Basilsauce's learning log (Youtube, manga, books)

[basilsauce]

I’ve been around on and off, and finally thought I should try logging some of my stuff. Right now I should probably be making this more of an “on” time, because I’ve got a trip to Japan coming up in a few weeks. It’ll be the first trip in 4 and a half years, since before Covid. I haven’t had any speaking practice in about 2 years.

Rough background:

I used to live in Tokyo but that was a while ago. I was roughly N5 when I started living there, and passed N2 a couple of years before leaving. Some people are great at conversation at N3/N2 level, but I’m not outgoing so I wasn’t one of them. That said, I became able to do it well enough to navigate a variety of situations, even if my speech was full of oddities and I had to ask for explanations.

My reading goals while in Japan were almost entirely focused toward improving real-life stuff and finding information about my hobbies. Instructions of various types (recipes, tutorials, etc), assorted paperwork, navigating stores, things like that. Sometimes I’d struggle through magazine interviews or blog posts by my favorite musicians, or skim the band threads on trashy anonymous forums to check out the gossip.

After I passed N2 I started looking at fiction some. It’s not that I just happened to become good enough to pass N2; rather, I took a 3 month test prep class and frantically crammed vocabulary and grammar trying to keep up with the Korean and Chinese students, and at the end of it I had the N2 certificate. But more importantly, suddenly everyday reading was much easier than before. I felt like I finally had some attention to spare. I read a few fiction books and burnt out after a year. Everything was a lot easier, though.

Then I moved back to the US. I didn’t see a reason to keep working hard on improvement. I still used Japanese when visiting Japan (a couple of times a year) and to get information about my hobbies.

During Covid I started reading fiction in an effort to avoid forgetting what I’d learned, but ended up having to learn a lot more. I guess my goal with that was to reach a level of Japanese where I could maintain it naturally through doing the stuff I like, rather than studying. Little by little, I’ve been getting closer.

I think I’m starting to hit the bottom edge of that now, although it really depends on the presentation and topic. I still feel the effort of reading and get tired easily. On the other hand, Youtube videos about my strongest areas often just feel like I’m watching Youtube. I’d like more things to feel like that.

The immediate goal is just to do the things I need to do on my upcoming trip. I’m mainly focusing on research right now, rather than trying to figure out a way to do conversation practice. There are a lot of things I want to buy so I’m investigating the options and figuring out where to go.

2025 goal: try to read
10 books
30 manga (currently 1)

[basilsauce]

Eyeglasses are a top item on my shopping list. Japanese glasses can be much cheaper than American, and there are a wide range of frame styles which will fit my face well. I’ve bought glasses in Japan before, but it was a long time ago (10+ years) so I’ve been reading up on glasses/lenses stuff and watching some videos. Also, I’m a lot older now and my vision needs have changed.

Youtube videos about glasses for middle-aged and/or nearsighted people

Wakasa goes shopping for glasses at inexpensive glasses chain Zoff (looking at frames, and it shows the vision test machines)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoicdWJERRo

I came across a mention of 中近両用 progressive (累進) lenses while poking around the Zoff glasses site. This appears to be an extremely useful type of lens, that no American optometrist has suggested to me even though I’ve repeatedly asked about glasses optimized for indoor use with lots of computer and reading, rather than driving. They look at me like I’m speaking a foreign language when I ask for this. But it looks like this is a popular choice in Japan with an easy name.

This video explains the differences between 3 types of progressive lenses available for glasses.
https://youtu.be/iySZkTK072Y?si=HIpgptBCx7WL9NI_

And this guy loves his 中近 glasses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG-RYTTbU-A

強度近視でもOK！目が小さくならない眼鏡の選び方！
This was helpful and I will keep their advice in mind when choosing frames!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reEZRkoJCsc

【強度近視】のメガネ選び！目が小さくならない、レンズが厚くならないためには
This guy really gets into the details of how frame choice affects lens thickness for strong nearsightedness. And now I know that nose pads are called クリングス.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnnzjxOpaaQ

[cat]

I’m glad to see you here again! hope your trip is fantastic, I went earlier this year myself and ended up not going to nearly as many places as I’d hoped to. Jet lag is a beast

Interesting stuff about the glasses. I remember asking my eye doctor a couple years back about the lens where you can see differently near vs far and he commented something like they’re mostly for much older people (like seniors)? but also my prescription is mild enough that fairly simple lens do for me

[basilsauce]

Glad to see you too! I hope you were able to enjoy yourself anyway.

