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Achieving Your Japanese Goals – August 2017 — 31 Comments

  1. Two hours of Anki and two hours of immersion per day. My reviews are getting intense, so I’m dropping my goal for cards added per day to 20.

    For immersion, I’ll read twenty pages of manga per day and add another five hours of material for my playlist. Which means finding material… I’ll give sixty different series the five-minute treatment.

    • 43.6 minutes of Anki per day
      Way more than two hours of immersion per day
      7.6 cards added per day

      I gave up on reading twenty pages a day after about a week, it was too much. I’ll give it another try later.

      Five hours of material successfully added to my playlist. My passive listening time is up dramatically.

      Only around 30 series reviewed, but I found plenty to watch anyways.

      This month I found myself bored and skipping Anki a lot. I definitely have a lot more to learn from it, though. I’m about to start JALUP Advanced, so I’ll go back to studying hard.

  2. I will be in Kumamoto Prefecture from August 6th to August 18th on a volunteer trip (again. someday I’ll go to Japan to do touristy things) to aid the victims of the April 2016 earthquakes. While there, I have a few goals.
    1. Talk to people in Japanese. Do not be shy. People will be staring at me anyway, so why not get some Japanese practice in? Talk to at least two people a day in Japanese. Conversation starter ideas: “この漢字はなんて読まれていますか?” and “ちょっと道に迷ってますが…”
    2. Get all of my anki backlog done before I arrive in Kumamoto. This means that I can work on it on the plane, but preferably most of it would be done before that.
    3. Buy the things on my “buy in Japan list” if at all possible. There are a few volumes of manga I want, along with a 韓日辞典 and an iTunes gift card or two.

    Bonus goal: Try natto. I wasn’t brave enough last time I had the chance, so when faced with the legendary 納豆食べられる? question at work last week, I had to answer, to my chagrin, ううん、食べたことない. (恥ずかしい…)

    • If you are in Kumamoto, I recommend trying to find this shochu bar called the Glocal Bar. The owner will tell you all about the local culture! He also will try to get you to speak with the other customers in Japanese, so it is a great, friendly place to practice. It is located on Club Dori, in Shimotori.

    • 1. I did a great job of this. When I watched a Japanese film on the plane ride back, for the first time in my life I genuinely felt that the subtitles were annoying, which was really weird.
      2. I did, and maintained this while in Kumamoto, but I’ve already started letting the backlog creep back into existence. Oh dear.
      3. I actually bought almost none of these things (not for lack of looking), but I’m satisfied with what I did buy. (20 books at Book Off for ¥3000? Yes.).

      I did not try natto. I had a horse-meat croquette, though. (Horse meat is a specialty in Kumamoto, strange as it is).

  3. Get my reviews to 0 everyday. Anki and Jalup NEXT. Anki after breakfast. NEXT after Lunch.

    Immerse in Japanese everyday. Japan TV and anime on Netflix. Possibly play video games. Watch at night before I go to bed.

    Speak in Japanese everyday. Close the computer at breakfast time, take every opportunity for conversation I have available to me.

    • I did good on this until I returned home. I’m getting back into things okay so it all works out.

  4. Last month I finally defeated the RTK beast, so from now on it’s time to speed things up on Anki and spend more time on immersion.
    1. Finish reading 魔女の宅急便
    2. Watch more anime
    3. Add 300 new cards to Anki
    4. Talk talk talk!!!!!! Throw shyness out the window and start taking it as seriously as the other goals
    5. Register to JLPT N3

    Game plan: Do Anki in my freshest, right after breakfast, read after dinner and watch an episode or two after I get tired of reading. On busy days (will have some in mid August) do as much Anki as possible on the train and finish it off first thing after getting back home. For talking, just keep going to the weekly language exchange and try to avoid English chatting as much as possible. Aim for at least 50:50 J-E ratio. Also, try finding more opportunities to talk, preferably Japanese only. About JLPT registration, I just need to remember doing it on time.

    • 1. Only made it halfway. It wasn’t too hard, just didn’t have time for daily reading as planned.
      2. Don’t really remember how much I watched. Should make a more concrete goal next time.
      3. Done.
      4. Surprisingly, done. Had more opportunities than usual, since I’ve taken time off and traveled Kansai. Apparently shyness isn’t an issue as much as lack of people to talk to regularly is.
      5. I’ve mistaken the registration dates. This moves to next month’s goals.

  5. 1. Add 95 new cards from expert deck 6
    2. Read 2 manga ( 日常 3 and 4)
    3. Watch 6 drama (野ブタ。をプロデュース episodes 3-8)

  6. 1. Continue Immersion stage 4 at 5 cards per day. I’m considering increasing it to 6 or 7, as my reviews are beginning to fall a bit low.
    2. Immerse, especially listening. This is where I’m getting the most benefit at the moment.

