I discovered jpdb has this crazy useful feature, “Start a review session treating due cards as new cards”, for not dying under the weight of new deck reviews, in the jpdb labs section
With this, you can just go through the deck normally
Watched きみの色 | L21 with JP subs. Had 3 lookups, and think I could have understood like 95-98% without subs. I even got most of the song lyrics, tho 水金地火木土天アーメン has a few that are too quick for me to process (also they’re hillarious). I still have to watch all the extras
Finished 美少女戦士セーラームーン 5 | L25 and waiting till the other volumes get here, so I can go back to vol 2-4
Started ソードアート・オンライン6 ファントム・バレット | L33 - don’t it with jpdb deck & audiobook. Not sure whether I will actually stick to it rn or not. It’s 70% Known, 90% Coverage with 641 sure and 1863 New… So it will be productive, but not necessarily efficient. It’s also 445 pgs
Practically speaking I should not do SAO & instead do 薬屋のひとりごと deck, rather than adding a new novel… Tho actually my stats are even lower for that… So SAO is more practical in a sense
Fire Emblem (Three Houses): I dropped this back then (Nov 2023), and now (Mar 2024) it feels very comprehensible. Still an occasional word or two I don’t know, and it takes me a bit to get certain things (tho I’m partially convinced this is just the early game instructions, and getting used to the game). Anyway, it doesn’t feel like a “learning project”, which is both cool and weird. I’m not 100% sold on the game just yet, but I’m enjoying it more this time around. Not sure how much I should/will play it.
SeaBed: Joined in on Home thread for SeaBed - informal Visual Novel Book Club (like I needed another thing to read… ), and it’s been really easy grammatically/comprehension-wise, and pretty mixed vocabulary wise. I tried a text hooker for the first time, and extracted a portion of the text, and turned it into a jpdb deck (using the text hooker in real time was aggravating, as I suspected). That added about 125 words. I definitely find it more annoying/draining than just reading a normal book, but still kinda cool.
クラにか web novel: the book club for this is starting in 6 days… which I’m sorta not psyched about, b/c I’m reading so much other stuff rn… but at least it will be a pretty quick read, since I’ve already read book 1 twice. Curious to see how the web novel compares I guess, and how many things I have to lookup… Though I wonder if anyone else will even participate… if not, I probably won’t start it for a while
Sailor Moon: I’m 15 eps into 美少女戦士セーラームーン Sailor Stars | L24 now, and it feels a bit harder than previous seasons. I do per-episode jpdb for like 5 eps in advance (sometimes while watching lol). Also watched a bit of 美少女戦士セーラームーンクリスタル Season III: Death Busters | L28 as well, which was good reinforcement for the manga. 劇場版 美少女戦士セーラームーンCosmos 後編 | L28 (which matches the arc I’m in now) was harder, and would have been a struggle without the subs. Guess I’ll get to learn those words in the corresponding manga volume(s). Also rereading 美少女戦士セーラームーン | L25 and then getting to the rest of the series. It’s been really enjoyable doing all this Sailor Moon, though the downside is that I haven’t been keeping up with novels too much. The main challenge of the manga for me is actually all the hiragana, and a bit the handwriting. My reading speed definitely slows down from it - so it’s good practice.
花物語: Finished あやめ in 花物語 上 | L39 and next up is 山梔の花, which has 84 words left.
SAO 6: Still doing the SAO 6 deck as well, but haven’t read any more of it yet. There’s 2011 new words left in that, so assuming I do actually read it, I’ll definitely finish the book first. Probly won’t make any real decision on that till after I finish Sailor Moon anime at least.
Decided to drop SAO 6, at least until I finish SeaBed - which I learned there is a jpdb deck for (and for flowers games as well!!). So that should make that a lot easier.
However my focus rn is 美少女戦士セーラームーン | L25 - which I’m reading alongside 美少女戦士セーラームーンクリスタル Season I: Dark Kingdom | L28 (manga first, then watch corresponding eps), and doing the jpdb deck as well - which is sadly only for S1. Though they have a deck for Eternal too, so I might add that afterwards, since I still need to watch the rest. There’s a lot of little stuff where I didn’t quite put together in the manga, but seeing it in anime form it makes more sense. So I guess I need to work on my visual (not linguistic) comprehension there. Hoping that will improve somewhat as the manga continues.
