Luna's Learning Log

Japanese
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Read slightly faster w/ マリみて in lesson today, and excitingly came across quite a few words that I’ve been doing in the 声優ラジオ jpdb deck! Which was surprising b/c I didn’t think they had so much common vocab - but I guess those particular words/expressions were common enough.

Reading speed progression:

Pages Speed (pgs/min)
90-98 .16
98-111, 111-124 .26
124-139 .27
139-152 .29

So it’s only marginally faster, but still neat. Reading definitely felt a bit smoother for most of the session. It may just be that I’ve started living in my kotatsu, and thus my monitor is closer to me now… Curious to see if this holds up next week or not

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Been listening to ソードアート・オンライン2 アインクラッド | L34 while cleaning. Since I’ve already read it, I don’t mind that I’m missing things. Definitely places where my comprehension is spotty, and where I’m relying on my memory of the anime & LN. There’s spots where it differs (very nicely) from the anime, but they’re not very major.

Definitely wouldn’t do it like this if I was freshly trying to read it (too much unknown vocab), but I feel like my recognition is doing pretty solidly, for words I do know. And it’s another thing I can add to my November Listening Challenge hours.

Otherwise been thinking about just how much time I want to spend on jpdb daily. It’s helpful, but also I’ve probably spent enough time that I could be done with 声優ラジオ (with much greater exertion, and less internalized vocab) by now. Of course I’ve spent my time on other things too. But anyway, maybe I’ll just make myself go ahead tonight, regardless of where I am in the deck. I did decide to blacklist the “appears once” food words that I’ve already passed. I’d have kept them if I hadn’t gone so overboard with adding new words :sweat_smile:

The fact that there’s so much vocab in SAO 2 LN that I don’t remember (despite having read it) does kinda reaffirm value of SRS… Tho to be fair, it was almost a year ago that I read it

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Thinking on the textless audiobook thing more, I do wonder if it’s worth doing with material that I’m vaguely interested in, but don’t really care about. This would only be an “in the background while cleaning or walking” sorta thing

Some options:

Anyway I still have another 7.8 hrs to go with SAO 2, so a bit premature, but worth keeping in mind. If I do it, I should probably stick to lower level stuff

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声優ラジオ Progress - book and deck

56% through 声優ラジオ 5 (book). Vocab from deck was helpful to varying degrees (full recall, partial recall, “oh that was in the deck”, etc). And some words I understand better bc I saw them in an actual book now 上位互換 かいごかん is an interesting one. Dictionary says forwards/backwards compatible, but in-context it meant could be replaced by [swapped out for] this younger voice actor who copied what I do, but does it better.

Words: 83.1% Coverage: 96.4%. A lot of current words are annoying オノマトピア in kana, which I grade myself very leniently for. I kinda regret opening this many reviews… But it gave me something to do during my work meetings. Update: I then proceeded to start opening up more words, after finishing this post :sweat_smile: most of them are easy tho

Reading speed
  • Reading speed was >= to earlier in the week, except for 1 tired stretch
    • Peaked at .5 pgs/min (30/hr)
  • Avg is .4 pgs / min (24/hr)
  • Book is 344 pgs, so that means a puf 14 hrs total (approx 6 hrs left)
    • If I maintained .5/min, it would be 11 hrs
    • the average audiobook time for LNs seems to be ~9-10 hrs

Truthfully if I wasn’t timing, there’s a few sections I would have gone through slightly slower, or paused for lookups. There was one paragraph with like 4 different types of soba mentioned, which I did not delve into, beyond glancing at the definition. I’ll learn about those someday, if/when I cook more :joy:

Anyway, probably I’ll finish the book on Saturday. I’m a bit mixed on whether to do 声優ラジオ 6 or 転生王女 2 next; or do the マリみて deck. My usual philosophy is to go for the next easiest/closest, but considering I already own 転生王女 2 physical, and this all started bc I want to push into fantasy more, 転生王女 2 is probably the way to go. As much as I’d love to speed up マリみて, I’m almost 2/3rds through (84 pgs left).

