== Status Update ==
I know there’s a lot of other excitement going on with the audiovisual release, but I needed to hold myself accountable and make an update…
Jan/Feb 2023
– Started off great, with lots of reading, but then somewhere in mid-Feb, I hit a wall. In retrospect, I think it was when I started reading くまクマ熊ベアー 1 | L24 . Not that it’s so hard to read, but that I went from books where I had furigana and a vocab list to one that I had no furigana and no vocab list. The story is interesting enough, but it really slowed down my progress (and drained my enthusiasm). Coincidentally, this week, a coworker started talking about making 3-month goals and holding each other accountable, and so I re-examined my goals and tried to come up with something challenging but attainable. (His goals are with kayaking, and my goals are with Japanese. “3 months” means 12 weeks, with Memorial Day weekend being the finish line, 5/26-5/29.)
– Otherwise, I’m not doing too bad. I’m getting comfortable with more and more words, and I’m making progress through the natively levels.
Level+1 Reading Challenge 📚📈 - #41 by ForeKred
– I like keeping two books in the mix – one hard and one easy. The hard book is the challenging book with lots of new vocab and I’m shooting for 80% understanding (extensive reading). The easy book is either graded reader or children’s book – something that I’m pretty sure I should understand everything in it. Given that I should understand everything, I focus more on making sure I understand every sentence, and stopping to investigate when I hit a sentence that I don’t quite understand (intensive reading). I treat it sorta like a reading homework assignment. It’s also a good break when I don’t have the energy for the hard book.
– For the next set of goals, I’ve decided to: 1) attempt 時をかける少女 | L23 again (because furigana and vocab list), and 2) take the plunge into talking. – I wish there was an easier way to “ease into” talking. With reading, there’s many things you can do to go at your own pace, but with talking, you can’t tell the other person, “wait, let me look up that vocab… oh, I think I heard that before… how is that different from this other word…”. (Well, I suppose you can do that, but it’d slow down the conversation and probably annoy the other person real quick.). I think shadowing is a small stepping stone to conversation, but all you really have control over conversation is exposure time. 
Mar 2023 goals (+3mo goals)
- Read 20min/day (3mo: 1 light novel)
– 5 out of 7 days
– Keep on hand: 1 hard (extensive) + 1 easy (intensive) - SRS
– iKnow: 10min/day (3mo: +250)
– Skritter: 10min/day (3mo: +250) - Shadow 10min/day (start)
– 1.5 chapter a week (12wks: 18 ch)
– シャドーイング Beginner - Convo tutor (start)
– 1+ day a week (12wks: 12 sessions)
