I agree with 30s. Unless ppl are used to the way Japanese structure long sentences, this is definitely not an easy one to parse even if the words themselves aren’t difficult. I feel comfortable in the lower 30s but I had to read the sentence twice (and look up 2 things) to understand what was being said. 
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I think I’m with the low-30s crowd here. I had to re-read the sentence a few times it doesn’t help I kept misreading 相手 as 勝手 and confusing myself, but in the grand scheme of things it’s not a difficult sentence. Once the reader’s familiar with longer sentences and can keep all the info in their head while reading one, they’d probably be fine.
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Thank you all for your responses / gauges of how it feels to you 
Looks like my difficulty gauge was indeed off, yet again If I’m lucky (slash, don’t get distracted) I’ll finish the book this week, and keep this in mind while grading it. Likewise for another book I’m reading which is technically for children, but which has some longer sentences I’ve noticed (since children won’t struggle with them as much as learners will).
I think there definitely is more and more an analytical sense of ‘ease’ I have to use compared to a ‘how did this feel to me’, and forcing myself to notice long, multi-clause sentences seems to be one of those pieces.
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I decided to set myself a goal of writing 20k characters in Japanese this year as additional output paired with the 52 hour goal for speaking. I was late to start my writing, haven’t done a great job of tracking all of it, and have not been super consistent…yet I just passed 100%. I think that 20k characters was a far more conservative goal than I would have thought
I will say the main thing that got me to actually write so much was doing language exchange. Apparently I’m just chatty in any language 
But I also got overwhelmed due to too many people talking to me and trying to keep up with all the budding conversations. That will require some tweaking.
Also on the topic of output, @bungakushoujo has inspired me to pick up shadowing again, likely next year as I’m going to be pretty busy until December, and then December will bring the Aozora Advent challenge (my favorite challenge of the year 
).
Thinking perhaps of setting myself a yearly goal for shadowing. I have no idea what the goal should be, though. 30 hours? Which is ~5 min a day? Given I also plan to:
- relearn how to handwrite kanji, since most I’ve forgotten and it’s awkward when taking notes
- give Swedish another go
- read my typical minimum 5k pages
- listen to 300 hours of Japanese
- probably another writing goal? 40k? I have no idea…
I don’t want to set myself up for failure by stacking too much on my plate 
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Handwriting challenge thread goooooooo! I want to get back to doing this as well
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you could do a 30k digital and 10k handwritten writing goal or something along those lines. learning to write kanji but then never using them is what always makes me drop the habit again.
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I think having to count my handwritten characters would make me quit sooner I’m still tossing around how I wanna do it but it will probably just me be revamping a kanji learning anki deck and ripping out the ones I still know how to write
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There’s the app Ringotan as well; dunno if you’ve heard of it/used it before. I’ve dabbled with it a bit but never used it long term, so I can’t comment much on its overall effectiveness.
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I unfortunately don’t like drawing on a screen, I feel like I hold my hand unnaturally compared to how I actually write on paper so the muscle memory won’t be as good (and it just feels awkward).
There’s also something about filling up a notebook with kanji that was nice and made me feel accomplished in a way that I just don’t get from an app.
It’s worth noting that I handwrite a lot. I currently have 4 notebooks next to me, all in active use (one for grammar study I’m doing, one for to-dos, one for character and plot notes of books, one for rewriting sentences which received corrections from my language partners).
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I’ve done RTK (I’ve been learning Japanese for a loooooong time, WK is still “new” to me ) at least one and a half times, but the kanji that I actually remember how to write are the ones that I learned through rote memory for tests in university. It makes me feel like if you don’t use it, you’re just gonna lose it.
And considering that my output abilities are adorably minimal, I keep on kicking the writing kanji can down the road.
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I also did RTK, but only up to 6-800? I forget where I landed. I eventually just shifted into reading and dropped it because I knew more kanji by sight than by Heisig.
I agree that it’s a use it or lose it thing. This year I’ve been handwriting Japanese a lot (grammar study, corrected sentences) and not having those kanji in muscle memory anymore has been bothering me. Even something like 状況 I find myself just writing in hiragana because the strokes don’t come to mind and lemme tell you - that one comes up a LOT in grammar explainer videos
If someone does not need to or plan to make use of the memorized strokes it’s really not as important to do the type of practice I’m planning.
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For me it all comes down to stroke order repetition and making sure the ones you practice cover a lot of different radicals.
I’ve practiced writing about 800 kanji and after a while you just start to intuitively know the patterns and you can guess the stroke order for basically any kanji you see.
Transcribing thoughts to kanji is a whole different story though. My anki kanji deck goes English concept->Japanese answer for that reason, but I still struggle with kanji recall when I try to write something unprompted.
If you (or anyone else reading this) ever wanted to try digital writing again, I highly recommend getting a cheap drawing tablet/pen. The feel is different to regular paper, more similar to writing on construction paper, but it is so convenient.
