Cool. I just added 明日の世界 and earlier ぬくもり. Gonna preview one or both tonight, to see if I’ll start them soon
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The first volume has a lesbian couple, but that’s it. I’ve read several of the volumes at this point and it’s definitely not yuri.
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Have been reading 明日の世界で星は煌めく | L27 with the audiobook & without stopping for lookups (that took some effort not to do!), and it’s sooo nice! I still do feel like I’m missing a bit by not looking up completely unknown words, but I’m almost halfway through the book already, and it’s felt so easy! I’ve also been speaking along to some of it, and I’m not quite fast enough yet, but I feel like if I keep this up more, I’ll get there. At the rate I’m speaking now, I’d probably be fine at .75x.
I will probably do このぬくもりを君と呼ぶんだ | L30?? afterwards for the greater good of having another reviewed yuri LN series on Natively, then swing back to books 2-3. Unfortunately the remaining few yuri LN w/ audiobooks are either not interesting or too hard for now
My reading speed for マリア様がみてる 1 | L29 last night was .26 pgs/min vs earlier .16 pgs/min. Reading outloud (especially in lessons) is inherently slower than reading silently
Some reading speed comparisons:
| Series | spoken? | Pgs/min |
|---|---|---|
| マリみて L29 late Oct | outloud | .26 |
| マリみて early Oct | outloud | .16 |
| クラにか L27 early Oct | silent | .25-.45 (.3 normal) |
| 裏世界ピクニック L33 September | outloud | not working |
Will update when 裏世界ピクニック gets fixed. クラにか is lower level, and I was already somewhat familiar with the material (from web novel overlap), but the fact that I got to a similar reading speed while reading aloud for マリみて is definitely encouraging!
I still feel like I need to be doing more reading than I have been… So to myself: しっかりしろよ！
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Caught up on ダンダダン S1 | L30 and ダンジョンに出会いを求めるのは間違っているだろうか S5 | L29 today, and while there’s some stuff that’s flying past me (ダンダダン especially has some really specific vocab), I’m following and understanding pretty well for both shows. With ダンまち I was pretty confused for the last episode or so… but when I looked it up, it turned out that “no, the plot is just confusing here” - so that was affirming.
Finished GIRL FRIENDS (1) | L23 - checked the translation for a panel maybe 3-4x, but overall easy to understand. Really itching to start my アオノハコ | L23 reread, even tho I’m reading so much. Cuz I keep seeing ppl post stuff from it, and I’m like “wow, I completely forgot that ever happened”… I’m already reading too many things tho, and getting more soon… the solution? Do more reading!!
Decided to start doing that proper names deck again (after forgetting that Anki exists for who knows how long). So hopefully I’ll remember to keep that up… still haven’t actually done anything w/ Tobira tho lol. And of course still have うそなつ and SAO Alicization Lycoris to progress on… plus more books coming next week - some of which are new reads, for once… anyway, the games are a great “I can just do them whenever I feel like it” thing. And since I can’t log them on Natively anyway, I don’t feel the same urgency to push to finish them
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tldr: I decided to start doing SAO GGO ep 5 jpdb deck and 声優ラジオ vol 5 jpdb deck - with no specific expectation of frequency, just whenever I feel like it
General thoughts on SRS
Been contemplating whether/what role SRS should be playing in my learning right now, after all the discussion in the forums lately. A comment I read elsewhere a while back is “that SRS emulates reading”. As a result, my thought has long been “I’d rather be reading then”. Upon further reflection though, I think I might be able to use it to enhance my reading, since:
- Your brain is doing a lot of additional things while you’re reading
- I don’t always have the energy or motivation to read, but I could do SRS
- I have found SRS useful in the past
- I’ve seen people, with much higher reading levels than me, mention using it
I think I see 3 potential use cases:
- Names, keigo, etc
- Acquiring domain vocab, in order to reduce cognitive load for harder material
- Reinforcing words or readings I frequently forget or half learn
Of those, I think 1 & 2 are the most useful ones, and jpdb’s pre-built decks are the best way for me to approach 2. 3 is the most nebulous… it’s easy to over-add words, and also it makes things even more disruptive… though if I handwrite them to add later, that might not be a bad idea. Certainly that’s the most disruptive, but it’s also productive in its own way
jpdb analysis
Anyway, the downside to jpdb is a lot of stuff doesn’t have premade decks… some current stuff that does:
- Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online – Prebuilt decks – jpdb (I’m on S2, but probly they have a lot in common)
- Seiyuu Radio no Uraomote – Prebuilt decks – jpdb
- Kamisamatachi no Oisemairi – Prebuilt decks – jpdb
- Maria-sama ga Miteru – Prebuilt decks – jpdb
| Series | General Known | Specific ep/volume |
|---|---|---|
| SAO GGOA | 68% | 96% |
| 声優ラジオ | 41% | 65% |
| 網様たち | 42% | 64% |
| マリみて | 28% | 57% |
So SAO GGOA & 声優ラジオ are my 2 highest “unique words known” total w/ 97.8% & 92.9% coverage (which I think means “how many of the vocab cards from here have you seen”?). I’m a little surprised the GGOA episode is so high. In theory I should be able to follow it pretty easily this time then! 声優ラジオ should probably be the most useful of those decks in the long term, b/c I think it probably has a lot of common vocab, and I am definitely planning to read the whole series. GGOA will be kinda weird, cuz it’s a new ep each week, and I might lose some words by dropping the deck, but I think that’s okay
These numbers are pretty far off right now anyway, since my total encountered words in jpdb is only 7,821 (I reset it a while back). For GGOA that’s 15 words left in the deck. For 声優ラジオ it’s 1,713. It will be interesting to see what those statistics are in a week… assuming I haven’t totally forgotten by then 
Also got a bunch of new yuri manga that I’m looking forward to reading/rereading. 君と綴るうたかた | L22 is the one I’m most excited for, but I’m waiting for vol 2. So I have a feeling I’ll read that on Friday (day off)
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I never did 1., but SRS has been invaluable for 2. I don’t think I would have learned 磔, 旋毛, or 馬大頭 without SRS. I think I’m reading quite a lot, but those words just don’t show up often enough to make it to memory otherwise.
