Luna's Learning Log

[暁のルナ]

I switched to just the SAO 2 deck, but kept the 声優ラジオ deck below it, so I don’t lose the words.

Definitely just went through way too many words at once, but a lot of them are “I mostly know this, but wanna reinforce the reading/meaning” sorta words. Anyway that puts me up to 68% known, 3122/4587 words (1465 left). I’m tiiiiired now tho.

Anyway I like usual, I think I will actually watch all of SAO 2 this time around. So it will give me some time to actually stick with the deck. We’ll see if that actually happens lol

Update: a lot of the words I did in the jpdb deck earlier actually showed up in the 2 eps I just watched now, and it was really helpful knowing them! Hopefully they’ll continue to stick

[暁のルナ]

At 22 hrs for November Listening Challenge. The vast majority from anime and games, but a portion from 2 light novels. So yeah, I’ll definitely make my 30 hrs goal this month, and then bump it to 40 when I do!

I’m up to 71.1% words known for SAO 2 deck (but 53.9% for the corresponding LN) - and plenty of reviews to catch up with! I started getting further into the deck, and hitting content for the final arc of the season (Yuuki arc), which has some interesting medical vocab. My total word count in jpdb is still only 7,352/10,052. Otherwise I finished Phantom Bullet arc, and besides the last episode, my comprehension was/felt great. I continued speaking along to a lot of it. Had Yona book club earlier, and I definitely feel like the bit of shadowing & speaking along I’ve done is already having some small payoff, in terms of reading aloud being easier.

I started ソードアート・オンライン5 ファントム・バレット | L34 with the audibook (no stopping for lookups at all), and am on the last book of 毎月庭つき大家つき | L25 . While the audiobook’s speaking pace is a little challenging to keep up with, I feel like my comprehension is pretty decent - depending on the section though. Even from the beginning there’s lots that the anime doesn’t include (characters’ inner monologue and description, but also it thankfully shortened the intro conversation). So naturally it’s harder, and the missing vocab + speaking pace is challenging at times. That said, I noticed that while SAO 5 takes more patience, reading 毎月 or other manga actually feels more frustrating, b/c of the interruptions to look up words. Unlike a LN with audio, where I can mostly get the meaning (and of course know the plot), even just one or two missing words in a manga scene can totally flip your understanding.

Anyway while I know it’s barely been any time, the impression I’m getting right now is that both the speaking along/shadowing, and the SRS are proving useful. So I made a deck for 頻繁に忘れちゃった言葉 (頻繁 is one of those words lol). I have it set to 10 words per day rn (only 7 in the deck so far). I put the proper nouns one up to 6 new words per day. I think/hope that should be manageable, but if not I’ll drop it down again. I just feel like 2 is a little too boring

[暁のルナ]

Caught up with Re：ゼロから始める異世界生活 S3 | L32 finally, and I… did not understand a lot of what’s being said… but still understood enough to have a general (or sometimes good) idea what’s going on. If I wasn’t doing the SAO deck on jpdb, I’d probably switch my jpdb deck to this. There’s a lot of vocab I’d love to grab from it… tho there’s also just a ton of weird character-speak

Otherwise watched an interview with 克平山口 (male Ranma VA in both versions) earlier. I’ve been kinda out of it today, so my comprehension and attention span were mixed. But it was still good listening practice, since it had no subs.

Edit: Actually I watched the most recent DanMachi eps, and a few words from the SAO deck came up in them. So that was cool. Also I’m totally not doing the subs2srs deck… was a nice thought while it lasted lol

[暁のルナ]

聴聞

I met my 30 hrs for the November Listening Challenge, so now my goal is up to 50! Most of that’s from anime, but one thing I added in yesterday was 空の軌跡 playthrough. I definitely feel like my listening comprehension (at least with text) has gotten way better. The speech pace was about the same as the SAO audio books, and I was able to understand it perfectly fine (sometimes slightly delayed), with some pauses for lookups. Watched the first 5 eps of 転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命 S1 | L30 - which corresponds to the first LN, and my comprehension was a little spotty, but I still followed it overall, and it would have been way harder a few months ago.

