When I joined this forum last spring, I wrote some goals and mostly ignored them in favor of just doing what I was doing, so this year I would like to focus more on accomplishing my goals. Not that I really mind, a lot of my goals were “read specific book” and I just read other things, so, luckily, I was more para-productive than counterproductive.
Goal 1: Work on listening
That being said, I almost completely ignored my goal to get more experience listening to the language so my A Number One goal would be to incorporate listening more. Right now, I have a couple of concrete ways to do this.
- I would like to finish watching the Natsume’s Book of Friends anime. Over the past two years, I’ve managed to watch the first two seasons (an incredible pace, I know). There is kinda a time limit on this goal because I don’t really care to subscribe to Crunchyroll anymore so I would have to do this before the end of spring I think.
- Read along with the Moribito audiobooks. I have read the first two books in the series and so I’d like to start with them. I will probably read each book first and then listen and read along just because my reading speed is substantially slower than the narration. I could always try and change that with some of the later books in the series too.
- Finish watching a game stream. I think at the end of summer or beginning of fall I started watching a vod of a skyrim playthough. I’ve managed to watch 3 videos (so like 8 or 9 hours), but I’m really inconsistent with it. I think it’s partially that I still need to pay a lot of attention while watching so I can’t really multi-task like I would listening to an English podcast or something, but also its so much more language sparse than reading that I rarely pick it as a thing to do.
- Play some video games. I started Octopath Traveler 2 a long time ago and went back to it in maybe October for an hour or so. It was pretty understandable and it felt like I was going through it at about the same pace as I would have in English (a little slower when larger text boxes describing game mechanics popped up) so I feel like a long RPG with voice acting might be nice. I also have the Voice of Cards series. I started one of them over a year ago and made a bit of progress, but eventually I dropped it. It’s kinda annoying to play these games now because I switched to a macbook a while ago so I’d have to dig out my old computer but these games also had nice voice acting to go alongside the game.
Goal 2: Extensive Reading
I recently subscribed to the Gunzou magazine for a year (got my first issue on the 24th of Dec.), so I would like to have read all the issues cover to cover. I’m kinda thinking this will cover most all my extensive reading for the year; there are a lot of different authors and different genres so I think it will be a good use of it (and I can always go back for a more in-depth read of the stories that I really like). I didn’t realize how large each magazine was, so I’m not super certain I will meet this goal, but I hope to at least get a good way through.
Goal 3: Intensive Reading
Reading. I don’t really have a concrete thing like read 20 books this year or anything. I think I would like to read more things in English this year. Last year I read a couple books, but because I spent so much time reading Japanese books, I feel a bit stunted to be honest. I’d also like to spend a bit of time brushing up on grammar and maybe diving in a bit more deeply. I think a big thing for me will be to not read long books anymore. I’d like to be able to finish a book in a week of effort. Luckily I have a few books lined up that are shorter. Some specific books are:
- 私の話 by 鷺沢萠
- 噂の娘 by 金井美恵子
- ジャッカ・ドフニ－海の記憶の物語 by 津島佑子
The last two are longer than I would like and also I stylistically harder, but I think maybe by next October I will be able to read them at a decent pace.
For language studies I would like to read 初級を教える人のための日本語文法のハンドブーク and 中上級を教える人のための日本語文法のハンドブーク. I’m mostly looking to read these books so I don’t get stuck at the intermediate “I know enough of what’s happening to comfortably miss a ton of what’s happening” stage. I might also try going through the shin kanzen reading and grammar books for N2 & N1 because I am a sicko who likes taking quizzes and tests.
Goal 4: Translation Practice
I’d like to put more practice into translating. I already do it a bit (like maybe a short section of whatever I’m reading), so I guess I’m thinking of maybe expanding this. Like with listening goal, I have some concrete goals.
- I’d like to have a full translation of something novella length and have it be better than mediocre. Or I guess a better way to put it would be that I would like to be able to justify all the decisions I made as a translator and in general to not be too unhappy with any particular section. To be honest, this will be pretty tough.
- I’d also like to start translating the Moribito series for my nephew. For his birthday, I got him the two books that were translated and he really liked them, so I hope to be able to give him one or two more by his next birthday in December. I think it would be fun to mail him a chapter or two every month. I think this will mostly be a test of my time management skills (not to say that translating this will be e-z-p-z but the audience will be one person who won’t be that critical so I guess I’m thinking of it more like extensive translating practice or something).
- Keep on translating little sections of what I’m reading for use in tutoring. This is basically what I’m doing now, so unless things really get away from me, I don’t imagine I will have too much trouble with this.
How I plan on accomplishing these goals (hint: no idea)
Hmm, can’t really say that I feel much confidence here. I think I overloaded on goals a bit. A little while ago I set daily reminders on my computer that I could check off after reading (Japanese), reading (English), studying, or translating for an hour. It hasn’t really helped because I get caught up on doing one thing for a longer period of time or because it can sometimes feel overwhelming so I don’t do much at all (especially after work). I think I might try to be more rigid with ticking those boxes for the first few weeks of the year, so I can figure out some sort of rhythm to get into. Also, maybe something to do would be to update my learning log at a fixed interval so that eventually the shame of writing “I didn’t do any listening” each week would drive me to action lol.
Thanks for reading me ramble as per usual and happy new years! *<:)
Objectives
Challenges
Tasks
Reading: Continue reading half an hour to an hour most days. I read 8 novels in 2025, I’ll see if I can up that to 12 in 2026. I’d like to at least start 夏目友人帳, 赤髪の白雪姫, 暁のヨナ, and 学園アリス this year as well. Less tangible goals include relying less on furigana and start reading manga with no furigana. 
I’d also like to change that I feel like my grammar is still really weak.
Reading
Watching
Vocab/Kanji
Grammar
