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So over the last two years I’ve spent:

  • €500 on ebooks (nearly all Bookwalker)
  • €300 on physical books (Amazon and Verasia)
  • $150 on Bunpro (one year at $50, then lifetime at $100)
  • $270 on WK (one year at $90, lifetime at $200, prorated refund of $20 when I upgraded)
  • €120 on JPDB
  • €120 on textbooks (Genki 1 & 2, Quartet 1 & 2)
  • €100 on Dogen’s Patreon
  • €150 on games bought specifically because of Japanese language options

So all in all, about €1,600 over two years. €800 per year/€65 per month on a hobby is not bad, I think. I spend more on that on video games per year.

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December 2024 JLPT results are out!!!

And my results for the N3 test are…

I PASSED!!

With a score of 49/60 (Vocab/Grammar), 60/60 (Reading), and 41/60 (Listening) – 150/180 total.

I knew I skilled everything into Reading (why else would I be here), but I’m really happy that Listening was better than expected; still a lot of room for improvement though–this is definitely one of my 2025 goals to get better in this domain.

Now is the next goal N2? I will probably aim for it next December.

My goal for 2025 was to watch more j-dramas and recently I started watching きのう何食べた？ S1 | L28, it’s a lovely drama adaption from the corresponding manga (from the manga art I’ll probably skip to read the manga). It’s basically portraying the daily life (and struggles) of an LGBTQ couple, and I like it for being pretty realistic and relatable. Things like coming out to your parents/co-workers, dealing with being perceived, personal insecurities etc. The actors are amazing and I heard they’re pretty high-tier too. It’s not really fanservicey which is a good thing here I guess since then it really focuses on the issues portrayed.

I’m also collecting a list of JFF movies (Films streamed by JFF Theatre | Japanese list by Pashmina | Natively) which I’ll hopefully be using for listening practice (most of them have no Japanese subtitles, so this will hopefully force me to rely less on them.

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Congrats and good luck on your trip to Japan, hope it’s awesome :blush:

I'm a little late in replying but I kind of have a yearly budget. Most of my free money goes on Japanese stuff be it books, textbooks, audiobooks, lessons or games. Any games I buy usually at least have a Japanese voice over if not Japanese text options.

Per month:

  • Lesson: £40 approx
  • Audiobooks: £7.99 (audible sub and every book I buy is in Japanese)
  • Textbooks: when I need them or have the money to buy one for specific things (I have a lot of smaller textbooks on individual parts of the Japanese language).
    Books to read: last year alone I spent somewhere in the region of about £800 and I’ve just spent another £800 approx on books for this year in one go.
  • Games: £40 this month so far but both were on sale and for Switch. I have 2 more games I want to buy which is Monster Hunter Wilds and Ghost of Yotei.
  • Media - I occasionally buy mp3s but it’s like once in a blue moon. I have recently started buying DVDs from Japan though but that’s more about £200 in the last year and will be about the same this year.
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First novel this year!

I liked the third volume of UtsuKare a bit more than the second volume, mostly because you see a bit more growth in the character development. Have already queued up Interlude (which is a short story collection, I guess) and the fourth volume.
I think I’m noticing improvements language-wise, it feels like I’m starting to have to look up less and less. But the fourth volume I will go in completely raw (did not look up any summaries or anything and trying my hardest to avoid spoilers), and hope that I can follow the story alright.

I bought a few other novels since Amazon had a point cashback offer:

猫を処方いたします。 | L30?? → will probably use that for my “Has cats” bingo field
カラフル | L28 → popular book with mixed reviews, let’s see how I like it, will probably use it to mine/pre-study vocab
言ノ葉ノ花 | L29 → already listened to the audio drama

And a few manga from Amazon/Bookwalker:
カードキャプターさくら クリアカード編 | L18 → the last volumes so I’ll finally finish the series
ハレとモノノケ | L24??
メタモルフォーゼの縁側 | L21
ハッピー・オブ・ジ・エンド | L23

Then I bought the BLCD drama for Old-fashioned Cupcake, I think Togawa’s voice actor is pretty close to the live action drama actor! Was a very wholesome listen. I still have a 25% off coupon for this month, still musing back and forth about what to get for that.

So a lot of purchases this month again sigh :money_with_wings::money_with_wings::money_with_wings:

I continued a bit with Tobira Chapter 6, but so far I’m only halfway through grammar. I’ve been a bit lazy recently, it feels like I’m already occupied with my study “dailies” (Renshuu SRS 30 min, reading about 1h or so, watching 1-2 episodes of Natsume Yuujinchou or Kinou Nani Tabeta). I’m mostly using the weekends to catch up a little, but recently these have also been full with appointments and schedules.