It always surprises me when that’s what’s holding me back. It usually happens in fight scenes for me, and I think there there’s often some incredibly stylized sound effects that I’m not good at reading and are necessary to figure out what exactly happened (so I guess that’s linguistic after all ). But getting more language literate has helped me see where I need to get more manga panel literate as well.
For me it’s actually a lot of the transitions and like different scene cuts, characters looking similar, etc. Sailor Moon’s visual style (at least vol 1) isn’t the clearest - so like you have to think more about what you’re actually seeing… Which I get the impression is true of a lot of older shoujo (and not necessarily a bad thing).
It’s interesting how different the visual language of different manga can be - even within the same genre or period. Like some conventions are shared, but other things are communicated differently (or different things are communicated)
Battle scenes I can’t tell wth is going on half the time, but it also doesn’t matter mostly. CLAMP is especially bad in that regard, imo
That said, I have a bad habit of skipping onomatopoeia or sfx… So much info in those sometimes!
And also probably gives your brain the space to process the visual part more.
Learned about a few tools that are pretty revolutionary for me:
YomiNinja - hover lookups but works outside of browser… this makes playing VNs soooo much easier. Only con is anything google-related won’t work, due to security. So I can’t fully hook it into my jpdb
JPDB Web Reader - what if Yomitan, but jpdb!!! It even highlights the words in the sentences, according to your Known status
I’m using this inside YomiNinja too, but it’s basically read-only there b/c I use google login for jpdb, sadly
Home · exelix11/SysDVR Wiki · GitHub - stream your Switch to your PC. Requires running custom firmware… but combined with YomiNinja, this might largely make the “should I buy on Switch or PC” question irrelevant
I don’t feel like picking up a new project right now tho, so not sure I’ll find out anytime soon
Anyway, YomiNinja has made playing Fate/Stay Night waaaaay easier, so I finally got out of the prologue.
I’m hoping SeaBed gets interesting soon, cuz so far it’s fine but mildly boring - but I’m still really early on. It is good vocab acquisition tho. It’s tempting to just drop it and do Fate/Stay Night instead
Totally changed the way I’m using jpdb - to accommodate short and long term reads/views. Ordered as follows:
Per-episode decks for Utena & Sailor Moon, chronological order
花物語 stories (2 at a time)
Novel decks in order of vocab quantity:
SeaBed
薬屋のひとりごと
flowers
SAO 6
Fate/Stay Night (Saber Route)
New cards order is chronological, one deck at a time - which ensures that I get the anime stuff. And then this way, if any of that overlaps with the novels, I don’t lose those words. And I get to see what words are in what decks as I go.
I’d had SeaBed & flowers at the top of the novels before, but I’m more interested in the 薬屋 vocab, and there’s less of it. Especially now that I’ve got YomiNinja working, it’s not as urgent to do SeaBed. Flowers I’m equally interested to 薬屋, but 薬屋 makes more sense, since I do it consistently every week.
薬屋のひとりごと has a lot of vocab with unfamiliar kanji - as does 花物語 of course. I should try writing them, but it never occurs to me when I’m actually looking at them
SeaBed still feels pretty easy, and is maybe starting to get interesting. It feels like such a huge commitment tho, so I’ll see how I feel at the end of ch 1… I wish there was a way to see how much is left in a chapter - general problem I have with visual novels
Wound up resuming 本好きの下剋上~司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません~第一部「兵士の娘1」 | L32 unexpectedly. Just over 100 pgs left, and it feels pretty easy - so I’ll try to finish this week. Really affirming that it feels easy now - cuz it didn’t really a year ago, at least not like this. I should probably do it with the audiobook - for speed & listening practice
Gonna be reading 知ってびっくり! 日本の歴史のお話 後編 | L21 soon, which is basically dramatized post-1200s history. I read a bit of the preview, and it’s rated at L21 - which is easier than the history manga I was reading forever ago, so I’m really looking forward to it.
