Goals & Plans 2025 + Review 2024

[Pashmina]

My ADHD brain needs a checklist… It doesn’t like me writing down ‘ git gud’

[mitrac]

reply to bungakushoujo about German resources

@bungakushoujo

Or an advanced grammar book like “B Grammatik” or “C Grammatik” (these are my favorites) should have a list.

I have the B Grammartik! Those books are fantastic, and you are right, it does have a list. I think I just got a bit discouraged that it didn’t feel like it was helping my irl German, but I’m feeling renewed motivation to tackle them in a different way now - I’ll try your idea of using it as something to increase my awareness.

[seanblue]

@暁のルナ

I just read through the Amazon preview for 紡ぐ, and I’m confused… Besides the random signs, it doesn’t seem that hard? Maybe just cuz it’s not far in? Idk I might give it a proper try soon

It’s because it takes place in the Taishou era. Some characters use outdated words and it touches on the political/social hierarchy of the era.

[Squintina]

Do it! I’d say focus on something you legitimately think you can stick to. After all, you can always make a new “year end” goal halfway through the year if your 2025 goal is completed it too early!

[gillianfaith]

Back in early 2020, I travelled across Japan hitting every BOOKOFF I could find, and brought home 20+ kids’ books and 30+ old video games as content to study with… which then went almost completely untouched for the next 4 years. So I only had a single Japanese goal for 2024:

2024

• Start reading

And I passed with flying colours! Not only did I start reading in Japanese, but I continued to read steadily all year (~once/week), and reduced my 2020 book pile by more than half

–

2025

• Finish reading my 2020 book pile (3 chapter books, 6 manga volumes)
• Finish something from my 2020 game pile
• 100 days read
• Score a bingo in the 2025 reading challenge
• Finish watching 5 series

Very modest goals, but the first one is the only one I’m sure I can meet (… as long as Natively adds re-read support so I can retry 十二秘色のパレット 第1巻 | L22 and stop putting off reading the other 5 volumes). I did find joy in reading in 2024, but I read veryyyyyy slowly, and I don’t like reading with other people around, so I’ve only really been willing to sit down and read in the mornings on days off before my roommates get up, which limits my potential a lot. I’ll need to also start reading on workdays to make a significant difference in my number of days read and how many books I can get through, so I’ll have to experiment with ways to make that comfortable… I can’t see myself ever getting used to reading in bed, but that may be my only option short of exiling my roommates whenever I want to pick up a book

[xnd521]

2024 Goals
1830 hours of immersion and study - Completed

2025 Goals

• 1825 hours of immersion and study
• Watch 12 Japanese dramas with Japanese subtitles
• Complete my TBR — 5 hardcopy and 13 e-books which I had purchased in 2024

頑張りましょう！

Revised TBR from 18 e-books to 13 e-books as I’ve completed 5 e-books recently.

[mitrac]

@gillianfaith

2024

• Start reading

And I passed with flying colours! Not only did I start reading in Japanese, but I continued to read steadily all year (~once/week), and reduced my 2020 book pile by more than half

wow congrats, that must be so satisfying!

[urikk2npg]

2024 Goals
Nothing particularly concrete, but I wanted to get back into Japanese, and read.
I definitely did that, with the help of natively.

I also passed N2 in the summer, which wasn’t really an original goal, but was nice to have completed.

2025 Goals
Main one with to read as much as I read in 2024.

I’d also like to make some progress towards N1, and maybe even take it. I don’t have any particular need for it, so I’m not going to push too hard on this, but I think having it somewhere on the horizon is a good motivator.

Within reading, I think I’ll have a goal to SSRS vocab (e.g. jpdb) on 3-4 books, before reading them. I’ve got a bit out of the habit of SSRS, but I feel like I would benefit a lot from a bit of a vocab boost.

[araigoshi]

2024 Goals Review and 2025 Goals First Draft

Some of you have probably seen this already as I posted the same in my Wanikani study log.

