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Achieving Your Japanese Goals: 2015 Compilation — 498 Comments

  1. I have a lot more resources this time so I can immerse better!
    Goals for January:
    -Finish Kanji
    -310 JJ
    -Listening immersion for several hours a day
    -At least 31 anime episodes (I’ll probably overstep that)
    -10 volumes of any manga
    -Get Japanese Novels prepared for when I want to use them

  2. Start of new job, so I have to lower my goals!
    1. Continue to review the RTK deck, with at least 5 kanji learnt each week, so that at the end of the month I attain 20 new kanji learnt with reviews done.
    2. Make at least 2 J-E reviews, and pass the 500 cards threshold (at 497 now)

  3. 1. Get to 1250 Kanji in RTK (currently at 1017)
    2. Finish reading Yotsubato V1.
    3. 100 new J-E sentences (currently at 400)
    4. Finish Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (barely even a goal, it’s gonna happen)
    5. Actually play a Japanese game. (didn’t last month)

    • 1. Just managed this one, I just need to do Anki today to get there.
      2. Finished. Now starting other manga I realize how easy Yotsubato is in comparison.
      3. Got 144 new sentences.
      4. Forgot this was even a goal this month, it was done like 10 days in.
      5. Started playing Zelda: Minish Cap. I’ll admit I only put in like 3 hours, but I’ve never learnt so many words in such a small time span.

      I’m not going to have goals next month. It’s good to make sure I’m productive but it can be stressful. I think I can only handle it every other month. Besides, I know I’m going to be plenty productive either way.

  4. 1. Complete JALUP Intermediate. 515 cards left.

    2. Acquire and begin JALUP Advanced.

    3. I have all this audio, but haven’t been actually listening to it. My goal is to get in at least five hours of listening time a day.

    4. Play more Pokemon (games are in Japanese). Perhaps, get up to five badges.

    5. Read two more chapters of ハイ☆スピード! and finish at least two volumes of 鋼の錬金術師.

    • I kind of fell out of things after January started. I’m back on it though!

      1. I’m down to 340 cards.

      2. Have not acquired it yet.

      3. Sort of achieved.

      4. I have three badges!

      5. I finished the first volume of 鋼の錬金術師.

  5. I’m going to set my goals low this month as I haven’t been finishing all of them, and then I can try to exceed them.

    -Finish Core 2k step 8. Should be easy to finish within the first half of the month, then I will review it for the rest of the month instead of starting the next deck.

    -Read at least 2 manga. If i’m lucky enough to find a Japanese novel with Furigana at my local bookstore I will start reading that as well.

    -Put at least 10 hours into Japanese games. This one should be easy as I just got a few new Japanese games, and still have a few older ones that I’ve started playing again.

    -Finally finish watching Samurai Flamenco, and catch up on watching Ace of Diamond. This one will probably be the hardest for me, even though I love watching anime I usually only watch one or 2 episodes at a time, so I will have to stay consistent in watching one episode each a day.

    • -I got way behind on my Anki reviews for the first half of the month, but I somehow caught up on all of them and finished C2K8 (finished it 3 days ago, so I just barely made it)

      -I only read 1 manga this month. I have plenty of stuff to read, but I just wasn’t interested in reading any of it this month.

      -This one was very easy, and it made doing my Japanese fun again, which is the main thing that got me motivated to catch up on my Anki reviews.

      -I am considering this one complete since I will either have it finished tomorrow, or at the latest it will be done on the first, and since it was the goal I thought I would have the most problems with I don’t mind cheating it by 1 day to keep me motivated. I also watched a lot of other Japanese TV, which is the main reason I didn’t finish this one, and since the goal was set to get me to watch more native material, I think it was a success anyways.

      Overall I did better than I thought I would. I put a lot of time into games, shows, and even got back into listening to Japanese podcasts throughout the day. This month has gotten me to start having fun with native material again, which I was missing last month, and as long as I can keep having fun progressing should be nice and easy.

  6. 1. Reach 1850 in RTK – Going a bit more conservative this time since I’ve been falling short on these. Maybe I’ll surprise myself and hit 1900? :)
    2. Complete JALUP Advanced Stage 2. (~250 cards)
    3. Play LOTS of video games. Going to try hard to actually finish Vesperia this month – I’m about 1/3 of the way in, so I think I can manage it.

    • 1. Done (But only to the base goal of 1850. No bonus points, sadly.)
      2. Done
      3. Not even close. Got to ~40%. I ended up getting sidetracked a lot during “fun time”, and also played a bunch of a different game instead. I think I’ll just let this one get finished as I get to it, and not worry about rushing.

  7. I screwed up a lot of my goals last month but…whatever! Trucking ahead as I evaluate my systems for success, so here we go!

    1. Complete anki daily! Just need to set specific hours for this. This includes continuing the Jalup Intermediate 1000 and warming my way into the One Deck near the end of the month.
    2. Read 73 articles this month. I have a system I created for completion!
    3. Read and study NHK articles daily for 1 hour.
    4. Study grammar from Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication and then Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide for an hour each day, 5 days a week. It’s mostly reviewing the grammar I kinda know and need to review.
    5. Watch ANYTHING for at least an hour each day (no subs unless JP).
    6. Acquire materials in Japanese to read/watch/study for Black History month!

    I recorded my methods specifically this time around and I’m still fleshing it all out. Aiming for full completion!

    • 1. Still working on consistency. I started the One Deck and I’m doing relatively well with 1 card per day.

      2. This imploded. I’m dialing back and learning I can only handle 1 intensive article per day. SO MUCH VOCAB!!!

      3. Epic fail, haha. I decided to read this extensively instead and I faired much better consistency wise.

      4. Failed. I read through JP Sentence Patterns every now and then though. Great refresher.

      5. Didnt do this daily.

      6. Something I did do! I bought the JP versions of Coming to America and Malcolm X. I decided to just study Wiki articles in JP about Black culture and history intensively.

      Just gotta work on my consistency and construct a routine!

  8. 1.Do at least 10 reps from my Kanji, and my sentence deck of Anki. 2.Finish Tofugu’s 500 sentences. (see tofugu.com for more details). 3.Translate at least 1 page of manga daily. 4.Read Mobile Suit Gundam 001 completely. So that’s it! Wish me luck!

    • Well so i uh, ran out out steam towards the middle of the month, and got none of my goals done. So, boo for me. I’ll try for next month, and hopefully, i succeed. wish me luck…

  9. Goal: Do my anki cards daily. Because of moving and previous issues in my home life plus work, my Japanese studies fell to the wayside. So my goal is to get back into the habit of just doing some Anki reviews every day.

  10. 1. Do 200 more Kanji
    2. Do 750 new drama vocab cards (finally buying an android phone so ankidroid should help a lot)
    3. Do 4 more chapters in my book
    4. Do my Japanese diary entries for class ON THE DAY (not fall behind and do 5-10 days in bulk).
    5. Actually read that book
    6. Watch 4 more episodes of dramas
    7. Watch 25 episodes of anime.

    • Failing on 1 and 4 already. And 5 for that matter, not that I haven’t been reading, but not the book I’m supposed to be reading, just random manga chapters and ameblo blogs. Doing great on 2 and 7 though.

      • 1. Failed
        2. Did about half of that – still reasonable
        3. Did 3 excercises, lol.
        4. No. Got distrupted by mock exams.
        5. No. My god reading is hard when I can’t pronounce the words to look them up.
        6. Did 2.
        7. About 10 episodes.

        Mocks really messed up this plan, though I made no effort on a couple so I better fix that.

        • About this:
          “5. No. My god reading is hard when I can’t pronounce the words to look them up.”
          IF you happen to have an iPhone you can use it’s “draw-kanji-input-thing” to make it easier.
          Another way is to use the new amazing FREE Google Translate App for both iPhone and Android. It can photograph/scan any text and translate it immediately. Or if you are past J-E, just set it to translate to a completely unknown language and just make use of it’s text-to-digital text function. This way you can copy-paste to your dictionary of choice!

          • Photographic translation huh? That’s really cool – I’ll have to check it out =)

            My primary method right now is to type in other words I know that contain the same kanji, then delete the parts I don’t need.

            For example, let’s take the word 皇位継承 (Japanese imperial succession). Normally I’d gloss over big words like that, but it was coming up repeatedly so it seemed important. Since I knew other words containing 3 of the 4 kanji in there, I broke it down like so-

            1. Type in 皇帝 (こうてい), and delete the 帝
            2. * here (wildcard), since I don’t know anything that uses 位 yet
            3. Type in 継続 (けいぞく), and delete the 続
            4. Type in 承知 (しょうち), and delete the 知

            So my search was 皇*継承, which allowed me to find it in the dictionary. Sometimes you’ll get more than one result, or will still have to do a By Radicals kanji lookup to narrow it down sufficiently, but so far this method’s worked pretty well for me.

            On that note, does anyone know if goo jisho supports wildcards? I’ve been using the J-J dictionary more heavily as of late, but it doesn’t seem to treat * as a wildcard.

            • I too use the Kanji-patching technique you are describing here almost exclusively. It is actually faster(I find) than photographing(or anything else) once you know at least one reading of each kanji you’re looking for.

            • Yes I also use that “kanji-patching” technique but my dictionaries (Jed and imi for android) do not allow the missing kanji to be in the middle; it will just bring up no results. I will try the photography technique, thanks.

              However the most likely thing is that I’ll leave the book till later; I’m not at the reading world yet but tried to read the book because it was given to me by my teacher. But since she says it is not really relevant until next year’s course, I can wait until the summer holidays to read it since it is currently so difficult.

  11. Watching all episodes of Digimon Data Squad and Digimon Tamers. If I’ve done that I’ll have watched all digimon episodes from adenture to data squad that I actually saw in German the first time. But When I’ve watched all of them in Japanese, Digimon will also be a memory in Japanese. And maybe I’ll also watch the newer generations (Xros wars?). Since I plan to watch a bunch of anime. In the last month I’ve watched anime with the total amount of over 150 hours) My goal is to reach at least 2000 hours since I’ve noticed what a big leap I’ve achieved just by watching animes.

  12. Okay time to get serious.. I have been on a sort of positive wave with Japanese materials lately and by god, inspired by Adams 10-year post I will strike while the iron is hot! So the remainder of January goals are:
    1. Finish vol 2 of デッドマン・ワンダーランド(Deadman Wonderland)
    2. Finish 悪夢のエレベーター.
    3. Add 300 in Anki (J-J).
    4. Watch one episode of J-drama each night.
    Gyaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!(cry of 頑張ります-spirit)

  13. Returning from holiday to start studying again on 14th January, goals are:
    1. Re-establish routine
    2. Learn additional 413 RTK (to reach 1631)
    3. Learn additional 176 Jalup Beginner (to reach 626)

    • 1. Yes after an initial period of jetlag / illness / inexplicable crushing fatigue
      2. Not quite. Did 221 more to reach 1439.
      3. Exceeded. Reached 632.

  14. Going through a little mid-level Blues at the end of this month so hopefully by March first I’ll reach
    1. 1000 more cards in the one deck
    2. Reach level 40
    3. Read 一リットルの涙

    • 1. Achieved!
      2. Achieved!
      3. Only 60 pages read, though this isn’t terrible considering I started yesterday, but sadly I did fail my goal.

  15. Yosh! Only 28 days this moth so I’m limited.

    1. 600 drama vocab words
    2. 100 kanji (Come on!!!!! You’ve completely halted on kanji study and then you complain that you can’t read)
    3. 3 chapters in my textbook
    4. Watch 3 episodes of drama
    5. Watch 10 episodes of anime
    6. Read and understand the second story in that book
    7. Play only moderate amounts of Persona 3 and Gyakuten Saiban 2. Only on the bus home.

    • From your posts on the subject, it sounds like you’re hitting the same kind of RTK slump I did. Got to 500 in my first month, then 300, then 200, then 100, then nothing… I kept finding excuses for why I couldn’t just sit down and do it. I’m not even really sure why – it’s not like it’s especially hard. There’s just…something about it.