I ended up going ahead in 美少女戦士セーラームーンクリスタル Season II: Black Moon | L28 relative to the manga - up till now I’ve been ahead in the manga. There’s some places where I couldn’t quite catch what they were saying, but overall understood like 90% of it. So reading the manga first definitely helps.
I realized I haven’t made any progress on my “get comfortable reading L27+ fantasy manga” goal, so I started Fate/kaleid liner プリズマ☆イリヤ ドライ! ! 3 | L27 - a series I really wish had a jpdb deck. It has furigana thankfully, which makes a huge difference in exhaustion level, since I can’t just tap the words (which makes me realize that mokuro would be useful for 真月譚 月姫 9 | L27)
I wish I had the single volumes for セーラームーン. The 完全版 are totally lovely, but the 2-in-1 makes them cumbersome (especially since I’ve been using the book holder, cuz of my back), and progress feels much slower. There’s affordable ones on eBay, but I’m extremely out of book budget for the next month or two
Caught up with the manga, and reading it first is definitely the way to go, since it’s not really possible to clarify vocab to the same extent, without text. Also it’s just more interesting doing manga-first.
Finished 少女革命ウテナ S1 | L31 - I’m glad I didn’t do that earlier, and do think it might have been good to do even later. Even though it was only 2 months, I do feel like my listening improved over the course of the show. I want to read the manga, but I’m reading enough right now.
Went back and watched a few skipped eps from 美少女戦士セーラームーン | L24 - and here too it felt like I was recognizing words much better than back in July, or even February.
I think my next “shoujo anime I missed when I was younger” will be 桜蘭高校ホスト部 S1 | L27
I started this - it’s great, and the vocab is challenging, but not overly so.
Was debating whether it’s faster to read manga or watch a show (the latter feels easier though). So will try timing a chapter of セーラームーン, since 美少女戦士セーラームーンクリスタル | L28 adapts 1 chapter per episode. If it is actually faster, that might help me feel a bit less anxious about reading so many things at once. That said, I think anime has some benefits manga doesn’t have, and vice versa.
Finished 本好きの下剋上~司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません~第一部「兵士の娘1」
| L32 with the audiobook, after 1 year & 9 months! Glad that’s finally over! It’s a lot easier these days, though I found my word recognition varied, so I was glad I had the text in front of me. I did put it on 1.5x for most of it - so I may have missed small things. But overall I could follow at that speed. If I was more interested, I would have left it at 1x, but I just wanted it to be over.
I do really want to do more audiobooks for my April listening challenge… rather than doing SAO 6 (9084 Unique Words), I’ll do SAO 4 (7750 Unique Words).
I’ve started making myself write out vocab with unfamiliar kanji, when I get them wrong (only once per kanji)… at least yesterday, it seemed helpful. Curious to see if that holds up. Don’t care about neatness, but I do at least try to get the proportions right
It’s kind of fun, tho pen weight makes a difference, and there were a few I just skipped b/c I was tired by that point. I don’t think I’ll do it for familiar kanji words, but for unfamiliar ones, it’s a nice way of learning the kanji
Square/graph paper helps with this a lot. I have a bunch of kid’s school notebooks kicking around for when I get the urge to write and my writing is a lot more proportional (and neater) with it than without.
Sure, but writing is just a secondary benefit here. Learning the kanji is what I’m going for - so they’re written as quickly as possible, since it still helps.
Is writing with the graph paper improving your handwriting without? In theory it probably should, but I wonder if it’s actually efficient… Either way, you’re basically just gonna have to write many kanji a million times, until you can do do proportions automatically
I’ve had to write my share of Japanese by hand since that’s what my university degre is in. My kana is something almost approaching good enough that I don’t hate it. But it wasn’t until I started using graph paper that my kanji started looking even remotely what I’d want it to look like. I was never really able to improve my kanji proportions without it.
Fair enough. Also I did my time with Ringotan for a while - which does involve grids & boxes. Idk whether it made it any neater (esp since it’s writing on a phone, not paper), but internalizing the shapes certainly vastly reduces the cognitive load.