レッスン ー マリみて

Managed to get through 15 pgs in マリみて, instead of my usual 13. Not significantly faster, but it’s still something. My teacher complimented my kanji knowledge, and said even when I mix up readings, I usually figure out the correct one very quickly. My other teacher tells me I’m good w/ kanji too sometimes, and internally I’m like 普通でしょう？but still, it’s nice to hear. Ironically I felt like I was reading poorly (in part cuz of hunger) - which probly means my reading has in fact improved (and thus I have higher standards now). I’ve stopped highlighting words in lessons. No point - I never look back anyway, and it disrupts the flow. So that probly contributed a bit.

jpdb

I can’t remember which thing(s) I was watching that some of the jpdb deck words started popping up in, but it’s again clearly having some benefit. My stats there currently look like:

14,322 words - learning 330 - know 8620 (non-redundant 8365)

Deck	Vocab %	Coverage %
SAO S2	77.6	94.7
SAO novel 5	56.2	83.4
転生王女	63.4	89.9
All Vocab	62.4	89.3

Vocab refers to “unique words” and coverage counts all the words (so like if a word is in the deck 5x, I get credit for it all 5 times)

I’m sure there’s still a number of words in those decks (and in general) that I already know… but still, that’s getting closer to an accurate count. I have 170 reviews to go through at the moment, but a number of those are words I’m just reinforcing, and I’ll just work through at a comfortable pace. Just means I won’t unlock any new words for a bit, 多分. Also a number of words I’m not marking as Known, are words I’d know from hearing, but I’m not sure I’d parse the kanji readings correctly without furigana.

LN goals for rest of year

• ソードアート・オンライン | L34 5-6
• 転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命 2 | L33
• 明日の世界で星は煌めく | L27 2-3
• 声優ラジオのウラオモテ #05 夕陽とやすみは大人になれない? | L28

Those are all w/ audiobooks, besides 声優ラジオ, and it seems like audiobooks for LNs tend to be about 9 hours. So that’s a bit less than 45 hrs, plus the few days it will take me to get through 声優ラジオ 5. With 7 weeks left in the year, that would require about 6.5 hrs of audiobook-ing per week

So far, if my books are displaying correctly, my all time LNs count so far is:

L30+: 15 finished (8 are L33+)
L27-29: 22 finished

One of my goals for this year was to get a point where I’m comfortable reading things in the lower 30s. I’m not sure those 3 remaining L30+ LNs, plus jpdb will be enough to get me there by the end of the year, but I feel like they’ll be a pretty significant step towards it. So far my book stats by year are:

Type	2022	2023	2024
Manga	36	173	387
Light Novel	2	21	14

Level Range	2022	2023	2024
13-19	0	27	18
20-26	1	134	295
27-33	36	29	87
34-40	1	4	2

The L34s are just SAO… which until sometime this year were L33. I feel weird counting them in the same tier as something like 薬屋のひとりごと, but that’s besides the point. So most likely I’ll finish this year with less LNs that 2023. That’s a little disappointing, but my comprehension and overall reading level are definitely much improved

Anyway, idk why this became my “reflect on end of the year” section… but I would in general really like to up my LN count. And I know one of my goals for next year is to finally finish 薬屋のひとりごと 1 | L38

Anyway time to stop blabbing, and do my vocab reviews

[Naphthalene]

@暁のルナ

So most likely I’ll finish this year with less LNs that 2023. That’s a little disappointing, but my comprehension and overall reading level are definitely much improved

Well, true, but you have more than doubled your number of manga. That’s more than one per day for a whole year! That’s something!

[暁のルナ]

Yes, tho disproportionately L20-26 instead of L27-33 (which still feels difficult b/c of vocab). Still at least I’m comfortable just picking up and reading L20-26 manga (not true a year ago). Seeing how useful SRS has been in just the last week, I do wish I hadn’t totally dropped it. I think it will help in finally making L27-33 manga more approachable. Anyway I’m over 1 LN per month this year. So next year I’ll set a minimum of 2 LNs per month. That should be quite doable, especially with audiobooks.