      Point being, I think your attitude about it is a good one. Even if you have to cut down your speed a bit, as long as you keep moving forward you’ll eventually finish. I’m finally down to the last 200 myself, so good luck to both of us =)

      • Thanks. Yeah my main thing is that during the summer holidays I did about 30 a day but when I started back at school (a new school doing A levels, the exams you do just before university in Britain) I found I had little time because of the longer days and bigger demands of my new courses. So I just decided I had no time for Kanji. Recently I freed up some time by dropping a course but kept the same attitude. So I need to just get to it and do a little each day.

  16. I’ve come to the conclusion that goals for specific progress in a game aren’t my thing. I’m too prone to bouncing between different games depending on what I’m in the mood to play. Oh well, as long as I’m having fun, right?

    1. >>>Finish RTK<<< (~200 new kanji). This is going to be a challenge, because it's a step up in pace and a shorter month to boot. I'm looking forward to finally being done, so hopefully the extra enthusiasm will push me over the finish line.
    2. Complete JALUP Advanced Stage 3
    3. Play lots of video games. I just picked up "超次次元ゲイム ネプテューヌ Re;Birth 1" for the Vita, and I'm excited to check it out, but I want to finish シエルノサージュ first before I start something new. Not to mention finishing Vesperia on PS3 before I start アルノサージュ.

    • 1. Still over 100 short on finishing RTK1. Two separate medical things threw my study time off the rails this month. On the plus side, finishing in March should be pretty easy *knocks on wood*
      2. Done. Already making headway into Stage 4.
      3. One silver lining to being at the Doctor’s a lot, is a plenty of time to play the Vita. I’ve almost finished シェルノサージュ. The story’s getting really exciting, so it’s pretty hard to put it down now =)

  17. 1.Do at least 10 reps from my Kanji, and my sentence deck of Anki. 2.Finish Tofugu’s 500 sentences. (see tofugu.com for more details). 3.Translate at least 1 page of manga daily. 4.Read Bleach #47 completely. So that’s it! Wish me luck!

  18. 1. Do 30 new Kanji in my anki deck. I’ve taken a break from adding any new Kanji for a month, so i’m going to start slow and make myself start adding them again, I don’t know what it is about kanji, I just can’t make adding them fun, so I will take it slow instead.

    2. Watch all of Bakumatsu Rock and keep up with current episodes of Ace of the Diamond.

    3. Read at least 1 manga, aiming for 2 or more, but currently i’m not all that interested in any of the ones I own, so unless i’m able to find some more this month I will probably just stick to reading one.

    4. Play a ton of Japanese games and have fun using the language!!!

    I feel motivated now to do everything on my list as fast as I can since i’m having fun with Japanese again, if only I can keep this motivation I can finish everything on my list in less than a week, but odds are I will procrastinate and try to finish it all during the last week.

    • Changing number 2 to finish the first season on Hunter X Hunter (was on episode 19 when I started this month) I’ve watched 4 episodes of Bakumatsu Rock and the episodes are kind of hit and miss on me enjoying them. I’m not ready to quick watching yet, but I’m getting close.

      1. Finished already! Was an easy one, but one I don’t like

      3. Finished reading 1 manga already, and over 25% done with a second. Will probably finish around 3 manga this month.

      4. I’ve put around 10 hours into Japanese games so far, and if the Medabots game im playing stays fun I should be able to beat it before the month is over.

    • I am extremely happy with what I ended up doing this month.

      1. Finished it but I didn’t add more kanji, instead I started on the next step of my core 2k deck, and will be finished with it on the second of next month.

      2. I finished the first season of Hunter X Hunter, watched 4 episodes of Bakumatsu Rock, and stayed caught up on Ace of Diamond, I may finish Bakumatsu Rock, but its just not holding my attention that much so im not watching much of it.

      3. Finished reading 2 manga, I was going to read more but I was out of stuff to read that I was interested in, so I made a twitter account and followed a few japanese people and have been reading their tweets everyday, as well as reading news articles from time to time.

      4. I ended up putting a ton of time into Japanese games this month, and I’ve found a few more that I like so i’m currently playing 3-4 different ones.

      Overall I’ve had a ton of fun with it this month and I feel that I’m at a point now where staying motivated to do stuff in Japanese is a lot easier because I understand a decent amount of it so it is fully holding my attention and is actually fun.

  19. 1. Finishing JALUP Advanced + my own cards – at least 30 sentences a day.
    2. Read the rest of 「ナルニア物語 魔術師のおい」
    3. Watch a new episode of anime a day. (Particularly Hunter x Hunter :D)
    4. Listen 8-14 hours a day.

    I pretty much keep up with this pace already but a steady stream is what pushes you to fluency.

  20. 1. Add at least 10 new sentences a day.
    2. Read 魔女の宅急便 & キッチン
    3. Watch one anime episode every day.
    4. Finish volume 3 of Dead man Wonderland.

    • 1+4 done.
      2. got distracted for a couple of days which led to weeks. Back at it next month!
      3. Not every day sadly.

  21. Super ambitious this month:
    1. Add 761 RTK to reach 2200 and completion of RTK.
    2. Add 368 Jalup Beginner to reach 1000 and complete Jalup Beginner.
    3. Try mixing in some native audio (anime soundtrack or something) with my Jpod101 listening diet.

    • 1. Not quite, added 497, reached 1936 Kanji and burnt out.
      2. YES! やった!
      3. Yes, mostly music whilst working, a bit of ripped audio. Jpod101 is still OK but getting a bit dry.

  22. 1. Finish JALUP Intermediate. Only 340 cards left!

    2. Continue listening to audio (speaking) every day.

    3. Complete at least 10 Kanji reps a day to practice writing.

    4. I would like to practice more writing (typing), so I would like to write out an entry online at least once a week.

    5. Read a bit of 進撃の巨人 every day.

  23. 1. Finish JALUP Beginner (300 left).
    2. Go through at least 100 cards in JALUP intermediate (hopefully I’ll do a bit more than that, though.)
    3. Finish よつばと Vol.1 and start/finish よつばと Vol. 2.
    4. Obtain at least 1 badge in ポケットモンスター:オメガルビ.
    5. Listen to 1-2+ hours of Japanese music/day.

    • 1. Finished
      2. Kind of obliterated… Ha. I just finished JALUP Intermediate last night and am about to start the Advanced deck.
      3. Finished both volumes and I have started the third.
      4. Failed, but I have played some. I really just spent more time with anki this month, so no big deal I think.
      5. Done.

      • Wow man, how did you do that? Wasn’t there an adjustment period going from j-e to j-j land? You finished it in less than a month. You didn’t have problems with all j-j sentences?

        • Well, for starters, know that I have always had a tendency to power level in relatively short spurts. Ex: I had a couple days where I “learned” 100 kanji each day (though it took me around 3 months to get through RTK1)… Anki really backed me up on making sure I actually remembered everything, even when things weren’t really sticking at first.

          I have usually been much more motivated too when going through sentences, rather than when I was just doing RTK since it is “real Japanese” and every new sentence brings me that much closer to enjoying more and more Japanese materials. Definitely find ways to keep yourself motivated whether you try to power level a bit or not!

          The very beginning of J-J sentences were still quite tough and very much of a learning curve getting used to learning words with only Japanese. Also, I used the anki search feature A LOT at first to help me out. I especially used it when a word I was still a little foggy on appeared in a definition of another word to jog my memory, or basically relearn it again. My progress at the start of J-J was definitely much slower for the first 50-100 cards, but I think once I made myself do something like 50+ cards in one day just to make some better progress I feel like I really started making good progress. At least for me, it was often better for me to be slightly foggy on a word’s meaning rather than spending a huge amount of time meditating on just one card, since often future cards would help solidify the meanings of words that I was still kind of unsure about. Don’t be afraid to fail cards a few times if you’re really struggling with it, because after a few days of seeing it over and over it’s probably going to stick.

          I should also note that I used some J-E-J on various cards out of the first 500 or so, but only when I was having a particularly hard time figuring out a card’s meaning. And, if you are considering any power leveling yourself, be ready for the anki reviews to pile up quickly! To finish Jalup Intermediate in the time frame that I did, it definitely took a pretty good chunk of my time.

          Regardless if you consider on trying your hand at power leveling or not, I hope my results and thoughts are able to be of some use to you!

          • Amazing, congrats. Thanks for the input man, I’m almost done with the beginner sentences. So this is really useful info.

  24. 1. Read things
    2. Listen to things
    3. Get better at reading things
    4. Get better at listening to things

  25. 1) read every day in Japanese (jump around too much to choose one
    2) watch at least one simpsons episode a day (日本語だけ)
    3) add minimum 300 J-J anki cards (this will be easy this month and most likely exceeded because of JALUP Expert)
    4) don’t skip any days of reviews, even if you fail the other 3!!!

      • I was just about to ask the same thing! I even dug out my DVDs, but no Japanese audio on there. (Simpsons in Spanish is pretty entertaining though, turns out.)

        Weird coincidence, too, as I was just thinking this would be a perfect way to boost my listening. Since… y’know… I know the first 10 seasons of the Simpsons basically by heart :P

      • I got them off yesasia, Japanese import reseller. Cost me a pretty penny though to Australia. First season in Japanese and has subtitles. Though they aren’t always exact subtitles, sometimes they paraphrase but it has very similar meaning. I think it explains it in a way that makes more sense for natives

  26. Hmm, let’s see…
    1. Do 40 new cards in my sentence deck a day (total 1120 in the month).
    2. And of course create enough new sentence cards to make that possible.
    3. Go through 10 pages of A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar a day and create anki sentence cards for sentences with grammar or words I don’t know (280 pages in the month)
    4. Get through about 5 new kanji a day (140 in the month) from RTK 3. Since i’ll prob hardly ever see many of these kanji I’m not really in a rush.
    5. Read one chapter of DMC a day.
    6. Read all of the Parasyte manga (i got through the first vol yesterday)
    7. Go though 2 jpod101 lessons a day (i usually just go through the dialogue part and add sentences to anki with words i didn’t know)
    Will be hard to do all this with working full time but I will do my best~~

    • I successfully did 40 new sentences a day which was awesome. Though now my anki cards all together take 2 hours a day.
      I went through the grammar book at 10 pages a day as planned.
      Prob did more kanji than planned cos stopping at 5 a day is kind of difficult.
      Didn’t read a chapter of dmc a day cos I decided to focus on rereading already read chapters and adding sentences to anki so I can better understand later chapters.
      Only read half of parastye cos I decided to mix up my reading more and read some Beelzebub and sone other random things.
      And I successfully did 2 jpod101 lessons a day.
      Overall it was a great month and I am pleased :-)

  27. 1. ANKI: 15 JALUP intermediate cards per day + 1 The One Deck card. I anticipate completing the Intermediate 1000 by the end of the month.

    2. READING (extensive): Read all NHK web easy articles each day.

    3. READING (intensive): Read one article or sections of an article from JA Wikipedia about Black history/culture/African diaspora. Review and re-read previous articles/sections. Half of the definitions will be J-E and the other half J-J.

    4. LISTENING: Watch and find scripts for JP dubs of Coming to America, Malcolm X, and Pursuit of Happyness. Rip audio and put on immersion iPod. Rip audio from Kill La Kill, Hentai Kamen, Sakuran and My Boss My Hero and place on immersion iPod. Keep immersion iPod in my ear from morning till night unless I have work.

    5. FUN: Beat Pokemon X! Get back to playing OmegaRuby and FFX in JP. Maybe read a volume or two of Naruto and Dragonball.

    6. OTHER: Come up with beginners lessons and tutoring plans related to Japanese for my tutoring business.

    7. FORMAL: Review Intermediate JP textbook, as well as JP Sent. Pattern book. Figure out an actual study plan. Order Intermediate-Advanced textbook to start studying next month (Aozora?)

  28. 1.Add vocab everyday.
    2.Learn some grammar and create some example sentence and add it to anki.
    3.Able to understand 2 volumes of Nozaki kun,highscore girl, sakamoto desu ga and yotsuba.
    4.Able to sing along and understand Aimer – StarRingChild and RE IAM.