I did a bit of 3. for words I can’t just remember, despite showing up more often, like 育む, 集う, or 慈しむ, or words I somehow always read wrong like 意図 or 思惑.
The problem with that last category is that they can be hard to notice (I need to be lucky when following along an audiobook or reading something with furigana).
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I’ve found the little I’ve done to be invaluable for names/proper nouns. I just have to remember to do them
Yeah that makes sense. I’m also thinking of words where I will get enough exposure to them from reading within a series… Like in SAO there’s a variety of technical, game-related, and other vocab that I’ll eventually absorb. In Tsukihime, there’s a lot of lore vocab I’ll eventually get. And I could rely on the series for exposure, but if I get enough of them in advance, then it will mean a much smoother reading experience.
My problem with the former is I start adding too many words, or finishing things too early for the words I added to keep being useful. And I spend time debating about whether I should add a word or not… Scope creep basically
For the latter, I’ll stick to audiobooks or similar input.
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Haven’t been feeling well, so spent a portion of today just marking already known words in jpdb. Still many more to go, and I left out words that I probly know/would probly get from context (since part of my goal is to reinforce those words). Current stats are:
Total Words: 7,822
Known Words: 6464 (82%)
Learning: 137
| Series | General Known | Specific ep/volume |
|---|---|---|
| SAO GGOA | 40% | 96% |
| 声優ラジオ | 44% | 73% |
| 網様たち | 44% | 65% |
| マリみて | 29% | 59% |
So I’ve still got way more words to mark. But it will be cool to eventually have a more accurate idea of how many words I actually know, and how accessible various things should be vocabulary-wise
I did do my reviews today (eventually), and found that I did well on a decent amount of semi-familiar words (some I did poorly on), and had a lot of trouble with 2-3 words with unfamiliar kanji. オノマトペ and all-kana words are very hit/miss. It is making me want to actually start reading it soon.
One thing that’s nice is that it’s set in JP-JP - so even for words I already know, it’s beneficial just looking at the entries. I can actually understand a lot of them. It’s much better than Amazon Kindle app’s dictionary
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Got through 13 pgs (.26 pgs/min ) of マリみて, which is identical to my speed last week. Considering the back/stomach pain, that’s nice. Vocalizing felt a bit more automatic a lot of the time - I guess the occasional shadowing is paying off, and it felt like I did better at seeing/feeling the longer structure of the sentences, rather than the shorter parts of the phrases. I can tell when I’m not doing that, cuz my sentence level intonation will be off
Speaking is still awkward, bc I don’t know how to say things I’m trying to say, like “I bought/ordered it, but it won’t be here till next week” for example. It’s like I half know, and I’ve probably heard it before, but w/e it is, I can’t pull it out
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On a bit of an SAO kick rn, since yesterday (2024年11月7日) was the day Aincrad was cleared, and Aniplex streamed it the Aincrad arc. While there’s still certain passages I can’t quite get, I truly understood most of it, without memory filling in the blanks… instead of “I get what this means in English”, it was “I get this in Japanese, without thinking of English”. Also watched the first ep of SAO 2 (beginning of the GGO arc), and besides the fancy vocab sections, the experience was similar.
So this got me thinking back to my recent “might SRS be useful?” question. I played a bit of Alicization Lycoris earlier, and continued trying to speak along to it, and did that just now with the first ep of SAO 2 as well. Which got me thinking back to forever ago, when I thought SRS was cool, and used subs2srs to make an anki deck out of SAO 2 ep 3-4(?). Which is a really cool way to do things, cuz you get the cards w/ audio, video, sentence, etc, for every line in the episode. To put it another way, it’s like making a visual novel out of the episode.