My anime episodes have also noticably increased (722 vs 845), and my largest category there this year is L27-33. Which makes sense, since I have larger tolerance for ambiguity with anime, and also can rely on audio knowledge (which audiobooks work for too)

[暁のルナ]

Today’s jpdb counts

14,314 words - learning 396 - know 8964 (non-redundant 8708

Deck	Vocab %	Coverage %
SAO S2	85.2	96.4
SAO novel 5	57.7	84.1
転生王女	63.7	90.1
All Vocab	62.6	90.1

The top words count went down, cuz I added a bunch of pointless words to the blacklist (like “doesn’t make sense without real context” sorta thing). Also I browsed through the whole SAO 2 deck, and marked all the Known words. So at least for that deck the count reflects my actual knowledge.

A lot of the Unknown words in there, I got/would get watching the anime, bc of the audio and visual context - but I know I wouldn’t get the meaning & reading for them, while reading. So I look forward to improving that. Also pushed the medical terms up to the front, cuz I remember those flying over my head last time I watched the Mother’s Rosario arc (Yuuki’s arc). I’ve still got some episodes before those show up thankfully. This is the worst of them (and worst compound I’ve come across):

Thankfully I know most of those kanji, but 十字熟語 oof!!

Anyway, far enough in that I feel like I can start the arc for now. Gotta make sure to get some SAO 5 reading in later too

[暁のルナ]

Watched the rest of SAO 2. Vocab was definitely useful. Even though I only did the medical words for a bit, they were helpful (tho a lot of the medical vocab in the show was not in the deck), and so were a lot of the other words… tho some words I didn’t quite know how to make sense of… Like jpdb’s definition for 編入 is 組織や団体に途中から組み入れること。 … Which is fine, but like seeing it as part of a 熟語 or two that had to do with transferring schools, in conjunction with some other vocab I didn’t recognize on the fly, was confusing. Also words where the reading was just totally wrong… Like あそこの“剣士の碑”に 名前が残りますよね - jpdb reading for 碑 is いしぶみ - but in the actual line (and others) it’s ひ. Those are both valid readings, but jpdb has no way to know in this case. And it’s certainly not the only time I’ve seen that sorta thing.

So there’s some definite weak points to learning isolated vocab from SRS. On a positive note, now I have a more solid context for some some of the other words in the deck, so I’ll remember and understand them better.

Side note, this arc contains what’s probly my 2nd favorite line in the whole series ぶつからなきゃ伝わらないこともある. It’s funny b/c it’s such a profound line in context (at least for me, and for the character), and before it used to be this thing that took effort to consciously say and remember… but now it feels almost too simple.

In terms of speaking along: some of the sentences are still fast enough that I’m basically just mumbling to try to keep up. But others I can say in sync, or close to. When I focus on intonation, I can match well, but it takes extra brain power to also monitor well. So I slip in and out with that. I really love Asuna & Kirito’s speech patterns. Sinon too, but she barely featured in this arc, and her lines are often harder to match.

Anyway I dropped the SAO 2 deck now, since I’m done with it. Not planning to watch Alicization at this point, but instead can focus on the SAO vol 5 deck. I added vol 6-7 decks for reference, and interestingly SAO S2 contains 553 active words that are not in any of those decks. So anyway, I added the other 2 for reference, and now the stats look like:

Words: 18413 - Learning 391 - Known 9355 (Non-redundant: 9118)

Deck	Vocab %	Coverage %
SAO novel 5	57.8	84.2
SAO novel 6	55.2	85.9
SAO novel 7	56.4	84.4
転生王女	65.3	90.1
All Vocab	50.8	86.6

I feel like I’ve been talking about jpdb stats too much lately… so I might just try to keep a single comment with ongoing stats under a fold in the future, so this doesn’t become “Luna’s jpdb stat log”

[暁のルナ]

Realized something unfortunate as I was reading SAO 5 with the audiobook - between vocab and getting distracted, I’m missing too many things I want to be comprehending (biographical details about characters, how they perceive certain things, etc)… So I’m pausing SAO 5 for the foreseeable future, and instead:

1. Will continue SAO 1, bc I don’t care if I miss stuff there
2. Will only do the 声優ラジオ 5 deck, bc I’m up to 80% with it (and it has 2-3k less words), so I’m a lot closer to being able to comfortably read it

I’ll actually be doing lookups for 声優ラジオ as well. After that I think I’ll go for 転生王女 2, since that deck only has 6,648 unique words (SAO are btwn ~7.5k-10k, depending on the volume)

[暁のルナ]

Ok 声優ラジオ + jpdb deck, instead of SAO was definitely the right choice!! Between being close to my reading level, and the reduced lookups, it’s very easy to understand, and feels exciting running into words I just learned.

