but other times it’s said as みくらうへび。I wouldn’t get super hung up on readings of fictional jargon. Another example is 古代遺物(アーティファクト): I’d also include こだいいぶつ as a potential reading.

I don’t know if you’re playing a version with voice acting, but if not you can ask me about vocab that comes up in main story segments in case you need to know how it’s said and I can try to find out (I think the website with the script also lets you play the voice lines back if accessed on a computer but can’t check right now due to internet outage).

The japanese wiki may also be useful.

Also I hope that the move goes well in the end! It sounds like it has been very stressful.

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I have moved! I no longer live in a shithole! Seriously, when the movers were getting my bookcases out they dented the ceiling (because landlord added the lower ceiling after when I originally moved in), and they knocked the light, which fell so the wires were showing, and some of them were exposed. As in, if anyone had touched that they would be dead. As in, this could have shorted out and caused a fire at any moment.

BUT! I now live in a nice, legal house and everything will eventually be okay.

In terms of studying, these past few days I’ve being using ringotan on my phone and reading a chapter of Japanese Short Stories for Beginners each day. I started playing Xenoblade Chronicles on my switch, and I’ve got Japanese voices that don’t match the subtitles so that might count for a little bit of listening (but not really).

I don’t get proper internet until August, so until then my studying is at the level of as long as I’ve done something each day it’s fine.

Internet (and Mental Health)

I was supposed to get internet this morning. It turned into a whole thing.

First, the guy told me he wanted to drill a hole through the wall. I did not know that this is a normal setting up internet thing, so I panicked and told him that this is rented and I don’t know whether the landlord would be okay with a random hole being drilled through the wall. The guy said to contact them for permission and then reschedule.

I decided I’d wait until my support worker gets here, then realised half an hour later that my support worker was coming to help me with the house thing due tomorrow that we were waiting on the internet to be able to complete. So I messaged her, and she told me that the drilling a hole in the wall is a normal thing for getting internet.

So, I tried to phone the internet people, failed the phone call, and went into meltdown crying fit mode for like a hour. All I could think about was how I’d fucked up and all the other things that are going to go wrong because I’ve fucked up because I’m the fuck up.

Tried to phone them back, and then was told I need it in writing that the landlord is okay with the hole in the wall, so I phoned the estate agents who sent it in an email (and copied my support worker thankfully because I still haven’t received it), and then phoned the internet people back and got up to the point of arranging the date and then I stopped being able to speak.

Thankfully my support worker arrived and was able to do the phone call for me while I lay on the floor because the sofa was too high up. Unfortunately, me screwing up the appointment this morning means the next one isn’t until August. If there’s a cancellation I might get internet sooner. In the meantime my support worker helped me get an internet dongle so my computer has internet. Though I need to avoid videos because that will just eat through it.

So no anime for a bit, and no listening practice either. I might be able to get away with a few short videos now and then. I haven’t yet tested how much data reading manga on bookwalker will be so probably I’m falling behind all the bookclubs again. 空の軌跡 my saves are in the cloud, but looking up vocab should just be negligible. So, until that’s sorted, I’m just having a low studying month.

I feel like I’m currently in a very precarious mental position where everything is theoretically okay but as soon as one small thing goes wrong then the world is ending and I don’t have any sense of balance. Logically things are fine. Support worker is very impressed with how I’m doing. But I feel like I could snap like I did this morning at any moment. Thought I suppose I have calmed down from that now so if when I do have another meltdown it’ll be over eventually. Won’t feel like it in the moment though.

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I had a similar issue getting internet at my first solo apartment. They said on their website I just have to plug in the router on X day and service will be on, as long as they had 7 days notice to sort it out on their end. I select Thursday as the day when I was moving in on Tuesday and figured all would be fine. Thursday morning I wake up and go to the bathroom and get a phone call in the bathroom and panic because I hate strangers contacting me before I’ve woken up properly and I don’t answer.

10 minutes later someone knocks on my door, and apparently it’s some internet tech guy who’s supposed to plug in my internet for me. He complains that I didn’t answer the phone and that he isn’t paid enough for me to take this long (and there are still boxes all over my apartment and I’m in pajamas). He needed to add some metal thingies to the router for it to plug in to dampen the signal apparently. I ended up not being productive that day at all and went back to bed as soon as he left.

Waiting until August sucks though. Fingers crossed you get an appointment sooner! I spent some time at my local library while I was waiting for my internet, but I was lucky because I lived only a 10 minute walk away.

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おめでとうございます*・゜゚・:.。…。.:・‘(゚▽゚)’・:.。. .。.:・゜゚・* @RebBlue
This is such great news!
Playing Xenoblade Chronicles will sure bring August fast, so it’s cool you have this option.
So good to read you were able to leave that sh**hole and that A hole of a landlord and get a legal house.
I don’t like moving it’s super stressful, had to do it a couple of dozens times in my life (work/education/rent surge/apartments conditions deteriorating /crazy landlords - you name it) so from my perspective, you’ve aced it with this move. I hope you’ll be able to enjoy your new place now.

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Enjoy Xenoblade! Xenoblade 3 is one of my favourite games of all time so I hope you get to it some day. I played Xenoblade 1 with Japanese voices, but for 2 and 3 I think it might be a rare case where I’d actually recommend playing with the dub (we should savour the few opportunities to experience primarily British voice acting).

Moving definitely sucks. A year ago my apartment complex was bought by another company that wanted to renovate all of the apartments (and increase the rent a lot) so essentially kicked us all out after a certain date, and it was very stressful finding somewhere else to move (I had a friend who was kicked out earlier due to being in a different part of the building and I think she had < 1 month to find a new place). Now I just live somewhere owned by some old dude and he seems pretty chill about everything fortunately.

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I exist again!

It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve been on here, even though I have been reading through some threads. I did a lot of rambling on my phone’s note app, not all Japanese related.

rambles

22nd
Watched Mononoke Hime, had English Subs but tried to listen out for what I could.

23rd. Read one page but nothing else.

24th

26th
Didn’t do anything the past couple days. Today a friend sent a bad translation meme that I was able to properly translate (and take a guess at how the meme’s translation went wrong). I also (re)watched some FMAB so I decided to listen and compare with the subs. These ones are very accurate, which is nice. Usually there are little bits here and there where the sub has gone more for the spirit of the sentence than the literal meaning. Which is objectively better for localisation purposes but for listening purposes the more exact translation is better.

Also I think I can only count Xenoblade as listening for the first two days because at some point I stopped focusing on that. Though I can’t not focus on it during the cinematic scenes. The subs had a whole sentence they claimed the villain was saying (and probably was in the dub if I’m understanding how this works correctly), but if my ears hear laughter I know it’s a laugh and not a sentence.

27th
Just keeping on top of ringotan and reading Japanese Short Stories for Beginners. On the one hand it feels very weird to only be doing 20ish minutes of study. On the other, I don’t really have the motivation to do more without the internet. There’s plenty I could be doing. I’m just choosing not to.

That said, I have had to be sorting a lot of life stuff related to the move and everything. And I spent a lot of time on planning because I like plans. I like making plans a lot more than doing plans, but y’know, still fun. I’m working on following through with the plans I make for myself. After yesterday’s 12+ hours of moping around, I made brief plans for the rest of the days until my internet is created. And plans for daily routine once the internet is created. And plans for watching more anime so that I hopefully eventually get through the milelong list of things I want to watch while keeping on top of new things that are coming out. (I am very behind on Oshi no Ko and terrified I’m gonna get spoiled. I only got to watch the first two episodes of this season.)

Honestly when the internet does come back I’m not gonna jump straight into studying loads because there’s gonna be so much I want to catch up on. Though some of that includes studying like kiseki club. Which I have not touched except once trying to rush through the opening scenes when it crashed. How bad is it that behind on my own club? :sweat_smile: I’ll have to make it a daily thing I do until I can get ahead again. I should be able to make tomorrow’s thread okay, but the week after I’m kinda fuzzy on exactly where I want the break point to be. The more I think about it and think about how much text there is, the further back it gets as I was originally thinking in terms of game time but that’s not as much reading as we’ve had in current weeks.

Anyway, mostly I’m just typing a lot because sometimes I don’t know how to end things so I just ramble on forever. So this is the end of this day’s entry.

28th
Another day of ringotan and that bilingual book. I also decided to finally delete all the superfluous shit I had on anki, so now I don’t have over seven thousand cards waiting for me. I could probably do with deleting some more. But for now it should work smoother.

