Day 112 of daily study!
Reporting in with a total of 760 minutes / 12.6 hours this week. Did not get a full grip on the new grammar, but I already knew that it won’t be an easy week!
What I learnt (not internalized)
Genki lesson 8 vocab
Short forms (informal positive + negative)
Short forms in informal speech uses
“I think…” (~と思います)
Short forms in quoted speech “they said…” (と言っていました)
“Please don’t…” (~ないで下さい)
Turning verbs into nouns
Subject particle が
何か and 何も (something or nothing)
Genki was okay and WaniKani went went well this week
WaniKani
Did all my lessons and reviews everyday. Reached level 9! Everything is going well but 表 is hard to remember, the mnemonic doesn’t work for me.
Genki
Already knew 22 vocab from Genki lesson 8, so that wasn’t much of an issue. But I did stall doing grammar points in more detail and making flashcards (which I finished on Saturday). I will have to focus on the exercises next week.
Goals for next week
Learn all Genki lesson 8 grammar flashcards by heart
Do all Genki lesson 8 exercises (textbook and workbook)
Do all WaniKani lessons and reviews
10 minutes of kanji writing practise
Start Genki lesson 9
Immersion
Started immersion. Watched Kiki’s Delivery Service and Ponyo in Japanese with Japanese subtitles. Did understand a few words here and there but basically nothing.
Set my YouTube to Japanese. Was able to understand some video titles.
Rambling
The first half of the week was slow. I did a little over an hour on those days and watched movies (immersion).
Vocab is getting easier to remember, which has me hopeful that my focus capacity will increase.
Nothing I can do but stick with it and see if my (almost) 2h a day can turn into 3h.
At least I’m not the only one haha!
Did you come up with your own mnemonic or did it just finally stick?
I might have to write it on a post it and stick it to my monitor or something like that.
I never could come up with a decent mnemonic. It was simply a matter of missing it hundreds of times and looking it up hundreds of times before it finally sank in.
Day 119 of daily study!
My week consisted of being sick. I managed to catch up some on Saturday and Sunday.
And with a total of 663 minutes / 11 hours, the streak remains unbroken.
Shame I could only reach half of my weekly goals, but being sick can’t be helped.
On a different topic
How do I get the yellow marked area to have a background picture?
Couldn’t find any info on google or the forum about it.
What I learnt (and what I am still working on)
Learnt
Subject particle が
being good/ bad at something (~が上です。/ ~が下です。)
Short forms (informal positive + negative)
Short forms in informal speech uses
“I think…” (~と思います)
何か and 何も (something or nothing)
Work in progress
Short forms in quoted speech “they said…” (と言っていました)
“Please don’t…” (~ないで下さい)
Turning verbs into nouns
Genki and WaniKani this week
WaniKani
I managed to do my reviews and lessons everyday but Friday, where I only did my reviews.
So -15 lessons this week.
The kanji difficulty is picking up now, but I am up for the challenge.
The vocabulary can feel random at times. e.g. 見付ける means to find? These type of words are harder to remember as the kanji combination doesn’t click for me.
Also learning words you already know some version off like “平安” and “平和”, which both mean peace.
Probably worth it to look into the differences of the “doubles” but I didn’t get to that yet.
Genki
Finished all lesson 8 textbook exercises but didn’t start on the workbook yet.
Goals for next week
Finish Genki lesson 8 workbook exercises
Learn all Genki lesson 8 grammar by heart (halfway there)
Start Genki lesson 9
Learn all Genki lesson 9 vocab
Make Genki lesson 9 grammar FC
Learn useful expressions (at the supermarket)
Immersion
Watched YouTube videos and heard “と思います”, which was cool! also heard “と思っています”
and wondered about the difference. Turns out it’s something someone has been thinking for a while, while “と思います” is more in the moment.
Also ever since I set my YouTube to Japanese with Japanese subtitles I drastically cut down on my time on there, which is nice.
Started watching “Nevertheless” on Netflix, my first Japanese drama. If you have any must watch Japanese shows, please let me know!
Question
Does “スマホを まだ はじまない で下さい。” work? Or does it have to be
"まだ スマホをはじまない で下さい。?
Omg your study log is beautiful I have to add it to my list of inspirations
How do you have the motivation to not only have a pretty customised notebook (I assume the whole thing is drawn? Or can you type text and it appears pixelated) but also to draw the accompanying pictures of Appa and ponyo etc for each entry :0000
I love love love it though and you’ve got moomins so even better, keep up the good work
Thank you!
I was going to use banners and it looked wonky but when I just checked your log it totally inspired me to try again
And absolutely love all the yellow I’m seeing in your log!
The whole notebook is drawn, but the program I am using (aseprite) luckily comes with fonts.
At that scale you need to adjust them a bit here and there cause they easily melt together.