The neat thing is that I can do the deck chronologically, so all the words I’m doing I’m pretty much seeing, and it’s saving me a number of lookups (tho some I’ve only memorized enough to go “I got that word earlier…”)

A few bumps tho:

• Do I want to be strict to stay ahead of where I am in the book w/ my reviews?
• I have the “count all WK words as known” option selected, but there’s a few words I’ve run into that (apparently are WK words) I don’t know, and can’t unmark without disabling that, and having to manually mark a bunch of words as known
  • I’ve been adding these to me 頻繁に忘れちゃった deck instead, but at some point I kinda wanna go through jpdb b/c this affects future decks, and might make me think I know more than I do
  • Edit: I went and disabled it, so now I have an endless stream of words to go through. I’m definitely finding some I don’t know though, so it’s fine.

Overall reading it is fun tho, and I think I’m gonna try to stay ahead of where I am in the novel, even though it will take longer overall to finish the book that way. Edit: tho judging by the vocab I’m getting, I’m pretty decently ahead at this point

Also I guess from all the speaking along I’ve been doing lately, I’m having trouble turning off the read-aloud mode. I guess that’s good practice tho. Definitely glad I’ve been doing the speaking along, cuz I’m certainly speaking noticeably faster (relatively)

[Pashmina]

@暁のルナ

The neat thing is that I can do the deck chronologically, so all the words I’m doing I’m pretty much seeing, and it’s saving me a number of lookups

I like this approach compared to doing frequency approach, feels like the words are fresh in your mind. Though on the other side I have the problem that going in order kind of limits how fast I’m going, so doing this I had to filter out a ton of words. How are you dealing with that or are your new words per page not that many?

[暁のルナ]

tldr: I’ll pause a little to get further in the deck, I think.

My unfamiliar/half-remembered words per page aren’t too many, and I’ve already opened up a lot of vocab that’s further along in the deck. I have my reviews set to “slightly longer” intervals (meaning it takes longer for each word to repeat), which lets me add more New words to the reviews, without getting too overwhelmed.

This works bc my Known words percentage is already high (75-80% unique, 95% coverage), and some of my New words are words I’m just trying to reinforce.

Anyway I think I’m pretty far ahead in the deck rn (I’m only on p35 of 333), but if I hit a point where there’s lots of unknown words per page, I’ll probably pause for a bit and do the deck more before continuing. Hopefully I won’t have to tho.

My other hiccup is how much to worry about one-time words. Ex: I already got 鮪 tuna, and I’m pretty sure it’s not showing up again. Reinforcing is good, but if it detracts from progress then I might have to blacklist some

[shitsurei]

@暁のルナ

I already got 鮪 tuna

For me personally, I’m usually fine being “some sort of fish” (which you even get from the kanji) and going on with my life

(although I feel like we already had this conversation in another thread where you prefer to learn the actual species, so ymmv )

[暁のルナ]

Sure, but I’m just asking myself “do I blacklist the card (and others that won’t reappear) or not?”. Specificity isn’t the issue, just (lack of) recurrence. Right now I’m at “keep it cuz it’s fresh in my mind, and if it gets in the way later, I’ll drop it”

I’m kinda 50/50… Like ideally I’ll learn the actual species… But practically sometimes you need to do the “ok, some tree” thing too.

[HopeWaterfall]

@shitsurei

For me personally, I’m usually fine being “some sort of fish” (which you even get from the kanji) and going on with my life

Same, if I wouldn’t actually be able to recognize it by seeing it, then I don’t really care about the specific name. That’s true for fish names, bird names, variations of plants… If I can’t differentiate them in my native language, then why would I bother to learn which one is which in another language? It’s not like I’m a translator, so there’s really no benefit for me to specifically learn them in my situation imho.

[暁のルナ]

@HopeWaterfall

If I can’t differentiate them in my native language, then why would I bother to learn which one is which in another language?

I look at it as an opportunity to learn about something I don’t know… But within reason. Like for マリみて, half the characters titles are French rose names, with kanji underneath. I looked them up the first time, but I’m not about to look them up every time (as an aside, I wonder if they contain some symbolic meaning). If I was doing the jpdb deck, I’d probably keep them tho, unless I was too backlogged.

