Somehow we’re halfway through 2024 already 
I posted an update to my goals I set at the beginning of the year in the goals thread earlier this week:
I find it interesting to see what goals I both under and over estimated myself on this year. I don’t think in the next 6 months I’ll somehow magically jump up 5+ reading levels (even if I downgrade my goal to 30 being a comfortable read + listen level), but my watch with subs level is pretty comfortable at 25-26 and my pure listen level is not that far at probably a 23-24 and 25 is just right around the corner from that. I guess I shouldn’t be very surprised at that considering I’ve spent this year really focused on my listening skills by mostly only reading books along to ebooks. I’m not exactly mad about this since I do want speaking skills, eventually, and I spent the first many many years decades of Japanese study with reading skills way higher than listening or speaking. There’s nothing like buying books that you can most definitely read from a bookstore in Japan and then not know what they’re saying if they ask you if you want a bag or not. 
June Summary 
Reading
| Total pages read | 2,226 |
|---|---|
| Manga | 1,603 |
| Book | 623 |
Listening
| Total Hours | 80 |
|---|---|
| TV Episodes (123) | 52 |
| Audiobooks (4) | 28 |
Conspicuously, there’s no French here this month. I’m not so much unmotivated/burnt out (although there’s a little of this) as I am excited for stuff in Japanese right now. Since my language mantra has become “follow the fun” I’m putting down French for a while and following the fun that I’m having in Japanese. I not surprisingly had my biggest month to date this month with (around) 80 hours of Japanese listening. I probably shave 2-5 mins off of every TV episode skipping opening and ending songs and fast-forwarding through recaps, but this also doesn’t count any YouTube, podcasts, or anime I watch with my partner. I especially don’t know what to do about content watched with English subs, so I don’t add that to my “study” time.
Media Highlights
- ひげを剃る。そして女子高生を拾う。 | L26 I finished out the main series early last month. I am glad I read the series, but there’s some parts of it that I didn’t love that I talk about in my review here. I have a vague interest in maybe reading the side stories one day either when they become an easy read for me, or if they ever record audiobooks for the side stories.
- からかい上手の高木さん | L17 I scarfed down the first five at the end of the month while they were free to read, the first time I’ve binge read that many free to read books at once and it didn’t even feel like a chore! I liked the story enough, and would read more, but not enough to pay full price. Maybe I’ll grab the rest if they ever drop to ¥100 or less.
- 神風怪盗ジャンヌ S1 | L24 Finished this up towards the end of the month. I was really disappointed with the second arc of the series. They introduced a bunch of new big bads, had a ton of monster of the week episodes, and then crammed all of the plot into 3-4 episodes at the end of the series. The op + ed were also way worse
I’m glad I did finally watch it though since I started it as a teenager and now finally know how it ended. - 犬夜叉 | L28 Been absolutely sailing through these since I finished up KKJ. I get a little lost in the villain/regional/sengoku-y talk from time to time, but am getting 95% of the show. It helps that I’ve watched it before (some episodes more than once) and read some number of the manga. At this point I don’t remember if I read or watched further into the story, but at 45 episodes in I still haven’t made it to new story yet.
