Study Log of Madness

[maddness]

Hi there! Welcome to my study log!

About Me

Hi! My name is maddness, or just Maddie for short. I’m from the Philippines, a country somewhere in the South-East Asia. Growing up, I’ve always been into anime a lot, and I still am today. Although my interest in anything Japanese has extended beyond anime and to its unique culture and language.

I started WK back in 2018 when I just passed my board exams and I was looking for a job. I just signed up for a free account, did my reviews until I reached level 3. After that, life got caught up and I left WK since the next contents were locked, and I didn’t know much about SRS and how I should have been consistent with the reviews. During that time, I would also stop watching anime for a time, and got hooked in American TV shows. So I guess I could say my interest in learning the language waxed and waned depending on if I was up to date with an anime or not. In between those times, I did get my not legal copies of some resources like Genki, Minna no Nihongo, and RTK books but I lacked the discipline to actually open a book and get down with it.

Fast forward to October of 2023, I signed up again for a new account after catching up with One Piece that time. I got to level 2 before I got busy with work and like with my previous account, I left it to dust. So when I finally revived this WK account, I subscribed and started a study log so I can hold myself accountable. I started around Aug 31 of this year, and I just did the pile of reviews that had been waiting for almost a year. And then I waited for at least 3 weeks before I decided to make a study log. I thought if I couldn’t do it for that long, then maybe it was not meant for me after all.

My motivations/long-term goals

Goals

• Watch anime/Japanese tv shows without subtitles
• Read manga in Japanese - because let’s be real: 1. it’s just cool, 2. sometimes the scanlations/translations are not available
• Be conversational in Japanese (not an immediate goal)
• Pass the JLPT (but I suppose it would be for a personal goal, not much for looking for a job)

Motivations

• Planning to go to Japan for a trip by next year
• Seeing my WK levels go up
• Seeing/hearing kanjis/vocab in the wild and knowing what they meant
• Seeing the progress percentage of known JLPT kanjis increase

Resources I’m Currently Using

• WaniKani with Userscripts
• Tofugu’s Guide on Reading - It helps me a lot with remembering what reading to use and when to use it
• Bunpro (Free month until Oct 16)
• KaniWani - To drill down those elusive vocabs
• Better Mnemonics - Made and Shared by @carlospazuzu (orig post here)
• Mokuro (A comprehensive guide written by @ChristopherFritz)
• Natively (I signed up to track the books I am/will be reading)
• Tofugu’s Kana Quiz - I make this an end of the week ritual
• Kana Practice with Pokemon Names (GSheet provided by the wonderful @Akashelia)
• Stay for Safari - when I’m doing reviews on my iPad, I can use the important userscripts
• Cure Dolly - will start using this next week
• TokiniAndy Genki 1 Lessons
• Genki Exercises on Web
• YuYuの日本語Podcast on YT
• JLPT N5 Japanese Listening Practice

Short-Term Goals

So it may seem that I started late on my Japanese lessons this year but I firmly believe that I am not late, and I’m just right on time.

Right now, on my 4th week of WaniKani (as I am editing this) I am on level 5. If I pass level 5 going to level 6 on full speed, without terrible repercussions (i.e. forgetting the radicals, kanjis, vocab of previous levels, causing reviews to sky rocket), I would be on level 19 by the time 2024 ends. In fact, I will level up on January 1, 2025! Hoo boy I’m really scared for the holidays because I feel like I will slack off, honest.

Week Number	Projected Level Up Date On Full Speed	Actual Level Up Date	Duration	New Level
5 (Sept 30 - Oct 6)	Oct 2, 2024	Oct 02, 2024	7 days 0 hr	6
6 (Oct 7 - Oct 13)	Oct 9, 2024	Oct 09, 2024	6 days 23 hrs	7
7 (Oct 14 - Oct 20)	Oct 16, 2024	Oct 16, 2024	7 days 1 hr	8
8 (Oct 21 - Oct 27)	Oct 23, 2024	Oct 24, 2024	7 days 22 hrs	9
9 (Oct 28 - Nov 3)	Oct 30, 2024	Nov 1, 2024	8 days 3 hrs	10
	Rescheduled Level Up (adjusted from the actual level up date)
10 (Nov 4 - Nov 10)	Nov 8, 2024	Nov 8, 2024	7 days 0 hr	11
11 (Nov 11 - Nov 17)	Nov 15, 2024	Nov 16, 2024	8 days 15 hrs	12
12 (Nov 18 - Nov 24)	Nov 22, 2024	Nov 25, 2024	8 days 22 hrs	13
13 (Nov 25 - Dec 1)	Nov 29, 2024			14
14 (Dec 2 - Dec 8)	Dec 6, 2024			15
15 (Dec 9 - Dec 15)	Dec 13, 2024			16
16 (Dec 16 - Dec 22)	Dec 20, 2024			17
17 (Dec 23 - Dec 29)	Dec 27, 2024			18
18 (Dec 30 - Jan 5)	Jan 3, 2025			19