29th
Very self conscious about not have made the thread for kiseki. But I didn’t get up early enough for functional internet so I’m gonna try and see if I can get it up tonight, and maybe update my actual log instead of typing nonsense into my phone… Included some anki today. And wrote up a plan for how I’m studying next month. And made some reorganisation to the habit tracker on my phone to better keep track of that. (It’s what I was using to track time spent studying, also walking the puppy and other life stuff). Now I’ve got things colour coded. And my targets are based on my plan instead of arbitrary shit like 50 daily wk reviews or 20 pages of reading or watch Anime 4 times a month.

30th
Did my srs easily enough. Once I’ve got internet and therefore wanikani and jpdb as well, 15 minutes a day will not be enough. I decided to do 30 minutes on study days. I still won’t get through everything. I think I should order it as wanikani, anki, ringotan, jpdb. Just because the last has a habit of me spending a lot of time on there adding lessons when I should leave it alone. Anki and ringotan add lessons during the review. Wanikani doesn’t. I’ll need to get my piling up reviews to 0 and then work on doing some daily lessons.

Read the 18th chapter in the book. I like that every though I didn’t know all the words, I knew enough to infer them. Also, I noticed the grammar more. Little things like the “accidentally doing a verb” or “なくちゃ” that I learned relatively recently.

31st
Got my srs done early this morning. I reckon I’ll clear my anki backlog tomorrow. It feels so good to not have 50 million versions of change this verb from this form to that form.

Almost at the end of Japanese Short Stories for beginners. Today’s chapter was meg. Got one more I’ll read tomorrow, then I think I will move onto the next book since I already have it.

Planning to do more subtitle comparative listening with FMAB tonight, will update on that later.

1st August
Did not actually catch up with anki. Forgot to count the cards that would be returning this morning. The last story in the book was a whole load of nothing. Maybe it’s just because I’ve come down with something, but it was just… Nothing? I mean there were words, I read them. I didn’t know most of them but guessed relatively well based on context. The questions to judge your understanding felt like they were reaching because so little happened. It’s not that it was too short for anything to happen, I quickly flicked through to confirm there were a couple shorter ones. I dunno. It’s kinda whatever. I finished it. Hooray.

2nd
Did more of the same. Started second short stories book. Font seems smaller. However, I am now ill. My eyelids feel warm. Anyone else get that when they’re ill? It’s not appreciated.

3rd
I am not well :slightly_smiling_face: I did not sleep well. I apparently forgot to lock up last night. I’m normally so paranoid about that, and I remember making sure I closed all the windows but somehow I forgot to check the door.

Tooks things easy and didn’t force myself to study, and this evening I was feeling a bit better so I did ringotan. Kept messing up this one stroke. The curly one in 考 which doesn’t look very curly in this font. had to redo 考 so many times, and 写 a few times as well.

4th
Still ill but felt better today, but stuck to just ringotan. Probably could have done more. Didn’t. Remembered I had cough medicine this evening. It’s a new one because I couldn’t find the Usual one when I bought it. But this stuff burned and my tongue still stings and I’m a little scared to go to bed. Because paranoia.

I’m not good with medicine. Dad never liked us taking it. He said if you take too much you become used to it and need more next time. Or you’ll become reliant on it and need it even when you’re not sick. Look at how much pain nanny is in. Look at how often aunty claims to have a headache when she’s fine.

So I didn’t know cough medicine existed until I caught a nasty cough while visiting my other aunt a few years ago. She helped me buy my first bottle of cough medicine. And we had a whole talk about medicine where I explained what my dad taught me and she explained why that was wrong. And I spoke to my nan who explained that the stuff my dad said about her was straight up wrong and she actually can manage her meds perfectly well, and was able to reduce one of her pain meds. And my aunt’s got her own chronic health condition and even if neither of them had good reasons, they are adults who can make their own choices.

My baby sister was terrified to take paracetamol because she didn’t want to overdose. I had to read through the instructions for her and explain that since these say you can have up to eight tablets in a day, that one tablet definitely wouldnt be enough to overdose. My other sister says she feels like she’s broken because of all the tablets she has to take for various physical and mental reasons. And now here I am and twenty fucking six years old terrified the cough medicine’s going to kill me because it tasted bad. Medicine is supposed to taste bad. I know this. I’m going to be fine. If you’re reading this, you know I was fine because I lived long enough for the internet to be installed tomorrow so I could post this whole rant / trauma dump / thing.

Speaking of I really do need to stop catastrophising and go to sleep because I need to wake up early.

5th
Decided to study while internet was being set up. I did my ringotan and read a second chapter of Japanese Short Stories for Beginners (Vol. 2). I have many, many thoughts about what I just read. Negative thoughts. Probably excessively so considering how little this actually matters.

First off, calling this a “story” is being generous. This (and the previous one in less-ill hindsight) is more like a non fictional article. This story was actually a little more story than the previous one because they squeezed in a conversation between all the info dump.

To avoid being vague, here’s what we have:
One paragraph setting up that Misato wants to send new year’s cards to her classmates. Three paragraphs of narrator (who is not the primary school age Misato) explaining new year’s cards.
4 dialogue paragraphs between Misato and her mother on how many cards she needs.
A narrator paragraph explaining sending new year’s cards.
4 dialogue paragraphs between Misato and her mother on what to put in the card.
A narrator paragraph summarising new year’s cards.

I don’t mind reading non fiction stuff and learning things, but I expect it to own up to what it is and not pretend to be a story. Looking at the titles of other chapters of the book, they’re all going to be like this. The first volume was actual stories so I don’t know why this changed. But it’s not the only change.

They change the romanisation in the vocabulary section. And I know what you’re thinking, that I don’t need to read the romaji because I can read the furigana. But Shohgakkoh? Tsujyohno? Hushime? The heck even is this? Those words are 小学校、通常の、and 節目. Those romaji do not match these words.

Also, the some of the English translations they use are just bad. Particularly with the greetings. They try to use an English equivalent and it just doesn’t work. Like this sentence: 「『今年も仲良くしてね』って書いてもいい?」みさとが聞きます。which when I read it my brain got the meaning of (“Can I write ‘let’s get along well this year too’?” Misato asks.) Which, yes, my translation is probably a bit clunky. But it’s not (“Can I write down: I hope you’ll have me for another year?” Misato asks.) which is what’s in the book. Also, 「えっと、20枚かな」 as “Well, it will be 20.” Where did the かな go? Isn’t that uncertainty? A 7/8 year old saying “it will be 20” sounds the opposite of uncertain. Apparently 「今年もよろしくお願いします」 means “wishing you a great year.” And I know subs often have trouble with whether to translate よろしく literally or not but this book is meant to help you learn the language. You can’t learn the language if you only get approximations for what you’re saying.

Finally, and my last complaint is a petty one, the explanation paragraphs were difficult. This could just be me not knowing the grammar used in them yet. But when this books claims “we will not bore you with grammatical notes […] The book has been well-written and revised to ensure that it covers those aspects without having to explain them in unnecessarily complicated rules like textbooks do.” It’s very obvious that this is not a good learning resource.

I can try to compare with the English translation, and guess that わかりやすく is connected to “make sure to” but I dont trust the translation enough to say that with any confidence.

TL;DR this book is stupid. I’m not sure I’d even want to be reading on holiday or during powercuts. Maybe there’s some amount of worth in criticising how bad it is?

Unfortunately, me ranting about this stupid thing did not take long enough to pass the time for my internet…

But now I have internet I can ramble on the computer like normal! (I’ve been able to open so many tabs, I can listen to music while doing other stuff, everything’s loading so fast! (it took 20 minutes to click the confirmation link in the email to confirm my internet appointment))

July was very much not a stable month. August has started off weak, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to jump back into things as of tomorrow.

I can watch anime again! if i can sit still for long enough so fucking hype about internet im sure anime is perfectly watchable while I’m jumping around all over the place. I won’t be able to read the subtitles so it’ll be listening. I don’t really know what train of thoughts my brain exists as in this paragraph any more.

yay happy next post probably more japanese focussed

acutally Japanese stuff now: I’ve got almost 500 wk reviews waiting for me
my book club tracker is back! it disappeared at somepoint and I never got around to figureing out why
either way I’m behind of everything
almost 900 on jpdb
I’ve got a plan for studying for both easy days and studying days and I’m finally gonna be able to actually do the plan

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Congrats on internet (and not dying to cough medicine).

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Took me a bit to get into the flow of studying properly again, but it feels good to be back at this.

SRS - 2.6 Hours

I know I said I’d prioritise wanikani, but I have a streak going on ringotan that I’d rather not drop. So I did that first. Then I worked through 143 wanikani reviews. I completely forgot to check my accuracy and the site won’t let me just hit the back button to double check. I have 42 things in my recent mistakes, but I know I got some of those wrong multiple times on both parts and others just once.