According to the eye doctors I’ve spoken to, typically people begin to develop trouble seeing close-up in their 40s.

My husband is a year older than me and if he has this problem, it’s not noticeable because he’s only mildly nearsighted and can get around the “can’t see close up with single-vision glasses” problem by just not wearing glasses indoors. I’m so nearsighted that I need contact lenses or glasses for everything further than 10 cm away, so I don’t really have the option of just going without correction in order to read better. My uncorrected vision is great for looking at individual kanji, but I have to hold the book so close I can’t see the whole page.

I hope I’ll like reading more after I get some new glasses. I haven’t wanted to read as much in the past year or so, and I’m starting to wonder how much of this is because it’s a little hard to focus in a non-metaphorical sense.

[basilsauce]

I still felt like I wanted more info about glasses, so back to Youtube.

More videos about eyeglasses

老眼鏡よりスゴく使いやすい！『近々両用メガネレンズ』 (8 min)

高い眼鏡 安い眼鏡 どっちを選ぶべき？忖度無しで大公開 (23 min)
Talking about the differences between expensive and cheap glasses

This led me to go investigate the cost of having new lenses put into a pair of existing frames. This is also MUCH MUCH cheaper than it would be in the US! So with that in mind, maybe it’s not a bad idea to check out some of the pricer options and see if they really are so much more comfortable to wear, instead of just rushing to whatever ultra-cheap place is closest to my hotel.
レンズ交換 [なし/オーバル/安い] ｜メガネのオーマイグラス(めがね・眼鏡) | メガネ通販

【鼻が低くても大丈夫】鼻が低い方におすすめのメガネとは!?＠オーマイグラス東京 (14 min)
They call the nose pads 鼻パッド

メガネ初心者必見！似合う眼鏡の選びかた徹底解説 (10 min)

I’ve been taking notes to help me keep track of some of the stuff that’s coming up in my JP glasses investigations. Stores with price ranges, options, and a list of vocabulary and expressions that I can quickly review as needed.

OK, I’m done with glasses! (For today)

By the way, the impetus to travel at this time is to attend 3 concerts by my favorite singer. (Kamijo, formerly of Versailles and Lareine) I used to go all the time back in the day but these will be my first concerts in four and a half years.

So I’m also trying to restock my brain with ビジュアル系 and バンギャ stuff.

I was stressing about what to wear to concerts because I haven’t bought anything nice-looking in ages, and then this video showed up on my Youtube feed last week and knocked some sense into me.
V系のライブってどんな服装で参戦すればいいの？ (25 min)
How did I forget that band merch is always appropriate? Why else did I buy it, if not for just this occasion?

Kamijo recently did an interview about his decision to move his base of operations to LA in 2025, and to do a short tour in South and North America. I remember how hard trying to read this sort of thing used to be, and now it’s smooth, even if I’m slow.

＜インタビュー＞キャリア30年を迎えるKAMIJOが活動拠点を海外へ、その理由とは | Special | Billboard JAPAN

I started reading the second volume of

バンギャルちゃんの日常 2 | L33??

It’s a collection of comic essays by a VK fan about the stupid stuff we fans used to do in the ‘90s through early 2010s. It’s jam-packed with references to so many nostalgic things. This is slow reading because it’s really dense.

And I’ve picked up 暁のヨナ again. (Currently on volume 21) It has nothing to do with anything I’m preparing for, but it’s fun.

[basilsauce]

I watched or listened to some more VK related stuff in the past few days.

ANDROGYNOSに参戦するギャ男の1日【DIR EN GREY VS PIERROT】

ANDROGYNOSに参戦するギャ男の1日【DIR EN GREY VS PIERROT】

This is roughly the sort of conversation that’s going to be flying around at the concerts I’ll attend, except that they’re all men and my concert acquaintances are mostly women. I felt like it was excellent listening practice to help get my brain in that mode. Also it was super nostalgic, since the concert was two bands that started in the mid-late ‘90s doing a Yoyogi show together. Some fans even carried those old-school trunks that everyone used to have.

Also I watched the YouTube archive of Kamijo’s end-of-year stream. Which was 3 hours long Some of it was clips from live videos, which I skipped over for now. And somewhere in the middle I stopped being able to look at the screen and just started doing other things while the audio played, like a podcast.