Never know when random info will be useful. I would probably do this in English too tho. At the very least, fish names seem useful for cooking recipes

[暁のルナ]

@暁のルナ

Also I guess from all the speaking along I’ve been doing lately, I’m having trouble turning off the read-aloud mode. I guess that’s good practice tho. Definitely glad I’ve been doing the speaking along, cuz I’m certainly speaking noticeably faster (relatively)

Finally got this to turn off, after I got tired (from various things).

• Read aloud speed: .43 - .47 pgs/min
  • マリみて read aloud speed: .16 - .27 pgs/min
• Silent speed: .36 - .41 pgs/min.

I feel like my read aloud comprehension was somewhat better (and it’s easier to feel excited), but that may just be from getting tired. In any case, this is much faster than my マリみて speed, even tho they’re just 1 level apart.

Looking at the jpdb deck this makes sense:

• マリみて 1: 50% Known, 79% coverage
• 声優ラジオ 5: 78% Known, 95% coverage

Some ways this might not be an equal comparison:

• マリみて is digital, and has more text per pg (236 pgs instead of 256)
• lookups in マリみて consist of me asking my teacher, and her explaining. In 声優ラジオ they mostly consist of me using OCR and pasting into my dictionary app.
• The jpdb reviews have definitely cut down my lookups a good amount

Anyway it’s a good example of how “levels can’t tell you why something is easier/harder”

(I should make that all into a single table, but I’m not bothering with it on my phone rn)

[mic]

@暁のルナ

鮪

I think the word マグロ is not uncommon like e.g. as sushi topping, but the kanji I at least see for the first time.

[暁のルナ]

Cool. They were at a fancy sushi place. So that certainly fits. Maybe that’s the reason for the kanji instead of kana here? I always wonder at choices like that. tho in certain books, I’m pretty sure the author just wanted to show off their kanji knowledge

Not sure if I’ve seen it before, but if I have, it would probably have been in 〆切前には百合が捗る | L28 There’s a lot of food stuff, esp in book 2, that I skimmed at the time. Hard to believe it was only 5 months ago… Feels like ages since I read it.

[暁のルナ]

Caught up w/ all 8 seasonal anime, read this month’s Yurihime in less than a day

For YH, the only thing that gave me real trouble was わたおし - like the lookups density in that is just brutal for me… which makes me think I should do the jpdb deck at some point in the indeterminate future… or just make a small Anki deck, and do it before my reread (whenever the physical gets here)… but I’m barely keeping up with the current ones. Otherwise the other fantasy ones were also a little tricky, along w/ the Taishou era one

I spoke along to most of the anime (I think らんま, アオノハコ, and ダンダダン were the only ones I didn’t), to varying degrees of success. ReZero was particularly hard (effectively just mumbling half the time), but by the time I hit やり直し令嬢 and 魔法使い, I was syncing up with the lines a lot of the time - which was pretty cool! I’ve always thought voice acting is really awesome, and while I’d never consider it as a career, it’s fun to try to match the voices (tho I drop/quiet the more excited parts, so as to not disturb the neighbors)

1/3rd through 声優ラジオ 5, plus finally made some progress on 対ありでした。 ~お嬢さまは格闘ゲームなんてしない~ 1 | L28 (hard due to fonts, visual contrast, and vocab) and 不揃いの連理 1 | L25 (moderately hard to easy, depending on the particular chapter). These felt so much more frustrating to get through than 声優ラジオ b/c of the higher proportion of lookups (3-5 lookups per 3-5 sentences is way more disruptive than 3-5 lookups per LN page)

Anyway, I both went super far ahead in jpdb deck and got super far behind on reviews. Slowly catching up with those, and I changed the review intervals to the slowest, so I don’t feel too overwhelmed. When I complete those, I’ll bump it up one level, at a time, until I get back to normal speed. As before, a lot of stuff I added is “I sorta know this, but wanted to reinforce” kinda stuff, so going through them won’t be so bad.

Edit: btw speaking of fruit definitions, this jpdb entry for persimmon didn’t care to distinguish either: 柿 かき 果樹の一種、又はその果実