Shinobis' Study Log🥷

[ShinobiMaster556]

Exchange Year and Korean

Hello and welcome back to my weekly study log, although its not weekly anymore at this point . Last two weeks were unusually busy and I had some weird cold, but I still made efforts into learning Japanese. I also had to adjust some learning Goals, more on that later in this post

---

SRS

I am not completely back to my old SRS routine yet, I’ll reach 5000 Words in the next two weeks or so, but I’m putting in as much effort as possible into WaniKani and Migaku. I’ve gotten a bit slower on WaniKani, but there’s also less of a vocab backlog because of that. And I’ve also reached Level 19, and am looking forward to the 死Death Stage .

---

Immersion

The second volume of ルリドラゴン finally arrived, but I haven’t found the motivation to start it yet😄. Manga Republic always include some small gifts like Manga Book Covers, Sweets from Japan and in this Case even an おみくじ Fortune Slip. I can definitely recommend them (not sponsored or anything)! I’ve only taken a look at the first couple pages of ルリドラゴン 2 and it doesn’t seem very difficult, I’ve already encountered most vocab in other Netflix Shows. I’ve also finally started really enjoying ダンジョン飯, because the club finally reached the episodes I haven’t watched yet. The second season of Squid Game is also great in Japanese, the subtitles match the audio in the second season and its one of the series on Netflix I enjoy most. I’ve still got a huge mountain of Manga in Japanese to read now, but haven’t found the time yet. I would also love to start a Watch Club or something in the WK Community for House of Ninjas, idk how creating such Clubs works though.

---

JLPT

I’ve originally wanted to take the JLPT N2 this year, but I will probably have to take the N3, as I don’t have enough time for heavily studying Japanese, as I’m still trying to learn a bit of Korean and Mandarin at the same time. But I’ll try to go through Quartet 1 and Bunpro to prepare myself for the N3. And another ugly thing is, that I’ll have to travel multiple hours by train to the nearest University that holds the JLPT in July.

---

Korean

I’ve studied Hangeul and most Batchim Rules now, and the Migaku Korean Course released into Early Access yesterday! I’ve used their Japanese Course before and they’re always well explained and go into depth. Can definitely recommend them. I’ve also subscribed to Talk to Me in Korean to get through the early stages of Korean.

---

Exchange Year and Mandarin

I’ve applied for an exchange year to China today! If I get the scholarship, I’ll go to China this August! But It’s still unsure wether I will actually recieve the scholarship since only 30 Students in Bavaria can actually get it. I will now also have to study Mandarin, I’ve actually planned to study Mandarin before, but was too occupied with Japanese, now I’ve actually got a pretty good reason for it. I’ll try the Migaku Course for Mandarin first and also use HanziHero for reading Hanzi and a mobile App called Super Chinese which I’ve found through a Youtube recommendation. I’ve also heard of HSK Textbooks with Online Courses, but haven’t bought any of them yet.

---

Other random stuff

I’ve once heard [危ないですから] in a YT Video at a Japanese Train Station and can’t get it out of my head since a week or so xD. I’ve also practiced how to do this Squid Game Dance for no reason lol.

---

That’s it for this week! I have to get back studying for an exam tomorrow, so see y’all soon.

[ShinobiMaster556]

Reaching 死 stage and new Update Interval

Hi, 皆さん！Time for another update! I actually haven’t died yet, but I reached Death Stage on WaniKani the week before last! I’ve decided to stop putting out updates at regular intervals. I’ll probably give updates from time to time when I’ve made good enough progress. Trying to learn three languages at the same time is a bit challenging, so I actually had to cut back on Japanese a bit. I stopped following Migaku’s course for Japanese since I reached N4 long ago anyway. I’m still doing all my regular reviews and lessons on WaniKani, but my focus right now is to get to an intermediate Korean and Mandarin level as fast as possible, and I’m trying to learn Japanese mainly through immersion and WaniKani.

