2025/02/04:
TLDR: New plan for Feb building on the progress I made in January and adjusting to a new routine with everything else going on in life atm. Last book orders for 2025 placed already, buying myself new books is now restricted.
My manual tracking for my Japanese has been working out pretty decent so far. It’s shown me where I am finding it difficult to do certain things within the time I have and shown me that I spend way too much time focused wholly on reading as opposed to any other language Skill.
I’ve managed to read at least a page of Japanese a day since the turn of the year (except today though my intention is to start reading after writing this). I’m managing 1-2 Language exchange sessions every week, some more productive than others, and a Lesson with the tutor once a week, though those are not always as productive as they should be since I am struggling with vocabulary outside of books and normal day to day basics. I need a way to get more vocab ingrained but in a way it actually sticks so I can use it, though I know the other way to do that is to practice with it which atm, reading seems to be the only non intrusive thing I can do with a lot of my time in work or public places where I cannot listen to stuff and cannot speak out loud in Japanese.
January recap -
Read something in Japanese every day, (completed 3 manga, 1 children’s novel and 1 novel)
Listened 13/31 days, at least 17 Hours of listening completed
Completed Japanese with Hikari beginner 2 course
Completed 3 Tutor led lessons and 6 Language exchanges alongside - approx 5 hours in total speaking
Non Japanese related stuff that's having an impact (feel free to skip - trigger warning with regards to ill health)
A lot of my free time that I would usually have spent on studying has been spent travelling to the hospital or spent over at my parents trying to help out as much as I can with stuff my mum would usually do since she’s been taken into hospital. We found out recently that she has Cancer and organ damage as a result and although they are hopeful that it can be cured if she follows the advice of the hospital, she has not been receptive to their suggestions and advice. You can’t force someone to accept help, we have tried, but our family is stubborn af and will do whatever the hell they want, regardless of the outcome (hence why I still continue to self study even through all the pitfalls, false starts, wrong processes and non-believers I’ve had on my back).
I’m not complaining about helping where I can, just noting that it makes things more difficult to do what I had originally planned so trying to adjust as much as I can around it so I don’t burn out again, while still trying to see the achievements I’m still making despite the reduced time I have to study and the forced into “reading is the quiet and least intrusive skill” given the circumstances.
As per above, reading was the most time spent, and I’m still struggling to get time to get back to the text books so I can then progress on to Tobira and Quartet. Looking like it will need to wait for my time off end of the month and beginning of next for me to then start trying to add the text books back in on the days I would usually be working. Maybe using my work time split between study and help would improve my options, but I’ll need to wait and see how that looks.
Plan for February -
Continue reading through my Bingo card
Commit to listening at least to 17 hours (preferably more)
Complete the first 10 sections of Japanese with Hikari intermediate (10/20) since these can double as listening as well as study.
Continue taking tutor lessons, at least one per week if I can, and continue my 1-2 language exchange sessions each week.
Add regular Shadowing back in
Plan for the books are to keep furigana books to be read through work with non furigana books read exclusively at home or where I have access to a dictionary/ WiFi.
For shadowing, I only managed 3 sessions last month, this month I would like to do at least 3 per week (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday for the moment with a view to increase this as it becomes habit).
I’m considering using the audio books again for listening and maybe just running through a chapter or part of a chapter each time (say 10m-15m focused) but will need to see how it goes alongside Japanese with Hikari.
I put my last 2 orders in to CD Japan for my books (like I need another book).
It has the rest of 本好き as well as the short story books and the spin off (may as well go the whole hog, it will at least help my reading over all if I manage to stick with it), along with a few short story collections, the rest of 水属性の魔法使い light novel series, the manga for The Summer Hikaru died and 1, 2 and 4 of おまわりさんと招き猫 since 3 seems to have become as rare as gold dust for me to pick up (will be keeping an eye open or end up getting it from proxy if need be). One of them should hopefully take about a week or so, the other order will probably turn up beginning of March since one of the books for 本好き is on a 3 week wait list. I’m in no rush for them, just wanted to order them while I had the chance. Plan is to not buy any more books after that for the rest of the year, though about mid year, I will be looking to put in my DVD/ game order (still want 13 sentinels and I want Tales of Symphonia in Japanese meaning I need to get a Japanese version and not the English or Download version.)
I’m hoping some of my holiday time can be used to catch up with a few things and get into a proper routine for studying from the text books again but I do think with the time restraints, I will be looking at shorter sessions than I had originally planned. Any time spent with Japanese is still progress and the way work is going, it’s looking like being able to read a fair bit for the first 2 hours and the last 2 hours of shift is going to continue unless I’m on training. I just need books with furigana or books that I actually know the kanji of or can at least guess the kanji meaning since I can’t look stuff up when in the office.
This part below will be edited across the next week with listening progress
- Mon 3rd - 58m Japanese with Hikari (tool box lessons - real time, though no longer sped up as she speaks faster in the intermediate lessons)
- Tues 4th - 60m comprehensible Japanese videos on YouTube (short videos about 5-10m long each with different topics each time - approx N4 Lv)
- Thurs 6th - 29m Japanese with Hikari Reading (section repeated 3 times, real time)
Additional edit: I’ve apparently read something from every Natively level from 0 to 29 except Lv 27. Will need to rectify that 
And there’s always one day a week that I get very little done unless it’s reading between calls due to the 12 and a half hour shift, so weekly goals I think will work a lot better for me. They will also encourage me to do more on days I do have extra time instead of just doing the bare minimum.
So far it’s all stuff I’ve covered before but it’s the audio that is helping me to hear it in use as she only speaks in Japanese for the video series. My plan is to finish it by end of January then make a start on the intermediate series as of March/ April so I can finish the advance series by end of July. Hoping that should cover most of the grammar up to and including N2 level (I think the beginner 1 covers N5, beginner 2 covers N4, intermediate level covers N3 and the advance covers N2 grammar as far as I can tell).