2024 Overview

So one of the big things this year was I got into Japanese immersion in a big way. It’s sort of a tradition in these logs to do a big spread of what you’ve done in the last year so here goes:

(colour code: green = anime, brighter green = anime movies, light pink = manga, purple = novels)

Also I hit Wanikani level 60! I started the year at like level 30ish, so the second 30 levels were a little slower than the first 30, but overall a pretty fast pace.

In general I spent about 600 hours on Japanese this year:

(note the “total” here is starting in November 2023, when I started recording these stats, hence only being a little higher than the yearly stats)

Goal #1: Reading 30 52 Manga Volumes

This was one goal that seemed pretty challenging but achievable at the end of 2023 when I had read about 10 manga in 9 months. Needless to say I smashed that goal, extending it to 52 manga by February looking at the pace I was doing, and so far this year I’m on 57, even with the fact that I’ve mostly moved time away from manga to novels and games these last two months. I think it was good to build up a decent-ish variety of stuff from an entertainment point of view and to build up the reading muscles in a high-provided-context environment. Overall, this goal was a huge success.

Goal #2: Reading 5 novels

This was a stretch goal added in the middle of the year as I was getting into novel reading and wanted to motivate myself to do that. Also a big success, going from how hard 本好き volume 1 and セーラー服と機関銃 were to 本好き volume 4 being a much smoother exerience.

Goal #3: Do some listening

This was set really vaguely because I honestly was so early in my ability to listen to Japanese that I didn’t know what a good goal was. I banged my head against Log Horizon maybe too long in the beginning (though I did come back around later and manage it!), but I finally got some traction and now have been watching a decent amount of anime, so I think this goal is also a success.

Goal #4: Do the JLPT exam N3 exam

This didn’t happen, but for reasons of test availability rather than failing it. I’m honestly not too bummed about this, as I got my fix for measurable progress in immersion and judging by how quickly N4-N2 all filled up, I probably won’t bother with this next year either.

Goal #5: Finish 3 games in Japanese

I was undone by my attention span not lasting long enough for the type of games I want to play these days I played a decent amount of Persona 3, Yokai Watch, Digimon Surive and Ni No Kuni but haven’t finished any of them (well maybe I’ll get Ni No Kuni finished before the end of December, fingers crossed). I’m a little more disappointed in this goal.

2025 Goal Ideas

So here’s the idea for my 2025 goals so far. I’ll probably post a final goals post in the last few days of December, so this is more a draft than my final goals.

Read 52 manga volumes (again)

1 a week I think is a nice number to keep the reading habit up and also just to have a decent variety of material to fall back on so I don’t burn out by getting stuck in slowly going through novels. This isn’t really an expansion area, but it would be nice to repeat the feat.

Read 10 novels

A decent increase over last year, basically decided at one every month apart from december and whichever month I do summer vacation in. It’s a little bit of a stretch at my current pace of reading to fit it in with the other reading goal, but I hope like with the manga reading my progress gets faster over time.

Write a weekly diary in Japanese

I’m not setting a length goal here, so will probably start out at like 1-2 paragraphs, but just a regular commitment so I get more practice than when I drop into EJLX on a whim. Probably this will just be typed and posted here, but maybe I’ll give a go at handwriting some of it if I feel like it.

Listen to 250 hours of Japanese

I did 200 hours this year - I expect with SRS time slowing down with no more Wanikani lessons, I’ll be able to fit another 50 hours in. I also want to be a little stricter in making sure I understand stuff and rewind and go through things if I’m having trouble. Maybe I need to designate like 25% of the listening time for “intensive” listening.

Find a tutor and do some speaking practice

This is definitely my weakest quadrant of Japanese and as I said in my level 60 post, it would be nice to polish it up here and have it not make the rest of my Japanese skills look doubtful by how bad my speaking skills are.

Learn Hangul

This one I didn’t mention on Wanikani There’s no commitment that literally anything more will come of this, maybe I just leave it there and get to being able to sound out esports players names and the few korean thread titles on this forum, or maybe it just sits there, ready to be used in the future as my first attempt at learning kana did.

