Japanese Language Log

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
genini1
Yellow Belt
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2020 12:21 am
Languages: English (N), Japanese
x 305

Re: Japanese Language Log

Postby genini1 » Sat Jan 23, 2021 2:04 pm

golyplot wrote:It depends a lot on your preferences, but personally I'd skip One Piece anyway. I tried watching the first few episodes on Netflix, but I didn't like it. I didn't like Jojo either.

So far of all the anime I've watched, my favorites (in terms of entertainment value) were Saiki K and K-On! I also liked Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online, Canon Busters, and BNA: Brand New Animal (except for the ending). Cardcaptor Sakura is ok, but it's a bit dated and formulaic by today's standards.



I've considered skipping One Piece as I never got into it myself. I've seen the first 20ish episodes and it was just kind of generic shounen. I've been told it gets better so I figured I'd at least try and watch it. Plus since it's the same series I'd presumably get a lot of listening practice in with people who speak similarly throughout the series.
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genini1
Yellow Belt
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2020 12:21 am
Languages: English (N), Japanese
x 305

Re: Japanese Language Log

Postby genini1 » Tue Jan 26, 2021 5:39 am

This week was a total wash as far as Japanese goes. Due to a confluence of factors not the least of which being me finding a new book series in English to read I did less than I've done in months. I only hit 30% of Volume 3 of Ascendance of a Bookworm, I watched maybe 3 episodes of anime, and I listened to very little in the way of podcasts. I still did my So-matome grammar and vocabulary every day, but even that I didn't do as thoroughly as I usually do. But there's no use crying over spilt milk so I'll have to try harder this upcoming week.

Specifically I saw a post by someone who watched an episode of JoJo's Bizarre Adventures 50 times in an effort to learn and posted positive results. I don't have the attention span to watch an episode 50 times, but watching an episode 5 or 6 times while listening to it in the background 20 or so times is doable I think so I think I'll try that. I was looking for a series that's somewhat longer (50+) episodes, set in present day (or near present day), without a ton of stylized speech, and most importantly something I could watch without repeatedly without getting bored. I've settled on My Hero Academia, it being something I have never fully watched, but I'm peripherally aware of. It's about super heroes and saving people so it's not perfect in terms of vocabulary, but I just don't think I could watch a slice of life that many times.

For the Week:
Ascendance of a Bookworm Volume 3 (80%)
So-Matome grammar/vocabulary
Watch My Hero Academia Episode 1 until I can understand every line without having to pause the episode.
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golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1719
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
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Re: Japanese Language Log

Postby golyplot » Tue Jan 26, 2021 6:20 am

I saw that post on Reddit too. Personally I think they were kind of crazy, but I'm curious to see how it goes for you.
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genini1
Yellow Belt
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2020 12:21 am
Languages: English (N), Japanese
x 305

Re: Japanese Language Log

Postby genini1 » Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:41 pm

Some good and some bad progression this week. I utterly failed my goal of reading this week spending maybe 20 minutes total reading which is the least amount of spent since I started trying to read native materials. However I spent more time completing the So-matome books as well as some other exercise type grammar work and am now up to week 7 of 8 in the so-matome books. More of my time was set up in small blocks and I find it easier to do exercises and textbooks in that format rather than read. Plus I just didn't want feel like reading. Maybe it's just the material though so I'll try and find something new this week.

I also attempted to begin my plan of watching an episode of My Hero Academia 50 times and 'failed' pretty hard there. I say failed in quotes because I still learned quite a bit, but I couldn't watch it more than 4 times. I went through it once with subtitles (Japanese only) and understood basically everything. Partially because I'd seen it previously though otherwise a lot of stuff would have gone over my head. I then watched it again with the goal of looking up every word and grammar structure. I actually knew all the grammar, but still had around 150 unknown words. Contextually I understood them, but I still wanted to understand the words better. After looking them all up I watched a third time with the repeat function of Language Learning with Netflix app with subtitles and repeating every time I couldn't quite catch a word. Then I watched again at 80% speed and after that I was well and truly sick of the episode. I'm going to try again with episode 2 this week and hopefully I don't have as many unknown words.
For the Week:
Complete week 7 of So-matome Grammar/Vocab
Episode 2 of My Hero Academia
Read 30 minutes a day of something.
4 x

genini1
Yellow Belt
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2020 12:21 am
Languages: English (N), Japanese
x 305

Re: Japanese Language Log

Postby genini1 » Wed Feb 10, 2021 2:31 pm

For the first time in three weeks I've managed to complete my weekly goals. Granted a large part of that is because I reduced my usual targets, but I'll take what I can get. My reading has been bouncing around lately and I've read some manga and bits of a few light novels I got off of amazon's kindle unlimited program. I made it through a volume of Naruto which I had thought too difficult when I last attempted it in October (has it been that long? Time really flies) and may try and go through the series. There's something like 77 volumes so if I can make it through I imagine I'll be pretty good at reading shounen manga at that point.

For TV I continued My Hero Academia and am starting episode 4 today. I feel like I'm starting to understand more, but still can't watch it on the first try without subtitles. If I can continue improving I may just the rewatching part of what I'm doing and try to watch more episodes straight through.