I wanted to project this goal so that I would know if I’m still on track and I would be able to do what’s needed if Iose track. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe this tabular projection is too ambitious. Let me know if somehow my math failed somewhere.

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Challenges I’ve Joined

• Listen Every Day Challenge - Autumn 2024 - Homepost!

• Read Japanese Everyday Challenge - Fall 2024 - Homepost!

• 900 days with Japanese Folklore - level 60 in Summer 2026

• The 0/0 Streak Challenge - Current Stats!
  
  

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This Week’s Summary (3rd Week on WaniKani)

Weekly Activity Tracker (Sept. 16-22 ‘24)

Type	月	火	水	木	金	曜	日
WaniKani
Genki
Bunpro
Listening
Reading
Watching

Reflections

Sept. 22, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening (I only have a small pile tonight)
• Did around 10 vocabs today, and I still have some left for tomorrow
• Did a small batch of Bunpro reviews
• Was listening to Yuyu’s Podcast but not much today. I’m planning on checking out other reading resources I found here in the forum
• Posted the study log!
• Did the hiragana/katakana quiz
• Did Self-Study Quiz for the new learned items today
• I have some goals I didn’t meet this week. So I plan to incorporate them to next week, hoping to get some tasks crossed out.

Sept. 21, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening (I did my reviews like my life depended on it)
• Was supposed to do a 1am review but I fell asleep and woke at 4am instead
• Did some more reviews throughout the day as soon as they come
• Finally unlocked some vocabulary words for level 4
• Drafted the study log post

Sept. 20, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening (quite a few in the pile today )
• I’m feeling like level 4 is a bit slow because up until now I’ve only unlocked 30-ish new vocab. Or it could that i just waited a little too long when I got my level 4 unlocked
• Got to interact with some Japanese people today and although they were talking to us in English, I listened intently whenever they talk among themselves
• I feel like I could recognize the basic grammar points taught in Genki lesson 1. And I can hear them use the Japanese pronunciation of the loanwords from English.
  ex. service - saa-bisu (サービス), technique - tekunikku (テクニック)
• Did the last round of review for the radicals’ path to Guru that unlocked new Kanjis
• Learned the second set of Kanjis and did a Self Study Quiz today

Sept. 19, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening
• Realized that my kana reading was terrible. I simply got by due to correct answers and the lady spoke out the reading
• Been guessing the readings of the vocabulary even without referencing the Onyomi/Kunyomi post of Tofugu. Unless it’s a really an unusual case like the vocab for 太字(bold text) which uses the kun’yomi for 太 and the on’yomi for 字.
• Listed to Yuyuの日本語Podcast playlist while in the shower and before going to bed
• Did some reviews on Bunpro but I was still making a lot of mistakes

Sept. 18, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening
• Learned the first 13 radicals of level 4 before going to work
• Today, when I got into the office and put on my Yuyuの日本語Podcast playlist, I sort of understood a single sentence, and I got so excited. He said something like: 僕のお父さんの誕生日です. And I was like: Oh! “It’s my father’s birthday.” I listened to this, and I’ve heard 誕生日 a couple of times in animes. I have yet to look up the writing part.
• Did 10 mins of the Genki lesson 3 from TokiniAndy on the に particle (I’m still not motivated doing Genki consistently)

Sept. 17, '24

• Felt bummed out by the Userscript app not working on iPad OS
• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evenings - couldn’t let a bad day ruin the review streak
• Major part of the day was spent on researching about userscripts for iPad OS - found a good one and I wrote a topic on that
• Did Self Study Quiz on the apprentice items on the way to worship (learned how to filter out SSQ lol)
• Learned all the remaining vocab of level 3 when I got home
• Did two rounds of Bunpro today - I feel like I need to revisit the Genki lesson 2 again because I had been confusing the pointer words during review

