Big Update! Halfway!
Hello everybody, it’s been a long time since my last update, and I’ve just reached Level 30, so I wanted to give a big update. It turned out I underestimated school a bit, and I didn’t really have time or motivation to write updates, but I’ve actually updated the main page of the blog, and I’ve also added my new resources. There is a whole lot to tell, so get yourself a coffee or tea and buckle up!
We went to Düsseldorf last holidays, and there is a Japanese community called “Little Tokyo.” There’s a kind of Japanese street with traditional ramen restaurants and even Japanese bookstores, as well as sweets. Back in the 1950s, a number of Japanese companies settled in Düsseldorf, and that’s why a community of Japanese people living in Germany developed. There were also some Japanese people when I went there, but most were tourists. I overheard a casual conversation in Japanese somewhere on the street, and it was surprising that I could actually understand some of what they were saying. The traditional salty ramen soup was very delicious and filling.
We also went to a Japanese bookstore that day, and I bought some Japanese books (mainly light novels). I’ll come back to that later, though. I also met some other Japanese learners at the bookshelf, and they were both around N4~N5 level. They had never heard of WaniKani and had only been studying with online tutors. I instantly recommended they check out WK and Migaku, and I also told them what an amazing community we have here! I’m recommending WK to so many people, I should probably get sponsored by them lol.
I’ve also got other online and local friends studying Japanese, and I always, always recommend WK—just because it’s been the greatest resource there is for learning kanji. Without WK, I probably wouldn’t have continued learning Japanese.
We also went to buy rose-style ice cream, and it was an overall great experience. Near Düsseldorf, in Dortmund, we also visited a Japanese garden. It wasn’t that big, but there was a torii on top of water with stones. Overall, it was a great visit, and I hope I can get back to Düsseldorf sometime in the future.
I also really like that you have to read from top to bottom—it somehow makes it all more interesting, haha. At the beginning, I always tilted my head because I was so used to reading from left to right. 変な家 is a book I’ve wanted to read since I first joined WK, but I haven’t really started reading it yet because I want to finish コンビニ人間 first… but I’m just too lazy to do that lol.
So now, let’s get into the actual light novel haul!
- ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石 (top left)
- 君の名は(top middle)
- 宇宙のクイズ図鑑(top right)
- ハリーポッターと秘密の部屋(lower left)
- すずめの戸締まり(lower second one)
- 氷菓(lower third one)
- 約束のネバーランド(lower right)
Except for 氷菓, which I ordered on Amazon, I got all these novels at the Takagi Book Store in Düsseldorf. 宇宙のクイズ図鑑 doesn’t count as a novel, but I bought it anyway because I was interested in what elementary 図鑑 look like, and I figured I could learn some space-related vocab along the way. I realized that I still need a lot of reading practice for the N2 in December, and that’s why I bought so many light novels.
So far, reading light novels is still somewhat difficult—it’s manageable, but I very often find myself checking translations of sentences with ChatGPT and other tools. I haven’t really started reading these light novels yet because I’m still stuck on コンビニ人間. You can actually look up words and even use AI with all text in novels in the iOS Bookwalker app. You can just select the text and then either open a local dictionary installed on your iOS device or even use Apple’s AI writing tools. Theoretically, they’re made for editing text, but you can also ask questions about the selected passage.
I think I’ll start reading more when I have more time, because currently I also have to study French intensively due to upcoming exams, and I’ve got a lot of vocab and grammar to catch up on.
I’ve started reading normal news and web articles in Japanese too. I usually just scroll through my Google News recommendations, and half of them are Japanese articles—probably because my smartphone is set to Japanese. Most of the time, I try to read tech magazines because I’m interested in AI and tech myself. It’s not as difficult as expected. Sure, I do have to look up some words, but most of the time I can actually guess the meaning from the kanji, and it’s pretty close to the actual meaning. It’s also good practice for the N2.
An online friend of mine already took the N2 last year, and he told me that the reading section is basically torture, so I’m trying to prepare really well for that. I’ve taken a look at the required grammar and the overall vocab, and I think it’s definitely realistic to pass the N2 this year, because I’m already familiar with a lot of the grammar and vocab through immersing a lot.
My favorite Articles so far
Now let’s talk about immersion. I feel like I’ve made the most progress here over the last couple of months. I’ve created over 700 vocab cards with Migaku, and my reading speed has increased tremendously. My Migaku Netflix mining deck now contains over 2,500 cards!
I’m now going to list all the series I’ve finished since the last blog update, as well as the ones I’m still watching:
Finished
- Solo Leveling S1+S2
- 忍びの家(House of Ninjas)
- 坂本デイズ
- ダンダダン
Currently Watching
- LAZARUS ラザロ
- ムーンライズ(Moonrise)
- 怪獣8号
Watchlist
- 薬屋のひとりごと
- 鬼滅の刃
- 今際の国のアリス(Alice in Borderland)
I’ve also started listening to YUYUの日本語Podcast and Nihongo con Teppei for Intermediate Learners. I mostly listen to them on the weekends while delivering newspapers. I can understand the gist of what they’re talking about, but it’s still way more difficult than reading.
I also really like the Thinking in Japanese Podcast. The moderator speaks very slowly and calmly, and I can understand about 95% of what he’s talking about.
So I’ve finally reached Level 30! Halfway! I went very slowly through Levels 28 and 29 because I wanted to clear my vocab backlog—it had just gotten too big to manage. WK has definitely been a big help in my Japanese journey. Funny thing is, though, I’m already familiar with most kanji when I see them because I’ve encountered them before while reading.
And learning Chinese characters in general has gotten soooooo much easier. I guess my brain just got used to seeing kanji/hanzi every day, and now I only have to see a character a couple of times in context to somehow assign a “feeling” or meaning to it—and then I can recognize it again. It sounds kind of silly, but it’s true. I guess that’s just the magic of immersion.