I did 100 wk reviews with 85% accuracy. I have 30 items in my mistakes, which it’s clearly more like 70% accuracy but wk counts it weird because of reanswering wrong stuff. and that is me done for today.

I did 106 wk reviews at 83%. It feels like I did so much worse than 83%.

Did 175 wk reviews with 84% accuracy. Just 51 left, and I don’t have too many coming back tonight so I should clear this tomorrow. The good news is that a fair bit of my pile was burn reviews and (while I didn’t pass them all) that’s a good chuck that are just gone forever now.

I did my last 89 reviews with 89% accuracy. (12 minutes not 89). I’ve still got a sizeable number coming back this afternoon and tomorrow, so I’ll wait 'til Monday to consider lessons. I also had time to do a bit of anki, which has built back up while I’ve focused on wanikani. I’m thinking I want to get to a point where I can clear my wanikani reviews, clear my anki reviews, and do wanikani lessons, and only then look at jpdb.

35 reviews at 93%. :blush: all is right again. (As long as I only look at wk.)

Reading - 8.0 Hours

Next I read some 玉藻の恋. I’m very happy with how easily I can read this. And very amused that 邪魔 showed up both in this manga and in my listening practice. I finished chapter 3, but I still have this week’s reading to go.

Read some 玉藻の恋. The reading wasn’t going too badly, but I’m definitely exhausted from working through the few pages I did.

Got caught up on 玉藻の恋. The page that looked difficult yesterday did take almost ten minutes to work through, but that was more due to the amount of text than any particular sentence being super difficult.

フリーレン Notes:

I seem to have stopped partway through the last chapter. Let’s see if I can finish the chapter today.

Page 179
遺跡を飲み込んだ大樹 = a tree that swallowed some ancient ruins (metaphorically? I think?)

~~探すことにしたの? = why did you decide on searching ~~ ?
Uses にした is past form of にする which is to decide on grammar

お前はヒンメルを
You did ~ to Himmel
知っておけばと
ておく = to do something in advance
知っておく = to know in advance
知っておけば = if you know in advance
口にした。
decided to say.
Altogether:
If you knew in advance, you would have decided to speak to Himmel.

あの言葉はヒンメルに直接伝えてやるべきものだ。
those words, to Himmel, convey directly, must, thing. Those words must be directly conveyed to Himmel. (who is a bit dead so good luck with that.)

Page 180
Top right, I think Eisen thinks if we find this thing, there’s a spell to talk to the dead so that Frieren can talk to Himmel about what it was she needed to say.

Page 181
The tree is so tiny! It much have been a long, LONG time ago.

Page 183
I’m guessing that woman is Flamme? It’s weird to think that this legendary person who lived a long time ago is someone Frieren knew so well. I didn’t realise she was that old.

Page 184
Fern is also seemingly struggling with this revelation.

I am very interested in this 魂の眠る地 (= land where souls sleep) and in particular that it’s furigana is オレオール while I believe is pronounced the same as the Aureole in 軌跡. I’ll have to check that word when we reach that part of the game, and maybe look up where it comes from. (It’s in the thread, it’s french for halo. Interesting connection.)

… I finished the volume! I don’t have the second yet but I will need to pick that up to continue with the club.

Started the 2nd ごくまのクーク chapter. Considering the book club is starting the 8th (last?) chapter today, I think catching up is a bit of a moot point.

Listening - 3.4 Hours

So anime club for とんでもスキル is over and anime club for 佐々木と宮野 has started this week. Rather than always be behind, I’m leaving とんでもスキル as is and watching this new one. The version I found has English sub, so I will have to put effort in to make sure I’m listening to the anime and not just watching it.

I have spent half an hour and a full page of notes on the first minute and a half. Hooray to me for listening intensively. However, this will take longer than expected. Okay. I spent over an hour on listening and I’m a few seconds over three minutes in.

Listened to this: 山登り. Done now.

Watched some more 佐々木と宮野. This time I tried not to get bogged down on every sentence, so I was able to watch 5 minutes in the hour instead of 3. … Hooray?

Watched some more 佐々木と宮野. I was able to pick out some すれば grammar that I studied yesterday so that’s nice. I managed to finish the episode! In just over an hour.

Even though I spent a lot of time on this episode, I feel like each time I returned to it I had a better idea of how much I should be relistening and making notes and how much to let play while keeping mental track of what I could hear.

I was also using the subtitles to help understand, like with the word 絆創膏 at the end I was trying to search ばんそこ and couldn’t find anything, but by looking for “band-aid” like the subtitle used I found it’s ばんそうこう.

In terms of the plot, I kept loosing track when we were. There seemed to be a lot of jumping around between their first meeting(s?) and a more recent time, but I struggled to keep up with that.

Watched 外国語の勉強.

Grammar - 1.6 Hours

Now for some grammar. JLPT先生 has 132 grammar points for N4, which is what I’m going to work through. Today I studied 間 and I was going to study 間に to compare why they are separate grammar points, but I’m getting hungry and headachey so I’m stopping.

Grammar studied:
間に - seems simple enough, though I will get it mixed up with 間
ば - good to see how this conjugates rather than just have a vague feeling that ば stuff is if-y
場合は - kinda feels like a formal ば in some contexts
ばかり - I am now better equipped to be judgemental at people

Grammar studied:
だけで
That’s it. One is better than none.

Daily Rambling (much rambling is 軌跡 club focussed)

火曜日:
I haven’t properly sat down to study for hours in so long. I’m going to start with a reading focus day, and spend most of it on 軌跡. I also want to spend some time on SRS (specifically wanikani), listening, and grammar.

Gonna start with 軌跡. First thing I wanted to do was get a rough approximation of character counts so that I can better plan future weeks (because I’m really not sure how balanced this week is.) I counted 2799 characters in week one. So I spent my first 40 minutes of “studying” on that :sweat_smile: but now I have an average for the boxes and will be using that to guess for weeks 2-5, and then I’ll have a rough idea of how to go forward.

Got an estimate for week 2’s character count (4700) and finished the last little bit of reading I never actually finished for it.

I’m actually already a tad exhausted and I haven’t even done that much actual studying. Must be because I’m out of practice.

(I can’t like flipping anything on the forum because I spent a lot of time yesterday catching up and liking stuff, and now I can’t like things today, and now I’m upset.)

(No I did not manage to proportion my time according to my plan, I was extecting the intensiveness of listening to add an extra 5-10 minutes of time to the length of the episode, and I’ve got an unaccounted for half hour and I stopped an hour earlier than I wanted to.)

水曜日:
I have stuff I should be sorting this afternoon, so I’ll just study in the morning. That still gives me enough time for an hour each reading 空の軌跡 and listening to 佐々木と宮野, then another hour split between SRS and grammar.

Spent an extra half hour in 軌跡 getting to a stopping point. And now I have a headache XD. I haven’t done anything else yet.

Took my lunch break earlier. That stuff I needed to sort, while I had build up in my head as this huge thing, took me not even five minutes, so I’m gonna try to continue this afternoon but stop if that headache comes back.

木曜日:
I dunno what the fuck’s wrong with me. I’m not even that ill anymore, and I don’t really have a headache, but whenever I think about sitting down to study, I start to feel like I have a headache.

I’m gonna try and do an easy day today rather than try to go all in on proper studying days all the time to catch up.

金曜日:
Got up and got shit done. Feeling very productive. Time to turn that into productive studying.

Playing through 空の軌跡. Not really reading, just clicking through the dialogue so I can have a save that’s caught up with where the club is. But I discovered a bug that made me have to quit the game. Estelle took damage while casting her art and then the game got stuck. I don’t think it’s related to the text. A little googling suggests it’s an issue that graphics cards sometimes have with that spell.

Anyway, I just clicked through week three, and just clicking past all the text and doing the tutorial battles takes a good 30-40 minutes. No wonder it’s taking me forever to actually read.

I didn’t really want to sit down and study grammar, but I made myself do some while my food cooks and now it is ready so I’m allowed to stop.

But I got a few hours of studying in on top of my life productivity this morning (I made 3 (three!) phone calls! And my bed arrived! And I unpacked my clothes and put them all away! And I put all my rubbish into the appropriate bins! And I bought food! And I bulk cooked curry! And now I’m gonna go eat curry) so I’m feeling pretty good about it all.

土曜日:
I seem to study so much better when I write down what I want to do in advance. Physically on paper, typing doesn’t always work.

There was a lot of free stuff on the bookwalker thread today, and also a lot of cheap stuff. Eventually, I’ll be able to read all these books and manga I keep getting.