Sept. 16, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening
• Did Self Study Quiz on all learned items (went as far as 500 before giving up)
• Listened to a Japanese podcast throughout the day
• Signed up for free trial of bunpro
• Did bunpro for the first time (input all the grammar points from Genki lesson 1-3)
• Had to ask Akashelia about how she did the Bunpro review
• Explored on userscripts for iPad OS

Goals for this week:

Finish the initial unlocked radicals of Level 4
Take it slowly but surely on vocab for level 4 - I still have some vocabs left for tomorrow’s grind
Consistent immersion
Maybe post a study log by Sunday
Tackle Genki Lesson 4
Work on Lesson 1-3 Genki exercises
Work on Genki Workbook lesson 1
Weekly hiragana and katakana Quiz (Sunday)

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Goals for Next Week

(Week of Sept 23)

Continue with the unlocked Kanjis of Level 4 (unlocked when radicals are Guru’d)
Finish Genki Lesson 5
Add 5 unique grammar points to Bunpro
Daily Bunpro review
Weekly hiragana and katakana Quiz (Sunday)

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Past Week Summary (2nd Week on WaniKani)

Weekly Activity Tracker (Sept. 9-15, ‘24)

Type	月	火	水	木	金	曜	日
WaniKani
Genki
Bunpro
Listening
Reading
Watching

Reflections

Sept. 15, '24

• I got the aesthetic Notion template to work, and I am patterning that to this Study Log. Thanks to bellynx for sharing it! I log my reflections there in journal type, but I figured I can just post the highlights and summary of it in my study log.
• Focused on Genki 3 by watching TokiniAndy (only got halfway through)
• Did 10 Level 3 Vocab lessons
• Wrote my goals for next week

Sept. 14, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning
• Rewatched TokiniAndy’s Genki lesson 1-2
• Subscribed to WK yearly subscription with the intention of upgrading to lifetime on December
• Listened to Japanese podcast on YT when doing menial tasks

Sept. 9-13, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evenings only (since I returned to the office)
• Reread Akashelia’s Level 60 posts for the 20th time
• Got into the forums and read some level 60 posts
• Learned hiragana and katakana

Sept. 2-10, '24

• Revived this account after almost a year (created on Oct 2023)
• Tackled the piled up review and managed to get 70% accuracy
• Got into the forums and read some level 60 posts
• Learned hiragana and katakana

[maddness]

Good morning! Starting off the week with this tracker that I plan to visit daily so I can tick the check boxes off. I still don’t know what format of logging to do but I suppose this is functional enough.

This Week’s Summary (4th Week on WaniKani)

Weekly Activity Tracker (Sept. 23-29 ‘24)

Type	月	火	水	木	金	曜	日
WaniKani
Genki
Bunpro
Listening
Reading
Watching

Reflections

Sept. 29, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and later this afternoon
• Joined the ABBC for Cardcaptor Sakura (yay! ) It’s gonna be difficult but I’m sure it will be worth it in the long run
• Revamped the study log homepost
• Projected the level up until Dec 2024
• Read one page of the Week #1 of Cardcaptor Sakura Book Club ( crawls)
• Did the kana quiz for katakana, and hiragana combinations

Sept. 28, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening
• I set up the Mokuro for reading manga today and man… it took the whole day to do that and my sched took a hit. But I’m just thinking maybe my future self will thank me for doing that in advance And thank you to all the people who have helped my dumb self!
• Today I unlocked all the remaining Kanjis and I’m getting ready for the onslaught of vocabulary and I did them today to make up for the time consumed by Mokuro setup
• Gonna check out Genki while eating dinner and see if I can absorb the new lesson
• Planning to do SSQ before bed since there are new apprentice items in the queue
• Did SSQ and I found that the newly learned kanjis from 4 hours ago were quite difficult to retain - if I didn’t do SSQ on it immediately. Luckily after walking around the house, it triggered the recall somehow.