I also watched マイ・ブロークン・マリコ | L28 from the JFF Theatre selections for listening practice, liked this movie, especially for the great acting of the main actress.

I do procrastinate a lot when I’m on my phone and actually want to study (rather going through forums and discord and reading/talking about studying than actually studying) , so I have to find a way to reduce it a little bit.

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The last update is two weeks ago, so I thought I might update even though not a lot happened.

I didn’t really read a lot of manga (still a lot in my waiting queue) but I felt more like novel reading. I feel like the speed is slowly increasing or at least I don’t feel as fatigued anymore. I remember that when I started novel reading, even 3-5 pages felt super exhausting. Now I read about 10-15 pages per book per session, about 30-40 pages a day (when I have time and not too many appointments).

Since my yearly goal was to improve listening, I’ve been looking for Spotify podcasts that I can play while commuting on the bike or during work. I’m not really commuting often since I work from home so that’s another question how to increase my listening time. At home I feel kinda restless doing nothing but listening, maybe while doing chores?

The podcasts I’m currently listening too (using Spotify Daily Podcasts autolist):

  • Nihongo con Teppei (moving to the intermediate ones, but actually my goal is to move away from learner’s podcasts)
  • GOLDNRUSH podcast: A podcast with new guests every time talking about various topics somehow related to the daily life in Japan, mostly ハーフ and foreigners (they have amazing Japanese though)
  • ココロ踊るドイツ語講座: Actually for Japanese who learn/are interested in German, they also have a “tandem” JP-GER podcast here
  • ニュースの学校: Easy news from Asahi Shimbun
  • Tanaka Radio: Very relaxing episodes about various topics, rather short
  • Haru no Nihongo: Various topics and Haruka’s experiences, relatively natural while still showing some vocab explanations

I finished the grammar section in Tobira, but still have to find more time to complete the rest of the chapter. Usually I did these on the weekends, but I’ve been pressed for time lately.

Yesterday I went to another JP-GER meetup exchange, it was quite nice, I could speak a lot but still notice that I make a ton of mistakes and often misunderstand what the other person asks me (to my defense it was rather loud and we had to yell across the table), sometimes I freeze up when I don’t know how to express what I want to say. But listening in to other people’s conversations feels like I understand mostly everything, that was nice. The meetup is once every two weeks, sometimes I intentionally skip it when there’s too many (German) people or if I’m being busy which is unfortunately a lot. But I guess I did fulfill my “once a month” goal so far.

I still want to find a tandem partner but it’s somehow hard. Maybe because I’m too introverted. I did download Hellotalk but I don’t feel like messaging anyone, I write a Moment or comment/correct from time to time but that’s it.

Edit: oh yeah I forget, last time I talked about procrastination, scrolling endlessly on my phone when I should (and want to) be studying. I now put a time limit on most time eating apps like Instagram and hope it helps. I hated that I fell into the trap that is short videos. By the way it’s a native setting (in Android it’s called App Timers), you don’t need any external apps for that.

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That’s a really great accomplishment!! Congrats :slight_smile:

Unless I’m listening to a drama CD or book I’m really invested in (and even then), I also struggle with that.

Haruka’s are my favorites at this point (not that I listen a ton) - great mix of content & difficulty! I’m gonna have to check out the easy news one. Some of the topics look interesting, surprisingly

I’ve found that the most beneficial use of HelloTalk tbh. I’ve thought a little bit of trying HT me, but it feels like a lot. Maybe I should just try writing moments (and be fine with probly getting ignored bc I wanna talk about really obscure stuff)

This is very good information, hopefully it’s in Android 13 (I refuse to upgrade the OS, bc 13 works perfectly well for me, and nothing about 14-15 have convinced me I should change)

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I write pretty boring stuff, just daily things / observations and there’s always a few people interacting, so it feels like a pretty safe (in terms of not needing a lot of commitment) engagement. The other parts of the app are tbh pretty overwhelming for me, it seems like they tried to monetize everything single last bit, like I have like eight messages which are all advertising different services.

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Yeah the advertising stuff is really annoying. I wonder if that goes away if you get the premium (which I wouldn’t mind doing if I was using the app regularly)

I’d basically just want to write about stuff I’m watching or reading. I used to have conversations with ppl too tho, and even the ones I was enjoying, I just got tired of talking to a random stranger regularly… tho some part of that was my limited speech skills

I agree the moments thing is great, in terms of being low stakes and such, and getting useful corrections. Tempting to give it a try again, but I should read more instead.