---

Japanese

I’ve reached the Death Stage! Looking forward to seeing you all in Death! I’ve also noticed that a lot of the kanji I regularly see in Japanese TV shows have started to appear on WaniKani. I’ve also reached 5,500 words on Migaku, so I’m still making good progress. For me, one of the biggest motivational factors for leveling up in WaniKani is Koichi’s emails you get when you level up lol, they’ve always got nice little quotes or jokes. I’ve still got a mountain of Japanese manga that I haven’t read yet lying around. I’m kinda unsure whether to sentence mine these or just go through them with a dictionary. Sentence mining makes reading them take twice as much time, and it’s also way more exhausting because it’s not nearly as simple as scanning subtitles on Netflix shows. I’m still waiting for the continuation of Squid Game season 2⏲️. I stopped following the ダンジョン飯 club because I don’t really enjoy the series that much, but I’ll definitely get back to it someday and finish the last couple of episodes.

---

Korean

I’ve moved on to using Migaku’s Academy Course! It explains all the basic grammar rules in detail and neatly without being overwhelming. And I also love their non-textbook-like approach. They don’t teach you the formal way of talking first like textbooks do, they start with casual speech and teach formal speech later, unlike most language textbooks.

Mandarin

Using Hanzihero regularly has become a habit and I really like it, it uses mnemonics like WaniKani for teaching Hanzi, but their mnemonics are a bit different. They let you imagine different places for the finals of the Pinyin syllables and Actors for the Pinyin Initials and the tone is being thaught as a spot outside or inside the place where the story for the mnemonics takes place. And this works surprisingly well! I can not only remember the inital and final of the corresponding Hanzi but also the correct tone! I’ve studied Japanese Pitch Accent a bit before , so my ears are already pretty used to recognizing different pitches in speech, it’s not too difficult for me to hear the 4 tones in speech as long as it’s spoken slowly. I really like simplified chinese characters, they are easier to remember and recognize than Kanji and Traditional Characters, at least most of the time. I’ve studied about 60 Hanzi and their Stroke Order as of right now, but I don’t think that’s too bad for having started with HanziHero 3 weeks ago.

---

Immersion

I’ve had to cut back on regular immersion a bit, but I’ve found an interesting new series called The Hot Spot, which uses more everyday vocabulary. I’ll start immersing in Korean too once I’ve completed most of the Academy Course. I might even get the chance to watch Squid Game in Korean (how exciting).

I’ve started watching Solo Leveling in Japanese with a VPN and Migaku, and it’s gotten surprisingly easy to watch content in Japanese. When I started out with Migaku, I had to stop the video at every single sentence and look up words all the time. But now, my brain has gotten much more used to comprehending Japanese sentences, and my vocabulary has grown a lot. When I started with Migaku four months ago, I barely knew 2,500 words, and I was able to double that.

For everyone who hasn’t started with immersion yet: I can guarantee you that it’s going to be very difficult at first, but once you get the hang of it, things will start falling into place, and struggling through early immersion is so worth it!

I’ve also read a couple of N2-graded articles on yomujp, and I didn’t struggle as much as expected! I had to look up some words, but my reading speed was pretty okayish. I’m impressed with how far I’ve been able to take my Japanese in just under eight months or so. It took me five years of English classes in school to reach this kind of language comprehension in English.

---

I wish y’all a great week! I’ll update once I’ve made more progress again. And keep doing your daily lessons and reviews, 皆さん頑張て下さい.
読んでくれてありがとう！

Meme from Reddit

[ShinobiMaster556]

It’s been a while since my last entry, but I’m still studying as always. I’ve just been really busy with school and everything and logging started feeling like a chore, so I haven’t had the energy to write a new update. I think I’ll do a big one once I hit Level 30.

[ShinobiMaster556]

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've actually started reading light novels two months ago, so I've theoretically reached my goal of starting the Intermediate Book Club in 2025! I bought the e-books of 変な家 and コンビニ人間. I'm about halfway through コンビニ人間. I would've already finished it long ago if I had kept reading it. Motivating myself to read is way more difficult than just watching Netflix in Japanese 😂.