Clicking through some more 軌跡. It actually takes a good 15 minutes to run around talking to everyone without reading anything. So not making people do that every week probably is for the better… (as much as I like talking to all the NPCs, I don’t think I’ve got time to if I’m gonna catch up…) Week 4 was about double the line count of previous weeks, thought a lot of that is the NPC dialogue.

I keep looking at all the stuff I own and want on Natively. Like 薬屋のひとりごと. The sensible part of my brain is saying it’s a very difficult book so I need to read easier books first, like in all those book clubs I’m behind on. The less sensible part of my brain is thinking I can probably puzzle my way through a sentence at a time and then I’ll slowly work my way through it and eventually, it will be read!

日曜日:
Trying to catch up with kiseki so I can make next week’s thread this evening (when it’s supposed to be going up). There is a slight problem that I can make my characters not use the forbidden art, but if a monster decides to hit me with aqua bleed, I’m fucked. I messed with the setting a bit, but, uh, no luck as of yet. This is very annoying as I’ve never had this issue before, Aqua Bleed worked fine when I played in English and this is the first time I got this far in Japanese. So I guess I’m leaving things there until my tech

It works fine on my legal version. I had to clicky clicky clicky until I reached the tutorial, but I cast Aqua Bleed with no crashes. It will take me forever to click through everything to get back to where I was, but it’s fine. I can be fine.

I just want to be able to set up my threads properly.

So, I’m gonna be working on that on and off throughout the day. The kiseki thread will be up this evening and it will have the right screenshot to stop at and side quest notes. And then next week, I can actually read the game I’ve been wanting to read. Hooray.

(Tech aquaintance got back to me. Whatever the Aqua Bleed problem is, it’s specifically a problem with the language patch. I’m gonna try messing around with it later, but I need to get tonight’s thread started first.)

So I procrastinated on the whole clicking through more kiseki so I could make the thread and I really should have started getting ready for bed a while ago. But! I did it! Next week, I’ll be able to actually read the game.

If you’re interested, I worked out an average of 12.61 characters per text box in week 1. I counted each 2799 character of that week individually. There probably was a better way. I did not know it. For the next four weeks, I tallied (again, manually) each text box. Rather than count in 5s, I made each block of 5 tallies into a square of 20 tallies and counted those. Except for week 4 which had way too much NPC text, that was about 370-410 lines of text. Then I realised I would need to tally 400ish lines every time I plan a new week. So I found an app for my phone that does it for me. Now all I need to do is tap the phone screen. And it shows the total the whole time so I can just know how much I’ve read. The character estimations in the home thread are based on how many lines I counted times the 12.61 characters per line, and rounded to the nearest hundred.

In Summary
Got Wanikani Reviews to 0 (twice)
57 Pages of Reading
1 Anime Episode (intensive with Eng Sub) in 3 Hours
2 Comprehensible Japanese
6 Grammar Points from JLPT先生

Total Time: 15.6 Hours

(My reading time is too high because I was counting 空の軌跡 in with it, and when I realised I shouldn’t because I’m not exactly reading it I didn’t know how much to take off. Instead I get to look a lot more awesome than I am.

I don’t actually have any goals set yet, so here’s some for August.

Finish Volume 1 of 玉藻の恋
Catch up with BBC
Reach 50% ごくまのクーク
Keep up with anime club
10 more comprehensible japanese videos
Study something grammar each week
Do 18 kanji lessons on wk

Trying to get a mix of keeping goals achievable but also what I want to do. If I’ve done my maths right, instead of stressing that I have to do 軌跡軌跡軌跡 all the time, which stresses me out into procrastinating and not doing it, I “only” have to double up on that for the next three weeks to be up to date with the club. And then, I can stop stressing about this. (and start stressing about other things :smiley:)
Weeks 3&4 of 軌跡 club
Weeks 5&6 of 軌跡 club
Weeks 7&8 of 軌跡 club

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My sisters came up to visit at the start of this week. Between TW: mild abuse / neglect / not okayness making sure they don’t starve to death (only partially exaggerating, my dad won’t buy my sister food unless she goes to the shop with him, and he won’t tell her when he’s going to the shop), washing mold out of and cutting the littler one’s hair (did you know hair could get mouldy? I didn’t), phoning the safeguarding helpline (because finally got her permission, they couldn’t do much last time I phoned), buying clothing (so that she’d stay another night so I could feed her again), visiting our nan, and stopping the dog from eating the niece (exaggeration, they were mostly both just very excited and Betty likes to nibble new people.), I didn’t study as much as I usually would then.

Aside from that, I objectively feel like I didn’t do too badly. I am very much feeling the frustration of Not Doing Enough though, which leads to me wanting to procrastinate, which leads to falling even further behind. I’m trying to just keep plodding along, and I’ll get somewhere eventually.

First of, 空の軌跡 is technically reading but I keep rambling about non-reading stuff about it, so I’m just putting all the 軌跡 stuff I did this week in it’s own little hide details box.

空の軌跡

Reminder to self to pull up low res version to see what that ハナ furigana is for. Anyway, I have eventually decided that as nice as it would be to have frequency data for the vocab in this game, it is really not worth the effort it’s taking me to get through each line. Especially when it’s one where I know all the words, I don’t need to have to look for each word in the spreadsheet and upping the frequency by one. I will never catch up.

So I duplicated the vocab sheet I was working on (I don’t wanna just delete it), and made the one the club links to more useful (because if you’re in this club you don’t need the basics like こと・する・あの each week). I was a little conservative with deleting words I already found, but going forward I’ll just be adding words I have to lookup myself, and the setting specific vocab.

Despite this new method of “only” looking up what I don’t know, I still have to look up at lot :sweat_smile: The pace is still slow, it’s just no longer glacial. I have managed to get another headache. yay…

More 軌跡. Started off quickly tallying up what I did the past couple days (360ish characters yesterday and just over 100 the day before).

I’ve also decided to be more lenient with my timer. If I need to open the game and then go make a cup of tea and load up the save when I get back, because trying to load the save immediately after opening the game is somehow completed wrecked by my executive dysfunctioning brain? Well, sure, that can count, especially if the alternative is being sat not clicking the damned icon and wasting time. (I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but this is not just an issue with playing in Japanese. I’m like this with a lot of game I wanna play. :slightly_smiling_face:)

Today I got through approximately 970 characters, so hooray for progress! (The less useless vocab sheet is probably the reason I can go so much faster.) But if it’s taking me over an hour to get through almost 1000 characters, and each week has about 5000, well I hope my reading speeds up as I need to look up less words.

Onto slightly more organised stuff.

SRS - 3.0h

Rushed through reviews as I have bus to catch. Didn’t do too badly though.

Just did my SRS today, got distracted by family visiting.

Had a bit of procrastiation, but got started with SRS.No new lessons still, but I did work through my anki queue and got all up to date on that. So, I think I’ll start doing lessons as of tomorrow.

Anyway, got SRS done and onto some lessons!
豚肉:already familiar
象:known (though new meaning nuance)
閉まる:almost all the anime context versions are some form of (ドアが閉まる音)
左腕:self explanatory
定額:定額は便利です。
触:I know 触る、for the new reading think of 触角 and 感触.

Right, I’ve got 882 jpdb cards waiting for me. Yay… :disappointed_relieved: I did 100 (their automatic “do you wanna take a break?” option) and now I somehow have 599 cards. I don’t understand, but yay.

It’s quite strange how I’ve gone from “massive pile of reviews! Oh no!” to “that’s all of today’s 18 reviews done” in just a couple weeks. Clearly I have no excuses for not doing lessons anymore.

Speaking of, wk lessons:
閉じる:その歴史に幕を閉じるのだ
載:所載・記載 (what do these have to do with the meaning??? If I put knowledge in a place, it has been recorded. If I put knowledge down in writing, that is a record.)
残額:
日本製:self explanatory
輸出:
層:I feel like this one looks like a そう.

Did another bunch of jpdb cards. Still have over 800 remaining.

I’m still doing lessons.
中国製:self explanatory
型:I put the vocab version in my anki deck for some reason, so all I need is the on’yomi. 定型的・原型
輸血:輸血すれば、多分死なないですね。

Did my SRS. No lessons today.

Reading - 5.8h

I decided to start off with ウスズミの果て. Club is on week 5 and I’m just starting, but the page count on the home page looks oddly heavier at the start? We’ll see how it goes.

Notes:

取りにいこっか
Took me a minute, but いこっか is a version of 行こうか? and then 取りに gives the what they are going to do.