  29. Goals for March:

    1) never a skip a day reviewing ( I have been real good about this lately.)
    2) add 20 cards a day minimum; 10 from Jalup expert, 10 from the one deck.(30 is ideal but I am a bit hesitant with adding too many self made j-j)
    3) read some of my attack on Titan manga everyday
    4) get passive listening hours back up
    5) beat ocarina of time on 3ds
    6) watch an episode of something a day
    I want to pick up my pace to thirty new cards a day but one deck reviews are much more of a burden so I’ll probably hold off until I reach the level 40 ‘turning point’ I’ve been gunning for.

    • Succeeded at 1 and 2 (missed a couple here and there and only added 10 cards).
      Passive listening was inadequate
      Reading was inadequate
      Gave up on ocarina cause of backtracking and realising the Japanese is sparse
      Smashed 6 though. Been watching a lot of stuff. Need to read more!

  30. Finally, I’m ready to do one of these! Couldn’t think of any goals for a while.

    Goals for March:

    -Finish Gacco’s course: ポップパワー (Starts March 2nd! Free course!)
    https://lms.gacco.org/courses/gacco/ga026/2015_03/about

    -Translate 100 manga pages in a day (Tadoku conversions apply, so it also equals 20 book pages)
    I found aiming for something like this was really motivating in Tadoku, so going to try it for translating!

    -Finish the volume of キノの旅 that I’m on.
    Haven’t really been reading any novels since my Stats class, and that’s long over now, so it’s time I get back into novel reading,

    • I did translate 100 manga pages in a day multiple times, but I did not go through with the Gacco course or finish my volume of キノの旅. Oh well <(^_^)

  31. I’m not going to be as specific about my goals for March as I was in February. I found that being too specific about what I was going to read was not a good idea, because if I want to enjoy reading something, I should read what I want at the time. Also I discovered a weakness in February – reading kanji names that don’t have furigana. So thusly here are my goals for March.

    1. Do 40 new cards in my sentence deck a day (Same as last month)
    2. And of course create enough new sentence cards to make that possible, including more sentences that have Japanese names in them so I can practice name readings.
    3. Go through 10 pages of A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar a day and create anki sentence cards for sentences with grammar or words I don’t know. This should get me to just about the end of the book, so I’m looking forward to that.
    4. Get through about 5 new kanji a day from RTK 3. By the end of March I should be about up to 2675 or so.
    5. Add at least one chapter worth of sentences to Anki from a manga per day.
    6. Read more manga. Probably Beelzebub cos I’m into that at the moment but I’ll see how I feel at the time.
    7. Go through 2 Jpod101 lessons a day
    8. Sunday is the day I have time to study for most of the day, so on Sundays I want to focus on creating a lot of sentence cards for anki (since I’m doing 40 cards a day I need to make a lot). On Sundays, as well as the above goals, I will try to get through 1 or 2 episodes of anime (depending on difficulty of words) and add sentences to Anki. I also want to try to get into the habit of reading a volume of manga on Sundays, and also looking for sentences that have kanji in them I’m weak at and adding them to my sentence deck.
    9. I’m weak at knowing about Japan itself. So starting with geography I want to learn more about the country. I’ve ordered some books about Japan geography from Amazon Japan (figured I should try and learn about Japan in Japanese) so I’ll try to at least have an understanding of where the prefectures are by the end of March.

    Should be a good month if I can get into a good rhythm :-)

    • 1. Yup, no worries.
      2. Yuppp. Getting a bit better at name readings I think but still a long way to go.
      3. Yep I have finished the book now, yay.
      4. Yup I’m already past the mark and I still have 2 days left of March.
      5. First 3 quarters of the month, yep. Rest of the month I focused on adding sentences for kanji I didn’t know the readings of instead. I know a lot more readings now, which is nice.
      6. Didnt read as much manga as I would have liked, maybe 5 vols total, 3 being Beelzebub and 2 being Wandering Son.
      7. First 3 quarters of the month. After that not so much since I am getting a bit sick of Japanesepod 101. Next month I will rest from using that website.
      8. More or less. Generally did a lot of study on Sundays which was nice.
      9. Nooope lol. Oh well, maybe another month xD

  32. Goals for March:

    1. Spend at least 1 hour a day using Anki. My average last month of 12.8 minutes a day just isn’t going to cut it. It’s time to man up on this stuff.

    2. Finish stage 4 of beginner deck. I have 50 to go, this last stage has been killing me.

    3. Begin Intermediate stage.

    • 1. Done. It wasn’t as hard as I thought. I just stopped worrying about how many cards I had to do, because I had to do this for 1 hour anyway, so I figured I might as well just take my time and properly study. Once I stopped worrying about the number of cards, I really started enjoying it.

      2. Done. It was a little rough at the end, but I made it.

      3. Done. I’ve started the intermediate sentence pack. It is really tough going to be honest. There is no more hand holding, no more pleasant voice to help me memorize the pronunciation. Now I have to learn what the new word means and how to pronounce it all on my own. J/J is pretty serious study, a lot of words I thought were not important turned out to be extremely important. I’ve actually had to use more of J/E/J but hopefully I can break myself out of that soon. It’s extremely hard to cheat and just blast through cards without really knowing them (I tried and became completely lost). It’s really difficult, and I love it.

  33. I’ve been happy with my progress the past couple of months, so my goal this month is to just maintain and keep doing what i’m doing.

    1. Read 2 manga, and on days when i’m not reading manga read a news article or spend 15 minutes reading Japanese tweets.

    2. Finish the final step in my core 2k deck. This will be a big milestone finally reached since I’ve been using this deck since I started learning, it will be nice to finally have it finished.

    3. Watch season 2 of Hunter X Hunter.

    4. Keep playing Japanese games. This one is most important to me because it lets me have a ton of fun using the language and is a big motivator for me to do my anki cards so I will understand even more of what is being said.

    • !. Failed this one, didn’t finish reading 1 manga, and didn’t spend much time reading japanese news sites or twitter.

      2. Finished this one, and it was a relief to get it done.

      3. Finished season 2 and got a good ways into season 3.

      4. I played some Japanese games, but I didn’t play as much as I wanted. I started playing League of Legends this month and that cut into my time a lot, I have to start balancing my time better so I can get practice in Japanese.

  34. 1. Start and finish JALUP Advanced (daily goal of at least 35 new cards per day, which would have me finishing it and then a little extra…Probably some JALUP Expert).

    My entertainment/immersion goals are going to be a little less specific this month, so I be a little more spontaneous on what I feel like doing at the time.

    2. Read よつばと!
    3. Start reading ドラゴンボール漫画 (having never really seen the anime by the way…)
    4. Play ポケットモンスター:オメガルビ
    5. Maybe read a little bit of 旅の仲間. Since it doesn’t have much furigana, it’s a little scary, but I really love LOTR. I’ll probably put a stronger focus on it after completing JALUP Advanced, or at least after going through a stage of it or two.
    6. Listen to 1-2+ hours of Japanese music/day.

    • 1. Almost finished. I’m still 50 cards off, but I think I’ve done pretty well while feeling bogged down by my regular collegiate studies.

      2. I read some.

      3. I’m currently on the 4th volume. I planned to read more, but it’s something.

      4. I didn’t really play this hardly at all unfortunately, but I did find some other games to play in Japanese. The first that comes to mind is Borderlands 2 with my roommate. (though there is relatively a lot of “down time” with no characters talking)

      5. I’ve offed this one for now, and it is now a somewhat more long-term goal. I will be reading some easier novels soon, however.

      6. Did this at the beginning of the month, but now am using most of that time/effort to listen to anime episodes, J-Dramas, etc. since I feel listening to dialogue can be more helpful than just song lyrics at this point.

  35. 1. Inspired by the level 40 in 8 months post, I’m aiming for FINISHING RTK this month. That’s 426 cards. At my lowest point, I was only doing 7 a day, but now it’ll be 14. I will annihilate this burden! *evil laugh*
    2. Who needs other goals? Alright fine: Finish Core 2k step 4.
    3. Hmm, I need an easy goal. Watch 20 eps. of One Piece. Meaning eps. 34-43.

    I’m really motivated recently after getting to talk with some Japanese students along with my trip to Japan getting closer.

    • 1. YES, FREAKING YES! (I did it). I still need to do a lot of reviewing for me to really learn them, but now I have much more time to devote elsewhere.
      2. Done. Way easier than step 3 now that I know more of the vocab base they use.
      3. Piece of win. 24 episodes. Although I didn’t watch much else.

  36. 1. Practice writing kana daily until I can write it as quickly and effortlessly as I do English.
    2. At the same time practice writing kanji daily, so I can generally at least write sentences without having to use a kana substitution for the most part. (Even if it isn’t quite as quick / effortless)

  37. 1. Don’t skip a day of Anki reviews!
    2. Learn 5 new JALUP Intermediate Cards each day
    3. Learn 1 new The One Deck card each day ( J-E-J in definitions)
    4. Watch and take notes for 2~3 Nihongo no Mori JLPT N3 videos 6 days a week
    5. Watch a couple videos of Asa no Gaijin when I get up (read a few comments)
    6. Complete all the readings in Read Real Japanese Essays
    7. Review Grammar in both of my grammar books
    8. Learn Hangul and introductory Korean s in Japanese!

    • 8. *Korean phrases
      9. Anyway, I wanted to include that I will also be playing Jak 2, Final Fantasy X + X-2, Okami, Pokemon X and OmegaRuby in Japanese. I don’t really plan to beat any of them this month–just dabble around for relaxation. I wish the US version of Dragon Ball Xenoverse included Japanese text. =|

      Gonna power level in April so I can FINALLY break into the Proficiency stage!!

    • 10. OH YEAH! Every Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday, I will post something on Lang-8. It’ll be my first time.
      11. Reach out to more advanced JP learners and arrange weekly conversations. I feel it’s time to dabble in the world of Output.

      • Output is exciting, if a bit scary at first. You’ll have a good time with it!
        If you need an extra someone to chat with, feel free to ask Adam for my email =)

  38. 1. Don’t skip a day of anki reviews.
    2. Listen/watch a Japanese ASMR video every night before bed.
    3. Start and finish kana conqueror.
    4. Master the first 158 kanji in Jalup Kanji Assist.
    5. Start the first stage of JALUP Beginner.

  39. 1. Read 魔女の宅急便(100 pages left)& キッチン。
    2. Read DMC vol.2.
    3. Watch one j-drama episode a day.
    4. Add at least 15/day to Anki.

  40. 1. Read & fully understand BAKUMAN Vol. 1 & 2
    2. Thoroughly learn & memorize approx. 200 JLPT N1 vocabulary words
    3. Watch the first 5 episodes of サムライフラメンコ without subtitles, with at least 80% comprehension
    4. Update my WordPress blog at least once a week

  41. This actually came at a really good time! I just finished RTK yesterday, and since RTK was my main Japanese-related goal for the last 3 or so months I’m feeling rather empty of goals at the moment. Now I’m forced to think of some!

    1. Do 15 J-E sentences a day – 31 days in March, so 465 J-E sentences by the time the month ends. (focusing on RTK = neglecting sentences)
    2. Read Yotsubato!
    3. Play Pokemon Black in Japanese. Not exactly sure how much progress I’ll make, so I’ll say that I have to be at least at the 5th gym by the time the month is over (so halfway through).
    4. Don’t miss a day of Anki reviews! I’ve gotten good at this, but I think it’s still worth mentioning.
    5. Spend at least 1 hour every day listening to Japanese music while doing homework.

    • 1. Eh…no. :P Tried to catch up by doing 20 a day near the end, but didn’t quite get there.
      2. Done! Read the two that are available online. They were hilarious.
      3. I started Black, but didn’t get very far. アララギはかせ just keeps talking…and talking…and talking…it took me a week just to get to the first town.
      4. Done!
      5. Done! This was my most enjoyable goal. I often found myself listening for much longer than that.