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

• 学んでいるのに身につかない理由～学習の盲点とは？（TED）
• 世界の工学者を魅了し続ける 80年代の日本のおもちゃ
• CRISPR遺伝子編集ブタ、米FDAが承認 食肉として流通へ

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

---

There’s an upcoming oral exam in French, and I realized I had a lot of stuff to catch up on. I’ve also actually wanted to watch *Lupin* on Netflix in French, so that’s why I started studying French outside of school as well. I found vocab lists from the textbook we use in school online, and I used AI to extract all the vocab into an Anki deck. It’s just 2,500 words in total, which honestly isn’t a lot considering I’ve had French in school for five years now—so I’m just trying to speedrun all that vocab.

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.

Hanzi for Biangbiang-Noodles𰻞
(I learned how to write it for no reason)

[ShinobiMaster556]

Hey everybody, I just reached Lvl 33 a couple hours ago and wanted to give a small update on my progress. I finally finished the 小説 コンビニ人間 a couple days ago and I’m so glad I did. It really was a drag, the story was pretty ok’ish, but there were so maaaaaaaannyy words I had to look up, it was so tiring it took me a couple months to finish my first 小説, overall I feel like I made a lot of progress, especially in reeding speed, in the beginning reading was very difficult and I needed to double check every single sentence I read with ChatGPT to correct my translation and understanding. But then halfway through the novel I noticed how my reading speed finally somewhat increased and I didn’t have to look up every single thing anymore. Still took me couple weeks to finish the Novel because I didn’t have any motivation because it just still felt somewhat difficult. But I’ve started reading 変な家 the day before yesterday and I’m already halfway through, maybe it’s just because the book is overall easier to comprehend, but I think it’s also because my reading speed has increased significantly. 変な家 is so good that I read 2 hours without even being able to take a break. It’s so good in the beginning, I feel like it get’s a lot more boring towards halfway but I can still definitely recommend this Light Novel!

I just had my first Japanese Lesson on Preply yesterday, I don’t really need to study grammar or vocab, but I do need to practice speaking, because I haven’t ever had the opportunity to talk Japanese with someone, so I just meet with this Tutor every Week for about 50 mins and practice talking about everyday topics, but also things like hobbies etc. in Japanese. Especially important if I’m gonna be accepted into the Exchange Program, wouldn’t it be kinda stupid being able to understand everything in Japan, but not being able to talk in Japanese🤷‍♂️.

I just signed up for an exchange Program for a high school year in Japan last week, haven’t been accepted yet, but I’ve been told I’ve got chances to get in, but the Organization in Japan will at last decide who to accept, and I still have to take some kind of Online Japanese Test where I’ll have to talk Japanese in a meeting, I don’t expect it to be difficult at all, since they only assume a JLPT N5 Level at time of registration. Wish me Luck everybody🤞

Just wanted to give a quick update, I’m also coming close to my 1 Year Japanese Anniversary! I’m also considering to start a Log completely in Japanese since it would be good practice for my Japanese, but I’m still not so sure about it, whatever that’s it for the update!
またね！

[Akashelia]

Damn you have so many things going on!! Impressive!

@ShinobiMaster556

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.

Oh I love Robert Sapolsky and his work. Both equally. He really has a way of explaining and making things interesting. Can recommend this Standford course also, free on youtube!

[ShinobiMaster556]

Yeah, I haven’t nearly finished reading the books yet, but I already watched a 1 hour long Stanford Lecture by him before. He’s got great Humor and he’s a great lecturer. But I’m so surprised about my progress with Novels/ Light Novels, I’ve only started reading 変な家 5 days ago and I’m already at Page 71 out of 98 on my eBook, I’ve already bought 変な家 2, but it’s way longer, I think it was like 500 pages. I had to sadly stop learning Mandarin and French for now, because it’s end of the school year and during the next 2 weeks there are some beefy exams. Maths is scary😫

[Akashelia]

@ShinobiMaster556

I’ve only started reading 変な家 5 days ago and I’m already at Page 71 out of 98 on my eBook, I’ve already bought 変な家 2, but it’s way longer, I think it was like 500 pages.

Wow nice progress!