Robot using katakana on page 009 is difficult. Is that 認証ーロヲ?認証10ヲ? I’ll have to check the thread. While scrolling through the thread (and comparing the pixelated ロ in game images) I realised that says 認証IDヲ. It doesn’t help that when I think ID I think like passport or drivers liscence and this person just used their hand.

I read this week’s 玉藻の恋 and made sure to pay attention to the grammar as I went. I’ve got a bad habit of piecing things together based on the vocab and what makes sense and not paying too much attention to the conjugations. But as I was paying attention today, there seemed to be a lot that I learned or briefly looked at recently.

Next I read a little bit of ごくまのクーク. I have to look up at lot of words and the amount of text (and lack of pictures) is kind of intimidating still. I think I understood the potato recipe enough to try to make it myself, and then I thought they were going to play with walnuts like conkers, but instead they’re jumping on a rock?

Now I’m reading some ウスズミの果て. Even though most pages don’t have a lot of words, it’s very slow going when the few words that do exist are words that I do not know. I think I’m doing quite well without the furigana though. (Except when it’s robo font)

Summary

page 19 bottom, ようになる?
I think the 「断罪者」と呼ばれる is people were called “condemned” but what does the ようになる add?

Page 31
lots of it

Page 33 top
The goal to purify is 0.002%? Is that because everything else is fucked or just because that’s a starting point?

So reading through the thread and it turns out aliens exist. Clearly I don’t understand as much as I thought I did when I read the chapter XD

I had 15 minutes left in the time I allocated myself to study, so I decided to read one sentence of 薬屋のひとりごと. That next sentence was unexpectedly easy. So I read two more. Which means I’ve finished the first page! (My pages are smaller than they should be because I made the font massive to 1. be able to see kanji better and 2. have less wall of text.)

That’s why today I decided to read some レンタルおにいちゃん instead of any book club stuff. I read half of chapter three. Still feels familiar so I must not yet be where I dropped it years ago.

Listening - 2.1h

動物あてクイズその2 for listening. Do, do hamsters have tails? I thought they didn’t? I had to google to confirm. Also, it amused me that a zebra is a stripey horse. As in, that’s it’s name. I was expecting ゼブラ or something since all the other animals were katakana versions of how I’d normally call them. But zebra gets to be しま馬.

人生で一番痛かった思い出. The idea of coughing so hard your rib breaks is terrifying.

Watching the second episode of 佐々木と宮野. (Or at least starting it.) As well as practising being able to hear the separate words/grammar/everything, I’m also putting some of my notes on here.

  • きんちょう can be used with a する verb
  • かんじがいさらにようなことは… = 「感じ害」更に(ようなこと)は… = 「hurt feelings」even more (thing that is similar to) topic = This thing (refering to 佐々木’s way of wording things) is similar to even more hurting feelings. = concept that what 佐々木 is saying could result in hurt feelings, even if not intended.
    Anyway, I got through about 5 minutes.

Watched some more 佐々木と宮野. Still slow going, but I’m over halfway through in the same time it took me to watch the first few minutes of the first episode. It’s strange trying to figure out how to balance making sure I’m listening and rewinding and pausing and looking things up with not spending forever on it.

Finished up episode 2 of 佐々木と宮野. I only focussed on a few of the sentences today, but I feel like my notes are getting more relevant.

I’m behind on anime club forever. This is fine. I listened to this スーパーで買ったもの. しょうみきげん seems like a very useful word, but in reality you’d mostly just look at the numbers and understand even if you didn’t know the word. 私が勝手牛乳の賞味期限は明日だから、今晩パンケーキを作るつもりだ。Also, I found that I got used to rewinding things a lot with 佐々木と宮野, and I relistened to couple things here even though I never used to be bothered before. Something so small might sound kinda silly, but I’m taking it as a sign that my listening related study habits are improving.

Grammar - 2.6h

Grammar studied:
出す - this verb attaches onto others. I understand it with things like 泣き出す but other forms I’ll need practice with.
でございます - had more trouble with the formal vocab in the example sentences than the grammar.

Grammar points “studied”:
でも (which I almost skipped but glad I doubled checked because it’s different from the N5 version)
ではないか is much more of a feeling than anything specific, which makes the “translation” for this point be actually not very used in the example sentences, which confused me. I think this will just stay in the pile of things that kinda make sense even if I’m not sure exactly how.
が必要 this is a word, why is this counted as grammar?
がする has more to do with the noun preceding it
がる&がり proper new grammar I studied properly

I kept opening various links in new tabs while reading book club threads so I’m gonna look at some of what those were and try to study them too.

たらどう - feels kinda passive agressive. I think it’s because my brain sees “why don’t you” in the English translation and it feels like “why aren’t you already doing this, you idiot” even though it’s meant to be a polite suggestion. What bunpro gives as the literal translation “When A, how about that?” feels so much more polite, so I need to seperate what this grammar actually means (polite suggestion) with how loaded the given english translation feels.

Read Tofugu article on くれる・あげる・もらう

Oh look, my dad got featured in a tofugu article. Lucky him. Anyway, I feel more confident in their differences now (and seeing the politer versions was useful because I think I came across them recently).

Watched a Japanese Ammo with Mida video Let’s & Shall We / I ? Volitional Form. I only studied ましょう version of this before so despite being a basic video this was still useful.

While watching that, I realised やった! is just past tense やる. The video didn’t even use やる, my brain just wandered off somewhere.

Daily Rambling

月曜日:
Got a lot to do today so just doing a little this morning.

水曜日:
Sisters are really distracting. I read one chapter of スーと鯛ちゃん and watched a video after they left.

木曜日:
Making a physical todo list this morning so hopefully I don’t get stuck on doing almost nothing like the past few days.

Today I intend to focus on reading. I would like to read a bit from each book club, a lot from 空の軌跡, and, if I have time, a sentence from 薬屋のひとりごと.

Me: Spends several days being distracted
Me: Decides to get caught up on actually studying
Me: Sits down and starts wanikani
My brain: How about a headache?
Me: :angry:

Today has been rather tiring, but I’ve been taking lots of breaks inbetween doing stuff so it’s a good kind of tiring. I also did an hour of 求職, because that is a task I’ve been given. Just don’t tell anyone I skipped the past few days. (I’m telling you lot so I’m not tempted to tell anyone who actually knows me.)

Still want to do some 軌跡 this evening, but overall I’m feeling pretty good about the progress I made today.

金曜日:
I’m testing out a new thing where when I feel myself wanting to procrastinate, I set a time for 10/15 minutes and let myself procrastinate. Intention: I only spend a bit of time doing somehting else instead of spending hours not doing anything because I’m feeling guitly about not doing the thing I’m supposed to be doing so I don’t allow myself to do what I want to do.

I am very, very tired. I know I’m supposed to be kind to myself and everything, but when I look at all the things I’m not doing despite knowing I should be doing them, it’s rather difficult.

土曜日:
I have done all of 30 reviews. That is basically nothing. Why the FUCK do I have this damned headache again? I have done nowhere near the amount of studying necessary for a headache of knowledge.

日曜日:
I have intended for Sundays to always be days where I don’t do a lot. Still, I’m a little frustrated to be constantly playing catch up.

In Summary
15 wanikani lessons
94 pages of reading
~1500 characters in 軌跡
3 comprehensible japanese
1 anime club episode in about 1.5 hours
11 grammary things
Total Time: 13.5 Hours

One useful side affect of this study log is I can look at all the things I have done instead of just thinking about all the things I didn’t do. Especially including the more personal side of things because like it or not that does affect how much I’m able to study in a rather big way.

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This.
It’s the opposite of neglect and a huge achievement. Being able to acknowledge what you did instead of what you didn’t is pick emancipation and is not an easy thing to accomplish considering the environment you were exposed to.

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This has not been a very productive week.

Studying

Did SRS. Felt like it went terrible, but 85% isn’t bad and I passed 30 of my burn reviews. Doing wk and anki took long enough that my timer beeped just as I clicked on lessons to start them, so I just did アメリカ製 because I’d already selected it and that is not going to be a hard word to add to the queue.

I read this week’s 玉藻の恋. Don’t really have too much to say about it. Only took me like 20 minutes, so plenty of time left over for more reading.

Right, so the ハナ furigana was for 最初ハナっからそう呼べってんだ。Looking at the omitted ハナ possibilities on ichi.moe, I can find that the last one has meanings of beginning, but I do not understand why this word has another word which rarely means the same thing in katakana furigana.

Got through 250ish more characters of 空の軌跡. That doesn’t sound like a lot (because it isn’t) but I did spend a fair bit of time investigating the ハナ thing and I have to do a lot of lookups.