  42. My goals for March:
    – Be able to name all the objects in my room.
    – Learn the meanings of at least 100 kanji.
    – Talk to natives at least once a week.
    – Turn those subtitles of!
    – Finish the Basic 2 textbook.
    – … And don’t get behind on my other school work :P

    • – Done, thank you Memrise :)
      – Done. Actually did this…for 180 kanji
      – Done. We mostly talked about grammar though, so not as much conversation as I hoped.
      – Done. I completed 3 anime without having on the subtitles
      – Done. Started Basic 3.
      – Welp, let’s just say I’m passing all my classes :)

  43. I kinda slipped up with my goals back in December (mainly due to Christmas preparations), but I’m back to challenge myself again!

    – Read 蛇神の女王.
    – Read all three volumes of ナイトクラス.
    – Read D.Gray-man reverse 1.
    – Add 300 sentence cards to Anki.

  44. Getting a bit burnt out and mid-level bluesy. So:
    Fun:
    1. Go to Japan (booked for over Easter); this might disrupt Anki work though :(
    2. Watch Fairy Tail with subs just for fun. Months since I watched it and I used to enjoy it.
    Work:
    3. Start J-J with Jalup intermediate despite feeling unprepared. Aiming for 213 sentences.
    4. Kana Conqueror 120 cards. Katakana is weak.
    5. Work through first 150 pages of Tae Kim adding more J-E to reinforce Jalup beginner.
    6. Stepping down a gear on RTK, will grind out 207 in the month to reach 2143.
    7. Continue all Anki reviews of Jalup beginner and RTK to date.
    8. Find a one star show to watch, rip, and immerse.
    9. Continue with Jpod101 unless 8 above is a huge success.

    This goal series is great btw. It pushed me to work harder in February than I otherwise would have done. I like having to think about what I am going to do each month. I get ideas from other people’s goals, and it’s motivating to see how people do – successes encourage me and watching people fail a goal but keep on trying makes me want to keep trying too!

    • 1. Yes. It was every bit as awesome as I hoped. Moreover I made a lot of Japanese friends including some with terrible English. Now, for the first time, I have a really good reason to learn Japanese!
      2. Yes. Fun.

      Morale restored!

      3. Partial. Started, struggling with Kanji readings. Only did 81.
      4. Partial. First 96.
      5. Partial. Only did 55 pages.
      6. Partial. Only did 96 to reach 2029. So close to finishing!
      7. Pretty much. Just a slight backlog built up on the holiday.
      8. Yes. This is working. I am beginning to get the hang of immersion.
      9. Yes. Beginning to prefer immersion though.

  45. Hopefully writing this goal here will push me to do it. XD

    -Start speaking in Japanese/Make some friends to speak in Japanese with.

    I go “I’ll do it this month!” Every month. Then don’t do it. I think my problem lies with my disliking of social media like Facebook, and thus my lack of use of Facebook… I’m gonna push myself to use Facebook on some Japanese pages to do with games and the like. Hopefully it’ll work out and I’ll make some buddies to chat with. Any suggestions on finding talking partners are more than welcome. XD

    • Succeeded. Made one facebook friend. Then didn’t bother to make anymore. Turns out the friend I made is fluent in English so the conversations tend to range from Japanese to English, though Japanese tends to be the language spoken 70% of the time or so. Gonna try and make some more friends XD.

  46. I would like to remember all of the katakana, and hiragana, as I’m a little fuzzy on those. I would also like to learn( and recognize) some kanji.

  47. 1. Learn at least 300 Kanji (Graduate Japanese Grade 3 and start Grade 4)
    2. Watch all of とらドラ
    3. Watch at least 2 hours of Japanese Let’s Plays a week
    4. Finish the current text book I have (Japanese Demystified, kinda sucks cause of all the romaji, but the sentences are good, I think)
    5. Finally get some actually good material on my immersion mp3 player.
    6. Watch more キルミーベビー

  48. 1. Continue with at least 1 hr of time studying Anki. I’m using Anki’s stats to help me keep track of the time. I realize that this is an underestimation as Anki stops counting if you take longer than 1 minute on a card. I am fine with this as a I strongly prefer to underestimate so I can get angry at myself for not studying enough.

    2. Finish Jalup Kanji Assist Intermediate.

    3. Begin RTK Mod Anki deck.

    4. Start filling up my immersion device (cell phone) with audio of my favorite dramas and variety shows. I’m already using music, but for me, unless I actively study the lyrics it’s just not enough.

    5. Not miss a single day of Anki reps. (Almost duplicate with 1, but I could do less than 1 hour and still make this goal).

    6. Last month I experienced a huge spike of motivation, it has since gone back down to normal, so my last goal is to find a way to induce another huge motivation spike this month and ride that wave as hard as I can.

  49. 1. Finish 進撃の巨人 vol. 1. My manga-reading rate is really poor. I read about one a month. Luckily it also gets easier every month.
    2. Okay, I “finished” RTK, but I didn’t actually write things out except in my mind. So this goal will be to write them out for each Anki review.
    3. Also can’t write kana, so I’ll do a similar writing thing with a new kana Anki deck. This month I will “learn” to write hirigana.

    • I loathe writing with pen and paper, but “writing” kanji with my finger (on any flat surface with a bit of texture, like a mousepad) has worked really well for me as a compromise. The muscle memory helps with recollection, too =)

      RTKの完了、おめでとう!

    • I can understand that one! I actually didn’t learn how to write kana until I went to Japanese camp in high school a long time ago even though I knew how to read kana. Good luck! You can do it! がんばって!

    • 1. Not only 進撃の巨人 but よつばと! Vol. 2 as well. Wow manga becomes exponentially better the more you understand.
      2. Holy crap being able to write kanji is AmAzInG! It was really intense, I wrote about 4000 this month and it’s been super helpful for knowing kanji. It is rather tedious though, and I see the effects diminishing, so I’ll probably only go to the 10,000 kanji mark.
      3.”Can’t write kana”? Pfffh. Now I can write Hirigana and Katakana. It’s really weird how I could read them so easily yet couldn’t recreate them.

  50. For this month, in addition to my normal study routine, I’d like to look for more opportunities to communicate. Daylight Savings Time in the US killed most of the overlap I had in online time with my JP WoW guild. I also haven’t heard from any of my email penpals in a while, so it feels like I have nobody to talk to these days.

    I’m not sure what those new opportunities will look like yet. Maybe I’ll finally get around to joining Twitter? I’d really like to do more live chat, though. I wonder if I can find some enthusiastic learners to chat with =)

    • I felt the same way now I use http://www.hellotalk.com/ its a great app that allow you to talk with people from all over the world and its free. It has helped me keep up my Japanese. The only downside is you might have to message a few people before you get someone who will steadily rely. Other than that I use it every day.

      I as use http://www.gospeaky.com/ but it is in beta but it is still good!!
      I hope that helps

    • This ended up being much more successful than I anticipated. I met a bunch of people with similar interests on Twitter and got to do quite a bit of writing that way.

      Also had my first spoken JP conversation since college (~7 years) – Thanks James! ^_^

      And thanks to everyone else for the great suggestions =)

  51. This is my birthday month haha!

    No time to stop my Japanese fury though.

    1) read, not just manga. I was heavily inspired by Adams short novel every 2 weeks. Starting Monday I am going to start reading a chapter a day minimum

    2) increase cards to 30 from 20. 20 from one deck, 10 from Jalup expert.

    3) start conversations for realises! I promised myself I would do this at level 40 (5000 cards). I am only on 4600 at the moment. A bit premature but I feel like I’ll just keep putting it off and level 35-38 is close enough to 40 that I’ll probably reach it half way through the month anyway.
    I want to an hour a day of conversation if I can organise it. But I’ll see if I’m actually capable of holding one first haha

    • お誕生日おめでとう!

      I’m still inspired to get into reading a novel every 2 weeks as well. I didn’t end up doing it last month (-_-). I don’t think I’ll do it this month or next month because I’ll be in Japan, but maybe I’ll start the habit with Tadoku in June and continue on after that! Wish you luck with the chapter a day!

      At level 35-38, you probably shouldn’t have trouble! I was holding conversations (though they were basic) at level 10 back in Japanese camp! Sometimes it takes finding the right native speaker too. Some people are more gifted at speaking to foreigners than others, because they can rephrase things, still in Japanese, to get their points across and are good at interpreting what you say, and if you’re lucky, might even correct you!

      • I’ve been booking lessons on italki

        my first lesson was fantastic and I was able to have her correct all my mistakes. However, my second tutor kept trying to teach me basic grammar. And it was hard to get the point across that despite knowing this stuff very easily, speaking it is a different matter. By the 50 minute mark i managed to convey that I wanted to just have conversation with her correcting my mistakes.
        I was a bit disappointed with that lesson compared to last, but I guess that was by fault of my own. I am quite excited for my next tutor as she teaches only in Japanese and refuses to use English (think I am in love already).

        I don’t know how to avoid situations where they just try and lecture me on basic grammar with even informal tutors. I guess I could’ve got that point across sooner but I can’t help but feel rude to say that I don’t want to talk grammar, I spend the other 8 hours of my day doing anki and reading I’d just like to have a fun chat whilst having my mistakes corrected! Eventually she said she would type my mistakes and it was great…. for the last 10 minutes!

        I guess on the plus side, even conveying my message across that I wanted to practice in a different way was a valuable lesson, one that I’ll be using often I’m sure. I don’t think I’ll be returning to that tutor.

        The worst thing about being a higher level and beginning conversations is being treated like an absolute novice. At the start of lessons I try and tell them that I have been studying a good while, but I guess in that case she must’ve thought my knowledge was absolute beginner. Ahh well, at least we got to an agreement by the end of it.

        I was actually pretty good at conveying my points I realised. However, I know my grammar was terrible, and every time she corrected me i was like -*Face palm* so easy I know that-. I guess that’s all part of the game. Speaking for the first 2 times was very very humbling. But I recommend it to all interested, it’s quite revealing.

        Any pointers for a novice speaker? I’d love any tips to avoid pitfalls and perils like the above. Getting proactive about those things is the best way to avoid them!

        TLDR; first time speaking at level 30+ easy to get your point across. Although, your japanese will be full of mistakes, and your nerves may get to you (this was definitely the case for me). You really need to find a tutor that understands your needs.

        • Ps. i have stopped highlighting my books now and am reading at a much faster pace. I realised I use pre made anki decks with 1000s of words already so I don’t really need to add to that pile. If I get super desperate to know a word I just define on the spot with ibooks fantastic J-J dictionary.

          and for anyone interested, immersion-style “kazagruma” Japanese classes is the tutor i’m really looking forward to tomorrow. She avoids english or L1 all together. Sounds like a dream for JALUP learners.

    • 1) I guess complete but I’ve only been reading an hour of a novel a day. It’s way too short, but because I spend 4-5 hours on anki I can’t help it, my days literally run out before I can read anymore. I am pouring all my free time in to Japanese. I guess I’ll make up for it when I hit 10000 words.

      2) done. Anki is where I’ve always shined. I added thirty a day successfully just like I said, and I haven’t missed a day of reviews, even on my birthday. At this pace who knows what my Japanese will be like in a couple of months

      3) I have been doing an hour of Japanese of Japanese conversation everyday for the past 3 weeks. Once the nerves settled I had a huge spike in skill, but now I’ve plateaued a little. Will keep it up though for next month. And I’m still having a lot of fun. Wish I didn’t make so many mistakes though…

  52. I’m not going to write too many specific goals for this month, since I like to vary on my study tools depending on my mood.

