finish an anime (or equivalent amount of time) Finished 彼方のアストラ (also wrote a review)
finish a german book Finished 2, one physical (which was super short) and one audiobook (which was a novella…) not my proudest pass but I’ll take it
DON’T study any new cards for the WK deck
Goals were pretty simple on purpose, but still a bit surprised that I did everything, it feels like I didn’t do any jp study.
Unfortunately things are still really hectic and most annoyingly I don’t have access to my main PC where most of my materials are. Things should improve in a week or 10 days or so but it makes me hesitatant to set big goals.
The silver lining is my cat didn’t have another health scare with the move which is what I was most worried about. The thing I’m 2nd most worried about is whether my pc suffered any damage during the move but I still can’t check this.
With all that in mind… Goals for August:
Finish Level 41 of WK (preferably more but let’s start slow)
Keep up with book clubs
付き合ってあげてもいいかな for Yuri club. I’m (just barely) on track for this.
百合オタに百合はご法度です! ? for Class-S club. At least 1 vol but probably all 3
Memories off for VN Club. At least 1 route, but hopefully more
Also want to join 乙嫁語り for 癒し系 club, but first I need access to my pc so I can mokuro it
roughly ~24 eps worth of anime because I am starting to notice my listening lagging behind and there is a lot of anime I want to watch and I seem to never do this without an extra push.
return to reading Marimite3 and finish it
Finish the current season of one of the german dubbed shows I’m watching
I want to update my yearly goals as well but I think I will do this after August at this point.
Well I spoke too early about our cat being fine. We noticed bald spots and skin irritation so taking to the vet later today hopefully. We contacted her old vet and she gave some advice.
Nothing much to report this week. Started adding cards from level 41 of wk.
Keeping up with 付き合ってあげてもいいかな and I’ll start the class s club pick today.
I tried to watch some german stuff but I think the reason I didn’t complete these tv shows is simply that I do not care. It is realy not my prefered medium lol…I will start some new stuff though we’ll see…
I got my pc set up and my cat is on meds and seems much better. Things finally have some semblance on normalcy. Except that I was really depressed the past 3-4 days and even forgot to update here because of it.
Somehow I ended up deciding to run a jp manga book club for my own friend group. Idk how well it will go esp since the levels of jp varies a lot. We will start next month though. At least, since I already read the manga that ended up being chosen it won’t be much extra work.
WK: about halfway through level 41. For the first time in 1.5 years I didn’t do my reviews yesterday because I was feeling awful.
I decided to abandon the mined deck completely for now. Catching up with it is just needless stress for me rn. I’d rather spend more time on my main deck instead.
Nothing much else to talk about. Not a great week on a personal level. I think I read some manga but it feels like a bit of a blur right now. Read some of かがみの孤城 I guess I’ll try to finish this instead of marimite2. Also started Memories offf.
stats: unchanged but copying for convenience.
jp:
wk deck: 40/45
manga: 80/100
books: 10/12
vns: 1/2
What manga are you guys going to read? I’d love to have an irl JP book club with my friends; the selection choices expand considerably when you’re not limited to EN.
The 変な家 manga adaptation. Though this isn’t irl for me, unfortunately I don’t know any jp learners irl, though I have a friend who learns korean and german.
You already know how the first half of my week went
WK: done with kanji cards and around 30 vocab cards left in the level. Busy next week so I am not in a rush to add them right away.
read more かがみの孤城 and Memories Off.
Oddly the former feels easier even though if I look at the vocab it probably should be harder. I think its a psychological effect or something. Like reading vn style only one line at a time makes me stop and overthink. Also might be the ocr’ing that annoys me? I switched back to yomininja after it got updated (from owocr + JL) and maybe having to stop and ocr is also making it feel harder as opposed to the owocr setup where its automatic? It’s frustrating how such small things can make a difference.
Catching up with various manga clubs. I don’t think I am built for reading multiple manga at once I really prefer focusing on 1-2 things at once I am enjoying all of them though.
I really feel like I can’t dedicate enough time to see any real progress lately. It’s very frustrating. But complaining to people lower level than me feels like humblebragging and complaining to people higher level than me feels like whining lol… Anyway, not like complaining solves anything.
This is my least favorite thing about VNs. You could always press a few lines at a time, and then read the backlog or something - but that’s still kinda iffy
Why the switch? Constant stopping and starting definitely adds to fatigue for me. I hadn’t heard of owocr before. Maybe I’ll try it next time I’m playing something on PC
I’m finding I prefer this a lot more as well… But sometimes ADHD or too many book clubs happens 笑
Nah, feel free to complain. Also I think it can sometimes be helpful/motivating for ppl at lower levels to see what ppl at higher levels struggle with… But depends on the person.
And I’d imagine ppl at a higher level probably struggled with similar stuff, and can sympathize.
(Tho I have that same feeling as well)
Mm, I think it’s helpful sometimes - maybe you have a realization, or just getting it off your chest helps with motivation.
Otoh I often tell myself “if I have time to complain, I have time to practice vocab or something instead”. Tbh sometimes I feel like I shouldn’t be posting, bc I take a long time writing things, and it’s “not efficient” (I could be reviewing or reading instead)… But I’m also the sorta person who finishes multiple things and goes “I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything lately”… So admittedly I’m probably a bit warped
I think that would hamper my enjoyment. I really like vns as a medium and it’s a big motivator for me to learn japanese. So I think that’s just something I have to get over.