Sept. 27, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening (my pile is slightly getting bigger each morning )
• Did 8 vocab lessons in the morning. I figured the sooner I get it out of the way, the more brainspace I can free up when I unlock the new kanjis
• Did ~10 vocab lessons when I got to the office, and waiting for the meeting - the lesson picker really helped with grouping the vocabs that have the same kanjis, which in turn may have the same reading
• Did the last 8 unlocked vocab of level 5 and for now, I am all caught up!
• I also did the SSQ today and wow it was not fun to do 200 reviews in one time… lol but I suppose it helped me with some vocabs I still sometimes confuse for another.
• As I was listening today, I heard a convo that went like this:
  女の人: この赤(あか)いはきれいですね.
  男の人: 3千円(せんえん), 高(たか)いですね.
  And I understood it somehow! It gave me a boost of confidence to power through the week even though sometimes I felt like I was just going with the flow.

Sept. 26, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening
• Today, I had around ~20 new Kanji lessons I unlocked from yesterday. I decided to do them in two parts: 1) at 7:30am today, and 2) at ~6:30pm as I was going home.
• Planned to do some SSQ tonight since I totally skipped it yesterday.
• I went a trip down memory lane and looked for some 黒執事 live action movies for listening. Found some files shared by some good souls and watched a snippet of it. I could comprehend some basic expressions and easy sentences. But the most striking for me tonight was when the character said: あの声は… and I just learned 声 today so I thought it was fun to understand that!
• Didn’t get to do much listening throughout the day since I was on a call all-day. But I tried to squeeze in an hour or so of listening to N5 Japanese listening practice on YT.

Sept. 25, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening (and throughout the day!)
• At this point I have 12 vocabs left for level 4 but I might postpone that in favor of the Level 5 Radicals and Kanjis
• I leveled up in the morning and I immediately tackled all the radicals. I feel like they’re easier at this level somehow. I hope so.
• I couldn’t resist but to work on 10/17 of the remaining vocabs of level 4 at lunch time. They were quite easy on the mnemonics and readings to remember. I especially loved the 足りる vocab because it reminded me that it’s okay to not be the best, but to just be enough.
• Work ended so late for me and before I went home, I decided to do one last review for the radicals. Then I caved in and did the last 7 of the level 4 vocab.
• Bunpro only had 3 reviews for me in the evening so I did that and went to sleep.

Sept. 24, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening - anticipating a level up tomorrow
• Actually unlocked new vocab words of Level 4
• Tried a new strategy about vocab wherein I choose vocabs that have the same kanjis and learn them together rather than random vocabs. Dunno why I didn’t do that before. Must be because I’m a rather dumb cat.
• Added 3 new grammar points in bunpro
• I had so many plans for this day but I ended up sleeping away the day due to a sudden comeback of the fever.
• Did one round of bunpro reviews before heading to bed

Sept. 23, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening
• Did some KaniWani for the first time - I had trouble with the vocab for “girl” lol there were just too many of them
• Failed to do Bunpro because I fell asleep too early
• Listened to a new podcast I found on YT during the day
• Listened to Yuyu’s Podcast again when I got home

Goals for this week:

[Level up WaniKani to Level 5
Tackle Genki Lesson 4
Work on Lesson 1-3 Genki exercises
Work on Genki Workbook lesson 1
Continue with the unlocked Kanjis of Level 4 (unlocked when radicals are Guru’d)
Finish Genki Lesson 5
Add 5 unique grammar points to Bunpro
Daily Bunpro review - Even though it was not “every day”, I’d give it a check since I did Bunpro for the majority of the week!
Weekly hiragana and katakana Quiz (Sunday)

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So I encountered something unusual this review session. It’s kind of like a conflict between the Reading explanation and the Rendaku Information (userscript). How is it saying the second syllable ちょう gets rendaku’d to じょう and then the userscript says it doesn’t have one? Is it maybe just a way to indicate that there’s a change in sound?

I went back to the Utilimate Hiragana by Tofugu and true enough the dyo kana is used rarely.

[trunklayer]

I love the title of this thread

Anyway, best of luck with your studies!

[soggyboy]

I think the WK explanation is just slightly oversimplifying different readings by calling じゅう rendaku (since it’s close enough) while the script thinks of it as a fully alternate reading.

[Akashelia]

Welcome to the study log crew looking forward to following your progress!