    1. 40 new sentences added to review queue a day in Anki. And of course creating enough new sentence cards to make that possible. That should be 1200 new sentences in the month, yay. This will bring the total number of sentences in my deck to over 10,000 <3
    2. 150 new kanji studied by the end of the month. This will get me to 150 left before I finish the book so I should be able to finish by the end of May. Yay.
    3. Get more into the habit of passive listening. I do very little of this so far because it's bothersome to make the audio files.
    4. I finished going through the Intermediate Grammar dictionary in March, so in April I want to go back and finish up the Beginner Grammar dictionary. I stopped that one half though and skipped to intermediate so I still gotta finish going though it.
    5. Other than that, I'm not going to name specific goals, just say that I want to spend at least 3-4 hours actively studying on weekdays unless other life commitments pop up, and the ways I study in those hours will vary depending on my mood. On weekend days, depending on what non-study related tasks I have to do, I want to study as much as possible.
    6. I have to admit I am starting to get into a slump. I have gotten to the point where I understand most of the grammar structures, and understanding a sentence is pretty much a matter of understanding the words that are in it. But the amount of words that I have to learn feel like a giant mountain and I'm learning so many words yet there are still so many I have yet to learn. It feels pretty neverending. Somehow I will get out of this slump this month ^.^

    • Sorry to be intrusive, are your 10000 sentencesj-e or? Congratulations btw for getting this far

      • It’s more of a hodge podge of J-E and J-J, as I don’t bother too much about what I use :-) It would be a lot less cards if all J-J, haha. Prob a lottt more J-E I would say but those work for me fine~

        • I wonder what the level difference between someone that did j-j cards to 10000 and j-e would be. The science of it is so intriguing to me! I wonder how you’re japanese to someone like say; shirobon, who is edging on 10 k j-j cards area. Interesting stuff!

          I think people should do what works for them too :)

          • Would be interesting to find out~~
            There are a lot of other factors to consider though, such as how much time is spend reading, listening, etc etc. It would be a hard thing to investigate with everyone’s different study habits xD
            (As for me, my speaking ability is actually really terrible compared to my reading ability. I’m not too worried though, cos I don’t plan on moving to Japan, and I don’t know any Japanese people. And also I don’t like having conversations in general, even in English)

    • Have you tried podcasts? You could download Podcast Addict if you have an Android device and set it to automatically download your favorite podcasts so that you don’t have to do so much work ripping things. This would assure you’d always have something new to listen to, and you could keep the ones you like for repeated listening too.

      There’s also NicoBox (on Android and iOS) and NicoNsen for music and voice dramas, as well as SOLiVE24 (a 24/7 weather channel) that you could leave on while connected to the internet for easy to set up passive listening. With NicoBox you can cache your playlists to listen offline too, as well as use the playlists for an immersion playlist. I have one for voice dramas on NicoBox.

      Hope you get out of your slump soon! I was in one recently too, but finally made it to the other side.

    • 1. Yup :-)
      2. More than achieved. I have only 120 or so rtk 3 kanji left now.
      3. Yup I am doing more passive listening now but it still needs improving.
      4. Pretty much. I have 30 pages left I’ve been putting off but I’ll do those tomorrow.
      5. Yup I used my spare time well this month.
      6. Getting there. I still have heeeaps of words to learn but I am increasingly seeing recently learned words in stuff I’m reading which is making me feel better about my progress.

  53. 1. 750-2250 Vocabulary using Recognition layout (25-75 per day)
    2. 750 Vocabulary using Production layout (25 per day)
    3. 750 Kanji (25 per day)
    4. 750 Sentences using Listening Comprehension layout (25 per day)
    5. 750 Sentences using Reading Comprehension layout (25 per day)
    6. 300 Sentences using Listening Output Layout (10 per day)
    7. 300 Sentences using Reading Output Layout (10 per day)
    8. 300 Grammar points (10 per day)
    9. Maybe 50 cards to help drill word formation principles into my head.
    10. Read 神咒神威神楽

  54. 1. Do at least 25 new sentences a day (or 600 into Jalup advanced)
    2. Finish those lingering RTK 1 reviews…
    3. Start 25 RTK 3 kanji by the 15th (yeah, lots of reviews…)
    4. Read 2% a day (Japanese kindle paperwhite for the win :P)
    5. Make MCD’s of all uni vocab I don’t know yet. Thank the powers that be for Jalup, kids, don’t do Jap at university :/ (unless you want a scholarship to go on exchange or something.)

  55. Well, lets see how well I can combine my new job with studying Japanese.

    1) Get to 200 kanji in RtK.
    2) Finish all the grade 1 kanji.
    3) Know the stroke order of all the kana.
    4) Do all exercises from the Basic 2 workbook.
    5) Complete one lesson of Basic 3 a week.
    6) Take a practice JLPT N5 test… and pass it?

  56. I just restarted 3 weeks ago, and am doing RTK this time around, which has been quite an eye opener. I started on JALUP beginner, but realized almost immediately how much not knowing the Kanji from RTK, yet, was hindering me, so I have decided to burn through RTK before I start up JALUP again.

    So…

    1) Finish RTK 1. I’m at 1000 as of today and have the next month mapped out, so I will finish all 2200. Totally doable and I already feel it is worth it.
    2) Finish TextFugu – not doing any serious attempt to drill anything. I just use it to pick up the basics and as much grammar as possible while I finish RTK. TextFugu is pretty good apart from too much vocab focus – more sentences and less repetition, please!
    3) Get started on JALUP Beginner – looking forward to this one :)

    • 1) Done! Yay! So nice to have that one out of the way.
      2) Done, and have also been reading Tae Kim’s guide to reinforce basic grammar.
      3) 520 cards in as of today, so I’d say that counts as a start :)

      I’m surprised how this goal thread affected my studies. I got a lot of motivation both from knowing what goals I had set, but also from reading the goals of everyone else. See you in May thread ;)

  57. 1. Add 30-35 new cards to anki per day from a mix of Jalup Expert and the One Deck. (Month total goal of ~1000)

    2. Read manga and at least start reading from きみが見つける物語. Reading at least one of the short stories would be nice.

    3. Watch anime, specifically One Piece.

    4. Keep up the listening passive immersion.

    • You’re inspiring me to up my card count. I’m only doing from 10 from each for th the past few months but I used to do 30 for the Jalup series when there was enough cards to meet my pace. What ratio of cards do you normally so?

      • I’m actually just finishing up Jalup Advanced and am only just about to jump into Jalup Expert and the One Deck. I was thinking 10-15 from Expert and 20-25 from the One Deck. I also may mix in some cards from the Theme Language Pack as a “substitute” for One Deck cards. I don’t really want to burn through the Expert cards too quickly while they’re still being made, though.

        Hopefully this is relevant, but I’m also planning to use the Morphman plug-in on the One Deck to hopefully make the transition to using One Deck cards a bit smoother.

        • I found it really hard to add 20 from one deck when I first started it but now I think I could (done about thousand from there). I do 10 from expert at the moment and 10 from one deck. I wish it was I+1 cause I get so many words still that have too many unknowns yet I’m super stubborn and force myself to learn a lot of them. I’ve gotten a bit better now and I’ll suspend some of them but I’d prefer I+1 I’m sure. I don’t ever resort to English which doesn’t help my cause haha. I’ve Google image’d like 2 works but I hate having to do that, feels like I’m cheating somewhat.

          If you manage to morph man the one deck can you teach me how to do it? I’m so stupid I couldn’t figure it out. I’ve done up to advanced and getting through expert stage 3. Would love love to figure how to use morph man but I can’t imagine it works as well for j-J cards unless it can read the definition+expression field.

          I would love love love if you made a video tutorial of how to do or even and article on Jalup. That I+1 idea really appeals to me. But that add on is way out of my league!

          • I got it to work last night. I see why you may have had trouble getting it going, because the instructions on how to use it are very scattered. If this information needs to be made into an article maybe with pictures, that’s fine with me as well. I’ll just try to go through all the steps as to not miss anything.

            *note: If you are at all worried about making a mistake (which shouldn’t create any problems, but you never know), you may want to export your current deck(s) to have as an extra backup.

            1. Download the Morphman plugin (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1248316808)
            Current download code to use in Anki program: 1248316808.

            2. (Perhaps optional) Download the Japanese support plugin (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3918629684)
            Current download code to use in Anki program: 3918629684.
            It says on the wiki that this add-on is required for Morphman to work properly, but it may be for a non-essential feature (i.e. a feature that I personally don’t need to use anyway). I downloaded it regardless.

            Be sure to restart Anki after downloading any add-on.

            3. Go to Tools -> Add-Ons -> Open Add-Ons Folder -> Locate “morph” folder -> edit “config.py” (I used notepad++ for this, but editing with notepad or something similar is fine as well.)

            —> Locate ‘morph_fields’: [u’Expression’] (41st line of code on my editor)
            The default is Expression here, and this is what field that Morphman compares to see how many words are unknown. In the Jalup decks, the field you will want to use is already ‘Expression’ so you shouldn’t need to change this. But if you did, it would just be -> ‘morph_fields’: [u’FieldName’]

            —> Locate model_overrides = { (67th line of code in my editor)
            If the ‘enabled’ (line 31) is set to False, which is the default setting, the model_overrides field is where you can tell what decks you want it to reorganize if needed.

            My model_overrides field looks like this:

            model_overrides = {
            ‘One Deck’: { ‘enabled’:True }
            }

            “One Deck” is the name of the deck that I wanted it to reorganize. If I wanted to organize multiple decks I might have:

            model_overrides = {
            ‘One Deck’: { ‘enabled’:True },
            ‘Other Deck Name’: { ‘enabled’:True },
            }

            Be sure to save your changes.

            Also, the deck you want to reorganize might need to not be in a larger deck, but I have not tested this. My “One Deck” was not inside of any larger deck group when I reorganized the order.

            4. Now, we have to tell Morphman what cards we know. Go to the deck where your known cards are stored. Click Browse -> Current Deck. Then highlight all the cards that you have learned. (It might be quicker to just go to “Review” and highlight all the cards that way. Then Edit -> Select All)

            While the cards are highlighted, go to Edit -> Extract Morphemes, then locate the ‘dbs’ folder inside of the “User 1” folder. Save over “all.db”

            5. Return to the main anki app. Go to Tools and click “Morphman Recalc.” If there is no error message, then the reorganization process should have finished. Also, if you ever want to reorganize the remaining cards again based on new cards learned (maybe after learning 1000+ new cards for example), you should only have to click the “Morphman Recalc” button again.

            Now your unlearned cards should be re-order closer to “i+1.” Let me know if you are having any problems getting this to work still. Hope this helps!

            • Wow. I have work in an hour, so I don’t have time to try this right this second. But that Is so very generous of you to write that up. I’m so excited to try it when I get home

              You have all of my thanks my friend! If there’s anything I can ever help you on don’t even pause to ask!

            • Ahh! I got so close but when I recalc my one deck i get errors :( An error occurred in an add-on.
              Please post on the add-on forum:
              https://anki.tenderapp.com/discussions/add-ons

              Traceback (most recent call last):
              File “C:\Users\James Kyprianos\Documents\Anki\addons\morphman.py”, line 6, in onMorphManRecalc
              morph.main.main()
              File “C:\Users\James Kyprianos\Documents\Anki\addons\morph\main.py”, line 208, in main
              updateNotes( allDb )
              File “C:\Users\James Kyprianos\Documents\Anki\addons\morph\main.py”, line 175, in updateNotes
              TAG.register( tagNames )
              UnboundLocalError: local variable ‘tagNames’ referenced before assignment

              This guide should definitely be an article on JALUP. So bloody useful!

              EDIT: i had my deck called ‘the one deck’ instead of ‘one deck’. Even with that fixed, still errors :( I’ll try again tonight

            • Tomorrow morning or so I will try to run through the process on my sister’s computer (clean slate) and see if I run into any problems.

              Also, you might want to check and look at the size of the “all.db” file. If it’s only 1kb or something, then it probably didn’t save over correctly. I only say this because I ran into a little bit of a snag with that happening when I was first doing it.

            • Okay, after a lot of trial and error, I was prepared for a nice face palm when I finally would get it working on another computer. Everything in the instructions I wrote up stands except the fields in the model_overrides section is the NOTE TYPE name, NOT the deck name. I had recently changed my note type names around (most notably, the One Deck’s note type to the name “One Deck”) so that was what confused me. So, with multiple note type names it would be like this:

              model_overrides = {
              ‘One Deck’: { ‘enabled’:True },
              ‘Other Note Type Name’: { ‘enabled’:True },
              }

              That should definitely fix your error.

              As another note, morphman can look also at more than one field like this:

              ‘morph_fields’: [u’Expression’, u’Definition’]

              That would be what you would have if you wanted to compute based on the Expression field and the Definition field.

