Hi! A month ago, I made this post talking about my progress throughout my first two months of learning Japanese. Since quite a few things have changed since then and since I was inspired by this other post, I wanted to make a continuation. This is just a log of the main activities I've been doing these past few months and how I've been progressing with my Japanese studies.
A bit of a background:
So about 3 months ago, I started learning Japanese. I rushed through Tae Kim and 1k words from a premade deck in 3 weeks then started reading Visual Novels. I had dropped Anki when I started reading because I didn't enjoy it but I have since picked it back up. From week 2 onwards, I had been reading visual novels, but this month, I've also started reading my first light novel. I've also started watching more to improve my listening skills despite not having previously liked listening.
Stats:
Immersion: 206h
Anki Word Count: 254
Reading:
思い出抱えてアイにコイ！！(Visual Novel; Read Two Routes/Stalled)
蒼の彼方のフォーリズム (Currently Reading)
時々ボソッとロシア語でデレる隣のアーリャさん (currently reading Vol 1)
Listening:
仮面ライダー電王 (9 Episodes Watched)
Grammar:
So this month has been kind of wishy washy for me, not in terms of my actual grammar comprehension, but in terms of me drawing the line between when I should focus on reading or focus on more textbook-style learning. I'm not a huge fan of textbooks but after hearing arguments from people telling me that textbooks + immersion work better than just immersion with look-ups, I tried considering it. This had led to me trying to look for ways to "optimize" my Japanese, but after thinking about it, my main strategy for memorising grammar has just been reading and then looking up any unknown grammar in https://dojglite.github.io/main/ or on Google or sites like https://www.edewakaru.com/ and IMABI.
However, unlike last month, I have been reading a lot more light novels and because of that, I feel like I've been encountering more obscure grammar points as a result. Okay, not "obscure" for the medium, but it was kinda funny seeing these grammar points for the first time. Grammar points like をもって and をいいことに and other grammar.
One thing I have been struggling with is understanding sentences and what they mean in context, especially in long scenes full of text and exposition. I have started the strategy of re-reading and taking notes of the scene like "X event is happening because Y character did this act."
This act alone has sort of helped me to keep my comprehension at around the 80-90% mark but it does mean that I'm spending longer deciphering scenes.
I have started mining grammar points too.
Vocabulary and Kanji:
So since finishing my premade deck, I dropped Anki as stated in my previous post. I just didn't like using Anki and I couldn't stick with it. In this past month though, I've been able to keep up with doing Anki (mostly) consistently at 30 cards a day.
As for my study process, I've been mining and learning Vocabulary and Kanji together through learning words. This is what I believe is the most effective for me. I prioritize mining either whatever high frequency words there are according to my frequency dictionary (I use JPDB v2.2 Frequency from here) to check the frequency of the words before mining them. As seen above, I am using the Lapis note type to mine, but other than that, not much has changed.
I started using Anki again about 2-3 weeks ago so I've been quite trigger happy with mining since I encounter a lot of i+1 sentences or vocab that I think might be useful for later. Other than implementing Anki back into my routine, my vocab and kanji learning has primarily stayed the same.
Reading:
Reading is still the main driver of my routine. Most of my reading has consisted of reading Visual Novels. I had recently finished 思い出抱えてアイにコイ!! and started 蒼の彼方のフォーリズム as it was the current Monthly VN for the TMW VN monthly event. This has been vastly more challenging than er of my routine. Most of my reading has consisted of reading Visual Novels. I had finished 思い出抱えてアイにコイ!! and started this one and unlike 思い出抱えてアイにコイ!!, 蒼の彼方のフォーリズム contains far more complex and dense scenes (not super complex; it's still quite manageable, but the compared to a simple SOL visual novel like 思い出抱えてアイにコイ!!, I find 蒼の彼方のフォーリズム to be more challenging, with scenes related to the Flying Circus. I've enjoyed the challenge though and because of it, I've been having to employ the note taking strategy that I mentioned above in order to parse scenes more easily and understand what is going on. My comprehension has taken a bit of a nose dive. It started at around 70% when I first started 蒼の彼方のフォーリズム but thanks to the note taking strategy and being able to spend more time deciphering scenes, it's come back up to 85-90%.
蒼の彼方のフォーリズム (MIsaki best girl so far)
Within the past month, I've decided to start with my first light novel 時々ボソッとロシア語でデレる隣のアーリャさん and this has been the hardest thing I've read so far. I did read one or two other light novels before this but I dropped those because this one was far more interesting. The lack of visuals has been screwing me over with knowing who's talking, what the context is, and trying to decipher the dialogue. However, thanks to context of the anime (which is what got me to read the light novel), that has helped quite a lot with deciphering scenes and giving me a good enough outline of the sequence of events occurring in Vol 1. Overall, I've been able to understand 60-70% of what I've read so far with look-ups.
Listening:
This was the thing that I've been struggling the most up until recently. So I'm not as into anime as I used to be. I find a lot of anime to be quite boring (though, there are some stand outs like Alya and this season's 薫る花は凛と咲く). I tried YouTube and podcasts too but I haven't been a fan of anything that I've found. There was a show from my childhood that I really did like called 仮面ライダー and so I decided to revisit a season I watched a few years ago: 仮面ライダー電王. I'm not the type of person to enjoy rewatching content but this has been super enjoyable so far. I decided to go into it by doing pure listening and… My comprehension has been super bad so far.
I have subtitles disabled in the background and I enable them whenever I want to look up a word or see a word that I didn't hear. This is a tip that I found in this video and with it, I feel like my listening has been improving slowly, but my comprehension is rather rough. I've only been able to understand 35-40% of what is going on and my comprehension is significantly aided by the fact that I already know the story. I plan to do the same technique with anime since by using this method, my comprehension has spiked from 30% – 40%. Not a dramatic increase but at least I know it's working slowly.
I will similarly try this method with some anime that I've already seen if I can find it in me to rewatch them without getting bored, but this has been a good workaround so far. As for the anime I am currently watching, I watch them with subtitles and count them as part of my "reading immersion."
Probably the best anime this season.
Conclusion:
This is all. I might make update posts every month or every 2 months if there's nothing that significantly changes. I might also get into reading more manga as 薫る花は凛と咲く has been interesting and I'd like to read more. I've also upped my hours to 3-4 hours now that I have been able to make some time between studying, my current job, and immersion. I'm aiming for the N2 by the end of 2026.
by LupinRider