転生王女 2 is gonna be quite the climb tho. I’ll be reading with audiobook at least. Will be interesting to see how that interplays with the SRS

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Translated a few more reviews in my lesson today:

Some new vocab from this: 不可思議、対峙

I feel like I’m gradually getting more of a grasp for the linguistic style/patterns for this kind of writing (but still have a long way to go). My teacher had previously suggested watching news clips to get more accustomed to it… I haven’t done any of that, but I did discover https://www.anikore.jp/ which has lots of reviews, and they write in this same kinda formal way.

Anyway, it’s an interesting challenging - both formulating the sentences at all, and also wording them appropriately. It also shows where I definitely have holes in my grammar. So I should really probly collect these reviews in a single post, and spend some time looking over them for grammar points and phrases. It’s also interesting see how much of a mess my English writing can be… like it makes sense, but it’s very messy(?) and conversational and stuff? Certainly much more informal than the JP versions I come up w/ in lessons

Anyway, I usually look up anything animanga related on MAL, but I’m going to try to use Anikore instead going forward. Just another “I can/should do this in JP instead” thing

Edit: Also got a lot more SAO 2 audiobook learning in while cleaning. 2/3rds done w/ the second story. This actually helped motivate me to clean… so I’ve definitely gotta do more of this in the future (my apartment is usually a mess :sweat_smile:)

Also I need to remember to switch Yomitan to use the JP-JP dicts. I rarely ever read with browser, so I always forget it’s not configured. But I feel like it would be more beneficial to have during my lesson

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Finished up 声優ラジオ 5, started 転生王女 2, but at a slow pace bc I’m trying to stay ahead in the deck - and wow this deck is hard!! I’m at 66% unique words & 90.5% coverage… But it seems like a decent amount of the words I don’t know are towards the beginning. Maybe I shouldn’t hold myself back so much tho.

Jpdb timing seems to be weird. Like I’ve put it on “even shorter intervals” and unlocked 608 words, but barely any reviews showing up. I may switch to the “new SRS timing” setting, which seems to be a bit more aggressive.

Oddly enough, even tho SAO books have more vocab and stuff, I think those decks would actually be much easier for me - I guess cuz I’ve read 8 of them, and setting familiarity?

Otherwise I got through my 50 hrs November listening goal, and will probably blast through 60 in the next day or two. It’s like I’m making up for all the hours I didn’t do the last two months :joy: A lot is from audiobooks too - I’ve been listening to SAO 2 while cleaning (which there’s been a lot). I definitely feel like something is improving, and talking along to things is certainly contributing to that.

Picked up らんま1/2〔新装版〕 21 | L23 - which thankfully I can read through more quickly than last time. I don’t mind being lazy with lookups for parts, bc some of it is just so dumb/pointless, and it kind of doesn’t matter. Otoh I’ve been enjoying the anime a lot, in part bc the beginning of the series is actually good. I’m still mildly weirded out by some of the aesthetic choices, but overall I maybe like it better than the original.

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SAO 5 over 転生王女 - what happens when a deck is way too hard

Decided to drop the jpdb deck for 転生王女. There’s too much really hard vocab I just have no exposure to that’s killing me. That said, I’m going to try continuing with the book, and just taking it slowly, looking things up as I need to.

So I’m back to doing SAO 5 deck, which is much more fun. Even when I don’t get words, I get them on the next round, or I go “ohhh, right” (with 転生王女 it was like “I just got these 5 words wrong 8 times in a row”). I guess bc a lot of the SAO vocab is either fresh in my head, or just makes sense and has familiar kanji and such. Like honestly I can do this deck even without reading SAO 5, and still enjoy it.

転生王女 was a ton of unfamiliar 訓読み words in the deck, like 詳らか and such, as well as unfamiliar “I don’t know those kanji” words like 憔悴, and I just couldn’t remember them bc I don’t actually know them on the first place. That’s the sorta thing that previously led to me going “I’d rather just be reading”

While the 転生王女 deck definitely helped with the オープニング section, I was also way ahead of it. So even if I keep reading, I’ll probably have that boost for a bit. In a worst case I’ll drop it, watch the anime, and come back later.