I decided I would watch the first half of the next 佐々木と宮野 episode (ep3) and stop there without caring too much about the time was too early or too late. It took about 40m so I don’t think that’s a bad pace.

Also frustrating is making lots of stupid mistakes during my wanikani reviews, like accidentally hitting u an extra time. I know 担ぐう is not 担ぐ. (Not I’m not putting on the undo script. I’m being stubborn about it.) Honestly 90% on 84 reviews is NOT bad. It is a good score. Everything is fine. I do not need ot be insulting myself over this. I could have got more right if I were paying better attention, but I got an A here so those extra marks while nice do not matter this much.

I was successful in finding some motivation to read ウスズミの果て. It weird reading this because there will be pages with basically no text, and then a page like 53 where I’m looking up every other word and struggling to figure out what the heck the grammar is doing.

Played for an hour and I’m getting a bit tired (as per fucking usual). I got through 65 lines / 820 characters. If weeks have, on average 5000 characters, and I’m barely getting through 1000 in an hour… Well I knew this would be a lot going into it. I just forget I struggle to maintain my hyperfocus while I’m in the hyperfocus.

Did just under another hour this evening for a total of 1700ish characters. Family stuff is going on again so I got distracted, but I have now finished the third week of 軌跡 club.

530 characters in half an hour. This is technically an improvement in reading speed.

Daily Rambling

月曜日:
Woke up tired, which is never a good sign. Today I plan to alternate between studying and doing that other stuff that needs doing.
One cleaning task complete.
求職が嫌い。でも、今日求職した。
Technically, I could study grammar. However. Don’t wanna. Bleh.

火曜日:
Struggled to get started this morning, so I’m not expected to get a lot done today. (Frustrating)
I choose to blame that it is rainy and cold and not take any responsibility for myself.

Admiring the covers of the intermediate manga club picks on the natively list in an attempt to motivate myself into reading so that I can eventually read them, too. And I realised the first one is lv27, and while I was reading Frieren, that difficulty got upped to lv27… The temptation. It is strong. And like, I already binged the DanMeshi manga after I watched the anime so even if I don’t understand everything it’ll be fine. (I am behind on everything except the ABBC at the moment so I really, REALLY, shouldn’t.)

I need to be studying grammar so that I can read more complicated things. I need&want to be reading to catch up on clubs and be able to read whatever I want whenever I want. I kinda want to keep up with anime club? But now that I think about it, I don’t really feel like it’s something I need. I think I kinda had it in my head that listening is something I should be doing, but is it really? The listen everyday challenge is almost over, so I might reasses at the start of next month.

So the whole studying today went out the window, but I finally got around to eating something so, y’know, could’ve been a worse day.

水曜日:
… Why am I ill again?

I haven’t studied today, but I decided to watch the first episode of Frieren (the first three should be safe to watch without spoilers). As the characters were talking, I was remembering reading the lines in the manga and piecing together what they meant. So it feels oddly nostalic for something so new. I’m not really sure nostalgia is the right word. There’s probably a better word that I can’t think of to describe the feeling.

Also, watching it for fun some things are hitting differently. Like, when old Himmel is watching the meteors, and calls them beautiful. It feels like the meteors burning out is similar to how quickly people will die compared to Frieren, but their individual lives have an impact even though they don’t last for a long time. I’m not sure I’m wording that right either.

木曜日:
Still feel like shit, potentially due to being a bit ill, potentially just my brain hating everything in general. Today I woke up with motivation to play 軌跡 and that might be the only bit of studying I do today.

I did not play 軌跡 today. But I did figure out what the fuck is wrong with me. I don’t think it’s a physical illness, I think I’m stressed. I’ve got to travel to a new city in a couple weeks to help my sister when she meets with social services. I keep thinking about my dad more than I’d like.

金曜日:
Today I will have 軌跡 motivation, that I will act on. I have opened the game before breakfast, so that after breakfast I can immediately go into it.

I also had a bit of a look at my calendar. I put in book club stuff for everyday next month. Most of that is 軌跡 as I would like to catch up so I scheduled it at 4 days of the week, but also ABBC and BBC stuff, the latter doubling up as I’m so far behind. There was one singular day with nothing to read on it. I could leave it blank. I could get Frieren Vol.2 and read that alongside the spinoff club. I could catch up on ごくまのクーク, which I realised while looking at it is now over.

This hasn’t even taken into account that I will have off days next month, like how this has been kind of an off week. I know I’m not going to do much on the 2nd, or the 5th, or any other days I have irl shit to deal with, or any of the days I just feel like shit.

Also I’ve decided to drop anime club for now. I have not kept up with any of the anime picked for it. Might continue with 佐々木と宮野 until the end of this month because of the whole Listening Every Day I haven’t been doing, or I might just stick to Comprehensible Japanese.

土曜日:
I’m letting today be another day where the only thing I must study is 軌跡.

It is very interesting to see the originals of some lines, and where the localisation team changed things to make it flow more naturally in English. And I was very happy that I didn’t have to look anything up until the 10th line XD. Felt like yesterday I was looking up four words every other line.

In Summary:
1 wanikani lesson
37 pages of reading
~2500 characters of 軌跡
1/2 anime club episode

Total Time: 5.7 Hours

I was going to do more but I’m fucking terrified so I’m gonna ramble a bit about what’s been on my mind. TW: abuse

I think I mentioned last week about helping my sister contact social services. This is great, we’ve got a meeting with them two weeks from now. I was feeling hopeful that they’d be able to help her get out of our dad’s house.

My sister has also been applying for benefits, with the help of one of her high school friends who suggested it to her and has been helping her with the process. I have not been involved with that.

Last night, she messaged in a panic that our dad had found out about her applying for benefits and she lied and said we (me and other sister) suggested it and he might ask us about that. I took a moment to calm down because I’m not a fan of lying and got irrationally angry, but wrote a message saying I understand if that’s what she needs to do to keep the peace while she’s still stuck there and to let me know if she needs to talk.

Then she asked me if she should cancel her benefit application, which I said no and asked some questions. Because to me that’s a worrying question that she thinks she needs to cancel because he found out. She explained that the reason he found out is because the benefit people called him, even though she explicitly asked them not to. So I’m furious at them. And she said our dad had “explained” that this might get him in trouble for XYZ reason.

So I’m trying to be reassuring that if he gets in trouble that’s his own damn fault, but she’s terrified that if he gets in trouble while she’s still there he’ll retaliate. And he would, so I get that.

So I tried to arrange to get her back to my place for a bit, because I don’t want her stuck in that house either. Eventually she agreed to come here at the start of September, and she’ll stay at least until we go to that social services meeting, not sure how long after. But she really doesn’t want to be around him on the day of the meeting in case he finds out.

And, in theory, everything is okay now. We have a plan. She has to keep this secret for another week, but social services is meeting at their office instead of his house because they’re not stupid enough to attempt to discuss his abusive behaviour when he’s around.

But this morning I had an intrusive thought cross my mind like “what if he kills her?” And I had this whole spiral where he finds out and gets angry and beats her to death and then claims she ran away and me and our other sister never find out what happened to her. And I’m trying to reassure myself that that isn’t likely to happen. And I told myself that my dad’s not a violent person, he’s emotionally/psychologically nasty, sure, but he’s not violent. Y’know, except for all those times he was violent but my little autistic brain didn’t realise it counted because grabbing his kids by the hair and slamming their heads into each other isn’t smacking, and when I thought of abusive parents I thought that meant they smacked their kids a lot.

I don’t know who I could talk to about this. Social services already has a meeting set up. The police or anybody else I contacted wouldn’t be able to do anything without showing up at his house, which would mean he definitely finds out. And even if I could talk to anyone, I’m worried that I’ll be told I’m overreacting / being paranoid, which I am but I don’t really wanna be told that right now when this fear feels very very real.

So I’ve got just over a week of waiting for the day she comes down and trying not to stress about what if he finds out in the meantime. And then afterwards when she goes back because she’ll have to go back. And I’m worried about what if social services investigates and he puts on his nice guy smiles and talks his way through things and they decide everything is fine so they don’t help her and she’s just stuck living with him.

I may or may not do anything tomorrow. Hard to give a shit right now.

10 Likes

This is truly horrifying… Honestly, what planet did that person (the father) come from? I mean, I know the answer, but it feels so unreal that someone could treat his children like that and call himself a human… I really hope your sister would be safe and manages to get away from him and his abuse…
May the Great Cat of Safety purrotect both you and her and may the Great Cat of Hope and the Great Cat of Courage help you get through all this! love2

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It’s funny, because it never even occurred to me that his behaviour might be a bit inappropriate until I was in my 20s. Turns out “a bit inappropriate” was an understatement,

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abuse

TLDR: try going to a family lawyer or social worker and asking about a free consultation while you wait and definitely write out the details of what happened to you in some organized way for when social services do show up. The fear is real but catastrophizing when you can’t be there is only going to give you stress that you can’t resolve. I hope everyone is safe.