@ShinobiMaster556

I had to sadly stop learning Mandarin and French for now, because it’s end of the school year and during the next 2 weeks there are some beefy exams. Maths is scary😫

Good luck with the exams!! Math is scary but one of my favorite topics, and can be quite useful for gaming development. Also I feel like compared to when I was in school (a 100 years ago) nowadays there are more easy material than textbooks, a lot of videos and so on that can explain things well? Or I wonder if that just makes it more confusing to have too many material available

[ShinobiMaster556]

@Akashelia

Wow nice progress!

Thanks

@Akashelia

Or I wonder if that just makes it more confusing to have too many material available

I usually just sleep in school and then study everything at home with YT Vids and the textbook, my worst school subjects are Maths, Chemistry and Physics, because it’s kinda difficult only studying them at home, other Subjects are pretty good, I get straight A+'s(Here in Germany Grade 1) in Geography and IT. But I think I really need to start studying more once I enter 11th class(I’ve got 13 Schoolyears)

[Akashelia]

If it’s important to you then yes do it! I think it was important to me and I didn’t do it, and it haunts me to this day (20 years later!). Once in a while I get dreams where I’m back at school and I’m all like “I swear, this time I will study hard!” and try my hardest

[ShinobiMaster556]

Hey everybody, probably no update coming until week after next, I’m currently taking it easy with Languages because of school and I felt like I was nearing burn out, so I decided to take it slow for the next 2 weeks. I’ll still study vocab, but I’ll cut down on Immersion

[ShinobiMaster556]

Hi, everyone ! I hope y’all had a great Christmas ! It’s been a long long time since my last update. I was writing a very long Anniversary post back when it was one year since I started learning, but it got too long and I didn’t really enjoy writing it anymore, so I just forgot about it and now decided to scrape it altogether. I’ll keep these posts simple from now on, just so that it doesn’t take so much time for me to write these and that I can therefore begin posting more regularly again. I don’t know wether it’ll be interesting to read these posts, but I’ll have to keep the time and effort bar low so that I don’t always procrastinate about writing an update. I also used ChatGPT before to check my texts for spellings and so on, but starting now I’ll just post without double checking using AI, because at the end what does it matter wether I have some spelling mistake somewhere or wether I’ve used a word in a wrong way. Errors and mistakes just make texts more authentic.

---

School🥱

I decided to just generally start to priorizite school over Language Learning for the next couple years, because now it starts to get serious as I got into 11th Grade (just 2.5 years away from graduation!!). I’ve set myself the goal to reach a grade average of about 2(~A-/B in the American system). I really have to revise some fundamentals in maths, cause I just slept through classes during the last couple school years😴. I’ve lended some books from the library and it really helps a lot because maths just seem to be so complicated on the outside, but once you understand a concept, it’s not that scary anymore.

---

Language Learning😎
Learning Languages is still one of my most important hobbies, I’ve decided to prioritize school on weekdays, but I’ll keep studying Japanese and Korean (maybe even Mandarin) during holidays and on weekends. I took a big 5 week break from language learning and SRS, and it really helped a lot. Now that we have christmas holidays I’ve started to study languages again and at first my Japanese was really rusty and it took a couple days to reactivate those brain cells. But then I actually noticed that studying is fun again! I was kind of burnt out before so all Japanese felt like was: Endless SRS reviews and lesson + Immersion chores to get to fluency. It all really felt like a chore and was draining me. But now that I’ve had such a big break the dopamine kick when I finally finish all my WK Reviews is back again.