In both cases, I think the key will be to just take it slowly (I currently have the SAO deck on chronological, and I’m probably ahead in the book)

Edit: at this point for SAO 5 I’m at 70.97% words, and 90.58% coverage. Just for reference, after marking all WK words as known again, 転生王女 is 72.33% and 92.8%. Which means I know a much higher amount of words in SAO, but a slightly higher percent in 転生王女. Ironic, given how hard 転生王女 feels. Last time I wrote down 声優ラジオ 5 was Words: 83.1% Coverage: 96.4% - so that’s a good idea of “this book will feel relatively comfortable, when…”

Been playing Zelda: A Link to the Past. Besides occasional vocab, the language is really easy. So that’s been fun! I’m almost a the dark world. For once I’ll actually complete a video game, cuz it’s a pretty easy endeavor (I’ve beaten this many times already)

Dropping 私の初恋相手がキスしてた | L32?? and 神様たちのお伊勢参り | L26 from my Now Reading for now. While they’re enjoyable enough, there’s no way I’ll manage 4 LNs rn (and even if I do drop 転生王女 2, then I can just focus on SAO, and go on to the next volume)

Edit: マリみて speed was slower this week .23/min (13.8/hr). I definitely wasn’t vocalizing slower though, so I’m pretty sure it was just the result of having more lookups this time around. If anything, I think I was reading more smoothly. It’s a bit of an endurance exercise reading outloud tho lol

Edit 2: I’m probably gonna finally reread アオのハコ | L23 … I felt intimidated by it before. But at this point, I’m fine with a lot of it, and I’m finding that there’s so much of the plot I’ve forgotten. I think when I finish this Ranma volume, I’ll start it

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Got through another 8% of SAO 5. There’s definitely stuff in a sentence level that’s flying past me (didn’t help that it’s 1-2am), but overall understanding it ok. Only around for words if they’re interesting, or I feel like I need to understand them. I’m at a party of the story where I don’t care too much about the details I’m missing. So not sweating unknown vocab, but am seeing recent Chicago aplenty (yay)

This was definitely a good choice, and actually it feels comfortable enough that I’m just gonna drop 転生王女 2 for now, and focus on this book (42% left) and then SAO 6. The audiobooks really do wonders!

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One thing that’s been cool doing jpdb: lately I’ve been pronouncing the pitch accent correctly for the majority of words. While my pitch accent is far from perfect, it’s nice to know I’ve made some meaningful progress. And I correct myself when I get it wrong.

I’m sure that’s been helped by speaking along to things I’ve been watching. I haven’t been doing that with SAO 5, cuz it’s enough effort just following and comprehending

Reached my 60 hrs for November listening, via my 8th(?) watch through of ガールズバンドクライ S1 | L25 - speaking along as best I could. I know a lot of the lines less well than I’d expect (but I kept up with many as well). I’ve got 2 more watches left for the year (final 2 Blu-rays). So I’ll be curious to see if I can improve, and get more precision and speed by then.

For the first episode or two I was having trouble keeping up the talking pace, but then I got more in the grove. Some eps were 字幕なし, but most were あり.

One thing that’s been nice is I can confidently, correctly identify which scenes are 熊本弁, and I can understand like 90% of it (IRL this would really not be the case). The subs definitely help there, esp for the ep 13 scene.

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Got in some solid hrs with 転生王女 2 audiobook while on the train (finished chapter 3). Except for spacing out, and some occasional issues with telling characters apart (there are too many characters for a single narrator, imo), I’ve mostly understood things pretty well. I definitely have to really focus a lot of the time though, and there are occasional sentences where there’s like 2-4 words I just don’t catch. While I’ve been listening without text, I’ve been able to look up words on the fly, which has helped confirm or clarify things. Some were words from the jpdb deck (and some are in the SAO 5 deck) - though I guess I’m far past the ones that were driving me to despair anyway

I’ve really enjoyed what I’m getting of the plot, but also gonna watch the anime to see what I’m missing (Update: the anime is missing more than I’m missing! But it did confirm that I got things mostly right, and did correct 2 errors I had). I’d prefer to be listening with text, but otoh it’s good listening for when I’m otherwise occupied. Also then it’s not competing with SAO 5 (since I am doing that with text). I think I will try to do this next chapter with text & liberal lookups tho. Maybe I’ll feel less weird about tracking my Reading progress here (yes I’m having the “does audio-only count as reading?” debate with myself again)

I’ve been playing around with SAO 1 & 4 audio-only a bit as well. I finished SAO 2 besides the Sacchi story, which I’m just not in the mood for.