    • 1. I did 5 per day, but also added some new kanji and J-J cards of my own, so overall happy.
      2. I did lots of reading, but I didn’t do as much listening immersion as planned.

  7. I’ll be completing my anki every morning when I wake up with immersion, so an hour committed to that everyday after my morning routine. I will (re)learn 2 songs by the end of August: Bloody Stream by CODA (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency opening) and Viva Namida (Space Dandy opening). I will also re-connect with the local Japanese/Asian study groups that are hosted every other Sunday.

    For Anki, I am catching up on my Kanji Damage and JALUP Intermediate Decks. After week one, I’ll add 20 new kanji per day and 3 new JALUP sentences per day. My immersion will be Hideo Kojima’s old podcasts about movies. I’ll gradually get back into the habit of having an iPod shuffle connected to me at all times.

    As for the songs, since I enjoy them so much, I know I’ll be singing them throughout the day. I’ll spend time during my job active listening and reviewing vocabulary and will be using Jisho.org and Sanseido.biz to look up words and get acclimated with Japanese definitions.

  8. As of always I missed a few days – and then a few more days – and in the end everything went to hell with my nicely planned plans for the year (but it lasted more than midyear – which is pretty good) :D

    And also as always, the thing that is pressing me and my motivation down is the prospect of having to do Kanji-Cards :/

    And as it stands, always having a lot of new Kanji cards lurking around the corner I decided to just redirect all my japanese-energy and time into finishing that once and for all. There are a whopping 1700 Cards left, even though I finished Beginner already – And I’m sure I will be going near the burnout-point if I’ll just focus on there, but if I try to get rid of them slowly and with other stuff it will just drag me down until it is game-over.

    I won’t do it all in this month – But yea, that is my goal now.
    Slay the Kanji-Beast.

  9. I’m on vacation for a good chunk of the month, so I might take this opportunity to finish making my Kanji cards (I like to include etymology on my cards, so that requires some searching). I have about 700 Joyo Kanji cards to make up in this style. With that done, I’m hoping to start adding more cards again, and maybe finish it up by the end of the year. That amounts to 4.6 cards per day, so that might be pretty ambitious.

    As for sentences, again since I am on vacation, things might be slowed up a bit. I’m hoping to maintain an average of 8 per day so I can complete my goal of finishing Jalup intermediate by the middle of October.

    • I should have known better that I would have no time to proceed on things while I was on vacation. I basically did no Japanese during that time, so about two weeks. I did keep up with my sentence reviews a few times, so when I got back home, it wasn’t a massive effort to bring them back down to zero. I started adding again shortly thereafter, at a somewhat higher rate to try and make up for the lost time. I am pretty much half done Intermediate now. I also started adding Kanji cards again, since my daily reviews were dropping to as low as 80 per day. I’ve added four per day during the past week. I doubt I will finish the Joyo Kanji by the end of the year, but I will be close.

  10. I have made very little progress this year( Was the first Alpha tester for JALUPNEXT and am still only at 400 cards) in studying Japanese but I feel a stream of motivation coming and I want to get some results!

    I’m not going to try and overwhelm myself like I usually do which just causes frustration and burnout.

    the BIG 2 must goals for me this month.
    1. Finish Jalup Beginner! 20 cards a day will allow me to do this. (3rd time is the charm)
    2. Get to lvl 20 in WaniKani. This would mean I am 1/3rd done which would be nice to think about.

    Optionals:
    1. JapanesePod101 on commutes. Completely depends on my mood or also how hectic traffic is.
    2. I burned my LoTR movies in Japanese to both MP4 and MP3 so listen to the MP3 at work and maybe 10-20 minutes of watching a day.
    3. Read Japanese the Manga Way and a Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.

    I’m feeling this is the month I will get it done!I have been losing motivation since I have been in student mode for almost 2 years now with not much to show for it and haven’t been enjoying the fruits of labor by immersing myself in content I can understand.

    • I did not meet my goals but overall it was a very productive month for me. Not so much in Japanese but in my more important priorities. I’m going to keep going with my very slow and steady pace since as long as I don’t stop I will keep slowly improving.

      I realize that unlike most of the other people on this site this is rather low priority even among my hobbies. Sometimes one of the most difficult things for me to do is not compare myself to others since I am a very competitive person but I realized this month that if I spent the time learning Japanese I was planning on it I would have had the time to lift weights in the morning and I decided to get back to my old body that I had before I needed a massive surgery.