[暁のルナ]

@araigoshi

It’s sort of a tradition in these logs to do a big spread of what you’ve done in the last year so here goes:

Out of curiosity, how do you make spreads like that?

@araigoshi

I banged my head against Log Horizon maybe too long in the beginning (though I did come back around later and manage it!)

Impressive! I got through S1 subbed with constant translation checking, and don’t think I’d even attempt S2 without doing the jpdb deck at this point. (as an aside, アカツキ was one of the inspirations for my username, and my pfp did used to be her (or maybe that was just on WK?), tho I’ve switched it a few times since then)

Congrats on reaching your 3 goals

[araigoshi]

@暁のルナ

Out of curiosity, how do you make spreads like that?

The process is a little manual, but basically I downloaded the Natively list API response and images (well mostly I used the bookwalker images as some of the Natively images are poor quality) and ran this script I wrote:

generate-book-page.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# coding: utf-8

import json
from datetime import datetime
from pathlib import Path

def finished_in_2024(item):
    return (item['dateFinishedData'] != None 
            and item['dateFinishedData']['year'] == 2024)
    
def render_html_snippet(item):
    return f"""
    <figure class="item-{item['type']}">
        <img src="./{item['image']}">
        <figcaption>
            {item['name']} <span class="series-progress">({item['series_pos']} / {item['series_length']})</span>
            <p class="dates"><span class="started">{item['started']}</span> - <span class="ended">{item['finished']}</span><p>
        </figcaption>
    </figure>
    """

def parse_images_in_folder(folder):
    images = list(Path(folder).glob('*.jpg'))
    images.sort(key=lambda path: path.name.split('-')[0])
    return images

def generate_item_summary(item, item_type, index, images, series_cache):
    return {
        'image': str(images[index]),
        'series_pos': item['item'].get('seriesOrder', 1) or 1,
        'series_length': series_cache[item['item']['seriesId']]['numOfItems'] if item['item'].get('seriesId', None) else 1,
        'name': item['item']['title']
            .replace('【マンガ】本好きの下剋上~司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません~第一部 「本がないなら作ればいい! 」', '本好きの下剋上')
            .replace('【マンガ】本好きの下剋上~司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません~第一部 「本がないなら作ればいい」', '本好きの下剋上'),
        'started': datetime.fromtimestamp(item['dateStartedData']['timestampDate']).strftime('%Y-%m-%d'),
        'finished': datetime.fromtimestamp(item['dateFinishedData']['timestampDate']).strftime('%Y-%m-%d'),
        'type': item_type
    }

def generate_item_list(natively_export, item_type, natively_item_types=None):
    included_item_types = natively_item_types if natively_item_types else [item_type]
    items = [x for x in natively_export['results'] if finished_in_2024(x) and x['item']['mediaType'] in included_item_types]
    items.sort(key=lambda manga: manga['dateFinishedData']['timestampSeconds'] if 'dateFinishedData' in manga else 0)
    series_cache = natively_export['seriesCache']
    images = parse_images_in_folder(Path(item_type))
    return [
        generate_item_summary(item, item_type, index, images, series_cache)
        for index, item in enumerate(items)
    ]

natively_book_export = json.load(open('natively-book-export.json'))
natively_video_export = json.load(open('natively-video-export.json'))

manga = generate_item_list(natively_book_export, 'manga')
novels = generate_item_list(natively_book_export, 'novel', ['Light novel', 'light_novel', 'childrens_book', 'novel'])
movies = generate_item_list(natively_video_export, 'movie')
anime = generate_item_list(natively_video_export, 'anime', ['tv_season'])
items_to_render = [*manga, *novels, *anime, *movies]
items_to_render.sort(key=lambda item: item['finished'])

with open('formatted-output.json', 'w') as output_json:
    json.dump(items_to_render, output_json)