A couple of fashion or shopping videos. I’m going to do a lot of clothes shopping during trip because I’m short, and I’ll definitely be able to find things that look better on me than what’s available locally.

【vol.107】大草直子率いるAMARC編集部員の”リアル”な冬のコーディネートをご紹介feat.HÉLIOPÔLE 身長もテイストも異なる4人の全身コーディネートを６体お届け
The stuff here is nice but pricey

【ロペピクニック】スタイリストが行く！ショップクルーズ＆ファッションチェンジ！【ROPE’ PICNIC】
A (much) cheaper store, with coordinates for 30s and 40s ages.

And some reading. More 暁のヨナ。Currently on vol 22.

Picked up 背中を預けるには 1 | L30?? again. I wasn’t going to start any novels before leaving because I definitely won’t finish it in time, but never mind, why not? I already started and paused this one, and I want to know what happens! This book has an English translation so I can quickly skim that to refresh my memory of the plot up to where I left off, and even if I take another pause it won’t be a problem.

It was a #2 winner in the このBLがやばい ranking. It’s a 3 volume story, in trade paperback size with 2 rows of text so it’s really dense. For me there are lots of words to look up. But the grammar and sentence structure isn’t difficult. It would be smooth and easy to read, if only I just knew more of the vocabulary.

[shitsurei]

@basilsauce

Kamijo, formerly of Versailles and Lareine

I was just humming 冬東京 to myself the other day, lol.

[basilsauce]

I read more of 背中を預けるには volume 1, up to the 28% point.

I’d forgotten about how the first 1/4 to 1/3 of a book tends to have a wave of new vocabulary, so the first 50 pages were pretty discouraging. (Also, I took half a year off of reading and forgot how to pronounce a lot of words, so that increased lookups) But I’m definitely seeing lots of that initial vocab repeating and beginning to see my lookups decreasing.

I’m making a character list to help me keep everyone’s names and ranks straight. Unfortunately I didn’t think to do this when I started (I was deceived by the ease of reading katakana names) so I skimmed through the first few chapters of the English translation to quickly assemble a starter list, and have been adding to it gradually as I read more in Japanese.

Not sure if I’m overthinking this or what, but I feel like the author is sometimes (often?) deliberately writing the dialogue so that it sounds like it could be a translation from English or some other Western language?
Like, 「あああ〜なんと薔薇色のほっぺただ！食べてしまいたいくらいに可愛い。」
“Ah, what rosy cheeks! You’re so cute I just want to eat you up!”
Do normal Japanese people say this?

My trip to Japan is in 3 days so the book is going on hold until I return.

Yesterday I went through a whole rollercoaster of uncertainty and panic about whether I should be doing more to prepare for my trip language-wise, before finally concluding that I probably already did the most important stuff. (And should therefore be focusing on stuff like doing laundry and packing, which of course I don’t want to do) On the one hand I have this sense that because I haven’t tried to speak Japanese at all in over 2 years (and only very little for 2 years before that), it’s going to be a lot harder. But on the other hand, my listening and reading comprehension is the highest it’s ever been.

I expect my Japanese will have changed but I don’t know how. In the past, I tended to be fast but sloppy. I think this is common among people who lived in Japan before building a solid base in the language. Back in the day it was difficult to find appropriate material for lower levels and that made it hard to build a mental model of what to imitate. So this person’s speech is littered with grammar mistakes and weird word choices, but anyway they’re fast. If you’re a beginner it might seem like they’re great at Japanese, because they’ve already responded while you’re still trying to work out what the question was in the first place, and you don’t have the knowledge or confidence to assess the quality of their reply. But what they actually said is either a stock phrase or mangled in some way even if the meaning comes across. I remember watching these people, and then I became one.

Hopefully, the amount of reading and listening I’ve done in the past few years will turn out to have helped with some of these issues? I do remember that after reading my first book (魔女の宅急便) way back, I found that it helped smooth out some of the worst of my bad habits. I don’t know what I’ll find now. Will I still default to leftover bad habits? Or, after several years of consuming normal Japanese without ever having to produce any of my own, will I have picked up some better ways of phrasing things?

I’m looking forward to the trip so I can stop overthinking this.