For the week:
Finish So-matome Vocabulary/Grammar
Read 30 minutes a day
Watch Episodes 4/5 of My Hero Academia
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genini1
Yellow Belt
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2020 12:21 am
Languages: English (N), Japanese
x 305

Re: Japanese Language Log

Postby genini1 » Mon Feb 15, 2021 3:34 pm

Another week of not doing as much as I feel I should. I only stuck to reading 30 minutes a day and even that felt like a chore. I'm not sure what changed over the last month, but I hope I go back to genuinely enjoying reading like before. Otherwise I've made it through the end of So-Matome Vocabulary/Grammar. The books were fine if not as in depth as I would prefer and now I'll start the reading comprehension and kanji books. I'm not sure how long these will take as I am at least peripherally aware of most of the kanji listed and I don't care enough to make sure I can write them by hand from memory. I generally write them out several times by hand to get the stroke order down, but since I doubt I will be handwriting Japanese anytime soon it's sort of a moot point. The reading comprehension similarly seems to be fairly easy after my previous readings. I'm tentatively hopeful I'll have both finished within the month.

For TV I finished through My Hero Academia Episode 7. I've been watching once with (Japanese) subtitles and once with no subtitles and then letting it play in the background. It seems to be working at least so far which is nice. The first season is only 13 episodes so I'm going to see if I can't finish it this week.

To do:
30 minutes of reading a day
So-Matome Reading Comprehension/Kanji Weeks 1/2
Finish Season 1 of My Hero Academia
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genini1
Yellow Belt
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2020 12:21 am
Languages: English (N), Japanese
x 305

Re: Japanese Language Log

Postby genini1 » Mon Feb 22, 2021 3:07 pm

This week was a failure from the outset for me. The first three days I basically did nothing in Japanese. I think I've been on the edge of burn-out for awhile now and due to some other stuff going on at the same time the only thing I did was watch some anime with English subtitles. I don't count that as good enough so for the 365 challenge I'm recording it as 3 missed days. It did make me reflect on what I was doing and where I wanted to go though so I decided to change things up a bit starting with my JLPT prep.

Originally I had wanted to pass the JLPT N2 in December and while I still do I've come to terms that I simply don't have any real reason to care about it. I won't be getting a job in Japan and there's no one that would care if I got the certificate so it's more of a self check that I'm actually making progress. But I can just as easily self check my progress by watching TV or reading books and those are much more enjoyable. So I've decided to shelve the JLPT study books for the time being and revisit them later in the year.

So for this week all I'm going to be doing is reading and/or watching anime. No study books or grammar guides or reps and I'll come up with a new plan starting next week for what I want to do.
5 x

genini1
Yellow Belt
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2020 12:21 am
Languages: English (N), Japanese
x 305

Re: Japanese Language Log

Postby genini1 » Thu Mar 04, 2021 2:23 pm

This week has just been a week of reading and watching anime. I finished Ascendance of a Bookworm Volume 5 this morning and it was pretty good. The series as a whole has been great for someone just getting started with reading native materials and it's entertaining enough. I also read a bunch of samples from the amazon store of different light novels that looked interesting. Having grown up in the dial up internet age I've always had access to the internet when it comes to language learning and I have no idea how people did it before the internet. There wasn't even even ebay to get books ordered from yet I can get more free reading material today than I could ever physically read. But I digress I went though a bunch of samples on amazon, but nothing really caught my eye. A few of them were simply more difficult than I wanted to deal with at the moment (Overlord), but quite a few just ended up not being interesting enough (I'm a Spider, so what) so I'm still reading the Ascendance of a Bookworm series as my go to. There's over 20 volumes so I won't be running out of material for that series any time soon.

For anime I mostly just continued with My Hero Academia. I can mostly understand it even without subtitles in either language, but that's got a lot to do with having already seen the series. I'll probably be finishing it up in the next couple weeks here though.
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genini1
Yellow Belt
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2020 12:21 am
Languages: English (N), Japanese
x 305

Re: Japanese Language Log

Postby genini1 » Sun Mar 14, 2021 4:57 pm

Another week gone. I've mostly been reading manga this week and I've been skipping around to different series. I'm averaging about half a volume per day between Death Note, Naruto, and Pokemon special which are all fairly good manga. It's kind of weird how differently written each one is though. Death Note has more high level vocabulary with higher level speech patterns such as news reports and international police work while Naruto has a lot more colloquial grammar and slang that makes it harder to read. Pokemon is sort of in between with only a bit of slang, but some specialized vocabulary. I've been considering ordering some additional series (My hero academia, One Punch Man, and Hunter x Hunter specifically), but I can't really justify it when I have so many already that I haven't read. I've probably got 200+ volumes, but I've only read about 40 of them. Perhaps I'll start doing more of a one volume read one volume bought system.

I'm on the last season of My Hero Academia now which is about 24 episodes I think so probably two more weeks until I finish it. It's been a fun ride so far even if it's nothing particularly special for an anime.
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genini1
Yellow Belt
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2020 12:21 am
Languages: English (N), Japanese
x 305

Re: Japanese Language Log

Postby genini1 » Thu Apr 01, 2021 1:24 pm

I've been plugging along for the last couple weeks. I finally finished My Hero Academia yesterday, or at least finished through season 4. The newest season started this week, but I'll be waiting for the full season to be out before I watch it. I really hate having to wait a week in order to watch the next episode so I always just wait for a season to be fully done to watch it. Instead I'll just be flittering between shows until I find a new one I like.
For reading I've been doing Re:Zero- Starting Life in Another World. It's more difficult than the other books in my collection (except maybe Overlord), but it's also one of my favorite anime so even though it's slow going I've been plugging through. Because the actual reading is slower for me I've been trying to learn more of the vocabulary than I otherwise would. With Harry Potter/Ascendance of a bookworm I would just look up the word and move on. If I saw it often enough I would learn it that way or if I thought a word particularly interesting/useful I would go out of my way to learn it. With Re:Zero I've been adding any word that I think I've seen before or that might be useful and any grammar pattern I didn't know/recognize I've been writing out an example sentence of. My goal being to make reading a lot smoother and more fun for the future.
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