Decided to try making one of these even if its just sparingly updated.
TL;DR is that I learned Japanese via passive immersion and playing lots of Japanese games but am trying to up my reading comprehension now and perhaps escape upper N4. I can barely speak or write, but those are lower priority than reading.
Focuses: Kadokawa Tsubasa Bunko publications (aiming to read all of the Puyo Puyo novels), yuri manga, mobile game stories since Natively doesn’t offer tracking for that, maybe posting about fanfic that I read on pixiv.
Background
I got into Japanese first via Vocaloid and anime of course.
I’ve been unwittingly immersively learning Japanese for probably 7ish years now via the game series Puyo Puyo. The writing for cutscenes is dead simple and easy to follow with only a few kanji thrown in here and there, so I ended up learning how to read just by playing a lot of it, getting very into the stories, and listening to the audio dramas.
Unfortunately my grammar is shaky and output (writing/speaking) feels beyond my wildest dreams right now, so I’d like to improve to a point where I can at least read without assistance.
Tools
Currently using Memozora but looking to switch to Anki soon.
Watched the newest Christmas episode of Wonderful Precure! on tver. Very cute and made me care about Yuki I don’t really like her much, so I’m glad they momentarily made me care about her.
Got to chapter 4 in Amitie & the Mysterious Egg. Honestly I never imagined I could read a Japanese novel and understand 60-70% of it . I might be low balling my comprehension but it helps that I’m very familiar with the characters and their respective role language already.
Haha, that is basically what it is! I started with Puyo Puyo Fever back in the day and they’ve all basically followed the same format of visual novel with some puzzle gameplay mixed in.
I just checked out the thread–I would love to join! I’m a bit shy honestly, but I’d love to try it out since it’s been a long time since I was in any sort of book club. Thank you for the invite
Thinking of switching this to a sort of “weekly notes” format since I don’t actually do that much reading in bulk…? I read like 5-10 pages a day currently (haha). IRL I’m a somewhat obsessive journaler/paper-planner so I probably don’t need to go this hard on something I’m doing for fun. While I’m here though I wrote up some goals for next year for my Japanese journey. A lot of these are small since I want them to be manageable.
Read through more than one of the Puyo Puyo novels. I’m already very intimate with the source material and have no trouble parsing the author’s style, since she also writes the scripts for the games.
Related to this: buy and read through more of the Kadokawa Tsubasa Bunko library. A lot of these go pretty cheaply on surugaya so I’ll most likely buy them secondhand. I put a few series/one-offs I’m interested in in my wish-list already. Especially eyeing the adaptation of Night on the Galactic Railroad…
Find a show that I’d like enough to watch with Japanese subs… I’ve been enjoying Wonderful Precure a lot this year, but I don’t really have anything that I’d like to watch next year every week without subs/with Japanese subs.
More audio immersion practice with natural Japanese no more audio dramas. Currently considering listening to stuff that’s already connected to my interests like Niigo Radio, Sekai Radio, and the event after talk broadcasts for Project Sekai.
Considering listening to VTubers more frequently for this as well, but there aren’t many I am interested in these days.
Also can read more Project Sekai stories for this since they’re all basically fully voiced visual novels.
Start setting up some time every week for Anki in between work and hobbies and (probably) school.
I found this works best with shows I already love, and am willing to rewatch. When you say “every week”, do you mean like “a seasonal show”, or are you planning to rewatch the same content every week or something?
That’s the way to go, imo. I mostly listen to a lot of voice actor radio shows, for shows I like - or audiobooks (but that’s a recent thing). And of course lots of anime (with or without JP subs)
Have you ever tried Satori Reader? It may be perfect for filling in both your grammar and listening gaps.
Your grammar resources look good, tho I’ll add that if you’re looking to try out other grammar resources at any point, Cure Dolly YouTube channel, and Miku Real Japanese shadowing course are the things I found most helpful. Cure Dolly accent/affect is kinda annoying (I put on 1.5-2x with captions) & titles are clickbaity, but her vids are quality, and were the first time grammar started to really click for me. Miku Real Japanese is lessons + shadowing exercises, organized by grammar. Was great for both comprehension and output
I found this works best with shows I already love, and am willing to rewatch. When you say “every week”, do you mean like “a seasonal show”, or are you planning to rewatch the same content every week or something?