items_html = ''.join(render_html_snippet(item) for item in items_to_render)
with open('all-items.html', 'w') as all_output_html:
    style = """
                body {
                    display: grid;
                    grid-template-columns: repeat(10, 150px);
                    justify-content: center;
                    grid-gap: 0.5em;
                }
                figure {
                    margin: 0;
                    text-align: center;
                }
                .item-manga {
                    background: #f7eafa;
                }
                .item-novel {
                    background: #d9c1de;
                }
                .item-anime {
                    background: #c7dec1;
                }
                .item-movie {
                    background: #bce3b2;
                }
                figure img {
                    height: 200px;
                    aspect-ratio: keep;
                }
                span.series-progress {
                    font-size: 10px;
                    white-space: pre;
                }
                p.dates {
                    font-size: 10px;
                }

    """
    all_output_html.write(f"""
    <!doctype html>
    <html>
        <head>
            <title>Araigoshi's 2024 Reading</title>
            <style>
                {style}
            </style>
        </head>
        <body>
            {items_html}
        </body>
    </html>
    """)

(Note the images needed to be numbered in watch order)

That gave me a web page which I screenshotted.

[暁のルナ]

Ahhh, that’s totally an approach I was thinking of (tho I didn’t realize Natively had a list API)… tho I’d want to code out the part for getting the API response and swapping for bookwalker thumbnails too. Thx for sharing the script, and nice job on the code cleanliness

[araigoshi]

@暁のルナ

tho I didn’t realize Natively had a list API

There’s no public API, I just saved the API response from the private API the browser calls.

[暁のルナ]

Ohhh gotcha. I’ll have to look at that sometime

[araigoshi]

I made it a user script!

[UserScript] Natively Recap

I ported the code I used to generate my yearly recap to a user script so you can use it too if you want to try it out. It opens a page like this: [natively-recap] Caveats Absolutely nothing this uses is supported by Natively and may break at any time. I’ve only tested in Firefox I’ve only tested on my own profile, which is using Japanese content only. Installation & Usage Install TamperMonkey in your browser Install the user script from the greasy fork link It will add a new link to the…

[spaghettiman]

I did quite well reading wise and also finished my broader year goal of getting through the N2 and N1 Anki vocab decks, so now my only Anki that I’m adding to is really the yomichan deck that I mine words for.

I think my main goal next year is to add listening since I tend to neglect that, and to attempt to buy less books, but Honto has many coupons and the weak yen makes impulse buys so easy to justify.

[alexay7]

2024 Goals

I set 2 goals for myself this 2024:

1st: Finish 100 light novel volumes in total
I started the year with 20 LNs finished so that meant to read 80 LNs over the course of the year. I’m currently sitting at 99 and I’m planning to read the 100th tomorrow so I can consider this one achieved.

Edit: Goal achieved !

2nd: Read at least 1.000.000 characters every single month
This one was honestly pretty hard to achieve, would be way easier to achieve if the goal was “Read 12.000.000 characters over the year”, but that was not the case.

Until now I’ve been surprisingly passing the million mark every month:

• January: 2.199.373chrs
• February: 1.002.656chrs
• March: 1.341.788chrs
• April: 1.009.327chrs
• May: 1.576.908chrs
• June: 1.207.185chrs
• July: 1.622.381chrs
• August: 1.108.677chrs
• September: 1.001.026chrs
• October: 1.007.914chrs
• November: 1.000.256chrs
• December: 1.002.813chrs

So I still am 270k chars from reaching the goal but I think I will get that done.

Edit: Goal achieved !

2025 Goals

So the goals for 2024 were extremely painful and I found out I was limiting myself (for example if I was in the mood for watching an anime but the end of the month was close and I didn’t reach the million characters so I had to give up the idea) so I decided not to set any goals this year, just to enjoy as much as I can.

I do have kind of a goal which consists in reading the same amount of manga, light novels and visual novels but it does not have a time limit and is more like an excuse to try other media.