Anyway, as I was watch ep 1 just now, I was thinking about the advantage/disadvantage… on one hand, just talking along to the episodes or a game playthrough keeps things fresh, and is a nice challenge. Otoh doing it as a deck means you can really thoroughly internalize those lines - which might be more useful, in the grand scheme of things. Otoh, I don’t wanna get bogged down by trying to do too much. I’m a little tempted to try it, but in the meantime…
Since I know I’m gonna be playing Alicization Lycoris for a while to come, I added the SAO Alicization deck on jpdb. I’ll probly delete the GGOA episode deck, since I know the majority of the words anyway (also I realized that’s the deck for S1, and it doesn’t correspond to S2 anyway - duh). That’s probably the most optimal in terms of steadiness/realism
Anyway, I’m gonna get back to watching the eps, and stop overthinking this stuff lol
Update: while watching ep 4 (I skipped 2-3), I thought to myself that it’s useful vocab that’s adjacent to what I already know, and would be fun to practice (Sinon is my fav character, and speaking along to her lines is so fun)! So I’m gonna give the subs2srs thing a try, and probly just drop the jpdb decks for now
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An hour later… that turned out to be fruitless. Something about the import seems to be broken. However, I realized I can use animelon’s loop function to achieve the same thing. I guess I’ll give it a try. It also has the advantage of being able to adjust the speed. Kinda disappointed subs2srs didn’t work out, but maybe this will be better?
Update: I tried out Animelon a bit. Besides having to wait for it to buffer, it’s kinda fun… but also definitely tires you out! It’s nice that they have the dialogue selector, so you can skip to the lines you want to work on. One downside though is that their subtitle files are a bit spotty at times (randomly missing dialogue). It’s interesting, as much as I think I know these episodes inside and out, from having watched it a bunch, I really don’t know them that well. I guess cuz I know the plot of them, but most of those prior watches, I wasn’t actually processing the Japanese.
One thing that’s interesting is how at some point, going over a loop for long enough it just starts becoming a mush of sound and muscle movements… but then take a break, and you can hear/speak it better… I like to focus on a phrase till I get sick of it, and then include the phrase or 2 before/after it… basically the same as practicing music tbh
Anyway, can’t say I’ll definitely commit too doing this regularly or anything, but it’s cool for now
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A fun note on the SRS thing… One of my recent 声優ラジオ deck words was 弾切れ, which showed up in SAO 2 ep 4 earlier. While I probably could have figured it out in context, it was cool just knowing the word instead.
Just like with voice actors, One of my favorite things w/ words is when a word from one context shows up in a totally different context. So that was neat 
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subs2srs is some very old, unmaintained software so it’s not that surprising if you have problems with it. There are more recent alternatives out there - I’m not overly familiar with them, but there’s this project, for instance.
Pretty sure subs2srs is the only reason I know Japanese though. It’s such a good concept.
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There’s some part of me that’s going “I’m sure I could fix that (assuming the source code is available)” - but I will wholeheartedly ignore that, in favor of not working outside of work 
Anyway, thx for sharing. I think the animelon will work better for me, and honestly it’s way more fun than SRS. So I’ll stick with that.
Good to know in general tho.
Alternatively, if someone is really attached to subs2srs, finding and installing the appropriately old version of Anki would probably do the trick.
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Once you make the cards you can import them to your actual deck too, so you wouldn’t be stuck with old anki either.
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Hmmm, I think that would depend on why exactly it’s not working in the recent version of Anki. Hard to say without diagnosing/debugging it (unless you’re saying you’ve done this before?). Honestly, it seemed to be some sort of file paths issue… so I wonder whether someone running a Unix-based system (mac, linux, etc) would have the same issue (does subs2srs even run on those?)
My initial description wasn’t clear, but everything imports, and the cards themselves work. It’s just the audio and video were broken for w/e reason, despite mapping them to the right fields
Well once the cards are made, they are agnostic to what anki they were made with since they’re just some markup and assets.
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And the mention of markup just made me realize… I forgot to copy the media files to Anki’s media folder
I guess I’ll go generate the rest of the deck now, in case I feel like playing around with it later
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Well now that I got the subs2srs deck to work, I did an initial round and decided that (assuming I use it at all) I’ll use it for SRS purposes, and not shadowing purposes. Idk whether it’s actually worth the effort or not… but it’s there anyway, if I do want to use it
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Vocab overlap is fun. 弾切れ and 発泡 are both in the jpdb 声優ラジオ deck, and also show up in SAO II ep 4
Voice actor overlap is even crazier tho… 花江夏樹 as Kyouji, and 川澄綾子 as Aki (nurse character). So I’m here thinking of Tanjirou and Saber, while watching SAO (Shinji’s VA also makes an appearance in the first ep)
Also vocab complexity is interesting
- 声優ラジオ L28
- SAO anime L29
- SAO LN L34
The total words are actually somewhat higher, I just blacklisted the most common ones, a while back
I’m not gonna do all those decks at once or anything, I was just curious
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