---

Japanese╰(°▽°)╯
It’s my favourite language out of these three and it’s the one that’s responsible for making me a language learning addict. I love Japanese. At first I planned to drop all languages for school, but then I decided that I’ll have to keep at least Japanese on life support. I thought that I’d lose a lot of progress over the course of a few weeks if I just stop doing reviews. Surprisingly I was very wrong. Sure the first couple days trying to get back into Immersion and WK were kind of difficult and my Japanese just felt somewhat rusty, I had forgotten some of the Kanji that I had learnt just before my break. But my comprehension in Japanese improved a lot. I think it’s because I could finally enjoy learning again. When I stumbled upon an unknown Kanji I was now actually genuinely interested to find out what it means. Before it just felt like some chore to read books and look up words. I’ve also got an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite this christmas and I’ve connected it with my Amazon Japan account. I’ve also subscribed to Kindle Unlimited and there are a lot of titles on there, but I still don’t really know what to read lol. Too many books → book choice paralysis I guess. I’ve also purchased また同じ夢を見ていた and 君の名は on Kindle, and looking up words is so easy. I’ve set the Kindle UI to Japanese and I’m mostly using the Japanese → Japanese Dictionary and that way I also improve my Japanese while looking up words😄. I really like reading on the Kindle and I’ve also started reading Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese Grammar to just revise all the fundamentals. I thought that I’d fully understood the usage of に, but the book gave me a much better understanding of it. I’ve stopped doing new lessons on Migaku’s SRS for now, because my goal is to actually stop using SRS as much as possible and learn preferably by reading books on my Kindle.

---

Amazon JP(┬┬﹏┬┬) >:(
I really don’t like buying books on the Japanese Kindle store. On Christmas when I was trying to buy a book my account was put on hold because of suspicious payment activities. I uploaded censored bank statements and censored photos of my debitcard. The first time I was told that the documents I’ve uploaded are insufficient to prove card ownership, which is ridicoulus btw because I left all the parts they need to verify ownership uncensored. Then the second time I tried to upload the same documents I got an email a day later telling me that my account was successfully reinstated. It makes no sense lol. I know that Amazon JP is extremely cautious towards people not living in Japan buying Kindle books. But I’ve used VPN and also changed my billing adress to a hostel in Osaka. It worked the first two times I bought a book, but then on Christmas their fraud system flagged me for some reason. Probably because the debitcard is from Germany and not Japan. Just to be sure I’ll only be using Amazon giftcards for now.And I’ve found out that I don’t even need to use VPN when I buy the book directly on my Kindle. I also created a backup of my Kindle library on my pc just in case the account gets put on hold again for some reason. You never know.

---

Korean:-P
My Korean impoved a lot. Like a whole lot. I just watched the movie “The Great Flood”(amazing movie btw ) with Migaku this week. And I’ve also finished some other shows like마이 네임. Measured in JLPT Levels I would consider my Korean to be somewhere close to N3. I can understand most shows with Korean audio + subs but I still have to look up a lot of words sometimes. And I’ve got a Migaku comprehension score of over 80% in most shows. Surprisingly I already have a premonition on what many words mean, because they sometimes sound similar to their equivalents in Mandarin or Japanese. I’ve been holding myself off of Squid Game S3​:squid: until today, because I really wanted to watch it in Korean and I’ve started the first episode, sure there are many words here and there that I have to look up but it’s quite manageable. But keeping the balance between korean and the other languages and school is challenging. For now I’ll just try to not forget everything I learned when school starts again

---

Mandarin(～￣▽￣)～
Learning Mandarin is a lot of fun. I love chinese characters and Mandarin has a lot of them🤓. I’ve reached 1200 Characters and 2000 vocab(~HSK4). But my grammar is at like somewhat HSK1. I barely studied any grammar lol. I want to put in some time and effort because chinese grammar isn’t that hard, but I also have to pay attention that I don’t fall into the language learning whorm hole again and spend all my time that I should use to study for school with language learning. And Hanzihero is also way to expensive(15$ per Month?!). So I’ll have to check some other study resources for learning new characters and vocab. There are a lot of Anki decks but I don’t know how to synchronize my progress from Hanzihero

---

So that’s about it with this update. Nothing really fancy or anything. But I just wanted to show some signs of life😁. I JUST NOTICED IT’S 5AM. My sleep cycle during holidays still isn’t that good, but at least I spent the time studying instead of binge watching some sitcom on Netflix. Whatever… Good Night/Morning everybody!! cya

[soggyboy]

Focusing on your studies at school and doing language learning when you have time to keep the hobby up sounds like a great plan Best of luck with everything, and hope you enjoy getting into reading stuff in Japanese!

[YandrosTheSane]

Welcome back !
So young and yet so far… I’m impressed… Happy to read that you’re having fun again ! All that you already learned will give back many hours of free time during your secondary cycle.