A seasonal show! I liked the incentive Wonderful Precure gave me to watch every week that was also around my skill level, haha. I think I’ll figure something out though, I’ve been checking out Netflix recently and checking what sites offer Japanese/no sub options.
That’s the way to go, imo. I mostly listen to a lot of voice actor radio shows, for shows I like - or audiobooks (but that’s a recent thing). And of course lots of anime (with or without JP subs)
Yeah, I started listening to some recordings of livestreams and stuff to get a groove back… I work with a lot of boring spreadsheets for my day job so it’s good background noise. When I’m actually paying attention though, I’ve found myself using YouTube’s auto-generated captions a lot recently since they’re actually pretty decent? So it doubles as “OK” reading practice if I don’t have proper subtitles on hand.
Have you ever tried Satori Reader? It may be perfect for filling in both your grammar and listening gaps.
I’ve seen this on a lot of people’s lists and I told myself to check it out! It looks really useful for my skill level since I’m doing more grammar immersion and mining lately. I want to improve my current toolset to be honest, so I’ve been lurking on other people’s learning logs and taking note of what seems to be the most useful
I’ve never heard of Miku Real Japanese or Cure Dolly before, so I’ll check those out too. I never really went into the language-learning side of YouTube much, but it seems like there are so many resources now that it’s almost overwhelming!
You might know this already, but there are tools like ASB Player and Jimaku Player (Crunchyroll specific) that can help with this (tho I found the former confusing). Also sites likehttps://kitsunekko.net/dirlist.php?dir=subtitles%2Fjapanese%2F and https://jimaku.cc/ to find sub files. There’s also a site like animelon, which was made as a tool for JP learners. I’d really love to find a good JP site or two to stream from, but I’ve yet to find one that has good UI, good selection and accepts international payments
Yeah, they’re not perfect, but if it’s between that & nothing, they’re decent enough, depending on the content
It’s really pretty incredible… and the fun thing about YouTube is you can kinda just randomly watch from any of them… eventually you find the ones that work for you. There’s lots of intermediate level podcast type things too (Miku has content like that, Sayuri Saying, Yuyu no Nihongo, etc) that might work well for background noise, but are great for more active watching too
Ooh, I’ve never seen Jimaku Player before, that’s a really cool tool. I have some other subtitle extensions that I use sometimes with a site that supports turning subtitles off, but I’m definitely going try this out since Animelon’s library is a bit limited IMO.
I have seen kitsunekko before since I downloaded the subs for Star Twinkle Precure a while back! It’s my favorite season and I’d love to rewatch it with Japanese subs eventually.
It’s really pretty incredible… and the fun thing about YouTube is you can kinda just randomly watch from any of them… eventually you find the ones that work for you. There’s lots of intermediate level podcast type things too (Miku has content like that, Sayuri Saying, Yuyu no Nihongo, etc) that might work well for background noise, but are great for more active watching too
Yeah, I ended up bookmarking a bunch of playlists from random channels that looked interesting if I need a break from listening to seiyuus talk about gacha games haha! I’ll post about what I think once I get to listening to them
Time for my first “weekly notes” style post! And happy 2025 to everyone! Not much to report due to holidays and a mild illness that I’m still recovering from sadly, but life goes on. I’ll probably have a few different categories for these weekly notes including: reading, watching, listening, playing, and learning. The last two are optional and won’t always be included.
Now, without further ado:
Reading:
Still slogging my way through Amitie & the Mysterious Egg. Chapter 5 is super long and descriptive so I’m trying to really absorb and understand all the details.
Watching
I started (re)watching Gekkan Shojo Nozaki-kun on animelon over the past week, but the subtitles on the 2nd episode are mistimed. I’m going to kind of poke around and see what else is on there that I’d like to watch or rewatch…
Watched the newest Wonderful Precure! episode today! It was cute and I’m looking forward to what seems to be a lot of finale episodes
Also I’m watching it with subs so it probably shouldn’t go here, but I started watching BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!! and am really pleasantly surprised at the directing. Unfortunately the last time I engaged with anything related to this franchise was like, almost a decade ago now? So the art style doesn’t really appeal to me the same way it did back then.
Listening:
Slowly listening to the Radio at 25:00 archives on the Project Sekai YouTube channel since I was doing a lot of boring work this week. I’ve gotten to about episode 4 and it makes me really nostalgic from when the game first released…it’s fun listening to the voice actresses talk about their experiences with song recordings.
I hope everyone else has had a more successful start to their new year
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(with or without JP subs)
