wk deck: done with level 37. I think I’ll add some cards from levels ahead this week and not start 38
still listening to 変な家 audiobook, as well as 時をかける少女 (audiobook + ebook). I want to keep focusing on manga for a bit, so I’ll probably pick another audiobook or audio drama when I am done with these two.
8 vols of manga.
read a bit of code_18 , still not done with the route
Stats
wk deck:37/45
manga: 32+8/75
books:7/6
This week I had a day I didn’t study for my minimum 1 hour for the first time in the year. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
I made some goals for german in the 2025 goals thread. I will track my german goals here again though it’s going to remain jp focused.
german stats
listening: 2/100 hours (started tracking yesterday)
books: 1/12 (1 non owned book, 0 owned books)
This week I had another day of <1 hour studying. I need to take care for this to not become a habit.
wk deck: I didn’t study any new cards. My relationship with anki is a cyclical love-hate one and I am in the “hate” phase right now. I just have to ride it out without making more work for myself. Soon enough I will think it is the best thing ever again.
Manga: so…I said I’m focusing on manga lately, and this is true. More specifically I want to read <level 25 manga on my list. The perhaps faulty logic for this is as follows: these are manga I want to read, and the better I get at japanese the “less” I will get out of simpler manga. So the best time to read them are now. I will continue doing this for a while but I think I also need to work with some harder stuff…
I am joining the ミーナの行進 book club so that could fill the spot of “harder thing to read”. I looked at the first few pages and yep definitely will take me a while to get through it. I hope I can keep up with the club.
no progress on 時をかける少女 because along with the audiobook this is my book to read while in a noisy room, and it hasn’t been necessary for the past week.
変な家 finished audiobook. Definitely helped that I knew the story from the manga already (I would recommend the manga over the novel).
code_18: finished the third route. 2 routes left. I changed my ocr setup so I can make anki cards, which made me a bit more excited to continue this. (if anyone is curious i now user owocr + jl)
This week was stressful for personal reasons. I think I did study the min 1 hr amount everyday but to be honest I didn’t track as strictly as usual.
wk deck: same as last week more or less, I did add the vocab from level 38 which had kanji from earlier levels but that’s it.
Listened to yuri cd drama lilycle, because I wanted some easy listening in a busy week. And well, it was easy listening like I expected. But it was also utterly dull. The most interesting part was the voice actors talking at the end, and I don’t really have a strong interest in those generally. The other cds follow different couples, so maybe I’ll still check them out since theyre all 1 hour anyway and it’s a good backup option when I can’t get anything more mentally taxing done.
started persona 3 portable, and at some point switched to japanese just to see what it was like. It felt surprisingly doable.
Watched a few eps of various anime. I dropped Canaan because it just didn’t live up to my memory of it.
I wasn’t much in the headspace to read this week I guess, only 2 vols of manga.
Started “properly” and read the first chapter. A lot of sentences where I have to look up 3-5 words. Not going great.
no significant progress on code_18, though I did read a bit.
Anyway lastly I want to add a new section of monthly goals. This is less about actual language learning and more about finishing stuff I start, really. Especially for shows, I tend to forget I’m in the middle of things.
things to do next month
finish do it yourself anime (only a couple eps left)
finish chainsawman rewatch in jp (only 1 ep in but should be easy since it’s both a rewatch and I read the manga.)
finish yugioh gx manga (2 vols left)
finish ハッピーシュガーライフ (9 vols left)
finish 4th route of code_18
finish the german book from my shelf I’m reading that I’ve been ignoring for 5 months
yeah, that’s how I know of it, a friend who likes it mentioned it was based on the drama cds. I didn’t play it and if it’s the same tone as the first drama, probably not my thing.
started wk level 38. honestly still kind of in the “hate” phase of the anki cycle but my reviews were low enough that I might as well
finished 時をかける少女. Trying to find my next ebook + audio pick, they either didn’t hold my interest or, in 成瀬は天下を取りにいく case the audiobook was faaar to fast even on 0.9x speed I frequently have to pause, it’d be easier to read it without audio. I listened to a bit of 安達としまむら and it seems much easier (it helps that i am familiar with the anime though…) so I think I’ll pick that.
keeping up with ミーナの行進
code_18: about halfway through the current route, I really would like to finish it next week.
read 5 manga vols
watched a few eps of anime, as well as the usual youtube.
de
listening: i keep underestimating how annoying it is for me to track this. I stopped it once again. Besides 100 hours untill the mid point of the year was probably very unrealistic, considering I’m still focusing on jp.
books 1/12
I generally find audiobooks, even in japanese, way too slow so this was a bit shocking to me. I would have loved this speech in english though since I always speed it up. It’s good to know it wasn’t just me that found it too fast.