[ShinobiMaster556]

Yeah, I’m trying to really prioritize school for now, because there is a lot of fundamental knowledge especially in maths where I need to catch up. But once I’ve caught up I’ll probably have more time for languages again! I really enjoy reading on the Kindle. Characters and letters look so beautiful on that e-ink screen. Sadly I’ll have to send it back, because they mistakenly sent me the version with ads that you can’t remove on Amazon Japan, but I’ll get the money refunded. I’m thinking about maybe not even buying the Kindle again because there aren’t many Chinese or Korean books available. But then on the other hand I don’t want to lose access to the Kindle store, because there are so many great japanese books on there. An Android based reader might be the solution, but there are also many more distractions on these compared to Kindle, and I also don’t want to spend too much money. It’s sooo hard to decide…

[ShinobiMaster556]

Yup, it’s so great finally being able to enjoy learning again. Before it really was like school, it felt like a chore and I also took learning languages a bit too serious. The 1 month pause was the best thing I could have done. And it finally feels like a hobby and not like a profession again. Wanikani also helped a lot. There was a time when only Koichi’s funny little level up mails kept me going lol

[ShinobiMaster556]

Hey everyone!

I know it’s a bit late but…

Happy new year!

Just here for a quick update, I sent my kindle back because I’ve accidentally bought the version with ads… But now I’m unsure which e-reader I should buy. Kindle is great for Japanese and English, but it’s terrible for Korean and Mandarin. I really like the Kindle UI and the dictionary and so on, but it’s also kind of a hassle that only one account can be connected per device. I’ve tried to read with the kindle app on my phone and iPad, it works, but I feel like the dictionary on the kindle device was more accurate. In the kindle app it often just doesn’t find any definitions even for words that aren’t that rare. And it’s also not nearly as great for reading before going to bed. Smartphones offer much more distractions than a simple e-reader and that makes it really difficult to resist that urge to open youtube😂.

I’ve also started Mandarin again, I really want to finish HSK 4 and 5 , and maybe even 6 this year. And I also need to study a lot of grammar in Mandarin. So far I’ve used the Chinese Grammar Wiki by AllSet Learning and it’s a pretty good resource, especially for free. But I also have to pay attention that I keep a good balance between school and language learning. I’m also about to finish Squid Game S3 in Korean and it’s just such a great feeling when you realize you actually understand most of the subtitles without translations. And I’m also still reading the Japanese Grammar Guide by Tae Kim. And as I’ve already said in my prior post, it’s such a great resource. Because it makes you realize so much new perspectives about grammar in Japanese. This book is really helpful even though I already learned all of the grammar at some point or another. Textbooks like Genki teach grammar, but they don’t really go in depth about most of the concepts and tries to teach you grammar the “foreign way”. But Tae’s guide gives you the perspective of a native speaker and how a native speaker basically thinks. Basically it makes you feel the grammar instead of just simply translating if that makes sense. And I’m also halfway through 同じ夢を見ていた, it’s the perfect novel for me, because it mostly uses simple grammar and vocab because it’s written in the perspective of a child in elementary school. It’s basically the perfect “novel-reading warm up“ after a long break.

Just wanted to give a quick update before I forget it again​:joy:. Wish y’all a great weekend(tomorrow is friday ). Keep doing your reviews and lessons and make the great and sacred Crabigator proud!

Cya

[NihongoLearner19]

I have both a Kindle (2017; an old model) and a Boox (2023? much more recent). I use my Kindle for English reading, but I have Pleco for Mandarin reading and Kimchi Reader/Ridibooks for Korean reading on the Boox, since it supports Android apps. I also have the Kindle app on the Boox, so I can read in Japanese and not have to constantly switch between accounts on my Kindle.

[ShinobiMaster556]

I’ve also already considered the Boox. Specifically Boox Go 7. It’s pricier than the Kindle but might be worth it. It even uses the exact same Carta 1300 e-ink screen as the Kindle Paperwhite 2024. And I really loved that screen on the Kindle, text looked beautiful and refresh is pretty good. My concern is that I might distract myself instead of reading because of how open Android is. But that might not really be a big problem because of the screen refresh rate