@maddness

So I encountered something unusual this review session. It’s kind of like a conflict between the Reading explanation and the Rendaku Information (userscript). How is it saying the second syllable ちょう gets rendaku’d to じょう and then the userscript says it doesn’t have one? Is it maybe just a way to indicate that there’s a change in sound?

That is a bit odd. @soggyboy was faster I agree with their explanation

[polv]

Possibly misspelling, though.

[maddness]

@trunklayer

Anyway, best of luck with your studies!

Thank you! May the Great Cat of Diligent Studies bless us all~

@Akashelia

Welcome to the study log crew looking forward to following your progress!

Uwah senpai noticed me! I, too, look forward to it! You’re one of my inspirations~

@soggyboy

I think the WK explanation is just slightly oversimplifying different readings

Ah so it is safe to say that the rendaku info script is still correct. Thank you for the explanation!

@trunklayer

I love the title of this thread

@polv

Possibly misspelling, though.

Haha thank you! I was deciding between Maddness or Madness, but I thought madness is more appropriate at this point

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Today I have more time to do studies so I will take advantage of that!

[maddness]

I really liked today’s Japanese learning session so here’s a mini summary of it:

Sept. 27, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening (my pile is slightly getting bigger each morning )
• Did 8 vocab lessons in the morning. I figured the sooner I get it out of the way, the more brainspace I can free up when I unlock the new kanjis
• Did ~10 vocab lessons when I got to the office, and waiting for the meeting - the lesson picker really helped with grouping the vocabs that have the same kanjis, which in turn may have the same reading
• Did the last 8 unlocked vocab of level 5 and for now, I am all caught up!
• I also did the SSQ today and wow it was not fun to do 200 reviews in one time… lol but I suppose it helped me with some vocabs I still sometimes confuse for another.
• Happy I could squeeze in a small batch of bunpro reviews. But I still need to learn at least 2 grammar points so I can cross off the goal for this week.
• As I was listening today, I heard a convo that went like this:
  女の人: この赤(あか)い傘(かさ)はきれいですね.
  男の人: 3千円(せんえん), 高(たか)いですね.
  And I understood it somehow! It gave me a boost of confidence to power through the week even though sometimes I felt like I was just going with the flow.

[maddness]

Sept. 28, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening
• I set up the Mokuro for reading manga today and man… it took the whole day to do that and my sched took a hit. But I’m just thinking maybe my future self will thank me for doing that in advance And thank you to all the people who have helped my dumb self!
• Today I unlocked all the remaining Kanjis and I’m getting ready for the onslaught of vocabulary and I did them today to make up for the time consumed by Mokuro setup
• Gonna check out Genki while eating dinner and see if I can absorb the new lesson
• Planning to do SSQ before bed since there are new apprentice items in the queue
• Did SSQ and I found that the newly learned kanjis from 4 hours ago were quite difficult to retain - if I didn’t do SSQ on it immediately. Luckily after walking around the house, it triggered the recall somehow.

[maddness]

It’s only 3pm in the afternoon here but I’m posting this one and will edit later at night.

Sept. 29, '24

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and later this afternoon
• Joined the ABBC for Cardcaptor Sakura (yay! ) It’s gonna be difficult but I’m sure it will be worth it in the long run
• Revamped the study log homepost
• Projected the level up until Dec 2024
• Planning to read a few pages of the Week #1 of Cardcaptor Sakura Book Club
• Did the kana quiz for katakana, and hiragana combinations

[maddness]

And so my fourth week has flown by~ I didn’t have a lot of expectations this week, except for the WaniKani reviews. I’d say I’m really strict with myself on that because it’s so easy to fall behind one day which can turn into a year… I really did Genki dirty like that, and didn’t pick it up. No, because like I’m running on fumes at the moment. I thought having an overnight fever last Tuesday was it. Done. Nothing. Nada. Esta hecho. No, it had to evolve into clogged nose, itchy throat, and now occasional coughing. It made me too tired and just went with the SRS type of stuff.

しかし! To make up for Genki, I put it as a vague entry in the Goals for this week, and it can be ticked off by doing something Genki related…haha…

My takeaway as this week ends is to really do the self-study quiz as soon as I learn new WK lessons. I can’t always refer to the nice mnemonics so I have to make my own on the fly - I find myself doing lessons while on the way to work. And because of this, I tend to forget it as soon as the first review for it rolls around. But if I do SSQ on it, I have a higher probability of remembering it. wow, much learning, much rocket science

Also, this week, I really liked listening to N5 JPN listening podcasts. There was an instance where I understood the conversation because I encountered those vocabs at my current level. It gave me confidence to trudge through my lessons and reviews everyday.

