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study log 11/12

N5 listening practice. My reading and vocab is definitely better than N5 but I'm starting here for listening. I got most of them but 4 was so hard, I got it mostly on vibes. Does that count? https://youtu.be/w4wS7eI9FwM?si=5xuF-eLITr5-o0Gj

Finished 25min of vocab reviews

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11/10 study log

N5 vocab reviews - still doing a refresher of these on bunpo, which is also reading and listening practice

watched a listening comprehension video and I could read so much more easily than I could hear. I need to spend some more time on listening

I've been reading Jay Rubin's Making Sense of Japanese and finished the section on は vs が. I learned a lot about the nuance between these of the known topic vs unknown, and the emphasis that is placed with each.

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11/2 study log

Finally set aside some time for some studying!

Vocab:

finished 350+ vocab reviews, still have 350+ more... I've been doing the reviews on bunpro where I fill in the words and listen to the sentences, so it's been good for listening and reading comprehension as well

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9/9 study log

Wow it's been like two months!

vocab/kanji:

watched ~20 minutes of game gengo vocab series #2 and made flashcards

reviewed flashcards from ep 1

did 30 minutes of review on wanikani and reviewed all missed cards

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how to play pokemon games to study japanese

I just started playing pokemon omega ruby in japanese and have been having a great time with it! The language has been surprisingly simple so far, and I've found it a lot easier to get into than animal crossing. I used a few different resources, so here's a guide on how you can play pokemon in Japanese for language learning:

Choosing a pokemon game

I used this video from gamegengo to decide which game to play and ended up with omega ruby. The tldr of his video is choosing a game that you have access to (in Japanese), that's easy to read (graphics quality makes a huge difference for japanese characters), that's in level. He documented his findings here

Access: Emulators, especially on the PC, are great options for older games. This is especially true for games that are region-locked and need a specific Japanese version to play the game in Japanese. Multi-language support wasn't added until pokemon x/y, so anything older needs a JP version game

Readability: characters on switch games look great, 3DS is also very good. DS is good, anything older can be a bit of a challenge

Hiragana, Kanji, Furigana: prior to pokemon black and white, all text was in hiragana. This can be really challenging if you're used to seeing text with kanji, it can make words much harder to recognize. However, furigana has only been added in arceus and scarlet/violet

Level: All of the pokemon games rank between N3 to N2 except for arceus, which is N2 to N1. I am studying for N3 and am not having much trouble with omega ruby, although I am slow at reading and this is one of the easiest rated games. Someone who is a complete beginner would struggle a lot with these games depending on the amount of reading they intend to do (you don't really need to read to be able to play pokemon)

2. Game resources

There are a variety of resources to help make playing video games in japanese easier. Normally, I would like to just play the game and absorb the content without having to look up a lot of it. Unfortunately, since most pokemon games don't include furigana and aren't voice acted, there is no way to learn how to read a word with kanji you don't know other than to look it up.

Poke Corpus: amazing tool for querying text dumps from different pokemon games. Select the game you're playing and the language, and then write a query with some of the text from a sentence you want to look up. Works great, keep in mind the search is exact (including spacing). It also shows results from other languages, so in addition to pulling all the text for lookup you can see the english translation (which is localized, so is not always a direct translation)

Yomitan: a japanese pop-up dictionary browser extension. Very helpful if you ever read japanese on a computer. I used this video for getting it set up. Very customizable with different dictionaries

Game2Text (PC only): if you're playing a game on an emulator on your computer, this is a great tool for grabbing the text straight from the game. Additionally, since this works inside a browser, any browser extensions (like yomitan) work with this.

Google translate lens: I really don't like this, because it isn't going to be as accurate and it won't show you individual word translations, it will just blur out and translate the entire sentence. But works in a pinch

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study log 7/7

kanji/vocab:

finished wanikani reviews in just 7 minutes

grammar:

finished bunpro reviews for my remaining 25 minutes of review, only have ~35 left. Almost gotten through them all

immersion:

watched 34 minutes of comprehensible japanese. I watched all folktales today: momotaro, cinderella, and tsuru no ongaeshi. I've read all of these before so they were really easy to understand.

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study log 7/5

kanji/vocab:

didn't do very much at all yesterday because of the 4th, so I had a lot of reviews to come back to. It took about 25 minutes to get through all of them, which is a lot considering I've been working on them at least once a day and not actively learning any new terms!

grammar:

only a bit of grammar today, I'm trying to cap my wanikani and bunpro reviews to 25 minutes combined, but I bumped it up a bit today because my wanikani reviews took so long. Still only got around 15 minutes of grammar in

immersion:

watched about 20 minutes of comprehensible japanese videos, but I'm so tired I'm falling asleep. I watched a video about how to make nikujaga (looked great, I am considering trying this), sumo mice, and how to discuss why you're studying japanese. I really like the variety, and the ease works for me. I just don't understand how real beginners listen, I'm still not comprehending everything after years of study!

