idk what this thread is really going to be yet, but I think I’ll mostly just try to keep track of my thoughts on what I’m reading/learning (i.e. ramble, you’ll see :\ )
How I got to where I am
There’s an interactive fiction game called howling dogs that uses a paragraph from the Kenzaburo Oe short story The Day He Himself Shall Wipe Away My Tears as an epigraph. I consider myself an okay reader but I was like huh what is this even saying. howling dogs ended up being one of my favorite things the year I played it, and as a result I kept thinking about the kinda incomprehensible epigraph. So I eventually picked up John Nathan’s translation of it and later on, because I enjoyed Oe’s work a lot, A Personal Matter. At the same time, I was sort of aware of something that seemed to be emerging as the new hotness: autofiction. The direct connection of this concept to the fairly old Oe novel(la?) (at least in my head) lead me to search all sorts of things: autofiction japan, japan autofiction old?, japanese autofiction, shishokestu, shishosetsu, etc. etc.
Anyways, I came across a book with a chapter titled “Autofiction and the Shishosetsu: Women Writers and Reinventing the Self” within which there was an analysis of the 鷺沢萠 book 私の話. This isn’t translated to English, and because I had a lot of free time, I decided to buck up and learn the language by doing duolingo on and off for a couple of years - whoops. After the third or so time restarting I found the Tofugu grammar webpage and used that to get explanations (and then dropped it again).
In 2024, I picked up Duolingo - again - and then in March I dropped it - again. But this time dropping the language all together, I started going through the Genki books and graded readers. I was surprised that most of Genki 1 felt familiar (three years of on-and-off Duolingo paid off!!) but Genki 2 was mostly new (maybe not too much pay off). Then I went through various other materials (Tobira (well half of it), Satori Reader, Penguin Parallel Text (to some extent), note blogs) and at the tail end of November I decided to read a collection of short stories, 海の鳥・空の魚, that didn’t have a translation to check my understanding with and that experience felt like a big jump in terms of challenge and, also, growth.
I think it’s worth noting that I was marginally employed for a chunk of the spring and fall in 2024, so I could spend quite a bit of time most days.
Goals 2025...
*be able to understand spoken language better
At this point, I feel like I have little to no ability to understand speech, so I kinda want to get better. oops all books backfired a bit I guess. I resubbed to Satori Reader for a month and will try to listen through some stories because the writing is simple enough that the main challenge will be hearing what is said, if that makes sense.
*read faster
I think this will come with time, so I’m not too worried about needing to do anything specific to reach this goal. I can also see getting better at listening being helpful with this.
*work through a good bit of The Routledge Course in Japanese Translation
I got this a little earlier this year and have been putting it off because I feel like I only get one really good shot at working on the exercises that I don’t want to waste because I decided to start before I was ready.
*read 私の話 by 鷺沢萠
umm this was the text that got me to try and learn Japanese in the first place, so I’d like to read it this year and I think that’s a reasonable goal – although I have a paper copy which is harder to read and takes a lot longer than I expect (which is already a pretty long time :|
*read ケナリも花、サクラも花 by 鷺沢萠
another text I became interested in before i started learning the language. I came across it in the article Constructing the self in Megumu Sagisawa’s and Miri Yu’s travelogues: a case study of two Japan-based female writers of Korean origin
*maybe finish ジャッカ・ドフニ 海の記憶の物語 上 by 津島裕子
I read this for a little longer than a month and got halfway through ish but it’s a bit too tough for me right now so I’d like to revisit this later in the year to see if it goes a bit smoother because it’s really interesting to read and think about.
Novels/Short Stories/etc that I like
I feel like I have a high hit rate in terms of liking what I pick to read, so I’ll need to come up with something so this doesn’t become just a list of everything I’ve read.
- 黙市 by 津島裕子
- 海の鳥・空の魚 by 鷺沢萠 – particularly 東京のフラニー, 卒業, 天高く, 涼風, and カミン・サイト
- ジャッカ・ドフニ 海の記憶の物語 上 by 津島裕子 – dnf but I liked what I read
Current "Study Plan"
I don’t do much structured study right now - go through Anki in the morning/during free time at work and try to read for about an hour a day. I do look up a lot of stuff in The Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns and in dictionaries though. I also meet with a tutor every other week to talk about what I’m reading.
Currently Reading: 河童 by 芥川龍之介
I got recommended to read this after deciding to put down ジャッカ・ドフニ. I’m liking it so far (about halfway through) and the short chapters are a blessing – it feels breezy to read (even if the experience is not because I’m very very slow at reading!)