I have no experience with an actual abusive home only an imagined one, but the more information social services has the better judgement call they can make when they decide what to do. If there’s a pattern but it’s hard to notice from the outside, explain what triggers the abuse if there is anything. As much detail and as well organized as you can so someone who knows what abuse looks like can recognize a pattern of abusive behavior rather than a possible “random” argument at a “normal” home. Someone in social services is going to make a snap judgement about whether there is abuse and how bad it is and the more information they can get, the better.

There are people who are experts in abusive situations and I’m not one of them. Family lawyers may offer free or reduced consultations for new clients or there may be a crisis helpline to talk to, but look for resources like that that you can speak with about these fears who will take the idea seriously. But while you aren’t there, worrying about if and when he hurts her can’t help stop it from happening. If you think someone is in danger emergency services may be the best thing to call but only if the danger is immediate.

In the meantime try finding a way to call your sister and check on her every day or so. If she’s living with you for a little while soon maybe make it seem like you’re asking her about that. I’m sorry this is happening and it sounds like you’re doing the best you can to deal with it safely.

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Oh RebBlue, I’m so sorry you’re going through this. It’s absolutely normal to worry, speaking as someone with personal experience with similar situations.

I can’t do much for you as an internet stranger with zero legal expertise, but consider trying to write about things that relieve your worries rather than fuel them, to help calm you down. as @SpiderWeb says, The fear is real but catastrophizing is only going to mess with your head. Write about all the ways the situation might go right instead of wrong. Write about what you think is realistically most likely to happen rather than worst case scenarios, or about steps you could take that might lead to better outcomes. It’s something that helps ground me when I’m fear spiraling, maybe it’ll help you, too.

Big hugs

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Hugs from me too. I hope by the end of the week your sister is away from this terrible situation.

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This week was also not very productive, BUT I did do at least one thing each day which is something. And I found out my targets for how much studying I’m “supposed” to do each day were unrealistic.

I did however get my JLPT score on Monday, here it is again for anyone not on the JLPT thread.

SRS - 1.8h

Anyway, I got through about half of the new backlog. hooray… The actual hooray is that several of those were burns so they’re just gone forever now.

I did all 100 wk reviews (with 86% which is lower than I’d like but still decent.) Burned about 10 of them, it is nice to know those are just done and I don’t have to worry about them anymore. But my leeches are a little stuck, like I failed 保証 again today and it has a leech score of 42 which is not great. Headache has made itself know again.

Spent 7 minutes this evening on wanikani. That’s not a lot but I am rather exhausted.

Did my wanikani reviews and then worked on anki. I had wanted to do enough lessons this month to make a level up technically possible, but it seems like a bad idea to do lessons just yet.

32 wk reviews done. Feeling tired/headache/numb-ish so that’s it.

I procrastined long enough for more reviews to be available. So I did 52 reviews with 91% accuracy. I also did some anki.

Only had 6 wk reviews this morning. So I worked through the rest of my anki backlog and then did a set of reviews on ringotan. I do appreciate how it only gives me 20-25ish reviews at a time even though I’ve got over 100 waiting, makes things feel more manageable.

Reading - 3.0h

Took a break then read some 軌跡. Read about 500 characters and actually finished the 3rd week this time. My headache started up again 20 minutes ago but I can’t pause midconversation so I probably pushed myself further than I should to get through that.

Reading 玉藻の恋. What’s going on with 辛かろう? Not sure if I’ve pushed myself too far today despite doing barely anything, but I do not understand 141’s bottom left panel. I just read a little bit.

Reading 玉藻の恋. I’m sure how to interpret え with dakuten. I think XなくてもY means “even if we don’t X, Y will still happen” but I’ll check the thread after on that point. I FINISHED IT! やった! (I feel so nervous posting questions in the thread)

I played some 軌跡 for a little bit. I know I said my goal was an hour, but I think if I stop now I can do some more this afternoon. 400ish characters.

Playing some more 空の軌跡. Why is baka spelt 馬鹿? Why those kanji? Why a mix of on and kun’yomi? Why does Luke speak in kanji for 馬鹿 but katakana for オンナ? So many questions. Anyway, I made my goal of an hour (albeit in two sessions) and read approx. 1450 characters, for a total of 1850ish today. Hooray! It feels easier to read now since I’m out of the tutorial and don’t need to look up as many words. (Actually since I started week 4 I can see I looked up exactly 44 words, plus some I didn’t count because I was just double checking I got them right.)

Read some ウスズミの果て. I managed to read the whole chapter (3), though I’m not super certain on my understanding.

Notes:
終わってしまったんだろ?
終わるー>終わって
しまった (was done accidentally/completely finished)
ん - explanatory
だろう - possibly/likely/it seems like
Altogether: It seems like the world has already completely ended? with a nuance that this could explain an unspoken question, but they’re not really sure

Listening - 20m

I did a listening. 日本の美術(富嶽三十六景). I did not know that the wave painting was about Mt. Fuji.

雨の日☔️ for listening. I have been quite lucky recently in that the rain has waited until after I’ve walked the puppy.

Grammar - 8m

I studied one grammar point: ございます. Yes I’m a hypocrit for adding to anki lessons while not doing any wk lessons.

Daily Rambling

月曜日:
While doing reviews, I saw a button called script menu and realised jitai wasn’t on. So I clicked the button and it just took me to the dashboard, and then I tried to go back but it lost my session. I think I was only 10 reviews in but still very annoying.

My head hurts too much to do anymore and I’ve been in a foul mood all day so I’m not forcing it.

火曜日:
I intend to watch one Comprehensible Japanese video, in an hour or two to give this headache time to die. (It did not go away)

水曜日:
Did not do anything until this evening. Japanese-wise that is. I spent over 3.5 hours this afternoon in a sister meeting preparing for next week’s meeting.

木曜日:
Woke up feeling motivated today, here’s hoping it lasts.

Okay, but seriously why do I have a headache when I’ve studied for not even an hour today, but I have been able to study for multiple hours in the past? I’m getting rather frustrated by it all.

I’m starting to think maybe the headache just doesn’t go away, it just gets ignorable until I try to do stuff and immediately returns. Because sometimes just thinking about how I want to read makes it throb and I haven’t even loaded words up yet.

I watched another Frieren episode. I half want to consider this with my listening because I feel like I’m understanding entire sentences, but only because I read it and I’m not watching it with the intention of listening practice so probably I shouldn’t. Or I’ll be tempted to count all anime.

土曜日:
I still don’t feel great but I’d like to actually read today. I made a list of all the things I want to work on, I have chosen two of those things to do today (Finish 玉藻の恋 & 1h 空の軌跡(repeatable)), and then if I get those done and still have energy for more, I can pick another thing from the list. Also it’s the last day of the listen every day challenge and while I have not been hitting the “every” part of “every day” I would like to do a little today.

First though I need to motivate myself to do my reviews. There’s only 36 of them. That’s not a lot! This will take me all of 5 minutes. Anyway, while procrastinating on that I was reading another thread from someone else who is also attempting full-time study, and just lowering my mental goal from “I must do 6 hours everyday and if I can’t even reach that how will I ever work a full-time job what the eff is wrong with you” to “I can do an hour or two now and an hour or two later” and it is crazy how much of a weight lifted off my shoulders when my brain decided those two hours do not need to be for studying. (Then again, my brain just thought about all the chores I should absolutely be doing in those hours instead, which is… less motivating :sweat_smile:)

In Summary
0 reviews for wanikani and anki, started ringotan again
53 pages of reading
~2400 characters in 軌跡
2 comprehensible japanese
1 grammar point
Total time: 5.3h

August has not been my best month. Feels like it’s just been one thing after another. I haven’t completely stopped yet, so that’s not too bad. I’m probably a little too focused on all the things I haven’t done. So, to focus on the things I have done:

  • I finished two book club books and a third book that does not have a book club.
  • I have kept 軌跡 club running as in making weekly threads, and spent some effort into guesstimating character counts so that I can have those stats for myself and also use them to plan how much should be in each week.
  • I have kept decently on top of my wanikani and anki reviews, and have burned many turtles.
  • Ooh, look, stats. Those aren’t bad accuracy

I’m not quite sure how we’re in September. But we’re here. Yay.

I want to level up. I’m feeling self conscious about how long I’ve been on this level. So I’d like to add in lessons with a bit more consistency, even if it’s just three at a time.