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I actually used to know the ordering quite well, but not touching it for…4 years now probably? It’s largely gone from my head. I suspect it will come back fast once I start practicing it.
the thing I’m tossing about in my head is something like:
Front:
[じょう]況
Back:
状況
Frankly I don’t care to learn kanji I’m not likely to write, and I personally can’t be bothered to write out something like 鬱病, I’m just gonna write うつ病 But the more custom the deck is the more work it is, so it’s rattling around my head.
I perhaps should state that I like writing on paper I have lots of cute journals with nice paper and lovely smooth writing pens. I also spend so much of my day looking at screens, that having an escape from them (even a little bit) is something I enjoy.
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Maybe you should consider practicing words you commonly use rather than individual kanji then? That way you don’t learn anything unnecessary.
A big decision to also consider is if you want the kanji on the front of the card or not. I don’t have kanji on the front for mine, I have to be able to remember what it looks like in my head based on the readings.
Agreed. You have to decide what is worth it for you. Some kanji are just really annoying to write for a variety of reasons. I personally can’t stand writing 喜 (12 strokes) but I can write stuff like 譲 (20 strokes) with no problem. I think it has to do with the spacing feeling awkward to write.
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? I’m not sure we’re understanding each other. 状況 is a word I commonly use and therefore want to write. I would be practicing the kanji in isolation in terms of what I have to write per card, but it would be prompted by words I’m very familiar with.
I’m talking about potentially creating a deck of kanji I consider worth writing, and giving myself Japanese prompts on the front, primarily as kana+another kanji forming a compound word I’m familiar with.
Some more examples (since maybe that will help make what I’m saying more clear):
「ば」合 → 場合
地「きゅう」→ 地球
たまご → 卵
Yep, I would be practicing is 状 from 状況, represented as じょう. If I can’t draw it from memory it doesn’t serve my purpose.
Ain’t that the truth 
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Ah, seems you were a step ahead of me then. Sorry about the confusion! I just didn’t understand your diagram on the first pass.
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Tucking this away as a fun idea for the forum sometime maybe
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Not really sure where to put these thoughts as making a thread out them feels like making a whole thing of it, when it’s just a musing really, so into my notes it goes.
I’ve been thinking lately since finishing 点と線 if there is a standard, or even an expectation, of a level of explanation that to me, feels like over explanation, in Japanese fiction.
A few examples of books that seem reasonably popular but which contain the trait I view as overexplaining:
- 点と線 (4.2 stars on Amazon)
- スマホを落としただけなのに (4.1 stars on Amazon)
- broadly the 死神 series, but let’s go with the last one in the series which I liked the least, 死神と天使の円舞曲（ワルツ）, 4.5 stars on Amazon
These books would rehash/restate over and over events that had happened and explain in detail how things (which I expect to be known to the average reader) work. I have yet to notice a Japanese review complaining about this. I personally find it very tiring to read and you’ll probably find more than one review by me on this site pleading with authors to “say less”.
What I’m not sure is if this is a Japanese book trait which is expected/desired/tolerated by many Japanese readers, or if this is a general book trait that I’ve come to, by my English reading habits, avoid in English literature.
The reason I wonder this is because I can tell my English reading habits are quite narrow compared to my Japanese reading. Considering the last year or so of books I’ve consumed in English I’d ballpark it at:
- 75% nonfiction (primarily pop science and history books)
- 10% classics (I love old lit
) - 10% sci-fi
- 5% murder mysteries (…excluding the ones which were classics )
- It’s worth noting that most of those were translated from other languages and so might be already bad samples for ‘English books’
Meanwhile in Japanese while I do have a clear lean towards classics and murder mysteries still, I also consume romance and thrillers and ‘contemporary fiction’ and fantasy and whatever else because I’m still feeling my way around the book world, if you will. I also read barely any sci-fi or nonfiction (yet).
Anyone else do much reading outside of Japanese and have thoughts on this? Do you notice the trait I’m talking about in Japanese lit? In English lit? Do you like it? Dislike it? Neutral?
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It’s the whole “show don’t tell” debate that is always ongoing in book circles. Generally, it seems that in English showing something rather than telling is more appreciated and seen as the literary more sophisticated approach i.e. author’s who have “info dumps” are often seen as worse writers. (This is completely my subjective experience listening to ppl review books.)
I remember you liked the coffee books and there they repeat how the time travel works EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Even I got fed up with that. 
(Maybe you could ask that question in the book discord. 
)
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If you want a premade deck like that, Complete Jouyou Kanji Writing Deck (“Kanken Deck”) Part 1 has been amazing for me. I have been doing it for a few years and am up to pre-2 kanji.
Nowadays I can be a bit lazy and just “write the kanji in my mind”, haven’t really noticed a difference in retention, but it is much easier to take shortcuts that way, which may hinder learning. I think after you have the intuitive stroke order down the difficult task is actually envisioning the kanji in your head before you write it. Writing is trivial compared to that.
Though a lot of the time I just feel overwhelmed now with the more difficult kanji plus lots of reviews and want to get through them fast 
.
EDIT: Oh, few years turned out to be four years. Where did the time go? Have been able to keep it a daily habit at least!
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