Current stats
LN: 11.389.102chrs
Manga: 25.230.953chrs
VN: 5.679.103chrs

So yeah, there is a long way ahead

I hope everyone to have a nice year 2025 and for you to achieve your goals

[ditto20]

I saw this thread mentioned on the wk forums and got curious and now I’ve ended up reading the whole thread, so at this point I figure I may as well post my goals here too (with some non-Japanese goals added)

I don’t really use natively for Japanese, but

Japanese

Read 30 books - I usually read just below that many but I haven’t read as much this year, so I figure I may as well set it as an actual goal
Read 50 manga volumes - I have some manga I want to read too, so why not?
Read 5 vns - I’ve been reading visual novels a bit more recently so I’ll probably want to continue with that.
Maybe also play 5 non-vn games in Japanese? (this is honestly also basically just me taking something I did this year and setting it as a goal for next year too)
Watch… 20? anime without subs (If I’m watching on my own I always watch without subs anyway nowadays)
Watch those two ドラマ I wanted to watch but haven’t gotten around to yet
Reach 20k known vocab on jpdb (I’ve been using jpdb fairly consistently anyway)
Spend around 10-20ish hours listening to some Japanese content that isn’t anime or ドラマ (Mostly just to help get exposed to a good variety of content)
Write 80k characters

Spanish

That said, I do use natively for Spanish (or at least I intend to, I’ve only really watched one thing that made sense to add so far)

Reach 150 hours of total listening
If I accomplish the previous goal and feel like doing more, reach 200 hours of total listening as a stretch goal
Watch all of Peppa Pig (already watched season 1 and half of season 2)
Watch season 1 of Bluey

I don’t want to spread myself too thin so I think that’s good enough for now, even if there are other things I’d eventually want to do too (both in these languages and in terms of starting to learn others)

And also one non-language goal

Keep consistently doing drawabox for the whole year or until I finish all the lessons (so far I’ve done lessons 0-3 and the 250 box challenge, and while I still totally suck at drawing there’s also a big difference between where I started and where I am now in terms of drawing skill so clearly it’s working)

[GrumpyPanda]

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?

[ruby]

2024 Goals

My big goal for this year was to read every day, even if it’s just one sentence. If you’ve seen the update to my original post about that you’ll know how that went (lol). I’ll update again in a few days, but let’s just say that given the circumstances I’ve done well (over 75%)…

I had some other priorities, rather than goals, listed on my profile for this year that I definitely didn’t forget about:

• Finish the 死にたくないので英雄様を育てる事にします series - I read book 2 and book 3, didn’t finish the bonus chapters but I’ve been yearning for this series again recently so I should go back and read them.
• Finish バスタブで暮らす even if it kills me - DNF’d it in the end. I just haven’t felt drawn to reading it again.
• ミモザの告白 4 (+5 if it comes out) - I have both of them on my bookshelf but this series is just too dear to me, I don’t want it to end!! So I want to be in the perfect mood for finishing it up
• ニアリーイコール
• Try some new genres! Yes and I hated it (屍人荘の殺人 | L32). I’d argue that 吸血鬼と愉快な仲間たち | L30??, which is currently half-read and half-abandoned in my backpack somewhere is also a new genre for me, I’ve just been preferring to read digitally recently so I haven’t finished it.

2025 Japanese goals

• Read every day that I commute into work. That should be at least 160 days, which I know is easily do-able after this year.
• Read at least 4 of the 20 books I’ve bought but haven’t read yet.
• Semi-regular creative writing. I’ll start off trying to do 140字 prompts every week and see how it goes, but I’m happy to do every 2 weeks or even every month.
• Write a second doujin comic in JP. I’m almost done with my first one, it’s not very good (I’m not a good fiction writer in English either), but it’s quite a rewarding feeling.
• Try out iTalki/etc for speaking practice or chat with friends more

I appreciate these are some… unique goals but I’m hoping that focusing in on reading this past year will have helped my writing. Recently I’ve started reading with an eye for how authors I enjoy write and I’ve really enjoyed it, so I’d like to find more authors who write in a way I’d like to emulate in my Japanese, or just read more by 砂原糖子.