I’ve been debating starting one of these, not wanting to clutter up the forum or anything. Instead, I was mostly using Challenge Threads. But I figure I’ve been around here long enough now, and my activities diverge from challenges quite a bit.
But mostly, writing a short “What I did today” and making it public helps keep me accountable to myself, even if nobody sees it.
Motivation
Sometime this year, hopefully in July 2025, I will be moving to Japan to attend an advanced class at a Japanese Language school, possibly followed by Vocational School, in my goal to become a Jp → Eng translator within the next 2 to 3 years.
Additionally, I have a ton of friends and contacts in Japan. When I get back, I want to surprise them with my improvement, and so I am devoting all of my free time to Japanese.
Current Level
I am currently at a decently high level of Japanese.
I am able to read and write somewhere in the area of 2200 Kanji.
I am able to Read Novels up to aboht Lv. 30 without major difficulty. Look ups still happen, but theyre infrequent enough for reading to be fun.
I am able to watch up to Lv. 30 or so shows without Subtitles, unless they festure a lot of shouting or specialized terms. With Japanese subtitles, I don’t think there is a limit.
I have passed N1 with 136/180
Study Methods
My study is split into 6 sections based on things I am able to do by myself, and where my interests with the language are. I use a simple app by the name of aTimeLogger (Not affiliated, I just like it) to painlessly keep track of what I have been doing, and for how long. In addition, each category has an ideal percentage of my total study I want it to be, this time based on my experiences in Japan.
Traditional Study (5%) - This includes test prep, textbooks, Grammar Lectures, and Pronunciation Training.
Anki/SRS (10%) - Currently using an App called Skritter, as my primary concern is being able to write right now. Ringotan is similar, I just found this first.
Games (10%) - Text heavy Video Games. Mostly RPGs.
Currently vague and unplanned. My only two goals are to
Hit 1000 hours of independent, focused study (Not school, and not just talking to friends.) It looks like I will breeze past this, so I may up it.
Surprise my Japanese speaking friends with my improvement.
I’m not going to keep a list of what I have read/watched recently, as the main Natively site has me covered for that. Also, I read some pretty shameful stuff. Though I will certainly talk about it as I go on!
Thanks for coming along on my journey. Lets see how far this intense study experiment can take me this year!
I’m happy to see everything get back into balance. It doesn’t really matter, but it makes my number oriented brain happy. Once I’ve got it back evened out, itll be harder for it to get this out of whack again: The bigger the number, the less the percent drifts.
Today I left the world of really, really trashy borderline ecchi Light Novels and went to something a bit more able to be diacussed publicly
I spent just shy of 4 hours today reading 甘城ブリリアントパーク 3. The tentative is Level 31, but I feel thats a bit too high? 26-28 epuld probably be more appropriate.
I managed to read half the book, though. That’s a neat thing for me. The first book I ever read in Japanese was shorter than this and took me a month. That I could theoretically do a whole book in a day, if I put the time into it, is super cool.
双子まとめて『カノジョ』にしない? is one that’s not too embaressing.
Was recommended to me by a friend after we spoke about Kanojo mo Kanojo and 100Kano. It’s not even on Natively. Put in a request but I think I did it wrong.
I think the approvals are backed up right now, but the manga is already approved so I don’t see a good reason why this won’t be eventually. For the record, you can interact with the books before they are approved just like any other approved book, it just won’t come up in searches.
Unfortunately, I read too slow to read that much trash still, but I’m putting together my list of trash to blow through once my Japanese gets a little better
I’ll have to ask you how to do that, then. I’m sure its something simple, but since I always use the site on mobile, I haven’t really been able to see how the site is structured.
Anyhow
Day 2
I listened to 2 episodes of ゆるコンピューター学ラジオ. The first was very interesting, building a full adder from logic gates, and it was easy to follow because it was a topic I am familiar with. The second was a round up episode and I ended up tuning it out before I noticed.
Moved back on to Amagi Brilliant Park 3, finishing it up. Thanks to Bookwalker’s 読み放題, I can read a lot really fast. At first I thought the selection was pretty limited, and for the big popular series it is, but I’m finding fun little things through their recommendations I would have never heard of.
I’m going to add another goal of 50 Books in 2025–A book a week. I’m currently reading 2-3 a week, but I got started late, and tine will dwindle if and when I get to Japan (C’mon, approve my CoE damnit!)
I’ll probably post my time logger once or twice a week, as to not fill the forum with uploaded images. Besides, at 550+ hours, its not changing very much day to day.
I almost always use it on mobile too. If you click on your profile picture it brings up a menu. If you’ve interacted with the book before (setting it as owned, want to read, etc) it will be in your library (under Books) in that category. If you don’t have it in your library at all if you go through the process of adding a new book from the Amazon link it will give you an error that says book already exists with a link to the book and from there you can add it to your library so you don’t have to go through that again
Didn’t do anything of note yesterday, really, so I decided to combine the two days.