Thankfully I have no real need to write. It is fun on occasion tho
For Sailor Moon vol 3, the last chapter (53 pgs) took me 25 min, and half the penultimate chapter (which I read aloud) took me 18 min. Granted this was right after my lesson… but still, verdict is it’s not faster - though for easier series, it might be. The chapters in SM are pretty long though - usually 40 pgs or so I think.
薬屋のひとりごと 1 | L38 went well enough in lesson. After 4 lessons, I’m at 17%… so if that average rate keeps up, it’s going to be like another 18 lessons. Speaking was clumsy as usual - but that’s fine.
I’ve picked up too many current reads - so either I’ve gotta hurry and finish stuff, or will probly end up dropping things… fine either way. SAO 4 has like another 8 or so hours left… I think I’ll try to finish Fate/kaleid liner プリズマ☆イリヤ ドライ! ! 3 | L27 & マリア様がみてる 28 フレームオブマインド | L29 (halfway through already) next. Then I’ll be down to 7 (2 of which are long-term reads). レトロゲ(1) | L27 will finish tomorrow, but I’ll start vol 2 right after.
I’ve probly been spending too much time on here, and not enough time reading lately
Ok, I started writing them out once in the kanji squares, and then once in my notebook. It does help in some small way (obviously I’d have to practice it more than once, to have a more meaningful effect). Figure if I’m gonna question it, I should try it first
That whole “get comfortable with L27+ fantasy manga” thing feels less far away now… Tho I should see how 月姫 9 goes, when I get there.
While it’s been a bit stressful, I do feel like the overall content level I’m engaging with is gradually rising. Haven’t been reading manga, since I finished Sailor Moon 4, but I should start on book 6 soon (already read 5). Maybe finish マリみて 34 or 小さき花々 first though.
Recent books & shows
Recent current reads:
花物語 | L39 - all over w/ the vocab, but comprehension
小さき花々 花物語 | L39 (probly L29-31) - from 1930s-40s. So far much easier than 花物語
ソードアート・オンライン4 フェアリィ・ダンス | L34 - if I wasn’t doing with audiobook, I’d probly put it off a bit more, but it wouldn’t feel overwhelming either way
マリア様がみてる 34 リトルホラーズ | L29 - easy/comfortable. Jpdb has been very beneficial, since I only have a few hundred cards left, and most of them have familiar kanji
Recent current views:
ベルサイユのばら S1 | L43?? (around L35) - definitely need subs for this, but found I don’t necessarily need jpdb (but it really helps)
桜蘭高校ホスト部 S1 | L27 - can follow well, but lots of specific vocab - some of which overlaps w/ ベルサイユのばら. Have been doing 3 eps at a time
薬屋のひとりごと S2 | L34 - this is still super hard, though the jpdb deck for book 1 was helping a bit
Vocab thoughts
One thing that’s been interesting for me, with doing decks for harder materials, is how many words with unfamiliar (or weakly remembered) kanji I’m running into. I’ve still been writing them out once or twice, when I have energy. Also surprising has been the “I used to know that word/kanji”. There’s also a mix of “I’d know this word hearing it, but not reading it” and “I’d figure this word out if I saw it, but not if I heard it” - and it’s something I take into account when reviewing, depending on which thing the word is associated with. As usual, I do find that encountering the words in the actual thing I’m reading/watching is a million times more effective for remembering them - but jpdb does help me recognize & retain them when I encounter them.
jpdb decks
Current jpdb decks:
Versailles ep 21-24
Ouran ep 10-12 (will update to 13-15 soon)
Next 2 stories from 花物語
3-4 miscellaneous small decks
マリみて 34
Long-term decks (trying not to do new vocab from these rn):
ApoDiaries - 1,662 Unknown
I can be more gradual w/ this since I’m only reading it once a week
SAO 4 - 1,844
Maybe most beneficial since I’m reading w/ audiobook, and instant recognition helps keep up
flowers - 2,671
SeaBed - 3,903
Fate/Stay Night - 4,639
If I do new vocab, either ApoDiaries or SAO, since they’re the smallest, and more active
Thinking of switching to conversation in lessons… though I already booked next month’s worth as our current format (which I think is actually more expensive than the conversation format anyway), so idk… Anyway I realized that I enjoy trying to converse, and while it’s somewhat helpful having a teacher for stuff in 薬屋のひとりごと, it’s still mostly the sort of thing I can do on my own.