[shitsurei]

@basilsauce

On the one hand I have this sense that because I haven’t tried to speak Japanese at all in over 2 years (and only very little for 2 years before that), it’s going to be a lot harder. But on the other hand, my listening and reading comprehension is the highest it’s ever been.

I’ve never lived in Japan, but whenever I go, I feel like there’s actually urgency to speak Japanese (even when I’m just in Tokyo and there’s very little urgency) in a way that makes my brain just better at Japanese when I’m in Japan. It could also just be all of the cues of signs and people speaking the language around me, but I’ve had full day long conversations with very little English and at my current level I’m sometimes like “how?”.

tbf it was all with friends, friends of friends, and language partners that I’ve chatted with for that long, so they’re more motivated to understand me than, say, a store clerk. But I still think there’s something about actually needing to use the language that unlocks some of the ability that you don’t think you have

[basilsauce]

Is it not urgent any more in Tokyo? The last few times I visited before Covid, I remember there starting to be a lot more English around, and more people being able to use it. But even then I didn’t feel like I ran into English that often. Has Tokyo become even more international since then?

I’ve definitely felt that “unlocking of ability” thing before when conditions are right. It’s like all the pieces are there, but my brain is trying to be tidy and keeps them stored away on shelves until it thinks there’s a real reason to lay them all out on the work table for instant use. The process of finding the pieces, bringing them home, and removing them from the plastic packaging is mostly done. There just needs to be a good impetus to prod the brain into taking it off the shelves. (The other thing that happens is that when the project is done, my brain puts the pieces back on the shelves. They are not left out on the table continuing to be ready to use )

[shitsurei]

In Tokyo I feel like I rarely need any Japanese. It’s obviously a big help, but most cashiers, wait staff, and any other service people who deal with tourism will almost certainly speak better English than my Japanese. About the only place where people pretty reliably talk to me in Japanese has been bookstores (which on some levels, yeah, why would the stores need to hire people who spoke English well if you’re in a store buying books in Japanese? ) Golden Gai was another place that there wasn’t a ton of English, but I wonder how much of that is that people don’t speak English and how much people don’t really want tourists in their bars. Similarly if you’re straying outside of places international tourists go, the English will be a lot spottier. But I’ve honestly had more trouble finding people who will speak Japanese with me than the other way around

[basilsauce]

Arrived in Tokyo a few days ago.

Buying glasses and medicine in Tokyo

I went to the glasses store Zoff the day after arrival, as soon as they opened. This whole thing was in Japanese, and I never actually found out whether this branch has English services available if you need it. I had my current glasses for them to scan, as well as a new prescription from an American doctor, but since I wanted a pair of 中近両用 glasses I had to get an eye exam anyway. The Japanese doctor recommended a weaker prescription than I’d been given in the US, and she said that typically American prescriptions are stronger than Japanese doctors like to prescribe. The strong prescriptions are apparently great for having crisp vision at very long distances (ex. Reading road signs when driving on highways) but can cause eye strain for indoor use. Since I don’t drive with glasses, I’m very happy she recommended milder prescriptions. She had test lenses that slipped into a huge test frame, so I could find out what it would feel like to look through glasses with her suggested prescriptions. And she gave advice on frame styles, from what shapes are well suited to this type of lens, to which color frames looked good with my complexion.

The whole ordering process, from registration to vision test to frame selection only took about an hour. My lenses are special order so they’ll be ready in about 10 days. (This is why I did it on my first day) But if you only need a basic and popular lens type, the turnaround time is same-day.

BTW, it cost 57,400 yen (minus 4400 yen after tax refund) for 2 pairs of glasses with their more expensive type of frame, and fancy progressive lenses with the pricey extra-thin option. This is roughly $175 US dollars per pair. And every single frame I tried on was super comfortable and gave me great field of vision. (I’m ハーフ so the Japanese frames work well for my low nose bridge)

And then last night I started getting sick with something, so I got to have this sort of thing for reading material. The JLPT puts a lot of emphasis on testing whether students can successfully read these kind of medical instructions and I’m glad I went through the test-focused prep materials because there’s so much stuff in them that’s useful IRL.

I planned my trip with some spare days, expecting that something would go wrong at some point. Maybe a winter snowstorm would delay my flight for a day. Maybe I’d get tired and need rest days here and there to do nothing. Turns out coming down with some kind of illness is what happened.

At least Netflix JP has a lot of new (to me) stuff to keep me entertained.