I found myself joining some clubs and installing softwares that are intended for future use. Funny how it would seem like I have this inkling that I would be using them rather sooner than later. And with that, this week comes to a close, and coming into a new week once again!

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This Week’s Summary (5th Week on WaniKani)

Weekly Activity Tracker (Sept. 30 - Oct 6 ‘24)

Type	月	火	水	木	金	曜	日
WaniKani
Genki
Bunpro
Listening
Reading
Watching

Reflections

Oct. 6, '24:

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening - I start to see how I get some vocab readings confusing AF I need to do the SSQ again sometime this day
• Watched 3 episodes of Cure Dolly - Japanese from scratch and I gotta say it’s just so different with what I learned from Genki, watching TokiniAndy back then. It was just 8 mins of video per episodes and somehow I’ve learned so much in such little time. Especially the wo article. I love that she made a whole complex sentence, explaining the function of each particle, and how it changes the structure of the sentence, when the particles are rearranged.
• Cure Dolly also shed light to a lesson in Bunpro that I couldn’t get my head to wrap around: why い-adjectives don’t use だ.
• After the Cure Dolly episodes, I went back to some pages of CCS that I knew I didn’t understand the grammar structure. So I guess that’s what I did for today’s reading.
• Only did around ~10 lessons today because I’ve been getting some items incorrectly, and I feel the need to review them before taking on new lessons. Thankfully it’s with vocabs, not the kanjis needed for leveling up.
• I had more items checked off for this week’s goal still not getting any Genki tho lol and I’ll keep at it!
• Kana Quiz today.

Oct. 5, '24:

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening - This morning I had around ~84 reviews because I slept too comfortably, and I woke up 4 hrs later than I intended
• Finished the last 10 vocabs of the level 6 initial unlocks! I gotta say, this is my new favorite phrase now:

仕方がない！

• Today, I learned 冬休み which is a part of the lyric of まつり by Fuji Kaze. And It was like a Eureka! moment for me. Back then, I thought it was “Winter, good night.” oh lawd…
• Finally unlocked the rest of the level 6 kanjis!
• Today, I just reread CCS from page 1 to page 17 uninterrupted
• Listened to N5 listening practice just for an hour today

Oct. 4, '24:

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening - I’m paying close attention now on when I do my lessons so I can do the required reviews at the expected time
• Did another huge bulk of lessons today (~37 vocabs) in preparation for the anticipated Guru-ing of the radicals, which should unlock the second leg of kanjis. I feel like I might be demotivated to see a huge backlog of lessons while unlocking new kanjis and vocabs yet again.
• That also finishes all the vocabs of level 5! With around 10 vocabs left of level 6 (initial unlock).
• For a while now, (since level 4 actually) I’ve gotten perfect accuracy in every review session. Today, I found it hard to remember these vocabs and I had to fail them since I couldn’t recall. I suppose I just need to study them again tomorrow. I logged it here so I can get back to it.

言(い)う, 行(い)く, 行(おこな)う and 近(ちか)い

• Read 1 page of the CCS ABBC (hopefully I can read more pages tomorrow!)
  Listened to N5 listening practice while at work. Today, I seem to be actively listening and I found myself understanding the gist of conversations
• Watched some Cure Dolly episodes and added the grammar points to Bunpro - which ticks off the bunpro goal for this week!
• I decided to just update the reading and listening challenges weekly (on Sundays) since I’ve got my hands full with the study log already

Oct. 3, '24:

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening
• I did ~48 Lv5-6 vocabularies today I was feeling motivated for some reasons and well, that just happened lol. I did break it into two sessions so it wasn’t too overwhelming
  **I also cherry picked the lessons so that I focused on the group of vocabs that use the same kanjis, and the set of new kanas I unlocked form level 6.
• Read 1 page of the CCS ABBC (Probably this is the rate at which I could read during weekdays)
• Listened to N5 listening practice while doing SSQ and Bunpro

Oct. 2, '24:

