Yes it‘s maybe half a year ago, but I still hear it in my ear, a real earworm. You might end up to see the show just to be able to see the opening 24 times 
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I gave it a listen. A little too slow for my taste, but the music is brilliantly written. Seems like it would be fun live. Can definitely see the appeal. And the danger of the earworm…
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Finished マリみて 7, took a short break to do the new job deck, and went straight into through マリみて 8 (66% through). The second 33% of vol 8 was the graduation ceremony, and that was a really frustrating slog (extended backstory, focused on characters I don’t care much about).
Had to take a break after the graduation stuff, and watched some anime (おにいさまへ & アオのハコ). My comprehension with おにいさまへ is less than I’d like it to be, but still decent. It’s very good listening practice. Also wow, some of the characters in it are really nasty! It’s quite exciting drama
Anyway, I’m finally at the first part of マリみて that I’ve been looking forward to - Sei & Shimako meeting, and Noriko’s introduction. I’m so interested to see how Noriko-related developments are around in the novels!!
Kinda crazy to think that I read 66% of vol 8 in one day. Which means I should be able to finish, and hopefully start vol 9 tomorrow
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Finished マリア様がみてる 8 いとしき歳月 後編 | L29 within 24 hrs, and I feel like my comprehension is generally getting a lot better. I realized some of my issues are due to getting distracted by lookups, so sometimes I have to remind myself to reread the sentence, after looking words up. If I wasn’t so hooked on these, I’d spend more time on the jpdb decks beforehand. Tho I feel like the vast majority of my lookups at this point are double-checking 読み方, often for older words I should know. I should probly limit highlights to ones that I repeatedly check/get wrong, so I can reinforce them… or maybe I should stop highlighting altogether. That might help w/ the distraction…
Speaking of jpdb, starting stats for vol 9 are: 76.1% Known, 91% Coverage, 423 Learning, 749 Remaining… with 383 due reviews. I’m starting vol 9 tonight either way, but I’ll spend like 30-60 min w/ it first.
The physical volumes will be shipping soon, which I’m a little torn on - cuz on one hand I wanna read from them, but otoh the Kindle is soooooo much easier to read from, and makes lookups so much nicer. Maybe when I reread the series (in like a year or few), I won’t need a dictionary (as much) anymore
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I swear everytime I write something like this, the book throws a hard section at me plus I haven’t gotten to the Buddhist stuff yet! Tho it was nice recognizing 弥勒 cuz of Inuyasha.
I love that the author changes the narration style depending on the perspective character, but sometimes it takes a bit to get my bearings.
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Only 50% through book 9 now, cuz I’ve felt like crap all day (somewhat better now). Got jpdb stats to 83.5% Known, 94.4% Coverage, 343 Learning, 467 New, 192 Due. Probably the least I’ve done of any of the books do far, but it’s going fine.
I didn’t find the Buddhist stuff hard at all. It all came up on a single dictionary search, and I didn’t really need to dive into what specific things were, beyond a superficial level (though it would be interesting to learn more eventually).
Most of my lookups are still reading double checks I think (tho sometimes meanings too). Besides an occasional pg or 2, I usually have 2-6 lookups per page, which is very manageable. Still some sentences where I’m just like ??? But they’re the exception I’d say, and sometimes I can get through really long portions of chapters without being to check translation. Other times I’m checking every few sentences.
Anyway time to get back to reading
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Finished book 9. I found myself having more trouble again once things switched back to Yumi’s narration, oddly enough. But after a while I got back in the grove. That was a ton of fun!
Book 10 deck start: 80.7% Known, 94.1% Coverage, 297 Learning, 524 New, 270 Due. Edit: got up to 88.8% Known, 96.7% Coverage, 464 Learning, 198 Due, 10 New
As much as I wanna just jump straight into book 10, I’m gonna take an hr or w/e to do the reviews, cuz it is helpful for getting started. Hopefully I can still keep the same pace of 1-2 days per book, but I might not have as much time to read the next few days. We’ll see
I kinda fudge things a bit with jpdb now, marking words as Hard, when I’d normally mark them with Something, just so I can get through more words in general. I worry slightly about that in a long term sense, but for now it’s helpful
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I’ve been starting to do this too… I feel like it’s usually a lot easier once I see the word in context that I usually will remember it there even if I don’t remember it on the card. I do try and remember the words that I had to look up when I was reading through and unless the act of reading it/remembering that I had failed it (paradoxically) made it stick, I will usually fail it when it comes back up in reviews if it’s not a quick recall.