Finished ベルサイユのばら S1 | L36 and ベルサイユのばら 1 | L32 which are two of the hardest things I’ve gone through. The manga felt not that hard, but that’s a mix of “I just finished the anime” and “it’s the beginning of the story”. I still had to look up a lot though, and I felt like I was reading at a snail’s pace, relative to things I usually read. In any case, it’s definitely not gonna be a manga I can just binge read. Now that I’ve finished the anime, I’d like to focus on reading a bit more. Decided against keeping the jpdb deck going while I read the manga.
So my current jpdb deck is for マリア様がみてる 34 リトルホラーズ | L29 , and I’m gonna plan to tackle that & 小さき花々 花物語 | L39 for novels, and then for manga: 美少女戦士セーラームーン 6 | L24 and ベルサイユのばら 2 | L32 . Curious to see how much easier Sailor Moon does/doesn’t feel compared to Versailles - since I also feel like I read that pretty slowly (tho it’s about 400 pgs per volume). At some point, I do need to read the rest of last months’ Yurihime, since this month’s is out next week. Edit: yeah sailor moon definitely is waaaaaay easier, even when I’m tired
I’m crazy close to my April Listening Challenge goal - 31.9/40 rn. That’s way more than I was expecting tbh
My teacher told me my reading speed, pronunciation, and the way I read outloud, has gotten a lot better - which was a nice surprise, cuz I felt like I was reading pretty terribly/not fluidly in my lesson (especially the video game しりとり section… that was not fun). Otoh he tells me my kanji knowledge is impressive… but that I definitely don’t feel - after all, I keep encountering plenty of new kanji in things I’m reading or watching. Anyway I’ll chock the former up to me getting more critical of myself as I get better.
I got tired of big jpdb decks, so I’ve switched to doing only:
Anime episodes (赤毛のアン and 桜蘭高校)
花物語 2 stories at a time
Wikipedia articles - 少女文化、少女、百合、エス、少女小説、少女趣味
Those are all Wikipedia articles I’ve partially read, and that I’m really interested in - and the vocab for them has been pretty fun. Some of them include a good (but not overwhelming) amount of personal names, so that’s great practice. Speaking of which, I reset & restarted the proper nouns Anki deck. I have new reviews set to 3 per day, and a lot of the cards are familiar rn. So hopefully I won’t get overwhelmed again.
Recent listening experiments:
I rewatched a few eps of マリア様がみてる S1 | L27, and understood much better than back in September
裏世界ピクニック 1 ふたりの怪異探検ファイル | L33 - with & without audio. While it doesn’t feel hard anymore, it’s still more effort than I want to put in, and for the audio-only sections I definitely missed a lot.
わたしの幸せな結婚 | L31 - with audiobook. I decided it was more effort than enjoyment, so sticking with the anime instead
螢の光 | L30?? - this was rough (audio quality & stuff)
Doing pretty well on ベルサイユのばら | L32 (started vol 8/10). It’s felt easier than I’d expect (i.e. not draining), which I think is a mix of full furigana + having seen the anime (though they’re starting to diverge more). Newer vocab doesn’t necessarily stick so much though, since I’ve mostly been reading them back to back.
In general I’ve been thinking about trying to branch out to non-anime/LN content more. But it’s not like a priority or anything
Any guess as to how many kanji you know? It wouldn’t surprise me if a native Japanese teacher has a biased view of any foreigner learning the language, such that knowing a moderate number of kanji (but still not enough to read smoothly) is considered “impressive”.
), and it’s been really easy grammatically/comprehension-wise, and pretty mixed vocabulary wise. I tried a text hooker for the first time, and extracted a portion of the text, and turned it into a jpdb deck (using the text hooker in real time was aggravating, as I suspected). That added about 125 words. I definitely find it more annoying/draining than just reading a normal book, but still kinda cool.