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I had HT premium last year (I grabbed it at the year end 50% off sale), but I didn’t renew it this year (even at half price). I went back in and felt like I was getting blasted with a pressure washer with all the ads they have (although iirc there were still plenty of ads even with premium).

I did find one Japanese language partner who I’ve kept weeklyish conversations up (on Line now) over a the past year and a half. We’re planning to meet when I go to Japan next (terrifying!). We don’t talk enough for me to really count it as a part of my language learning, but it’s been really fun for like cultural exchange. We share photos back and forth about different celebrations and stuff (she sent me some great photos of some natsu matsuri near her house last year), so it’s been nice from that perspective.

Ohh, I’ve been trying to not get back into German (it’s supposed to be in line behind French, but it keeps on trying to skip the line :joy:) Maybe that would be a way to diret some of that energy but still be Japanese study or, you know, absolutely get me way back into German :upside_down_face:

I’ve also had this impulse too! It’s been a lot more fun to read as reading has become a lot easier to do. I’m hoping I’m finally approaching that feedback loop of enjoying Japanese reading so much I can’t help but get better. Here’s hoping you are too!!

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I currently have the half price premium and yeah, you still get ads but all the ads are just to buy more VIP or send people virtual gifts. You can also pay to view the Selfie feed :roll_eyes: 199 coins for 120 minutes of browsing just AI identified selfie posts, but sure, it’s not a dating site…

I have myself hidden from search (which you can only do 3 months at a time) to stop lots of random “wave” messages and have a small core of people I talk to and occasionally will go and correct English posts, but overall it’s a pretty terrible platform… It’s just the best that’s currently out there sadly. There’s a few other platforms I’ve found that have nicer interfaces but not many users.

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Did you message her or did she message you? I wonder if I should try reaching out to more people but it always feels like bothering them. Also I would ideally have someone not male and within my age range…

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I don’t remember, but I probably messaged her? Most of the messages I got were from men, or pretty obvious scams :joy:

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February Recap
Vocabulary 346
Kanji 34
Grammar 35
Days Read 21
(M)angas/(N)ovels read 3M/1N
Pages read Manga 803
Pages read Novels 439
(E)pisodes/(M)ovies watched 17E/2M
Hours watched 8.9

Vocab/Kanji SRS: Fulfilled my monthly goals, roughly 90% through Renshuu N2 vocab list, so I think I’m on a good track. Accuracy is 95%, compared to the yearly average 97%, but it fluctuates a bit.

Reading: Read about a book length of novels this month, want to keep this up (currently reading 3 novels in parallel, which isn’t always optimal, but at least I can alternate what I feel like reading). Haven’t been so much into manga this month, this should be about 4 volumes, mostly continuations of series.

Notable mentions:
雑音 | L21 - from the author of ガンバレ！中村くん because I was curious about their other … not so lovey-dopey series were (if you didn’t know, most of their other works are tagged with some disturbing tags and trigger warnings… what happened to you Author-sensei?).

Well, I did expect something weird, and that’s what I got. It’s a collection of 7 short stories with some BL content (some very tame, some very explicit).
You know you’re in for a ride when the most wholesome story in the bunch starts with a (trigger warning) double suicide.

Listening: As mentioned before and elsewhere, I tried this month to incorporate more listening practice into my routine, mostly by upping passive input, and thus hoping that when I have time I can do some active input as well. Generally I don’t like passive input because it’s rather ineffective and I don’t believe in passive absorption, however in this case my strategy was to generally create an immersive environment, so that I can quickly switch to active input whenever I feel like I have a free time window.
I think that worked somewhat, I definitely did more active sessions than I did before. And I feel like the drain I feel when listening to less comprehensible stuff has definitely gone down. So I’m still refining, but I think that’s worth exploring. Right now what I need to work a little bit on is finding material that fits with my learning goals. Ideally I would like female speakers for casual listening practice, as well as formal listening practice such as news.

Speaking: Lumping this in together with general output. I tried to jump over my own shadow and cold-messaged a few people on HT. Some responded, not sure if anything longer-term will come of that. But having a good social energy phase at the moment, I feel like I have to make use of it while it lasts. I might go to the JP-GER meetup Monday, still feel a bit under the weather due to a cold I caught.

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Oh, that’s the first time I’ve heard this! Love the imagery.

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Darn, linguee failed me once again :sweat_smile:

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According to the Internet it’s a German saying? If so I’m not surprised I hadn’t heard of it.

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Yes it is! Subscribe if you wanna hear more random German proverbs :laughing:

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Bit early stats for March, and some minor updates!