I want to read a lot. The next book for ABBC is starting this month, and I have it so I will be joining them. I also got the next volume of Frieren for the offshoot and the first volume for the next BBC. ごくまのクーク is over, so I’m not stressing on it, it’s joining my pile of book I started reading and will get back around to eventually. So if I can count correctly (which is not a guarentee), that’s 1 (カードキャプターさくら), 2 (ウスズミの果て), 3 (フリーレン), 4 (軌跡) book clubs to keep up with. I’m 4-5 weeks behind on the three of those that have already started. Catching up is a lot of pressure, so I think instead I’ll say I’d like to not fall further behind than I already have.

I don’t particularly care about listening. I don’t want to lose whatever listening skills I’ve somehow managed to gain, (60/60 how?!) so I will keep at it. I’m just not making it a focus or putting any goals on it.

I don’t particularly like grammar, BUT it is helpful for reading. And, I do want to do the N4 next July. So I’m going to keep working through the list of grammar points. There are 115 left, I have 10 months until July. If I let June be fore revision only, that’s an average of 13 grammar points I need to study per month, just less than every other day.

Goals for September:
Do lessons for all Lv24 Kanji (14 remaining)
Clear Ringotan review pile (current: 102)
Clear jpdb review pile (current: 875)
Keep up with カードキャプターさくら book club
Read chapters 4-6 of ウスズミの果て
Read chapters of 8-12 葬送のフリーレン2
Read ~20k characters of 空の軌跡
Study 13 new grammar points

I think those goals look reasonable.

If I do one kanji lesson and one grammar per day, that’s half a month’s worth of spare days just in case. Ringotan I should clear in a week or two if I stick to it’s recommendations of 20 reviews at a time. jpdb is trickier because I don’t have a good idea of how quickly the reviews come back (other than it’s too quickly), but if I do 100 per day as per it’s recommendation, that’ll be done by the end of the month. I don’t think I have as much leeway for missing days. Reading, I should keep up with the book clubs by just reading a week’s worth each week, 軌跡 will be the tricky one.

So, y’know, mostly reasonable.

I don’t know how to end this, here’s a random cat I found last year.

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As I should have expected (but didn’t) having a sister visit does distract from the studying.

SRS - 2.0h

SRS done today: 36 wk, 36 anki.

SRS completed: 56 wk, 52 anki, 21 ringotan, 100 jpdb.

WK Lessons (finally):
象::elephant:
庁:guessing 丁 is one of those kanji where when it’s in another it tells you how to say it
自家製:妹の自家製パエッラが好きです。

SRS done: 15 wk, 6 anki.

SRS done: 63 wk, 124 anki.

SRS done: 35 wk, 38 anki, 24 ringotan.

SRS done: 8 wk (100% woo!), 37 anki, 25 ringotan. Trying to draw 室 is doing my head in because my phone isn’t recognising the bend in the ム stroke. I get better results if I overexagerate and make it curvy, which is annoying.

Reading - 4.3h
I'm excited to be starting the next フリーレン volume today :)

So their adventure (which was 10 years) is less than a hundreth of Frieren’s life. So Frieren expects to live more than 1000 years. Makes sense considering the tree we saw, I wonder how far into that she is. For humans, their 百分の一 is less than a year, because very few make it to 100. I’ve probably spent one 百分の一 living on my own now. That’s a little scary to think about.

Their 10 year adventure was just getting to the place the demon lived? But that includes the return journey, right? Surely?

Oh, with what Fern just said about this being her 二分の一, I completely misunderstood what Frieren was saying earlier. If Fern is 20 now, this 10 years is half of her current life. So Frieren was probably talking about her current life earlier (making her already over 1000 years old, though now I type this I think we already figured that out last volume), I for some reason thought she was talking about her total expected lifespan.

Well, I read chapter 8 easily enough, hooray!

I read like 5 lines of 軌跡 before my brain sulked at me and refused to process what the pretty shapes are. And two of those lines we’re “…” so I’m just not counting it.

I read week 4 of ウスズミの果て. I can’t say I’m particularly surprised by what happened.

I also read a little 空の軌跡. Just 400ish characters, but that’s 400 closer to being caught up than I was yesterday.

It’s been a while since I read にゃんにゃん探偵団. For some reason the vocab sheet wouldn’t load, but I managed to read the second solution chapter just fine without it.

Read a tiny bit of スーと鯛ちゃん.

Today’s reading, 空の軌跡! I still have to look up a lot of words, I’m finding it kinda useful to read the line first, then count each word I need to look up. Usually up to four words, rarely more. Then I just have to do a handful look ups and I’ve got it. Reminder to self to go thank simias for that kankan thing and why the fuck did I not start using it when they first made it?

More 軌跡 because I want to finish this week, damn it. I played up to the title screen introducing the prologue. Technically I should play the next scene as well, but the headache is back, which means it went away somepoint this last week so hooray, but now it is back so less hooray. I read approximately 1.8k characters today.

Played a bit of 軌跡 to get through the last 550ish characters of week 4, so this week I have not fallen any further behind than I already am.

Listening - 12m

Listened to コロナウイルス対策. It’s strange to think this was years ago.

Listening! 国あてクイズ. 私は地理が下手ですから、難しかったです。4/5.

Grammar - 1.1h

Grammar studied:
始める - means what you’d expect
はずだ - came across reading so it’s nice to officially learn it

I also read this article on 内 and 外.

Grammar points studied:
はずがない - not quite the opposite of はずだ as I was expecting
必要がある - knowing 必要 makes this self explanatory
意向形 - I think I mentioned earlier the Japanese Ammo with Misa video was the first time I was this for casual speech, now I have done it here too.

Also, slightly grammar related, I keep hearing なきゃ when I watch anime and every single time I’m like “I know that!”

Daily Rambling

月曜日:
I have acquired one (1) sister. She brought some of her most important special interest related things with her because she’s worried the dad would throw them away if he finds out about this. Which is a much more realistic worry than mine considering he has done that in the past. We’re potentially going to rescue more while he’s at work. But the important thing is the sister is here and alive and eating.

火曜日:
I want to read Witch Hat Atelier. It is supposedly easier than Frieren. And if I can read that, I could read other intermediate manga. But before I start anything else, I need to finish my current commitments. Or at least make progress on them.

I’ve started doing 求職 before studying. So it’s a bit like, I just have to do this for one hour, and then I get to look at kanji and read and other fun stuff.

水曜日:
Annoying stress morning of phone calls so I’m letting today be an easy day.

木曜日:
No studying today as today was the day of the meeting. It didn’t go quite as expected but it went well.

They seem to want to get my sister out of the dad’s house, but waiting lists and all that. She might be coming to live with me for a bit at first.

They’re making arrangements to get her stuff out the house while dad’s at work, and the social worker promised he’d phone the police if he found out and showed up anyway.

We do need to keep everything on the downlow, so unfortunately she does have to go back to the house and pretend everything is okay. But I’m cautiously optimistic that she won’t be there too long.

金曜日:
I have contradictory feelings where I both do and do not want to study today.

So I didn’t get around to reading, BUT I did spend multiple hours with my sister. First helping her finish learning hiragana. Which is all I was planning to help her with today because she has spent months on this and I just wanted her to get through the last of them so she has baseline knowledge of each hiragana.

She had a burst of motivation so I helped her set up anki (on her phone which is a fiddly piece of ****) and ringotan, and then working through the first lesson of Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide.

She is a slow learner so we spent a good ~6 hours on this. She also never really understood English grammar in school. I had to explain that negative-past tense does not mean that the past is lying. Or that the past didn’t happen.

At one point while she was doing grammar exercises I was messing about with lying in weird positions on furniture, and I got myself into a position I could not get up from which lead to “help, I can’t get up :sweat_smile:” “One minute, I’m writing a kanji :writing_hand:” which was absolutely hilarious to the both of us.

So I didn’t do much productive to my own studying, but the afternoon/evening was fun anyways.

土曜日:
I don’t have to 求職 today so I can get right into studying. :slight_smile:

Took a break to hang out with sister before she has to go home and pretend she’s not planning her escape.

日曜日:
I went looking into wtf is up with jitai and got the fix installed. I need to remember to refresh first whenever I’m about to do reviews, I will forget to do this, but I will try to remember.

In Summary
3 wanikani lessons (1/14 kanji)
102 ringotan & 921 jpdb remaining
57 pages of reading
~2750 characters of kiseki (2.8/20k)
2 comprehensible japanese
5 grammar points studied (5/13)
Total time: 7.6 hours

I have also not fallen further behind on any book clubs. Therefore this week is a success. yay :sleeping:

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