  11. After reading Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone in July, I want to make it a habit to read at least one novel per month going forwards. This month I’ll be aiming to get 2 books done:

    1. Convenience Store Human (コンビニ人間)
    2. The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe.

    They are both fairly short, but I’m not familiar with the story of either (unlike HP), so it’ll be a good test of my comprehension.

  12. Complete RTK by August 8th with anki
    Don’t miss a day of reviews
    Start J-J through picking words from immersion get its monolingual definition and putting all the dictionary words on J-E flashcards
    Try adding 20 cards a day
    Read through the first よつばと
    Game plan: do a little bit every hour and try to avoid doing everything at once

    • Setting ambitious it seems. Oh well.
      I finished RTK 1 by August 20 and RTK 3 by August 31
      Didn’t miss a day of reviews
      Started Nihongo shark core 2k
      Got 20 new Vocab a day.
      Didn’t get to reading よつばと though.
      My date for RTK completion was also too early

  13. Last month work went nuts AND there was some huge family upheaval, and this month I’m moving house and preparing to start uni and doing a huge bunch of paperwork. Aaaargh. So I gotta keep my goals modest.

    1) catch up on reviews. I’m not too far behind because I’ve been doing some every day, even if I didn’t get them to zero. This should only take a few days now I’m back.

    2) I can budget 1 hour of anki time per day. this is probably gonna equate to all reviews plus 10-15 cards added per day. Which is fine, as I have other things to think about.

    3) For now, I have to do a lot of english reading and listening as university prep. So I intend to watch an anime episode, subbed in japanese, every single day. Any will do. Just gotta keep the immersion in there as much as I can until I’ve at least settled in my new place.

    • 1) and 2) are going swimmingly so far. I’m caught up on reviews, doing anki every day, and just about to begin to add new cards again.

      I’ve…not been watching an episode. Whoops. Was so focused on getting through my review backlog that it just hasn’t been happening; I need to make a more active effort to schedule for it.

  14. – Read at least the first story in the second volume of 黒魔女さんが通る
    – Reach 600/1000 in Jalup Intermediate (that’s 144 new cards or 4-5/day)

    Bonus objectives:
    – Finish the whole 2nd volume of 黒魔女さんが通る
    – Review all the 2nd year kyôiku kanji in the kanji study app

  15. 1. 310 Kanji meanings learned – will bring me to 570 kanji meanings learned.
    2. 310 Jalup beginner sentences learned – will bring me to 550 sentences learned.

    I’ve been using JalupNEXT, and I love it!

    I’m also doing some immersion, but not working too hard on that, because my comprehension just isn’t quite ready yet.

  16. – Complete Jalup Beginner by 20 August, then get to 100/1000 in Jalup Intermediate by the end of the month (about 10 new cards per day)
    – Compete chapters 34-36 of RTK (about 5 new cards per day)

  17. My goal is to complete what I own of Kanji Kingdom and Jalup Beginner on Jalup NEXT. I will try and add 10-20 new cards a day from each deck and complete all of my reviews each day. I’m also going to try and find an easier way to actually remember the kanji, as I have trouble with that. Bonus objective: try to watch as much unsubbed anime as possible, preferably something visual like Doraemon, where I won’t get lost if I don’t understand.

    • I managed to finished the cards that I own in the two decks. Hopefully I can save up and buy more sections soon. I didn’t watch much Doraemon, but I did watch a lot of unsubbed しろくまカフェ. It’s super cute and pun-filled, even though I don’t understand much of it. I found a kanji textbook that I am planning to get to make kanji easier for me.

  18. Last month I got busy, sidetracked, lost motivation, priorities changed etc. Time to reset.

    Japanese Goals:

    1. Get to 630 in Kanji Kingdom. I’m at around 600.
    2. Get to about 200 in Jalup Advanced. I’m at about 100.

    Strategy for Kanji Kingdom:
    I’m going to use the same strategy I used last month where I study one set of Kanji before I move onto the next.

    Strategy for Jalup Advanced:
    I’m going to use the same strategy of learning an entire chain, or stop at a natural stopping point. I’m going to write the sentence and definition for JJ cards until my hand hurts, or I run out of time. I’ve found writing by hand really helps with retention. I bought a new notebook specifically for writing sentences and definitions. I have another for Kanji that I’ve used for quite some time.

    General Strategy:
    I’m not going to focus on cards per day. I’m going to switch back to time per day to force myself to put in the time and effort. I’m going to try to study in 10 minute chunks with a 4 or 5 minute break in between each 10 minute set. I have no set amount of time per day, but the writing will enforce a lengthy study session since I’m so slow at it.

    Spanish Goals:

    1. Input chapters 4 and 5 of my textbook into anki.

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