            • “‘morph_fields’: [u’Expression’, u’Definition’] ”

              This gives me an “invalid syntax” error.

            • “you should only have to click the “Morphman Recalc” button again.”

              Is it really that simple? lol. Does it like automatically save new cards you learn into the db folder?

            • I’m still failing at this. In my Morphman there are three sets of overrides, Do I only fill in the first priority override and enable the other 3 to false? I only have one note type that I need to be organised.

              I feel like i’m doing the expression field and morpheme part right. Especially the morpheme part cause its aroudn the 460 kb in size and seems to generate correctly as an ‘all.db’ file.

              If I can’t figure it out maybe I could screen share with you over skype? I think I’m not cut out for programming, even at its most basic (excuse the pun). I’ll stick to conversational languages :P

            • From the add-on page:

              “In essence, it is a plugin that makes Anki present new cards in optimal order for learning Japanese.”

              Based on cards that you have already cycled through, it reorders the cards in whatever deck desired so there will be less unknowns in the earlier sentences. Optimally, this would lead to having hopefully only one new word in the sentence at first (or maybe even none at first depending on how many words you already know via anki). As you go along with this newly reordered deck, hopefully you will already know many of the words that were previously unknowns by the time you get to some of the later cards.

              So for the One Deck, the plugin would hopefully make it easier to get through cards as opposed to in an order that is not more “optimized.”

          • For some reason that just kept giving me a syntax error so I put it like this
            ‘morph_fields’: [u’Expression’],
            ‘morph_fields’: [u’Definition’],

            Which also works fine, doesn’t it?

            Looks I got it to work, thanks a lot for this

            • The “‘morph_fields’: [u’Expression’, u’Definition’] ” line you posted should have a comma at the end. Without it, it also gave me an invalid syntax error. But the separate morph_fields lines might work that you did though. It seems like it would be possible that the second morph_fields line might overwrite the first rather than add to it, though my Python coding background is not strong enough to know this for sure.

              So you may want to change that to:

              ‘morph_fields’: [u’Expression’, u’Definition’],

              I’m glad I could help!

            • Rai can you copy and paste your whoever config.py. I’d like to have my meaning in+1 too

            • Rai, I forgot the line that “you posted” was the one that I had. Ha, my bad. Yeah, it just needed the comma after the line, and it should all be good.

              I think that the re-ordering looks much smoother thus far now that it is organized by both my Expression and Meaning fields rather than just the Expression field.

              (Answering your above question) From what I can tell, just clicking the “Morphman Recalc” button does all the work for you after the initial setup, automatically adding new cards to the db as necessary. Very simple indeed.

            • @James, what worked me for was typing out the Definition field (right after expression) manually. Don’t copy and paste. I don’t know why, but copy/pasting gives me a syntax error, very weird.

              @Jacob, hmm, I got it to work and it does look different now.I’m talking about this “possible that the second morph_fields line might overwrite the first rather than add to it”.

          • Just wanted to conclude by saying Rai that genius helped me figure out my problem. When he was certain my config.py was good he somehow realised that some of my other files (Morphman.py and Main.py) were corrupted so he sent me his and BOOM my cards are organised!
            I’m so excited to finish my reviews now to let you all know how well this bad boy works.

            Thank you so much you two legends!

            Definitely follow the advice written by these two if you’d like an i+1 one deck! Thanks again!

    • 1. Daily goal of 30-35 was surpassed for a decent chunk of the month, but university + interviews definitely got the best of my Japanese study toward the end of the month. I probably ended up at around 600 or so, which is still pretty good I think given my busier than normal month.

      2. Read some manga. (Specifically during breaks when I was getting stressed by above reasons) I only read a few pages from きみが見つける物語. I’m definitely going to at least read the first one by the end of May.

      3. Plenty of it.

      4. Plenty of it.

  58. 1. Finish キッチン.
    2. Add 200 sentences from the books I’ve read, got a huge back log.
    3. Watch one anime OR J-drama episode each day.
    4. Read my remaining よつばと volumes.
    5. 15 new Anki/day.

  59. So,I don’t know what will happen this month as I’m finishing up my last translations in the next two weeks and then going to Japan for a three week trip, but I do have some goals.

    1. Finish a reading guide for Sailor Moon volume 1, and/or a requested manga reading guide.
    2. Start working on my reading guide for Kino’s Journey volume 1. I don’t know how long this will take me, so I can’t estimate whether I’ll finish it this month, especially considering my trip to Japan.

    I’m going to start working on requested manga reading guides that consist of anki decks, vocab lists, grammar lessons, exercises, etc. (no copyrighted material is used, except for what’s considered fair use). You can see my blog for more info. But anyhow, since I stopped translating and am going to change careers (potentially to teaching ESL, as I really enjoy that), I see this as a great opportunity for more intensive reading like how I was doing with translating, but at an even deeper extent, since I don’t have to waste my time on translating the content and can spend more time analyzing the Japanese to Japanese definitions. I even plan to start using the Anki deck I’ll make for Kino’s Journey. It’ll be the first time I read a full novel this intensively, as usually I read either fully extensively or with a little dictionary use to look up key words, and I’m sure it’ll benefit me greatly (^_^).

      • So, did not complete my original goals since I don’t have my computer here in Japan.

        I am also post poning the 100 manga chapters goal for Tadoku. A little busy for it in Japan. Averaged about 10 chapters a week.

  60. Alright, since the new year, I’ve accrued a fairly significant Anki debt. This seems to happen around the winter, my motivation seriously flagged last year around this time as well. So, no better time than now to get it back under control.

    1. Take a few days to really cut down this 1265 review debt.
    2. 300 new JALUP Intermediate cards. These bloody terrify me and the grammar baffles me, but the way out is through.
    3. Make use of this Hulu.jp account I have. Complete one 10-13 episode J-Drama, no subs. まじすか学園, perhaps.
    4. My reading certainly suffers. Two volumes of Yotsuba.

    Alright, see you in 27 days!

  61. Different tack for the remainder of this month. I am going to try to establish some good processes rather than specific targets. In previous months I got stressed about reaching specific goals, fell behind, increased volume to catch up, got tired and stressed, lost efficiency, fell further behind….

    I want to succeed in doing the following on 80% of the remaining (8th onwards) days in April:
    1. Aiming for 3 hours 20 minutes study per day, in 5 blocks of 40 minutes. 2 before work, 1 at lunch, 2 in the evening. Involves getting up early in the morning, something I’ve struggled with my whole life.
    1(a). One block will be devoted to non-Anki work. Going to try ‘reading’ Yotsubata. Reading something with less than 100% comprehension is new to me.
    1(b). Blocks will be (i)Jalup Intermediate, (ii)RTK, (iii)Jalup Beginner review, (iv)Tae Kim and Kana Conqueror, (v) non-Anki
    1(c). Plan is to do all reviews and then use remainder of slot for adding new material.
    2. First though I will kill my Anki backlog accrued on holiday.
    3. Be disciplined about looking after myself: In bed by 10pm, try some fish oil supplements, diet and exercise must continue to be good.
    4. Aim for high intensity and efficiency in the 40 minutes bursts. No staring out of the window or checking email. There are planned breaks for that sort of thing. Look into some anti-distraction web browser software.
    5. Maintain high volume passive immersion all day at work and semi-active listening to Jpod101 on the walk to work.

    • I just started reading Yotsubato as well. I’m basically just focusing on one chapter at a time, not stressing about speed or anything. I’ve read chapter one at least 5 times now, first couple of times I just skipped what I didn’t understand (A LOT) then I just started looking up words as I read. Chapter 1 is getting easier and easier, I’ll be ready for chapter 2 soon.

      Good luck on your goals for the month!

    • 1. Pretty good. Managed to get up at 0600 most days. 5*40 minutes proved too much, but I did 4*40 minutes almost every day. I have found a good routine which I think I can sustain.

      Got to: 100 pages in Tae Kim, 175 Jalup Intermediate, 188 Kana Conqueror, 2105 RTK.
      2. Yes
      3. Pretty good as per 1.
      4. Yes
      5. Mostly. Much preferring listening to native soundtracks over Jpod 101 lessons.

      My fifth study block ‘non-Anki’ didn’t really happen. Never mind, I will return to this idea at a later time.

  62. I tackle things pretty slowly, since I don’t get hard on myself about stopping and starting.

    This month:
    1. Do some sort of practice, passive or active, every day.
    2. Enter all of the sentences and kanji vocab from Kanji De Manga 1 into StickyStudy (which I’m using in lieu of Anki)
    3. Get through at least Chapter 1 in both SFJ Drills and Notes, and Lessons 1-3 of Kanji in Mangaland

  63. 1. Make more of an effort to add kanji to Anki when I learn new words that (commonly) use them. There are lots of characters outside the RTK1 set that I see pretty often and recognize, but haven’t properly learned yet.
    2. Maintain written output, and try to have at least two spoken conversations.

    And of course, leave enough time to actually play some games =)

    • Just out of curiosity, what do you mean when you say you’ve “properly learned” a kanji? Using RTK?

      I’ve been playing it pretty fast and loose myself, just adding new phrases even if they contain kanji I didn’t previously know, then basically learning them in context. I’ve been trying to decide how I feel about that, considering changing up my methods…

      • For me, it means getting to a point where I understand a character’s shape well enough to distinguish it from similar characters with certainty. I use RTK style mnemonics for this (even for non-RTK characters like 罠) as I’ve found it works well for me. At this point I’m pretty comfortable selecting my own English and Japanese keywords when adding new kanji to Anki.

        Of course, there’s nothing wrong with learning and using words that contain kanji you can’t write yet. I do it all the time. However, I read faster and make fewer mistakes when I can clearly distinguish the kanji involved. It also helps me spot bad conversions when typing =)

    • 1. Added a lot of useful stuff this month, including various “weapon” characters like 杖 and 槍. Yay RPGs!
      2. Write stuff? Check. Double, maybe even triple-check.
      Talking? Not as well as I’d hoped. Only managed an hour or so of conversation time. Hopefully I can manage to do this a bit more regularly going forward.

  64. My main goal is to rekindle my love of Japanese. Recently it has been hard for me to study like I want to mainly because I am graduating in May. It is hard for me to find anime/drama that I like and can watch. After I graduate I feel that I can focus more or having a goal to aim towards.I am tried of studying Japanese just to do it I feel that it is getting boring.In addition I want to job to involve Japanese in some way. So I can focus on that as well as increase my Japanese level. If you have any tips I’m all ears. :D

  65. 1. Wrap up JALUP 1000 deck (as of today I have 90 cards left).
    2. Learn 3 new cards of The One Deck each day
    3. Build daily practice schedule for anki
    4. Read and study “Read Real Japanese Essays” in its entirety
    5. Completely read JP novelizations of “The Incredibles” and “Lilo & Stitch 2” during my lunch breaks
    6. Watch all of FMA: Brotherhood with JP subs and rewatch drama Kekkon Shinai when I get in from work
    7. Listen to JP podcasts on the way to and from work and during breaks
    8. Start creating song lyrics deck for June
    9. Reply to HelloTalk chats daily
    10. Listen to Asa no Gaijin when I wake up every morning.

    Overambitious as usual, but I think my main problem is with scheduling tasks!

  66. 1. Finish RTK 3. I have about 120 kanji left. If I have some time after that, I want to get into the habit of studying 5 non RTK kanji a day, cos I love studying kanji and I don’t want to stop after RTK :-)

    2. Study one grammar point a day from ‘A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar’. I’m not in a big rush with this book.

    3. 50 sentences a day added to my Anki review queue. This is upped from 40 a day, cos I successfully changed my sleeping pattern to wake up earlier so I have more time for flash cards before work starts now.

    4. Get at least 3 hours total study done on weekdays, and as much as possible on weekends, depending on my other commitments. What I do in these study hours will depend on my mood. If I regulate it too much I might end up in a slump again. Prob will involve a lot of going though anime sentences because that makes for more interesting study.