There is also an abridged version of the book as an audiobook, which is more like an audio drama. Though I want to read the full text so I didn’t really try that version. Since audiobooks in jp still seem relatively rare (compared to big english language publishers where books are almost guranteed to have one) I was surprsed there are two versions.
mostly done with wk level 38. 3 kanji and a bunch of vocab left.
Reading/Listening 安達としまむら (a bit harder than I anticipated) and reading ミーナの行進
code_18: finished the 4th route and on the last route now. I have made this my priority so it can be done before I leave for vacation next month. This route is finally plot heavy so I’m enjoying it much more. Hopefully done by next update? We’ll see.
read only 1 vol of manga. I’m enjoying ハッピーシュガーライフ more than I thought I would, but it’s not something I like to binge.
Finished Do It Yourself, thoguh the amount I actually watched this week was only 1 episode. It was ok.
Honestly when I look back it feels like I didn’t do much, though I did do my daily 1 hour. It’s probably because I focused on code_18 most.
stats
jp
wk deck:37/45
manga: 53+1 /75
books: 9/6
de
books 1/12 (but I finally am reading the book from my bookshelf!!)
Had a day where I didn’t study at all (besides reviews which I forced myself to go through) this week, I was sleep deprived and trying to read or watch jp was not an option as I couldn’t focus. I think that makes 3 days total so far this year.
finished wk level 38, started 39. Finally loving anki again. The cycle continues
Finished code_18!! This was my main priority. This also marks my first full length vn that I finished (as opposed to short 2-3 hour ones). It definitely got easier as I kept reading. This was a work I wanted to read for ages so even thoguh I didn’t love it I’m happy. Also one of my goals for the year was to finish 1 vn and it is done.
Still continuing with 安達としまむら and ミーナの行進. I only finished the latters portion for last week this morning. Although I’m also considering whether I should just give up on that one, as there are too many lookups and it’s going way too slow. The book club also has polls to up the pace every other week, and honestly regardless of the result it’s kind of also not making me want to continue.
manga: 1 volume only again. Not a big deal just doing other things.
watched some chainsaw man and youtube
oh and I guess I never updated but, I switched persona 3 back to english a while ago (about 10 hours in) because I realized just how long the game was. I already am a slow gamer, I don’t want to make it even slower for myself there is too much I want to play for that. Still it was a good experience and I definitely want to try again for a shorter game.
Also I tried to try out the condensed audio approach I’m still not sure about it, I only started it yesterday.
condensend audio talk
Basically, it’s taking an anime(or tv show/movie/video) audio and condensing in to dialogue only to listen on repeat. I had heard this being recommended (under this name and others) a lot. Generally, repetition is a good approach to language learning I agree with that much. But it always seems so painfully boring. Still , I decided I want to try it out because there are times I have the opportunity to listen to something but don’t want to listen to an (english/german) audiobook for whatever reason, and jp podcasts tend to either be boring or way above my level. So it might be a good choice to at least try out.
I started with chainsaw man and listened to the episodes I watched that day again during a workout session. It was … fine. But I already had pretty high comprehension of those eps from watching it before (twice) and also reading the manga. I did spot a few words that I looked up while watching with jp subs. But most of it was already comprehensible to start with. Maybe it’d be more useful to listen to it a few days down to line.
It also might be more useful to do this with something I have lower comprehension of, though I don’t want to start something that I know I will have low comprehension either since I don’t watch a lot of anime.
Next thing I’m going to try is to make condensed audio for anime I am watching with friends. I watch those with english subs because we stream them together, and I end up mostly focusing on that over audio. Turning those into learning materials might be useful. Or maybe not, I’ll report back next week, I guess.
Well this week was… not what you’d call productive.