It’d be nice to be able to search for a word an mark it as failed even if it hasn’t come up for review yet, but alas.
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Move it to front of review queue, and momentarily start the reviews process. It will probably be the first one to appear. Then you can mark it wrong
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Clever!
I didn’t realize you could move words to the front if you already have reviewed it. I usually just do that to mark new words as “I know this but I may forget” instead of telling it I know it outright.
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Ah yeah, it’s annoying that Know but might forget isn’t in the rest of the UI. I never actually get any use out of it at this point though, just I just press Don’t Know on all new words, until the reviews show up (can usually get through about 200 like that).
Can’t say I recommend that approach tho 
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Yeah I’m trying to keep my reviews as small as possible. If I can’t decide how well I know a word I mark them as known but may forget and if it comes up in reviews and I know it it immediately gets never forgeted I also blacklist words that are only 1x once I read them.
I have somewhere between 80 and 120 reviews a day and can’t imagine having more.
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Yeah it’s quite ironic I went from “how do I keep reviews manageable” 
to "let me binge half the deck once, and then just ignore it for 1-2 days: 
But it’s a helpful break btwn books, and I’m not reading other series rn, so it works. By the time the next deck rolls around, a number of the Due words have stuck in my memory, so I can mark as Never Forget
If I was doing every day, or reading slower, I’d probably limit it more
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I can see the advantage, especially if you’re both reading fast and within a series. I forget that when you’re done with the books you can just drop the deck… maybe once I find a series that I can read pretty quickly I’ll might give that a try…
Unfortunately for me I’m having trouble finding something that I both feel compelled to read and isn’t crushingly hard. Instead I’m binging let’s plays on YouTube
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Oh yeah, I absolutely immediately drop the deck. No need for old words, and I’d be drowning if I didn’t
Otoh here I am 7 days into January, with only 4/40 hrs for listening 
Which ones are you watching?
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I’m most of the way through this Link Between
Worlds playthrough:
And just started 逆転裁判:
Last year my goal was to bring my listening up so it wouldn’t be as painful in the long run to improve compared to my reading level. But I accidentally went too far and now I’d rather watch/listen to all the things and reading is the annoying skill. So, mission accomplished? 
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Great choices! I watched a playthrough of the first 2 arcs of Ace Attorney on GameGrammar (sorta similar to GameGengo). I’ll get around to playing it eventually… 多分
Yes so crazy/frustrating how much longer reading takes to develop than listening. I’ve put in so many hundreds more hours of reading compared to listening, and yet listening has come along way faster (not that they’re totally separable, and each helps the other anyway)
I guess a better way to look at it: “at least listening doesn’t take as long as reading to develop” And in any case, you’re still getting to enjoy some stuff you’re into. So in that sense, it’s a win.
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Got through the 1st 1/3rd of book 10. Taking a slight pause to calm down from being super pissed at Sachiko (what else is new). I read longer stretches without checking translation for a lot of this… But some of that was me being too emotionally caught up, and less concerned with precision in certain scenes
This made me realize that I should be more conscious/deliberate about what I’m looking up. A lot of the my lookups are things where it’s not an immediate recall, but if I think about it for 1-3s, I get it. So immediately looking them up immediately is counter-productive (prevents the reinforcement from happening). Also it feels better - and less disruptive (since the UI isn’t changing, and I’m not reading an unrelated sentence) - too look less things up.
So thx for the indirect reminder 
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I think part of this is that it seems like I don’t really learn many new words listening, but it’s great at reinforcing words that I already know. That said, I did learn あぶり出す from my let’s play today, but I did have to look it up bc I couldn’t quite get it from context. That feels pretty typical for learning words from listening.
But I think where listening shines is to activate more of the words you have already learned and (esp with unscripted content) learn how people naturally describe things.
Reading, on the other hand, demands that you know a lot more words. It’s a great place to get new vocabulary, but the barrier to entry is a lot higher, once you’re comfortable with listening to native speed speech. Although I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to understand mumbly men
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Ugh, tell me your secrets guys. I’m diligently doing my daily listening, and I know I just need more input, but I just want to skip all the “practice” and “learn” steps and just jump to “I understand this”. 
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