I got to a segment of ゆるコンピューター学ラジオ that was a 5 episode discussion of Alan Turing that was fascinating. While I didn’t finish school, I did study Computing Science, so this stuff is interesting to me. While Horinoto and Mizuno talk a bit above my Japanese level, I can still follow it just fine, even if I sometimes lose the details.
For reading I moved on to trashy twin stuff book 3, 双子まとめて『カノジョ』にしない?3 The scenarios are actually rather interesting conpared to most of the LN romcom stuff, but the writing is a bit… I spent a good amount of time wondering if it was AI assisted at first, before I read other stuff and realize that massive overuse of certain words is just hoe this genre is written.
Sounds interesting… maybe I should give a try (but not sure I’ll get around to it)
I’m unlikely to read said series, since it isn’t twins dating each other… but I’m kinda curious about both of these points. Btw 百合の間に挟まれたわたしが、勢いで二股してしまった話 | L27 is not 幼馴染 instead of twins, but has a similar setup. So you might enjoy it (I found the plot boring midway through, but liked the author’s writing style a lot)
This might be the first days in a long time where I feel like I was doing a balanced approach to my study. I mentioned in a challenge thread a long time back that I suddenly got really sick. While I can’t say it’s absolutely 100% better now, something like 6 weeks later, I’m at the point where I can do things pretty freely again.
That means devoting more time to Writing Practice, which I do via an SRS app, and more time to Pitch/Pronunciation. Very important right now, because all goes well, I may be moving to Tokyo in like… 6 and a half weeks.
I’ve been doing a lot of Podcasts for the challenge, but focus’s been iffy. Every now and then an episode will just grip me and I digest every word. Other times I realize 15 minutes have gone past and I barely remember a word.
Finally–Games. Playing text-heavy games is a large part of why I started learning Japanese, I do count it as time spent with Japanese. I am very careful to only track time during text or menu heavy segments. Otherwise, I could just run around farming an MMO for hours and call it study. I keep my tracking app open, and only run it when there’s lots of text.
Lately it’s been a lot of Persona 4 Golden, I’m about 1/3 to 1/2 way through. 10/10 Game for learning from. But also, Fantasy Life i released today, and that game is super text heavy. Unfortunately, there’s no way to turn off the Furigana, but I’ll deal.
Done early today! Thanks in large part to Fantasy Life i. I devoted 4 hours to the extremely text heavy quests, and finished off with a bit of reading and more writing practice.
I adore the game, and the original 3DS version, but I’m not sure its the best resource for people learning. Its good for me, as my current goal is to be able to read menus and quest text more quickly, but it does have permanent furigana everywhere like I mentioned before, and uses relatively simple language.
But Ive been waiting for this for years, so for the next week, much of my exposure to Japanese is going to be coming through gaming.
There is something very fulfilling about waiting years for the sequel to a game I played in English, and playing it in Japanese with no real issue. Its a reminder how far I’ve come since the first time I picked up a textbook years ago.
While I can’t say I’ve learned much new, this has had a fun side effect of increasing my reading speed by a lot, even in just 5 days. When I went back to Light Novels last night, it was like Night and Day. All the time reading quick text popping up and going through menu screens quickly has helped a surprisingly large amount.
But the most important development these past days isnt actually study. I recieved my Certificate of Eligibility for my student visa. Meaning I will be moving to Japan July 2nd!
With aging family back home. I can’t say how long I will be there. But at least 6 months. I never thought it would be possible for someone my age.
Originally, I went through Dogen’s Patreon course which, while not free, I found gave an excellent foundation without me having to search a half dozen books.
Theae days, its a mix of shadowing, and recording myself and comparing to specific lines. It was a wake up call for sure–I thought my pronunciation was way better than it was until I started listening to myself.
With preparations to move, I’ve not had a chance to think of much writing, especially not in English!
My CoE has been submitted to the consulate here, and now I have just 6 more days to wait in terror to see if it will be accepted. It should, but they seemed concerned that I am not working. I had left my job to travel, and then decided it probably wasnt really necessary to go back for 4 months before flying off to Japan again. We’ll see!
On the topic of studying, I’ve been so busy that I’ve allowed myself Youtube again. I had hoped to hold off and focus on other areas, but Youtube is something I can do in breaks between other stuff, where more active study requires me to set aside time.
Still, I have one month to cram as much into my skull before, assuning the visa is issued, I’m off to Tokyo. Gotta keep focused!
5 Likes
As an Amazon Associate, Natively earns from qualifying purchases through any Amazon links on the site.
for science… 