Not only did I drop ミーナの行進, I also noticed a general lack of motivation. Not as severe as to be called burnout but, not super excited to do anything. To make this not turn into real burnout, I decided for this week, I’d not track at all and only do what I want to, when I want to, if I want to. I immediately felt excited to start some vns I meant to after code_18, which made me realize I was treating ミーナの行進 like an obligation. Meanwhile 安達としまむら and ハッピーシュガーライフ are both series I enjoy, but I just wesn’t in the mood for either.
Well so far so good, but the same evening I made this decision my pc died. This made me not want to do anything at all. I could technically go back and read manga or watch more chainsaw man, but I was just in a bad mood and anxious over how much I would need to pay to get it fixed.
Well, it was fixed on saturday, luckily. However by friday I had developed a weird pain in my eye, and tried limit my screen time.
So what does that leave me with.
the only thing I did consistently were my anki reviews
Finished level 39 and started 40. I guess not doing any other jp made me go somewhat faster in anki. This made me think maybe I should count anki towards my goal time of 1 hour to not subconsciously rush through At least, I will count it for a while because of circumstances next month.
I went through all my mined deck and removed/edited low quality cards, cards I don’t feel like I want to learn now etc. This increased my mined card review load (which I normally tried to keep low) but I now only have around 30 new cards, which is great. Ideally I would want to study cards shortly after encountering and mining them, so I want to have a short queue.
Did some of the condensed audio strategy in my last comment. I don’t know how useful it is, but I want to keep on a little more since It seems like the kind of thing you would need to do for a while to see effects, and I wasn’t that consistent this week. Though right now my instinct is that this is probably more useful for beginner level. But I listen to it during “dead time” anyway so no loss.
Inbetween the time frame of my pc getting fixed and me deciding to cut down on screen time, I read a bit of … ネコぱら of all things. This was not one of the vns I was excited to get to, but I wanted something lightweight and something I can take with me to vacation that won’t need the whole ocr setup. However, I don’t think I will bother since I was too bored with it.
This morning my eyes felt ok and I read a bit of 処刑少女の生きる道 and it was much more comprehensible than last time I tried. However I don’t really want to start a new series. So I think I will continue マリア様3 or pick a standalone book instead.
Next month is shaping up to be a weird hectic time, so not sure how much time I will have overall.
stats
jp
wk deck:39/45
manga: 55/75
books:9/6
vns: 1/1
days not studied for 1 hour min: i think its like 8 at this point or so. I think my personal goal was under 10 days but well… I did give myself a free week so I accepted this even before everything else
de
books 1+2/12. finished a book from my shelf which counts for 2 points. still quite a bit behind on this one but there is hope.
This week was basically the continuation of last weeks lassitude. I didn’t track this week either. On sunday I was on the road, but kind of have no excuse for the rest of the week. For next week (and some time beyond), I’m on vacation with family, but reasonably I should still find enough time.
Mostly focused on anki again, with mixed results:
Focused on wk deck and really wanted to finish level 40 this week but, my retention rate went waaay down probably because I was going too fast. I’m about 2/3 through level 40 i think no new cards foor a while
Probably more than my main deck what increased my mental load was my secondary mined deck because I really wanted to decrease my new card queue. I succeeded at that and currently have only about 10 new cards. The main deck aside, I am happy with this.
Generally when I burn out on anki a bit, it means I should focus more on immersion, so I hope to track properly again this week.
Most of my immersion this week was vns. I read about 1 hour of ふゆから、くるる before pausing it to continue when I’m back home. Also despite stopping last week, I read more of ネコぱら, frankly it’s extremely boring but it’s an easy read so when not feeling like “proper” studying it was easy to reach to. Also it was weirdly fun to talk about how odd the series is with a friend. In the end I skimmed through the final part in English but read about 2-3 hours in jp if I had to guess?
I watched some JP youtube as well as read read some marimite3/adashima and one or two chapters of manga. But all in all not much.
Joined a server mentioned by @暁のルナ over in her log, and wrote a very simple jp introduction there, which wouldn’t be noteable if that wasn’t the first time I wrote in jp in memory I didn’t check the server out further yet.
also did more of condensed audio listening btu I really don’t even count this. More thoughts on this
condensed audio
I don’t think it’s useless, but I think it’s probably less useful to listening to music while paying attention to lyrics lol.
Well, it’s probably quite useful to beginners to get used to the rhythm of the language and picking out individual words.