    • 1. Yep. And I’ve done a bunch more kanji after RTK. 3186 is the total number in my deck now.
      2. Didn’t get around to it cos I’m bored of going though this book for now. I’m gonna give the book another month break and get back to it in July I think.
      3. I found out that reviewing 50 new sentences a day was actually counter productive in a way. It not only brought my total daily reviews up too much, and a lot more of my study time had to be spent finding sentences with words in them I didn’t know. So I dropped down to 40 new reviews a day again for most of May, and now I’m going to be going down to 30 new a day for June because I’m spending too long making sentences rather than actively experiencing native content.
      4. More or less. Some days I had to help my partner study for his tests and exams. He’s doing a unit in Japanese at uni. That was pretty time consuming a few days this month. Other than that though I’m pretty happy with May’s efforts.

  67. 1. Continue with at least 1 hr of anki study time every single day.

    2. Never miss a day of anki reviews (could fail 1 while still passing 2).

    3. Read よつばと Vol. 1 front to back at least 10 times this month (this is gonna be tough but I wanted a challenge).

    4. Listen to Japanese audio on the way to work (20 min) and on the way home (20 min) every work day.

    5. Spend time reading twitter every day (not just staring at cute photos or reading English translations).

    I’m going back to graduate school this month (comp sci) so I’m gonna be a busy boy, might be tough to keep all these goals.

    • 1. Failed. I missed one day, I did 43 minutes instead of 60 on a Friday (don’t ask).

      2. Done. Now that I think about it, this goal is a little vague. I marked this ‘Done’ because I think I meant do at least some reviews every day, not finish all of them. I’ll be a little more clear when I reset this goal.

      3. Failed. This was a big goal, and it just wasn’t specific enough. I’m going to re-calibrate this goal for next month using number of pages per day.

      4. Done. This worked out fantastically. My routine for this has been to watch a drama or variety show episode on the weekend with English subs 1 time. After that, I rip the audio and listen to it for 1 full week while driving to work and home. I also sometimes re-watch/listen to that same episode while doing my Anki reviews if I start to get a little bored. I’m very pleased with my progress using this technique. I might experiment with dropping the English subs soon.

      5. Failed. I started out strong, but again this was just too vague, it didn’t include specific numbers so it was hard to hold myself accountable. I think I will drop this goal for next month.

      I’m very pleased with my progress overall. If you are considering setting monthly goals but are on the sidelines, I highly recommend you do it.

  68. 1. Complete 22 new kanji per day to reach my first goal of 950 kanji, via Reviewing the Kanji and the RTK MOD deck. Record on XPNAVI.
    2. Complete 17 new sentences per day to reach my sentence goal of 500 sentences, using stage 1 and stage 2 of the JALUP Beginner Deck.
    3. Continue to listen to as much passive and active Japanese content as possible.
    4. Finish my article for JALUP!!!!!
    5. Continue to note vocabulary that is relevant to what I talk about, add to Anki Vocab deck.

  69. 1. Finish my review of all the jouyou kanji through the 2nde Kanji in Context workbook. (Now half of the way after one month)
    2. Find an other job than the baito I’m struggling with now.
    3. Read some stuffs about grammar. Yeah I really never read about it, whereas I have some japanese grammar books at home!
    4. Brush up on my English grammar. My Japanese – English translations look like crap those days.

  70. 1. Finish JALUP Intermediate deck (I hit the halfway mark tomorrow). I should finish it on May 24th if I remain consistent at 20 new sentences per day.
    2. Catch up in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders anime.
    3. Continue to write journal entries on Lang-8 on a somewhat consistent basis. Maybe two or three times a week.
    4. Listen to more non-music audio.
    5. Overall improvement of my immersion!

    • 1. Didn’t finish. I’ve got 195 cards left (and a backlog of 700 reviews. I hit a wall and let them pile up.)
      2. I’m on episode 23.
      3. I did pretty well in the beginning of the month, but it fettered out once I stopped my Anki reviews. I felt like the more complicated entries I tried writing, the more corrections I would receive and it got discouraging.
      4. This has probably been my most successful goal. I listen to podcasts every night and audio of anime.
      5. Kinda sorta.

  71. I’ll be going to Japan for May, so I have no idea how things will go over there. Still, there are some things I should stick to.
    1. Maintain Anki Reviews. I may or may not add cards.
    2. Speak Japanese if I can. I’m sure English will inevitably dominate, but I’ll try my hardest to banish it.
    3. Don’t do things that can be done back home. I should probably stop watching YouTube altogether.
    4. Document my adventures as much as possible.
    5. CEASELESSLY ENJOY EVERYTHING!

    • 1.Total fail. It has been super hard to keep up since I’ve been so busy. At least I’m still learning a ton anyway.
      2. Pretty much true. I’ve done about as well as I could expect.
      3. It was sort of inevitable that I would watch YouTube, there’s always downtime.
      4. Documented.
      5. Right on.

  72. 1) Finish Jalup Beginner. Currently half way and will finish on the 15th at my current pace of 30 a day. My Anki review queue is getting a little out of control, so I might have to reduce that pace to 20 a day to avoid burnout. I will however still be able to finish before the end of May.
    2) Get started on Jalup Intermediate.
    3) Learn all the basic conjugation rules and the common modifiers such as ください. I suspect that this is were some of my trouble with Anki and Jalup Beginner come from. My brain likes rules, and I find it nearly impossible to remember conjugation rules by example alone. I need to see the actual rules to connect the dots. I am hoping that this will allow me to maintain my 30 card/day pace for Jalup Beginner.

    • It might reassure you some to know that those rules will also become clearer on their own as you spend time in JALUP Intermediate (and simply through exposure to native material).

      That’s not to say “don’t study the rules”, but rather “don’t be discouraged if you still struggle after studying them”. Eventually all those crazy conjugations will feel totally natural to you =)

      • Yeah, I figured that it was something like that. I have already had a few of those moments where some of the cards suddenly go from complete mumbo jumbo to easy peasy. I really love the puzzle aspect and that translation is avoided right from the beginning. I can feel how it makes me think about Japanese according to Japanese rules right from the start.

        Thanks for the encouragement :)

    • For (3) I am similar. I’ve been working through Tae Kim’s grammar guide to see the rules written explicitly. It’s free and it’s fantastic.

      • I really want to try and do that close delete deck on anki shared, for tae Kim. But a lot of the grammar there I would’ve learnt in j-j, and I don’t want to have it spoiled by English… Choices

        I guess I’ll just keep picking up my grammar through osmosis

        • Such a good point! A lot of grammar and vocab that I had learned in English I wish I could have learned in J-J without having ever known the English explanations for. Of course, you gotta start with English, but the moment you can switch to J-J is great! That’s an interesting thought, saving it for when you can do J-J.

            • all decks are anyway is dictionary definitions, so I guess it’s the same as you looking them up while reading a book. I love not attaching english words to Japanese ones, keeps such a separate place for them in my mind. I think it breeds more natural Japanese because once you finally get them, you realise there isn’t an English word that is a 100% match, only similarities. It’s a bizarre feeling…

        • There’s a good book for learning grammar in Japanese. This one: 日本語文型辞典. Actually, it’s amazing. It has almost 700 pages of well-thought-out example sentences and easy-to-understand definitions. I can’t recommend it enough.

    • 1) Done. I slowed down to 20 as expected a few days later, but managed to keep that pace and finished on the 22nd.
      2) I did and am currently smashing my head on the brick wall that is the J-J transition :)
      3) I tried many different things here. I read through Tae Kim at first. After that I started working on some note sheets with the various rules as I learned them. In the end I found that the key is to just work with the material. What you do is less important. I have found “A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar” to be my new best friend. It’s awesome. I just wish they had used less Romaji, but the book is so well written that it works despite this flaw.

  73. Finish first 600 cards of jalup beginner on 400 now at 10/day. Going to Japan end of May and I will see how well I can understand my wife’s Japanese family.

  74. 1. Add 750-1000+ new cards in Anki

    2. Get caught up on those RTK Anki reviews. Maybe add a couple new ones.

    3. Read, watch, play in Japanese.

    • 1. Yep, think I added about 1000 new cards.
      2. I was able to catch up my RTK backlog I neglected during the school semester and now I have it down to a very reasonable daily review count.
      3. Yep. Lots of fun here.

  75. 1. Read 600 pages (or roughly 20 pages per day).

    2. Translate for 30 hours (or roughly an hour per day).

    3. Listen to a story each day on ラジドラ’s YouTube channel.

  76. 1. Reach 500 sentences on Tae Kim sentence deck.
    2. Keep up with Anki reviews.
    3. Read volume 1 of よつばと!
    4. Restart my copy of ポケモンオメガルビー, this time playing it through in Japanese.
    5. Spend at least an hour every day listening to old anime episodes/Japanese music.

    • 1. Done! Currently at 636 cards.
      2. Done! I did miss a few days here and there when things got busy, but I made sure to do more the next day – I’m all caught up now.
      3. Didn’t manage to do this. I still have a little over half of it to read.
      4. Done! I’m progressing through the game very slowly, partly because I want to understand it and partly because I’m purposely overleveling my team. :)
      5. Eh…some days were closer to 30-40 minutes. But I did at least some listening every day.

  77. 1. Reach 5,000 words in Anki (all decks combined). Currently at 4,573, but I’m taking the N2 in July and it seems that my vocabulary should be at around 6,000.

    2. Read volumes 11 & 12 of Hikaru no Go (Bunko editions). This will complete the series, which I started out reading so quickly but started dragging on once I reached Volume 10 (something of a filler volume).

    3. Read at least 2 new chapters (40 pages) in ハウルの動く城 (Howl’s Moving Castle). I’m on Chapter 8 and just over halfway. Speed is not an issue, but I want to at least make some progress.

    • Didn’t make much steady progress this month, but I am getting some done in bursts. Thought I would update just because I’m doing a final push to the end.

      1. 4,900/5,000 words in my vocab deck.
      2. Only 1/4 of the way through volume 11, but let’s see if I can read almost two volumes in the next 5 days…
      3. Halfway through Chapter 10. Just 10 pages to go!

      • Today and tomorrow there’s a festival in town, so I doubt I’ll get any more done in the next two days. Didn’t do too badly.

        1. Succeeded! Yesterday I got to exactly 5,000 including mined vocab and Core6k vocab that I unsuspended. Those cards are very young, but I’m currently caught up on all reviews.

        2. Failed. Only read 113/383 pages of volume 11. Will try to get this done in June.

        3. Succeeded! Finished chapter 10 and am now almost halfway through the book (193/413 pages).

  78. 1. Finish Charlie & the Choc-factory.
    2. Add 10 sentences/day from my books.
    3. Watch one episode of anime/j-drama a day.
    4. Have fun with all the great japanese stuff I already got!

  79. Process:
    1. Maintain discipline of getting up at 0600, wrapping up at 2100, and doing 160 minutes of study a day.
    2. Maintain habit of passive listening as much as possible at work, walking around, and at home
    3. Rip a few more sound tracks for the above

    Outcome:
    2. Should finish RTK
    3. Should do ~150 JJ cards taking me to 300 of Jalup Intermediate
    4. Should finish Kana Conqueror
    5. Should get somewhere between two-thirds and finishing Tae Kim (making Anki cards)

    • Process
      1. Despite significant external disruption, pretty much
      2. Yes – I am enjoying this a lot. More and more is coming into focus.
      3. Yes
      Outcome
      Finished RTK! So happy!
      Got to 280 cards of Jalup Intermediate
      Gave up with Ankifying Tae Kim, lots of effort for little reward

  80. I haven’t accomplished any goals these past two monthly goal posts, but I think it was just due to life circumstances.

    This month’s goal is to read a novel a week! Or two halves of different novels a week, since I’m half way through one right now. I’ve read four novels in a month before so it’s possible. I’d like to make reading a novel a week a thing for me, so this can keep me accountable.

    • I have yet to read a novel this month, but I had a lot going on. Jet lag and losing my childhood cat just sucked all the energy out of me.

      But I have one more week left (and even the end of this week), so going to keep trying! Plus, Tadoku around the corner. Next month I’ll make my goal to read a novel every week for sure!