Because owocr is also a hassle in a slightly different way it’s a command line tool and you have to set it up for each launch with the parameters you want and then launch JL on top of it. While Yomininja you can just launch and you’re done. It’s basically the question of whether I want to deal with a minor annoyance each time I need to look up, or a moderate annoyance at launch. If I know I don’t have much time to read especially, yomininja just feels more convenient…
I will try again with it though to see if it improves my experience.
Here is the command I use in case it’s useful for anyone.
Here is what the end result looks like (you can customize JLs separately like appearance and dictionaries)
What this does: automatically captures text from the window specified every 3 seconds and puts it on your clipboard. You need a seperate tool to read from clipboard like JL
If you don’t specify the area it launches an area selector and you can select the specific part of the screen you want, which can be useful, but I like to move my window around so I prefer window name.
Every 3 seconds can be a bit slow since vns can have quite short dialogue as well or it can capture before the dialogue is over so it has only half the text and you have to wait an extra 3 seconds for it to complete. There is an option to shorten the delay but I don’t remember it, and figured it probably isn’t worth it to increase the ocr traffic 2x for these instances.
edit: checked the help menu, the command is --screen_capture_delay_secs=SCREEN_CAPTURE_DELAY_SECS
I enjoy your posts! But I understand, even though I don’t write as much as you, I feel the same way sometimes. I feel like talking about how to learn a language instead of learning a language is a common pitfall But it’s also natural to want to talk about it and useful to both others and myself, I think.
Absolutely yes, but I also think it’s part of what fosters community, which is also necessary for sustained motivation…so for me it’s a balancing act (which right now I should really get to the other side of the scale )
That’s fair. I do think it’s a good challenge, in terms of comprehension. Like you have to really be sure you get every sentence, moreso than reading a regular novel
Idk what JL is, but gotcha. I might give it a try then. I already have bash open half the time anyway… well, not as much as I used to
That does seem a bit nicer
Thx! I guess I should know that already, but it’s nice to hear it
Indeed… Tho I don’t think any of us are in that category here. We all do plenty of learning - as evidenced in our study logs
I enjoy your posts as well, for what it’s worth. Like @shitsurei said, it fosters a sense of community, and it’d be so boring to ask someone what they’ve been up to and all you get back is “I’ve been studying flashcards”.
I was originally supposed ot have much more free time this week (the week starting todday) but some stuff got postponed so this will be another busy week.
As for last week.
Fİnished level 41
I’ve been thinking lately about WK deck. I do think it is still useful to me, but I’m not sure if I am not at the point of diminishing returns for a premade deck like this. Or at least, change my approach with it. I don’t think it helps me much with vocab, esp vocab I don’t encounter in my reading they just turn into leeches. On the other hand, it’s basically impossible for me to recall kanji without targeted studying with wk. I have been using some tactics to hammer in vocab leeches which ARE useful but also time consuming. Maybe I will just suspend them since my primary use of this deck is just to build some base for the kanji, individual vocab is just supposed to help with that.
Read a bunch of かがみの孤城 and Memories Off.
Enjoying the former. The latter has its ups and downs. Definitely a case of “I’d enjoy this more if it didn’t take so long!!”, but also not something I’d normally pick up (as evidenced by this being the only non-yuri in my nominations for the vn club)
Read a few chapters for various manga book clubs. I’m enjoying all of them! But I think I will be more mindful to not join a bunch at once from now on.
the fact I didn’t finish a full volume for 2 months now is a bit concerning hahahah… Once the scheduled book clubs are done I’ll probably focus on finishing up 百合オタ and then on the longer 付き合ってあげてもいいかな. 乙嫁語り I’ll probably shelve for a while. I generally don’t read ongoing series.
One thing I am neglecting is my goal for anime in theory I should be able to catch up quickly but in practice it’s the last thing I reach for, even though I am enjoying my current shows.
I’d definitely suspend them if I were you. Better to use the energy for stuff you’re getting it have higher need for. You can pick up the suspended words sometime later down the line, if they matter.
Dunno if you wanna join our informal club, but a few of us are reading it at our own pace
I only have threads for part one, but I’m happy to make more/you’re welcome to make them yourself if you want to comment on something past that. We have a few people who have already read it and are just there for discussion, so you’d still get some comments I’d imagine.
Ah I have not.
Despite “running” the club I haven’t actually started the book yet. It’s at the top of my list as soon as I finish my last (scheduled) book club read for this week.
パパのセクシードール which was ok…
it’s a command line tool and you have to set it up for each launch with the parameters you want and then launch JL on top of it. While Yomininja you can just launch and you’re done. It’s basically the question of whether I want to deal with a minor annoyance each time I need to look up, or a moderate annoyance at launch. If I know I don’t have much time to read especially, yomininja just feels more convenient…
so this will be another busy week.
Once the scheduled book clubs are done I’ll probably focus on finishing up 百合オタ and then on the longer 付き合ってあげてもいいかな. 乙嫁語り I’ll probably shelve for a while. I generally don’t read ongoing series.
in theory I should be able to catch up quickly but in practice it’s the last thing I reach for, even though I am enjoying my current shows.