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening
• Listened to some N5 Japanese practice in YT while at work - although I could do this because I was working from home. Coughing still, but not as bad as the past few days.
• Watched two episodes of Cure Dolly, and I must say it has been enlightening Started making my vocab sheet that I shameless stole copied from Akashelia but still incomplete since I haven’t encountered the other sticky ending verb forms

bloop

• Didn’t get much reading due to a whole day meeting, but I did one page of the CCS ABBC Week # 2. If I keep up at it, I might be able to catch up to the current week, or next week
• Also, I was today years old when I found out about the Japanese Only (Lv1-5 Beginner) section of the forum. I did some lurking around and answered the question to 何人です？
• Also leveled up to Lv6 this morning so I prioritized learning the radicals and kanjis immediately. Level 5 vocab who? I don’t know her.
• Forgot to add: Bunpro review! It’s still at 31/126 for N5 but it should be increasing around the weekend~

Oct. 1, '24:

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening
• Listened to some N5 Japanese practice in YT - I finally got around to comprehending the use of ありません. There was a conversation that went like:
  A: Is there coffee?
  B: No, there’s not coffee.
  A: Is there tea?
  B: Yes, there’s tea.
  A: Then that’s good.

Not the exact phrases but that’s the gist of it. And I got my first day in the listening challenge Fall 2024 ticked off~

• Bunpro review for today
• Setup Anki for mining vocabs in the CCS readings - I already created a deck for Volume 1 and I will populate it as I go on
• Read pages 9-12 of カードキャタさくら Week #1 - I finished the first week! Now I can read the Week #1 thread of CCS haha maybe some of my questions will be answered there. Oh, right, now I can tick off my first day on reading challenge Fall

Sep 30, '24:

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening
• Listened to some N5 Japanese practice in YT
• Made my Japanese songs playlist - combination of anime songs and some choice Japanese artists
• Bunpro review and added new grammar points
• Read pages 7-9 of カードキャタさくら Week #1 - I didn’t fully comprehend the sentences in terms of being able to translate it in English in my head. I had to look up the English translation at some point. But at least I can add new grammar points in Bunpro and see how those verbs are used in other cases.

Goals for this week:

Level up WaniKani to Level 6
Finish vocab for WK Lv5
Guru the Radicals of Lv6
Guru the Kanjis of Lv6 - first half!
Finish reading Week # 1 of CCS Bookclub!
Add 5 new grammar points on Bunpro
Do something with Genki - Gonna put it vaguely for now
Weekly hiragana and katakana Quiz (Sunday)

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Challenges I’ve Joined

• Listen Every Day Challenge - Autumn 2024 - Homepost!

• Read Japanese Everyday Challenge - Fall 2024 - Homepost!

• 900 days with Japanese Folklore - level 60 in Summer 2026

• The 0/0 Streak Challenge - Current Stats!
  
  

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Previous Weeks’ Summaries

• 4th Week on WaniKani
• 3rd Week on WaniKani
• 2nd Week on WaniKani

[maddness]

Today’s logs! I can’t believe September is coming to an end and soon it will be octobernovemberDecember. uwah~ I can already hear the Christmas carols (literally they’ve started playing that on the radios now) and smell the food that I’m planning to make~

Tomorrow’s the day that the listening and reading challenges will commence so I really pushed myself to get some initial readings done just to jumpstart the habit. Coughing wasn’t really fun but I made sure to rest adequately before doing my readings.

Sep 30, '24^↑:

• WaniKani reviews in the morning and evening
• Listened to some N5 Japanese practice in YT
• Made my Japanese songs playlist - combination of anime songs and some choice Japanese artists
• Bunpro review and added new grammar points
• Read pages 7-9 of カードキャタさくら Week #1 - I didn’t fully comprehend the sentences in terms of being able to translate it in English in my head. I had to look up the English translation at some point. But at least I can add new grammar points in Bunpro and see how those verbs are used in other cases.

I do have some questions about Mokuro. For some reasons, there are dialog boxes that are correctly deciphered by the OCR and thus, reflecting the correct kanji/vocab. But I encountered this on page 9:

However, based on the vocab sheet, it’s supposed to be 闇の力を秘めし「鍵」よ!

Is it be because of the quality of my copy, and not much todo with Mokuro?

Also, with the same sentence, I got confused about the structure and I didn’t know how 鍵 was supposed to fit in there. So I had to check the english translation for that page and I guess the "は” topic marker I was looking for was implied.

