Breaks are bad

So I came back after a week+ break and thought that the extra hours in anki will be the worst side-effect. I wish. It’s amazing how little breaks can completely mess up your schedule. Less than 50 reps into my sentence deck and I already get beat. My listening has gone down the roof. I’m misremembering some kanjis that I know I knew well. Some of the yellow blocks on my wall(meaning that I had them down meaning, writing and basic readings-wise) seem unfamiliar. Can that short of a break have such a horrible effect on my pace? Apparently.

It’s been a week since my return and I’m still feeling some side-effects. Damn!

vacation

you know you’re an anki addict when you’re on vacation and all you can think about are the 10000 reviews which have probably piled up by now.
Ho boy.

Looking back

Whenever I get burned out or am having a bad case of the “what is all this I’m never going to learn all these new words” I go to Kanjibox and set it to N5, N4 and(more recently) N3. I think I need a reminder that though the journey is long, I’ve already went far more than I’d expected. And it hit me today that I’m cutting through most of my decks and only staggering at the N2/N1 level things.

It’s pretty weird. I haven’t really noticed my becoming better at it. In my head I’m still messing up reviews and not making much sense, but sometimes I like to let figures and stats win over my own self-doubt.

A few years ago I stuck a first grade level kanji poster on my kitchen wall and started working on it, and after I was done with it I moved on to second grade, which I never got to finish. After a seemingly neverending hiatus I started again, only 6 months ago. I was done with it withing a month, and I’m close to circling every one on my 6th grade list now.

6 months ago I had not even finished core 2000, and by the end of the month I’m starting core 6000. I couldn’t even understand N5 listening samples made for beginners and now I can sort of get shows in Japanese without subtitles. I couldn’t even write 飲 without staggering and now I’m practicing 懲. It is pretty amazing, for me at least.

It’s been a good half-year. Cheers!

 

Getting the most out of anime?

So lately I’ve been watching some soft-subbed DBZ. And episode 43 had a bit of a 300frame delay. Before jumping to fix the subs, I decided to see what happens. Basically the sub would appear roughly 10-12 seconds after the audio…

And whhaddya know, my attention span followed my cry. Actually got myself to listen(and understand) to what they were saying, with the subs as confirmation/correction, instead of just automatically reading the subs. Guess that’s one way to do it.

Update

So I’m still alive and learning.

Current daily schedule goes like this:

About 15-30 mins on Iknow…I’ve been doing the sets really fast these days and restricted the new items to 5-15 per day. Still in the middle of core 5k.Going a bit slow because of…

Anki. 1000-1500 sets per day, going like crazy. Mainly sentences and reviews, with a bit of 四字熟語、人名用漢字, sub2srs and others on top.

RTK is really low on the priority list as I think it’s not working out for me that well. I think that if I’ve done it before learning a lot of kanjis chaotically it might’ve done more, but ah well. Still haven’t reached the 1000 mark, and reviews aren’t going too well.

Currently reading　キノの旅. Going slow. I’m very slow at reading, I should fix this.

Restarted watching anime. I still find it hard to focus on listening/comprehension rather than just auto-reading the subtitles, but I’m getting there.

Kanjiboxing is fun. Currently doing the N2 level sets. Apparently I’m pretty good at the reading section.

SO quit after about a week or two and screams out in horror whenever he sees hiragana. I had a sad .

That’s about it!

日本語能力試験N4に合格した

N4 results are in, finally. Passed, 120/180. Now that that’s over, on to N2!

What long-running animes are for

A bit of a bragging moment, if you don’t mind .

About 1100 days ago I was starting to learn Japanese (didn’t actually start till a year after that but let’s not get into that one…). Back in the day I was still in highschool and very much into anime. I started marathoning One Piece.

One Piece is this series which started airing about 10+ years ago and is currently at episode 500 or so. It’s a show filled with puns and onomatopoeia and kanjis everywhere, despite many names and places being fictional and in katakana. Aaanyway. So I started marathoning it before my first ever japanese lesson, right? After getting to episode 400 or so I dropped it. So, when I was still impressed by the fact that I can write my name in katakana and read 日本ご(since I hadn’t even studied 語 yet)

Recently I remembered it and decided to marathon from where I left it off. It is amazing to go back to a show and suddenly get everything, from the “kids, watch this at a reasonable distance from the telly” announcement to random gags found on shirts, to titles and what not. Actually getting the dialogue. Understanding the puns and names of the fruits （ゴムゴムのみ、アワアワのみ、闇闇のみ、etc). Amazing I say. <3

P.S. Brag moment no. 2, finally got the boyfriend to let me teach him some Japanese. Let’s see how that works out.

P.P.S. Brag moment no. 3, finally picked up the RTK book again, after a month-long break.