Don’t have too much to report… got up to 27.7 hrs for my September Listening Challenge. Currently at 20 min, for October Listening Challenge.
Recently finished videos
- 義妹生活 S1 | L26
- BanG Dream! S2 | L21 (audio only)
- ガールズバンドクライ S1 | L26 - (mixed 1-7 audio only, 8-13 subs)
バンドリ I understood probly like 95% of. 義妹生活 I definitely needed the subs, and even occasionally double-checked against the English (partially out of laziness)… which is frustrating, but w/e. ガルクラ I understand most of, but there’s still those occasional scenes where I don’t quite get everything, and the reason is usually vocab. I finally ripped the Blu-rays, so next time I can watch the blu-ray eps w/ subs too. I’ve considered doing that dictation thing (listen w/out subs, put subs on & write out parts I missed, re-listen)
Recently finished books
- 姉の親友、私の恋人。 | L25 - understood pretty well almost all the time
- 春とみどり | L18 - sweet series, very easy read
- 姉になりたい義姉VS百合になりたい義妹 1巻 | L21 - ok for what it was, easy read
- どうしたら幼馴染の彼女になれますか!? | L23 - also easy read
- 私だけが宮地美雪を愛している 1 | L20 - harem, meh. but easy
My September newly finished book count was still only 13… the last time it dropped that low was November 2023. Tho to be fair, some of that time was spent on Fate, うそなつ, etc. Still, I definitely want to pick up the pace this month. I would also like to get back to those two games.
Lessons rant
I’m still getting through about 10 pages of 裏世界ピクニック 1 ふたりの怪異探検ファイル | L33 per lesson, and that’s really frustrating, and I’m honestly wondering whether I shouldn’t drop the book and read something easier. I have about 197 pages left. That’s another 20 weeks (4-5 months) at this rate, and while it’s an interesting story, I don’t think it’s really all that productive right now. There’s just way too much unknown vocab. Otoh 裏世界ピクニック 1 | L23 (manga) is literally 10 levels lower. So I think I’ll ask to switch to that, starting next lesson - or maybe I can find a novel in the upper 20s. Actually, マリみて would probably be perfect for this! I still have some lookups, and I can understand most of it well, but sometimes I’m a bit insecure on the sentences… and it’s something I don’t mind reading at a slower pace. I should time myself first though one of these days, so I have an idea exactly how long that might take.
My other thought is maybe I should use the lesson to work on conversation instead. My general guiding principle with lessons is that I want to do things that I can’t easily do on my own, and conversation is certainly amongst those. I feel so clumsy everytime I try to talk at the beginning of lessons. I’d honestly like to pick up with the 3rd teacher I was working with again, but finances are way too tight for the near future
Comprehension
In general, comprehension is coming a long, but still has a long way to go. There’s a certain level that I can mostly just understand - with videos that seems to be around L23-25, novels around L27, manga L23-25. But in many cases, I still have to do a decent amount of lookups. Video is the easiest to get away with not, b/c you have other stuff to latch onto. Still, in general my level is at a point where I can confidently say I speak/understand/read Japanese (even if I make some errors), or use the term bilingual (which on the other hand, I never used for Hebrew) - so like despite the まだまだ、これから - I’ve still accomplished something. Like my default is reading or watching without consulting translation now, whereas I used to always read side by side. I can sometimes read a 国語辞書 (monolingual dictionary) and accurately understand it (that’s still pretty variable)… which I couldn’t have said even a few months ago. I guess to borrow a term from English, I can speak “broken Japanese” (and I can certainly understand much more than that)
Vocab
I’ve been considering whether I shouldn’t either A: Anki for common words I forget when reading , or B: make a list of, and then practice writing those words, in a sentence (mined or made up). In general I see Anki/SRS as inferior to actual reading (except for stuff like proper nouns, since most sources won’t be too helpful there). So writing is probably the way to go. This is one thing I thought Satori Reader did really well. If you used SRS cards, it gave you the whole sentence, audio, and everything else. Plus I know writing helps me with recognition, or distinguishing similar kanji. And that at least gives some practice with output.
eBook vs physical book
I’ve been thinking about reading digital vs physical books. I like reading physical books a lot - especially for manga, but its two disadvantages are: it’s less comfortable; and lookups use up much more time. For manga, the difference isn’t so large, and it’s less relevant. Otoh, novels is where it really becomes an issue, and I don’t think it’s worth slowing down my reading pace as much as it does, just because I like it, and need to use the physical books. I’d like to actually alternate between two editions of the same book, but there isn’t a good way to sync locations. I’m mainly thinking about this w/ クラにか right now… but even then, my digitals are on Bookwalker (which is useless for dictionary integration on Android), so I’d have to buy them on Amazon - which is not the end of the world, but it feels silly buying a book for a 3rd time, even if it’s a favorite series. I could torrent them, but I prefer not to read on the computer (despite yomichan), and getting a good setup with that on tablet is just an unwanted pain.
I should probably let that inform my purchasing tho, and stick to manga rather than sometimes getting novels, until I’m at a point where I can more comfortably read them. Makes me a bit sad, but oh well.
Anyway, I think I’ll stop being grumpy here, and go read or watch more Sakura Trick (still contemplating dropping) or something