闇の力を秘めし「鍵」よ!

しかし！In this part, although the quality seems to be the same, it got Mokuro’d correctly.

Vocab Sheet:

Coughing tired me out and I just couldn’t get myself to the next page so I’m ending this for now and just do SRS activities for the night. But I really find reading like this, fun. Difficult, but fun. I sounded like a toddler learning her first words. Just like in listening, it feels rewarding to comprehend the phrases and distinguish the verbs.

Bunpro stats for September!

[pembo]

This is cardcaptor right?

Yeah I haven’t been able to find anything readable which is why I haven’t really been doing it

[maddness]

Yup it is. I got this copy from a cough website way back then. Didn’t find a reason to buy it from bookwalker or some other shops. But I wonder how the other digital copies compare to mine. The pages here look p okay (in terms of alignment, and the dark shadows near the spine). It might not have been scanned with high DPI that’s why the quality is bad

[pembo]

I tried the sample on bookwalker (I think) and it was just as, if not worse, than the ones I found on the high seas.

Not paying 10quid for something I can’t even read let alone hold

[araigoshi]

So for these same dialogue boxes, here’s what they look like in the bookwalker copy (at the 300% zoom in app):

And at 100% zoom:

I think in this case, Bookwalker is better than your copy, but I wouldn’t say it’s true in general that legit copies are better quality than those obtained elsewhere. I’d actually say the overall trend is very slightly in favour of the umm… alternative… sources. Certainly I ditched my Bookwalker copy of Horimiya for someone else’s scan in the past.

I think it’s not just the blurry scan you have that’s confusing Mokuro in this case, I think this font is sort of exaggerated with the kanji getting more spread out at the base (compare 我 and 姿 in a computer font). I’d say it’s just something you get used to over time while reading, though one thing that might help is to try out the Jitai extension for Wanikani to quiz yourself in more diverse fonts rather than just readability-optimized computer fonts.

Also, you would think that publishers would have the digital files to produce their digital copies, but I’ve seen some on Bookwalker that are clearly scanned… And some of the physical manga have quite low quality/grainy paper that causes quite splotchy ink, which is a similar effect in ways to low pixel digital manga in terms of making the furigana hard to read.

[hotdogsuplex]

I can assure you that reading blurry kanji gets easier with practice. I read the sample on bookwalker and didn’t even notice the blurriness until someone pointed it out and I went back and looked. The pictures you posted are on par with the worst I’ve had to read, but at this point my reaction is “dang that’s pretty blurry ain’t it…” and not “this is so blurry that it would be absolutely impossible to read.” So, if you keep at it, it will get easier.

The hardest I've seen:

[maddness]

@pembo

Not paying 10quid for something I can’t even read let alone hold

That’s fair. Although admittedly, this is quite an old manga and they probably didn’t get around scanning it in >600 DPI since most mangas were sold in hard copies back then.

@araigoshi

So for these same dialogue boxes, here’s what they look like in the bookwalker copy (at the 300% zoom in app):

That looks so much better than my copy then, if it looks like that at 300% zoom. While I can still see the furigana if I squint, I’d have to double check the Mokuro result on the vocab sheet for this then.

Here are sample pages from my copy:

sample

@araigoshi

I think it’s not just the blurry scan you have that’s confusing Mokuro in this case, I think this font is sort of exaggerated with the kanji getting more spread out at the base (compare 我 and 姿 in a computer font).

Ah, that also makes sense. So combination of blurry scan + specific type of font used in the printing. Yup, both of them can easily be distinguished if typed.

@araigoshi

Also, you would think that publishers would have the digital files to produce their digital copies, but I’ve seen some on Bookwalker that are clearly scanned…

This is what I have naively believed in. But clearly they do not haha

@hotdogsuplex

I can assure you that reading blurry kanji gets easier with practice.

This is also at the forefront of my mind. It may just be that I’m only a few weeks in and used to the really nice fonts of WK. Although I do have Jitai installed as well for the reviews to cover the other…illegible fonts.

I’ll check back in a year to see if I can decipher that one!

[trunklayer]

That’s a beautiful but scary mountain

[pembo]

@hotdogsuplex

I can assure you that reading blurry kanji gets easier with practice.

Reading is difficult enough as is!