Yeah, it’s one of those personalized neurodivergent ones where it’s so silly it actually connects in my head xdd
So in the Japanese folklore, there’s this goddess of the sun called Amaterasu, one of the children of Izanagi and that’s how she’s represented in the traditional paintings:
see, she has a publicly-facing front, right? and a front is called “omote”, it can’t be an accident that Amaterasu has a publicly-facing front that is almost the same word, but you replace "a"s with "o"s, it cannnnnot be an accident, I’m sure of it xddd
Amaterasu’s public front is Omote…rasu, right? xdddd
Hello~ おじゃましますね。There are a couple of things here that need some revision.
Make sure the verb is inflected in its ~nai form correctly.
Notice that the two verbs はじまる and はじめる are conjugated differently.
はじまる => はじまらない
はじめる => はじめない
As for the choice of verb:
We don’t say xスマホを はじまる = Start (the) phone.
We could say スマホを ひらく = Open/Unlock (the) phone
Then we could say スマホを ひらかないで ください.
I feel like the use of まだ to instruct someone to do/not do something sounds unnatural. It’s more used about your own actions (see below) or the general state of things [1]. You could say まだ だめ です (= It’s still not allowed) which does not have any verbs in it.
Example on まだ, both are okay:
今日は ワニカニ(reviews)を まだ やってない
今日は まだ ワニカニ(reviews)を やってない
Wow I didn’t expect such a great answer!
I just noticed that I actually copied the sentence wrong from the answer key.
I mixed up
“スマホをつかわないでください。” and
“まだテストをはじめないでください。”
Which is a really stupid mistake, but without your reply I wouldn’t have noticed that.
How I messed up the nai form so badly is beyond me but thanks to you I know that I should repeat those exercises today!
That went straight into my notes!
Thank you for taking the time to explain not only my mistakes but giving me optional verbs to use in such a situation as well as examples for まだ in a more natural sounding way.
Day 126 of daily study!
Reporting in with another sick week, really sucks to have two weeks like this…
But I am starting to feel better now, finally.
With a total of 442 minutes / 7 hours I still managed to average a little over an hour a day.
I also reached WaniKani level 10!
Besides doing WaniKani daily (15 lessons and all reviews), I also kept my bunpro streak going and learnt half of Genki lesson 9 vocab.
My goals for next week are the same as last week’s and I’m excited to finish Genki lesson 8 and finally start with lesson 9!
My YouTube is still all Japanese and I even found a podcast I like to listen to while doing housework.
No art this week (for obvious reasons), but I already know what to draw for next week
In fact I feel like being sick boosted my motivation for next week in a weird way?
On a different note
I will be travelling soon. How do you feel about vacation mode? I’m not sure what I think.
Doesn’t it kind of defeat the purpose of SRS?
I can probably spare 30-45 minutes every morning and 20 minutes in the evening for reviews and do only 5 lessons a day?
Has anyone used vacation mode for 2 weeks? How was it when you came back?
WaniKani is going so well for me I’m worried to mess with it.
If you’re still not very much used to the SRS, it should be fine to turn it on, but after a while you retain a memory of a word for exactly a month and if you see it a month and 2 weeks later without having seen it in the middle, you’ll go like “huh? have i seen this one before? what’s this kanji?” xddd
Feel free to experiment around with it!
It kinda does ^^
I have a feeling that this is a good solution, plus it reaffirms some of the words you’ll be learning with the adventures you’d be having, making it easier to remember some of the words in the long run!
Apprentices will be hard to tackle then, but with Gurus and Masters you should be familiar with them ^^
Nice, that’s a good pace! I’m also doing a similar amount of study by myself, so I hope it feels sustainable to you and you won’t burn yourself out in the end ^^
Also hehe art not found
Is the grey theme indicative of your being unwell or is it just a coincidence
Mmm teeeechnically I feel it does sort of ruin the SRS numbers a bit but yk sometimes you just have to take that break or you’re stressing during your travelling like aaa I haven’t done my SRS yet. I don’t feel its too terrible to catch up after as long as you’re prepared for the higher workload a bit but I guess it all depends on if you want to/are able to manage your usual SRS load while travelling. I have taken time off Wanikani for a while though I can’t remember how long but it was a good chunk, and when I came back I had 800 reviews which was really not brilliant lmao. But they’re back to normal it just took about a week of consistently working through them to get it back down. I feel like I’ve rambled a bit but in summary if you’re happy to keep doing it while travelling then seems like a good idea.
Do you mean at lower levels in general? Not sure if I am used to the SRS but what you’re describing here was my worry. No kanji shall be scrubbed from my mind!
Didn’t even consider that! I will try the daily upkeep with little to no new lessons then. And if I fail I can still hit vacation mode!
I did read in your log that you have classes and I do wonder at what point lessons should come in. I’m going at a slower pace than many so I’m not sure I could keep up with a class, so I would go for private lessons.
Maybe after Genki 1? What do you think about that?
And yes, the whole plan is to NOT burn out. I have quit my fair share of things (not necessary languages) after getting to an intermediate point.
But even those things aren’t wasted as they taught me how to approach learning without overdoing it and to respect the initial motivation boost that leads to burn out.
xddd
and you’ve got moomins so even better, keep up the good work 
おじゃましますね。There are a couple of things here that need some revision.