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study log 7/2

vocab/kanji:

still finishing up reviews, I had ~100 today to get through. But a few more days of reviews and I shouldn't be spending too much time on these

grammar:

finished ~20 minutes of bunpro reviews, also hoping to get through these so that I don't need to spend much time on them

listening:

started watching the comprehensible japanese youtube channel and really enjoyed it! I watched ~40 minutes of videos and they were pretty easy and relaxing to listen to. I think I'm going to spend a lot more time listening to videos like this as opposed to spending hours on reviews

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study log 6/30

vocab/kanji:

finished all wanikani reviews

learned new kanji:

離 (り) detach, which I know from 距離 (distance)

融 (ゆう) dissolve, which I just learned from 金融危機 (financial crisis)

編 (へん) knit, which I know from 編む (to knit)

既 (き) previously (new!)

grammar:

another ~20ish minutes, got through a lot though, got reviews down to ~75

Every now and then I reflect on the way that I'm learning and decide if I need to change course, and right now I think I definitely do. I'm going to take a break from wanikani for now and focus exclusively on getting through reviews but not starting any new ones (basically pausing my progress). I think I'm currently at a level where the new kanji I'm learning is far above my actual level in listening/reading, so there's not much point in spending my time there.

I'm going to instead use that time to focus more heavily on listening and grammar, which are the areas I want to improve in the most. I want to spend more time doing immersion, but I think I also want the immersion to be easier. Reading and listening has felt exhausting, so I avoid it. I think finding easier material might allow me to spend more time and improve my skills here.

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study log 6/28

vocab/grammar:

finished all wanikani reviews

learned new kanji:

驚 (きょう) surprised, which I know from 驚く (to be surprised)

嘆 (たん) sigh (new!)

倉 (そう) warehouse, which I know from 倉 (warehouse)

孫 (そん) grandchild, which I know from 孫 (grandchild)

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study log 6/27

vocab/kanji:

finished all wanikani reviews

grammar:

finished ~20 minutes of grammar lessons, finally got the reviews down to 100 so more than halfway down!

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study log 6/26

vocab/kanji:

finished all wanikani reviews

learned new kanji:

閉 (へい) closed, which I know from 閉める (to close)

華 (か) showy, which I know from 華やか (bright and beautiful)

豪 (ごう) exceptional (new!)

鑑 (かん) model, which I know from 鑑定 (judgement)

除 (じょ) exclude (new!)

尋 (じん) inquire, which I know from　尋ねる (to inquire)

幾 (いく) how many, which I know from 幾ら (how much)

掃 (そう) sweep, which I know from 掃除 (cleaning)

泥 (でい) mud (new!)

棒 (ぼう) pole (new!)

grammar:

just a few minutes of grammar today

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study log 6/24

vocab/kanji:

finished all wanikani reviews, didn't have too many

learned a new kanji:

井 (い) well, which I know from 井戸 (water well)

grammar:

finished all bunpro reviews, did a little bit more than I did yesterday. Slowly whittling away the reviews, surprised that I remember so many of them

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study log 6/22-6/23

Short weekend for studying because I was busy, but I was able to get some in:

vocab/kanji:

finished all wanikani reviews and leveled up! level 31 now

grammar:

finished ~20 grammar reviews. Still pretty fatiguing. I have ~150 reviews to get through still

Look at that consistency! I was able to do a bit every day this week. Just need to get back to a point where I can do this and still have some energy leftover for reading/listening

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study log 6/21

another week done! vocab/kanji:

finished all wanikani reviews, just one more kanji to pass to level up!

no new lessons because I already have a lot of new terms

I also finished adding all of my wanikani kanji to my kanji flashcards! Now I'm at 1345 collected

grammar:

Finished some bunpro reviews, I've gone from 10 minutes to 20 correct terms + correcting all the ones I've missed. I think it would take a really long time to get through my reviews (200+) at that rate, but it's getting easier to have longer sessions again. I think I'll do 15 minutes next

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study log 6/20

kanji/vocab:

finished all kanji reviews. Only took 5 minutes. Consistency :)

learned new vocab and a new kanji:

床 (ゆか・のど) floor, which I know from 床 (floor)

I also added some kanji from wanikani to my kanji flashcard set. I've collected 1300+ kanji flashcards!

grammar:

Because I had so much free time after the vocab, I was able to spend more time on grammar. I spent 18 minutes to get through 23 reviews, a little more than half of my backlog. I'm a little impressed with how much I retained having taken such a long break from grammar!

Starting to get some of the payoff from consistency again :)

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study log 6/19

vocab/kanji:

finished all wanikani reviews. already passes 22/29 kanji for this level!

learned 15 new vocab words

grammar:

finished 10 minutes of bunpro reviews. that isn't very long but it's an amount that feels very manageable as I get back into the grammar grind, so I'm going to stick with this while I rebuild the habit