March Recap (so far)
New Vocabulary 331
New Kanji 63
New Grammar 22
Days Read 23
(M)angas/(N)ovels read 6M/1N
Pages read (M) 1,219
Pages read (N) 386
(E)pisodes/(M)ovies watched 11E/1M
Hours watched 6.3

Vocab/Kanji SRS: Monthly goals met, 95% through N2 vocab. I’ve been adding a lot of example sentences to harder to memorize vocab. Feeling like with Renshuu I get the best of both worlds of pre-made vocab decks and mining my own sentences.

Textbooks: Finished Tobira Chapter 7! Took 3 weeks this time which is my sweet point. I’m getting to terms with not perfectly clearing all chapters and rather going through them speedily. If anything doesn’t stick, there will be plenty of opportunities of revision while reading or when I go through a different grammar resource (I ordered Shinkanzen Grammar N2 and still have Sou Matome lying around).

Reading:

Finished

https://learnnatively.com/book/b49d20164d/: Short story collection for UtsuKare, I loved it! It’s very slice of life and gives some (unasked) background for some happenings in the main story line.
https://learnnatively.com/book/1da09070ca/: A manga about a fake marriage between an asexual fujoshi and a gay man with an unrequited crush.
https://learnnatively.com/book/b8d3f4a5b1/: Slice of life BL during a zombie apocalypse, wholesome, the second volume was sad :cry:
https://learnnatively.com/book/6576b27567/: I always wanted to read this since I saw some posts on Twitter, it’s really lovely, I love Kusakabe’s character. He’s so wonderfully direct.

In Queue:

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I actually got gifted a copy of 丸の内魔法少女ミラクリーナ | L28, I’m so excited to read my first physical copy! The format is so tiny, it kinda reminds me of the (smaller) Reclam books with a fancier and shiny sleeve.

In the last Bookwalker sale there was a point cashback on whole series I grabbed this series below. The artwork looks amazing, I’m very curious.

Listening: Nothing special, continuing listening to podcasts and news.

Speaking: Doing a bit of shadowing exercises, mainly to train my conversational reflexes using 新・シャドーイング 日本語を話そう! 初~中級編 [英語・中国語・韓国語訳版] / Shadowing: Let's Speak Japanese! Beginner to Intermediate Edition | L25

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Oh nice I loved that book! Have fun! The cover of that edition is very pretty

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Finished N2 deck! This month I did more extensive reading, so I didn’t add too much new vocabulary. I’m planning to convert and merge some of my ebooks to txt format so I can search and add example sentences quicker. I’ve been a bit lazy this month, basically did just the minimum required SRS study for maintenance.

Haven’t done any textbook study at all. Welp, I guess life happens. Or, in my case, hyperfixation on a text-based mobile game. I started doing a bit of Sou Matome in May now though. Tobira is paused for the moment until I feel like having more headspace for it.

Finished:

Easy book for novel beginners, though I thought it was kind of meh. It is well written, but the storyline doesn’t give much (the protagonist is reincarnated into a boy who took his life and lives his life for a while - yes, the plot twist at the end is exactly what you’re currently thinking).

The fourth installment (5th if you count the short story collection) of the UtsuKare series. While the last one focused on Kiyoi’s character growth and development, this one is fully focused on Hira. While I liked to see that things are always moving forward with the two, I didn’t particularly like this one. There’s few major happenings in the plot, and when it does, it is almost a bit too much.

Loved this BL! I listened to the BLCD before (Kamiya Hiroshi x Ono Daisuke <3). It’s a pretty easy read for a novel, no fancy vocabulary and only one POV.

カードキャプターさくら クリアカード編(16) | L18 Finally done with the series! I have to say, the story got me pretty confused in the end. Card Captor Sakura is maybe a level 20 when they’re having their slice-of-life school conversations, but easily 30 if they get deep into the magical lore.

Ongoing:
丸の内魔法少女ミラクリーナ | L28 I just noticed that this is the same author as Konbini Man - maybe I’ll check that one out after! Definitely fits into the profoundly weird category as well, but I’m enjoying the book so far (read 2 of the 4 short stories).

Visual Novel:
B-PROJECT RYUSEI*FANTASIA | Steam | Switch – for the Nintendo Switch on sale (currently 3850 JPY). It’s a non-romance Otome about managing a 14-member J-Idol group. I’m not familiar with the franchise, but I liked the demo and the story seems to be well written from what I’ve seen in the reviews. I’ll probably won’t have a lot of time for it, but I’m looking forward to Ono Daisuke as the princely idol-type. I like Josei-muke but I’m not into self-insert romancing, so I’m looking forward to this not actually having romantic content actually.

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