1.5 hrs left to SAO 5. So I’ll finish that over the weekend, and start SAO 6. I should have finished it yesterday, but I pointlessly procrastinated

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Finished ソードアート・オンライン5 ファントム・バレット | L34 and 転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命 2 | L32 and wow, I really loved the second! Did them both with audiobook + text. I noticed that a lot of the words I was looking up were furigana words, so that feels good. I think I had plenty of non-furigana lookups too, but still. And of course, a lot of words I could get from context.

Otoh to my surprise, my listening comprehension with 星降る王国のニナ S1 | L28 has been really iffy - even in parts where it shouldn’t be. Which I’m a bit surprised/confused by, since I can do pretty well w/ both SAO and 転生王女 when I walk away from the text for a bit. This makes me wonder if I should alter my December Listening Challenge to include a minimum of audio-only or audio-only anime hours as well

I want to continue on with both SAO & 転生王女 LNs, but I don’t own the next volume for the latter. I think I’ll probly order the next ones from Suruga-ya ASAP. If vol 3 is as good as volume 2 was, then I’ll pause SAO after vol 6, and just focus on these I think (I imagine the jpdb decks will feel a bit easier at that point too). I’m definitely really grateful for the audiobooks. These would both feel so much harder without them!

Also excited for various book clubs in the next month or two. I should make a note of them here

Update: I finished November Listening Challenge at 77.6 hrs

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Upcoming Book clubs:

Club Start Book
Yuri Jan 5 徒然日和 1 | L21
WK Intermediate Jan 4 サイレント・ウィッチ 沈黙の魔女の隠しごと | L31
Beginner LN? Jan ?? 明日の世界で星は煌めく | L27
Regular LN? ?? Still nominating…
Summer you were here Dec 1 君と綴るうたかた 1 | L20
Non-fiction Jan 12 日本人の心がわかる日本語 | L25
CLAMP Dec 1 東京BABYLON | L24??
Class-S Jan?? ??

(I probly won’t actually read 明日の世界で星は煌めく | L27 since I read it like a month or so ago)

For someone with such a 頼りない track record for book clubs, that’s a lot! Half of it is yuri (of course), but it also contains my very first non-fiction book! Hopefully I actually like the book. Anyway, while I’m reading enough already, I feel pretty confident I can keep up with all that - Silent Witch being the hardest of the bunch, but also potentially the most interesting. Thankfully it has an audiobook! What I looked at of the preview seemed fine style-wise, as well. In any case, I’m definitely not worried about the manga, except maybe Tokyo Babylon. Hopefully I’ll like that better than Rayearth (I didn’t totally hate it, but it was a bit painfully boring)

It’s cool that I can think about stuff like this, and that I feel up for participating in all these. Curious to see if I end up dropping anything in the end

Update: I finished 君と綴るうたかた 1 already… so that’s one less to worry about :stuck_out_tongue:

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I restarted Fate/Stay Night, tho skipped a lot of stuff. It’s hard still, but in a way that feels doable. One of my biggest issues is with semi-familiar words, where I’ll know the meaning of the kanji, but not the reading/actual word (sometimes I do know the actual word, and just don’t connect it with the kanji tho)

The 日常 parts are easy enough, except when they’re randomly not. My endurance overall is probably like 10-15 min sorta before I get too frustrated about lookups (even when I skip, I’m frustrated I don’t know stuff). That’s fine tho. So far I’m able to mostly get it without translation, tho when I get to the harder parts again I may need to check it

Ironically this time around 転生王女 3 deck feels easier than SAO 6 deck. So I’m sticking with that, and have a few days head start while I wait for the physicals to come :slight_smile: just 1,055 new words :joy: left. I got lazy about looking at the JP definitions before. So I’m making myself focus on those more this time.

