In 2022 I read 19 (light) novels. In 2023 it was 24. I’ll end 2024 with only 8. I did have quite a bit less time for Japanese this year, but I’m still not very happy with that number. I suspect part of it might be due to me no longer having any specific milestones to progress towards when it comes to Japanese.
In 2022 I aimed for the December N2, in 2023 it was the December N1, and they both pushed me to try a little harder. But ever since passing the N1 I haven’t really had any specific goals. I do (sort of) want to attempt a perfect score on the N1 for the heck of it, but that’s still years down the road.
So, here I am, setting a goal for 2025 in hopes of it giving me some extra motivation. I didn’t want to set a goal like hitting a certain number of books, pages or characters, but I have something else that I’ve been wanting to do pretty much ever since I started learning Japanese: Read 幼女戦記. I’m not entirely convinced I’ll like the light novel, but I watched the anime when it first aired back in 2017 and have rewatched it a couple times since, always enjoying it.
So, my goal for 2025: Read a volume of 幼女戦記, without it being painfully difficult.
That might not seem like large enough of a goal for an entire year—after all I could probably just slog through the first few volumes and then the later ones would be easy’ish—but I’d like to get there by reading progressively more difficult books with similar vocabulary, slowly building up the difficulty. Hopefully this will result in me reading more in 2025 as well.
On that note: Does anyone know any books that overlap with 幼女戦記 in terms of vocabulary, have an audiobook and are a bit easier?