I can’t accurately say how many kanji I can read. While I’ve only studied 1,010 kanji on WK, I can actually recognize far more in context. I’ve reached 7,250 words on Migaku and haven’t missed a single day of reviews. Most Japanese content is pretty comfortable to read now, and I think I’m moving into upper-intermediate territory, which is perfect for the N2.
My next goal now is to reach 10,000 words in Migaku.
Btw, I still confuse 科 with 料 all the time 
I also ordered the grammar compendium for the textbook, and it covers A1–B1+. And I absolutely HATE French grammar. Like WHY, why did they have to complicate every single rule to hell??? And I can never remember whether the article in front of a word is un or une, even though German has der/die/das. Sorry for the little rant…
I’ve already transferred all the French vocab into Migaku, and I think I’ll be ready for immersion once I finish that grammar book and the vocab deck.
I’ve also continued studying Mandarin, and thanks to HanziHero, I’ve reached 450 hanzi and about 700 vocabulary words. So I’ll probably hit HSK 2 in the new HSK 3.0 system soon. The only thing I absolutely hate about simplified Chinese characters is that they’re often just too simple—it’s pretty hard to distinguish some of them quickly.
I had a long conversation with another student in my sports class who’s going to the Confucius Institute in Munich and takes lessons there. He told me he never even heard of components and radicals. He’s around HSK 1 (old HSK 2.0 system) after half a year of studying, which is super slow. His teachers just told him to memorize vocabulary without actually learning the hanzi themselves, so he’s basically been staring at characters and trying to brute-force memorize them. He’s even given up on hanzi completely and now only studies pinyin.
I explained to him how learning hanzi is hard in the short term, but way more effective in the long run. Knowing hanzi makes learning vocab so much easier—you can often guess meanings and associate words with their components. I recommended HanziHero because it’s way simpler and easier to use than most hanzi textbooks.
The only thing I don’t like about HanziHero is that the typo system doesn’t really work well—it often fails vocab entries just because of a minor typo. Also, HanziHero accepts far fewer synonyms than WaniKani, which can be frustrating.
My goal with Mandarin is to eventually be able to read 三体 (The Three-Body Problem) in Chinese. It’s one of my favorite novels of all time, and it was originally written in Mandarin. I’m also really interested in Chinese history, especially during the Middle Ages.
I’ve tried reading some HSK 1 easy stories, and I could understand them pretty easily—HSK 1 (under the 2.0 system) only requires 150 words after all. My weak point is definitely grammar. I’ve mostly focused on hanzi and vocab so far. I do know some basic Mandarin grammar, but it’s nowhere near enough to read anything more complex than HSK 2 graded readers.
I’m halfway through the Migaku Korean course and I know about 850 words. For me, Korean is by far the most difficult language out of the three. The alphabet is simple, but memorizing words is much harder without Chinese characters. I often find myself completely forgetting even the simplest words.
I also think the grammar is more complicated than Mandarin and Japanese. There are a lot of exceptions and so many rules—it’s really overwhelming. The grammar is somewhat similar to Japanese in some ways, but knowing Japanese grammar only makes it a tiny bit easier.
I’ll see how far I can get and whether I’ll be able to watch Netflix in Korean. I’ve already made myself a watchlist, but it’s still going to take months before I can start consuming content in Korean.
Watchlist
- Weak Hero
- Squid Game Season 1+2
- Gyeongseong Creature
- Sweet Home
Sleep Routine
This is kind of off-topic now, but I’ve finally managed to fix my sleeping routine. My old one was totally messed up—I’d stay up until 7 a.m. on weekends and 2 a.m. on weekdays, and get only about 5 hours of sleep every day except weekends. On weekends, I’d usually wake up around 1 p.m., and during holidays it was as bad as 3 p.m. I knew it wasn’t healthy, but I didn’t know how to fix it. Then one day, I just had enough and started waking up in the morning when the sun rises.
Since then, I’ve been able to keep my new sleep schedule. I get about 6.5 to 7 hours of sleep and wake up two hours before school. I use that extra time in the morning to do my WK reviews and lessons, as well as HanziHero reviews.
Psychology
I also recently got interested in psychology and bought myself some books by Robert Sapolsky. I watched a lecture of his online on YouTube about stress, and he has great humor. I bought his two books, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers and Behave. I’ve only just started reading them, but I’ll definitely continue once I’m less busy with school.
Game Development
I’ve kinda restarted game dev too—I’m in the last stage of the Unity Essentials course. I’ll just see where the journey takes me. I had to take a break again because of school exams, but I really want to keep learning game dev. There are so many game jams on itch.io, and I really want to participate in one.
Exchange Year
I got rejected from the exchange year in China because I was a bit too late and they didn’t have any spots left in their program. So, I won’t be doing an exchange year during 11th grade, but I found out that I can also insert an exchange year between 11th and 12th grade. That way, I would have 14 school years, but I think it’s worth the sacrifice.
I’ll probably be able to spend it in Japan! I’m not sure yet whether I should choose Japan over Taiwan or China. I’ve heard that people in China and Taiwan are generally more open than Japanese people. But Chinese schools are also way more strict and stressful than Japanese schools.
I could continue this blog for two more pages, but I’m exhausted from writing all morning and still have to study today, so I’ll end it here. I’m trying to redesign the blog a bit, and it would be great if you guys could tell me whether it’s a bit too much decoration.
- Pretty good decoration
- It’s fine
- Well, it sucks
Fish
読んでくれてありがとう！
Thanks for reading, I don’t really have a consistent update Interval, so I don’t know when the next update will come yet.