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Probably don’t feel like reading today, cuz 君と綴るうたかた 1 | L22 really knocked me out; and I’m also not feeling well (temporary). So I’m just plodding away with the 転生王女 3 deck. Currently up to 76.6% Known Words, 93.7% coverage. In general I’m going for breadth over depth, and being lighter with grading than when I did 転生王女 2. I think that was a large part of why I got so distraught while doing it.

So I should be in pretty decent shape by the time it gets here… Apparently I never actually put my order through :sweat_smile: so I’ve got even more time than I thought

I was surprised to see some of the words from the decks show up in 君と綴る. It reinforces yet again that this has actually been a good decision. Especially on a day like today where there’s a good chance I won’t read anyway.

Otoh I’m only at 17 LNs this year vs 21 last year, so I might pick up the audiobook for 神様たちのお伊勢参り again. I think I’m fine reading that without text. So it can be some of my audio-only material

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Watched the corresponding eps in 転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命 S1 | L30 and my comprehension was mostly right, but there was 1 semi-big thing I missed (antagonist’s motivation, I was a bit fuzzy on), and one thing that either I misunderstood or was anime original (Anis fighting w/ 2 mana blades instead of 1)

Overall definitely think the books are the far superior version

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I wonder why this wasn’t on my radar. I’d heard of it, but didn’t realize it had such high ratings. I suppose I should check it out at some point. It’s on sale now, but I’m not sure if I have the time to try to squeeze in the first volume as a test before the sale ends…

That’s good to know! I enjoyed the anime, but I still plan to read the LN starting next year. It also sounds like you found volume 2 an improvement over volume 1?

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Maybe cuz it’s a Yurihime series? :wink: In all seriousness, as I mentioned elsewhere: the first volume (specifically the first 4 chapters) is easily the weakest part of the story, and really not representative of the rest of it, imo. So if you find yourself on the fence, it may be worth continuing anyway. (In contrast to say 私の百合はお仕事です! | L27 or マリア様がみてる 1 | L29 where the beginning is the weakest part, but it’s consistent with the rest of the series)

Cool - I’m sure you’ll enjoy it then! And yes, definitely. I can elaborate more if you want, but basically vol 2 has more exciting pacing & developments, b/c it could build on everything from book 1. Also the final battle is very impressively written, b/c of how it weaves in with everything else (I say as someone who usually gets bored reading battles in JP)

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Interesting…
I read the first chapter or two I think back when it was on KU at some point and was very meh. I think that was also shortly after I had bounced off of やがて君になる and didn’t have faith in any yuri recommendations anymore :sweat_smile: Now I wonder if I should give it another shot while it’s on sale because I’ve heard so many people rave about it…

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I felt that way during the first 4 chapters as well… like it was “ok, but kinda subpar”. Then chapter 5 was like “ok, some actual substance all of a sudden”, and volume 2 was like “is this the even same series?!” There’s a reason it starts off the way it does, but even still I think those 4 chapters were pretty clumsy.

I’d definitely recommend it, but I’ll add that the series can get really heavy at certain points. So if you do try it, you may want to be prepared for that.

What don’t you like about やがきみ? It’s a favorite of mine (and also my first yuri), but I have some mixed feelings in there as well. Always curious to hear critiques

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(having not finished it) I got really stuck in the play arc. I do not care about the play. I do not care that they are reviving the tradition that her older sister did. I just could not bring myself to care about it.

I also always felt a bit like the senpai girl (Nanami? Minami? Am I totally off? :joy:) was pushing herself on kouhai (Yuu?). Like in volume 1 she found someone who understands how she feels (I don’t know if she’s canonically ace but it feels like she is or at least in that direction) and senpai is like “yeah, I totally get that” and then immediately kisses her 2 chapters later. And it feels like the whole story is about pushing her feelings onto the kouhai. It didn’t give me the ick or anything, but I just didn’t feel like they were a couple I wanted to root for. My biggest issues with the story is the play, but not really being super for the relationship also didn’t help.

I’ve considered reading it again (I bought the whole series on sale a while back), or maybe watching the the anime to see if that could pique my interest, but it just didn’t do it for me on my first try.

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