Luna's Learning Log

Japanese
13

２０２３年１１月２８日 散らしちゃったけど、大丈夫かな？そして、雨垂れ石を穿つ

I feel like I’ve been all over the place, but in a mostly good way. I’m making bits of small progress, in lots of things… not my usual style (usually I try to drop/consolidate)

Finished

Manga

LIght Novels

Anime

Now Reading
Now Watching

Actively

Slowly

Now Gaming (sorta)

I’m very uncommitedly playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I’m very early in the game, but it’s been hard to motivate myself, and I’m not into the actual gameplay so far. I’m borrowing it from a friend, so I want to at least give it a fair shot soon.

I really want to get the next two 五等分の花嫁 games instead, but I don’t have the extra money for those right now.

Plan to Resume

I keep buying all these on-sale manga & LNs… which makes it harder to get the list smaller

Beginner's Light Novel Club

I put together the 初心者のライトノベル読書会、and we chose また、同じ夢を見ていた | L25 as our first book!! Here’s the (home thread link). It’s been a lot of organizing, but we’re starting at the end of January :smiley:

Ringotan/Writing Kanji

I went overboard with Ringotan, and had to reset it, b/c I had too many reviews. Which is great, b/c it let me start from clean at 840 kanji. I also decided to add Hiragana & Katakana for now. I’m making sure to pace myself this time.

Overall, it’s definitely been helping my reading. I’ve stopped caring about writing so much… but also printed some kanji sheets, which I can practice with when bored.

電子辞書 (Electronic JP Dictionary)

I got an electronic dictionary!! Very old fashioned, but it’s soooo cool having a single device with a bunch of JP-JP dictionaries, encyclopedias, EN-JP phrasebooks, etc. The main utility for me is slowly getting more accustomed to JP-JP dictionaries… which is great for byte-sized learning!!

Lessons

Same as usual - matcha-jp.com articles with Y-sensei. Essays from 「名作」で鍛える トコトン考える力 with T-sensei. I mentioned maybe wanting to read ヲタクに恋は難しい 1 | L28 together, but never followed up on it, and am not really 100% sure whether I want to or not. it would be useful, but I feel like the essays are more unique and culturally interesting.

Reading Comprehension Progress

Finishing クラスで二番目可愛い女の子 5 and 男子だと思っていた 1 (plus 2/3rds of vol 2) has definitely really helped my reading comfort. So it speaks to the efficacy of reading lower level material. Getting back to SAO Progressive 1 has felt easier now (though intensive comprehension remains hit or miss). I think I’m a bit burnt out of high school romance at this point… so starting to look at other genres.

Reading the older settings like 日本の歴史 series and 薬屋のひとりごと manga and light novel(!!) has been really enjoyable. Their is some overlap of vocabulary between 薬屋 and 日本の歴史, and the grammar patterns in the 薬屋 LN are novel for me, making it worth the challenge. It’s been helpful that I’ve watched the anime, but I think of the 3, the LN will be the most helpful for letting things sink in. It will be good prep for 後宮の烏 | L34. Since it’s such a higher level than anything else I’ve read, I don’t feel frustrated going slower, or not totally getting things (unlike say SAOP)

I’ve been dragging my feet with 日本の歴史 a bit… some inertia there, but will be great when I get past it. It’s hard with all the new characters and names, and it’s in the middle of “We’re going to war with the Tao Dynasty”… just need to be in the headspace for it.

Byte-Sized Challenges

I’ve been slowly pushing myself to read small things like JP-JP dictionary entries, read JP descriptions of media, read Wikipedia articles, tweets, book titles, etc, instead of giving into the “oh it’s too much effort” feeling. Reading Wikipedia articles can be cool. Like I learned that 松岡禎丞 Yoshitsugu Matsuoka (my favorite 声優) is from 北海道帯広市 (Obihiro, Hokkaido) the other day, and that he was inspired to get into voice acting by 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン (Neon Genesis: Evangelion). Sometimes it’s hard to hit the productive vs interesting niche.

この名前は何ですか？

One of the things I’ve felt frustrated by is just not knowing how to read names… people, cities, etc… which are also really inconvenient to look up. I know of ENAMDict and WWWJDIC: Word Search, but wish there were a less cumbersome way to do it. I guess maybe the answer is I’ll just start to get these more, as I read more articles and such? Would love to hear suggestions, if anyone has any.

Anyway, I’ll be amazed if anyone reads all of that… it’s a lot of sections, but I tried to keep most of them short.

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