While it does reminds me of words I newly encountered I already mined them , so it feels unnecessary.
The reason I say it’s probably less useful than lyrics is that since songs are shorter you can repeat them more often, and assuming you like the song it’s also less boring.
I tried it for chainsaw man (a show im rewatching in jp) and strawberry panic ( a simpler show i recently watched with a friend with en subtitles)
I since I didn’t mine the latter it did feel more useful, I def got lost a few times on what’s going on even if briefly, even though it’s quite simple vocab wise.
Despite being negative above, I think I might continue to do this with shows I keep watching with friends, to test myself on listening. The reason being, that the times I listen to this audio are already whenI don’t want to listen to anything requiring more attention.
Last section , I talked a bit about the month goals last time. But it’s time to check in and set new ones
monthly goals
finish do it yourself anime (only a couple eps left)
finish chainsawman rewatch in jp (only 1 ep in but should be easy since it’s both a rewatch and I read the manga.) just halfway through
finish yugioh gx manga (2 vols left)
finish ハッピーシュガーライフ (9 vols left) on vol 6
finish 4th route of code_18 not only did I finish the route, finished the whole thing
finish the german book from my shelf I’m reading that I’ve been ignoring for 5 months done!
This went not how I expected I really thought I’d be least likely to finish code_18.
Anyway, next month is a bit unsure but I still want to set goals.
Carryovers:
finish ハッピーシュガーライフ → still reading this but I’m changing the goal to finish or catch up with a manga.
finish chainsawman rewatch in jp
new:
Finish a book! probably adashima.
Finish the hsk level 1 section on superchinese. I don’t plan on making many mandarin goals, but this one I almost accomplished anyway, and I think once I’ve done that I can make a proper check in on where I really am with it (not far! but it might be nice to look back on eventually).
Finish another german book.
Goal stats are same as last week
jp
wk deck:39/45
manga: 55/75
books:9/6
vns: 1/1
I did start tracking 1 hour again, though I failed on saturday to hit it.
Wanikani deck: still level 40. I am done with the L40 kanji but some vocab left.
Mined deck is going fine. Both still have lower retention than I would like but forgetting is part of learning and all that.
Watched some chainsaw man (w jp subs) and doremi sharp (no subs).
Manga : 1 volume
Read more of adashima. I stopped using the audiobook since constantly needing to pause it slows me down. I’m listening to the audiobook after I read a section. Currently about halfway through. Also read a bit of marimite3
Small Mandarin Goal Update:
I finished all the hsk1 units on superchinese, but failed the test to get to hsk2 levels. I am not too surprised by that, since I definitely didn’t feel like I fully absorbed everything. I got 71 percent, which equals to 2 stars, and to pass I need 4 stars (max amount). I’m not sure what the cut off point for 4 stars is. I think I’m going to do the same content on the other apps I have for mandarin. Then try again.
jp
wk deck:39/45
manga: 55+1/75
books:9/6
vns: 1/1 (I guess like 1.5 if you count nekopara)
I do that a lot I’ve mostly hung out in the otaku channel, which has been like a little discussion and mostly recommendations, a few of which I might not have come across otherwise
I’ve hit that frustration in the past as well, and concluded that I should probably only use audiobooks for things where I don’t have to (or won’t) stop.
What do you think of that author’s style, and how do you the the difficulty compares to マリみて? I’ve read 2 of his other books (reviewed one) and found them enjoyable enough, but a bit obtuse.
The reason I do the listen while reading thing is because I often have to read in noisy environments. Though I found ambient noise can work as well. But I think I underestimated adashimas difficulty because I already watched the anime. I didn’t expect I would have to look up much.
So far I’d say adashima is slightly easier. Marimite is more descriptive (and sometimes more poetic/flowery), while adashima focuses more on characters internal thoughts. I guess it would depend on which of those you find harder. Style wise I like the close focus on characters mindsets and how sometimes they drift off in their head on tangents, it feels relatable. Though I’m not sure if that’s how the author writes in general or if it’s relevant to this work only.
The book you reviewed is probably not for me, as if I read that sort of age gap romance I’d either want it to be realistic, or very dramatic/toxic
Hi. Are there free audiobooks available and where do you find/listen to them? I like the idea of something relatively simple where I don’t need to pause to look up…
I’m still not sure about it, I only started it yesterday.
just halfway through