      Not giving up on this. I just got to start the habit first, then it’ll be easier to take the punches life throws at me. (Other than my cat passing away right after coming back from Japan, I had a really good trip. The best trip I’ve ever had there.)

      • I’m sorry to hear about your cat. :(

        Don’t give up, though! I’m not doing so well on my goals this month, either, but let’s push to do as much as we can before the end of the month, and do even better in June!

        • Thank you for your condolences :(

          Thank you! Ahh, I ended up getting a really bad cold! So I didn’t make my goals. Oh well. But I’m determined to make them in June! I won’t give up!!!

          Good luck with your June goals!

    • I ended up getting sick my last week of May (-_-). Oh man. Haha. But I still kept up with Japanese. Just wasn’t so motivated to read novels while sick.

  81. 1) 30 j-j cards a day (hopefully the next expert comes out in the next 12 days :o)
    2) immersion, I’m not even tracking it at this point, it’s all I do anymore in my free time, especially passive. I could put a number on it but I can’t predict my speed (especially for reading), anime is easier but I like to do what I feel.

    3) Continue with conversations every day, my teacher gave me some sweet feedback today that has my motivation soaring sky high. So I’ll definitely continue with them.

    • missed a couple of conversations but that’s a given. Think I missed two days but one of them I had a conversation with Matt anyway.

      J-j cards done, don’t think I missed a day.

  82. 1. re-learn all the vocab in my vocabulary notebook
    2. learn at least 5 new words from the Japanese 6000 core words deck in anki
    3. start a new drama

  83. 1. Get rid of my RTK review backlog.
    2. Add 200 sentences to my Anki deck.
    3. Finish reading 心霊探偵八雲 vol 5.

  84. My favorite time of the month.

    1. Spend 75 minutes every day doing Anki. I go by time spent reviewing just in case I start day dreaming or go get a glass of water. Anki will stop counting my review time if I stay on a card for more than a minute. It keeps me honest. For example, if I leave anki open for 10 minutes and go do something else, that 10 minutes isn’t counted for review time in Anki <3

    2. Never miss a day of reviews. By this I mean, all reviews for the day.

    3. Read at least 10 pages of manga every Monday through Friday. I'll keep track of this on a spreadsheet.

    4. Read at least 30 pages of manga every Saturday and Sunday. I'll keep track of this on a spreadsheet.

    5. Listen to Japanese everyday on my commute to work (40 minutes total).

    6. Spend at least 2 hours every day listening to Japanese (can combine time with above). This is going to be extremely difficult to keep track of, but I will do my best.

    Good luck everyone.

      • Thank you for the suggestion. I think I will stick with the spreadsheet for now, just to keep things simple.

        • Aww… we’ll miss you on the rankings! But I have a friend who also does the same things, keeping it to a spreadsheet or something of the sort. Have fun reading!

      • I can’t seem to get it to recognize any of my tweets.. I guess I’ll just not worry about keeping track of it unless you have some advice ^^

        • You can update it through readmod.com! Just click “update” at the top right after you sign in.

          There does seem to be an issue with tweeting your pages if your twitter account is private. I know people who do tweet their pages despite their account being private, but I think they follow the bot’s twitter account? I’m not sure. But most people just update through readmod.com from what I’ve noticed.

    • 1. Failed. I think I missed about 4 or 5 days where I didn’t hit the 75 minute per day mark. I have a legitimate excuse for only one of those days (I stayed up all night to watch the AKB48 election and was too tired the next day). The other days I missed were either because I was recovering from a hangover or just plain too lazy.

      2. Failed.

      3. Failed. I have data on 17 of the Mondays through Fridays of this month. The days I don’t have data for I must have forgotten to mark them. Of those 17 days, 11 of them I reached or beat my goal of 10 pages.

      4. Failed. I have data on 8 of the Saturdays and Sundays of this month. Of those 8 I reached or beat my goal of 30 pages 5 times.

      5. Succeeded.

      6. Failed. I have data on 24 of the days of this month. Of those 24 I reached or beat my goal on 17 of those days.

      I’m not so pleased with my progress this month, it feels like I went sideways more than up. Without that schedule, my studying for this month would have been extremely low. The only thing that really kept me studying, was the schedule. It’s like doing chores when you’re a kid, you don’t really want too, but you know you have too. I’ll take that over quitting any day of the week.

      Anyway, it feels like I’m just on the cusp of a major breakthrough. I’ve noticed that reading longer and longer sentences is getting much easier. I think if I could just have 3 months of really intense, hardcore, highly motivated study I could make a huge breakthrough.

  85. 1. I need to adjust to only reviewing 30 new sentence cards a day in Anki, so I can focus on reading and watching more native content. My vocab is pretty high now so I should be able to calm down and smell the roses a bit more now. (For the record, for May it was either 40 or 50 new cards a day, but making those cards was taking up too much time).
    2. Read a hell of a lot of manga. Every time I find a word I don’t know I’ll post it note the page and when the volume is read I’ll add sentences with unknown words in them to Anki.
    3. Keep learning new Kanji and adding them to my Anki review queue. Atm I have a list of 140 kanji I want to learn that I wrote a month or so ago. If I do 7 new Kanji per weekday I’ll be able to be done with that list at the end of June. After that, I have encountered a bunch more kanji I don’t know since I made that list a month ago, so for July I’ll make a new list towards the end of June.

    • 1. Nope haha. I tried to go down to 30 sentence cards a day but switched back to 40 after 3 days or so. Oh well. At this rate i’ll start catching up to myself as I learn more vocab and thus create less sentence cards so naturally the new cards I can do daily will drop.
      2. Read a fair bit. Overall happy with my progress but would be nice to up the reading amount next month.
      3. Not so much. About half way through the month I got kanji burnout. Not too worried though since they are all rare kanji so no rush.

      I’ve written a detailed goal listing for July. Will post when I get home from work today :-)

  86. 1. Get through the first 1000 RTK kanji. (I’m currently 330 in and am adding 25-30 per day.)
    2. Start and read through completely vol. 1 of Haikyuu!! and/or ACWNR.
    3. Do 15 more minutes of listening per day.

    • 1. I still have a couple days, but I’m currently only ~730 kanji in. So, failed.
      2. Success! I read through ACWNR vol. 1, Haikyuu vol. 16, FMA vol. 1, and the first five volumes of No.6.
      3. Success. I previously was doing 0 minutes of active listening a day, and I’ve been doing anywhere from 15-30 minutes of active listening this month.

  87. 1. Read at least one manga book per day
    2. Watch at least an hour of anime, movie, dorama per day
    3. Listen to japanese 24 hours a day, including while sleeping
    4. Not be embarrassed to read or speak japanese outloud in front of friends or family
    5. Try to say and think everything i see and do in japanese

    • 6. Read my first japanese novel 謎の彼女X
      7. Play and finish one of my favourite rpgs grandia in japanese

      • Good luck with your first novel! Exciting!

        I wish I could listen to Japanese while sleeping. My husband’s a light sleeper. And I’m afraid of my headphones strangling me, haha. Maybe if the volumes was suuuuper low.

        • Thanks im really looking forward to it, i attempted to read a novel last year but there was too much i didnt understand and couldnt follow anything so i gave up. Ive already read the manga and watched the anime of 謎の彼女X and my japanese has gotten a lot better since then so i think im prepared this time

      • Grandia is also one I had to replay in Japanese. I really enjoyed doing it, so I hope you do too~

      • 1. Didnt achieve this. I read a total of 5 manga books which is better than none i guess

        2. Done

        3. Pretty much but not quite 24 hours every single day

        4. Failed. Not sure why im so embarrassed to speak or read japanese out loud but I feel this is something i really need to conquer

        5. Pretty much did this as much as i possibly could. Had a few days where i achieved a japanese inner monologue all day

        6. Achieved and what a great experience. Ive been putting off novels for ages cos they seemed so intimidating, but i was surprised i could follow along the entire story.Cant wait to get started on my next novel

        7. Didnt finish grandia yet but im still playing it

        I probably set my goals a little high but im happy with my improvement ive made

  88. “Start and Complete Jalup Advanced (Nearing the end of Jalup Intermediate)” to reach level 30. Maybe read some manga side by side.

    • I finished Intermediate [had about ~400 cards left]. I experienced mid-level blues after intermediate, so I dropped my cards/day from 43 to 25. I am about 400 cards into Advanced now, and immersing a bit. So about 60% of the goal reached. Well, a little progress is better than no progress haha.

  89. This is the month of the Tadoku Read More or Die contest so my only goal is to read around 1000 pages in Japanese (and a good bit in Vietnamese, too).

    • Woo! Rooting for you! (I’m planning to read a little bit in Aynu too, if LordSilent adds the language. I just wish I could do something with Japanese Sign Language! But doesn’t apply.)

      • The month’s not over, and I couldn’t resist reading the new biography of the Wright Brothers in English, but I already achieved my goal of reading over 1000 pages in Japanese (and then some more in Vietnamese)! Now to get some work done…

  90. 1) 30 j-j cards a day
    2) read for an hour a day
    3) watch anime/movies/dramas to hearts content
    4)passive listening at all waking moments (where permitted)

    considering going 40 cards a day this month which will leave me somewhere around business level… someone convince me why this is a bad idea haha. Probably won’t though, enjoying actually doing active immersion. I just really want to get anki out of the way so I can focus solely on immersion though. I’m an all or nothing kinda guy. Though I’m starting to appreciate the necessary ratio between immersion and study that should be met for best results.

    I like to imagine anki study as creating new muscle cells, while immersion is the fluid that fills and expands these cells to become tangible/visible results (output). If all you do is study anki, even though you’re definitely progressing in some way, you aren’t going to receive many appreciable results. That’s why it’s very important to keep a fine balance between immersion and study.

    However, I am very bad at following my own advice. My thinking is ‘if I smash anki out fast and hard then I get to have pure fun later’. Unfortunately it isn’t always that simple,but I can’t help but consider going faster no matter what speed I’m at.

  91. This month of goals may end up being more difficult for me as I am about to start a summer internship, but hopefully I will be able to make plenty of time for studying/immersion.

    I spent more than half of May at 35 new cards a day before coming to the thought that I need to make sure I have more time for immersion (aka fun) for the things that I want to do. The rest of May I did around 20 new cards per day. This month, I may just keep at a baseline of 20 cards a day and do more when I feel like it and have the time to add extra cards. So, the goals:

    1. Add 600+ new anki cards total.
    2. Read 20+ book pages per day.
    3. Keep having fun (日本語で)

    • 1. Succeeded.

      2. Partially succeeded, though later in the month I hadn’t read quite as much from novels as I got a good chunk of new manga and other things that have been taking up my time. But, the main reason for this goal (Increase intake of Japanese reading) has certainly been achieved.

      3. Succeeded.

  92. I’m taking the JLPT N2 on July 5, so my goals this month are mostly to do with my preparations.

    1. Keep up-to-date on all Anki reviews (vocab and kanji). Don’t worry about adding new cards.

    2. Keep my reading speed up by finishing ヒカルの碁 volumes 11 and 12 (completing the series).

    3. Take two N2 practice tests (1 from the official site, and 1 from U-CANの日本語能力試験N2予想問題集).

    4. Work through a book of N2 grammar problems (U-CANの日本語能力試験N2 これだけ!一問一答集 文法).

    • 1. Success! Up-to-date on vocab and kanji in Anki, and even more kanji over at kanji.koohii.com

      2. Failed. Didn’t read a single page… I really lost my momentum on this manga.

      3. Success! Completed both tests with decent scores. Feeling good about that.

      4. Almost. ~200/300 pages complete.

      Now let’s see if I can pass the N2!

  93. 1 – Try to get as much RTK down as I can. I aim to finish the book, but I don’t know if I’m able to do 344 kanji in a month. Actually now that I write it, it seems much more doable. It’s only 12 per day.

    2 – Find more interesting sources to create Anki sentence cards. NHK News Web Easy is nice and all, but it’s pretty boring.

    3 – Stop skipping days with Anki. This is gonna be hard.

    4 – Watch every episode of Yōkai Watch, and put the audio on my ipod. I really want to understand what this white ghost says, but he talks so fast it’s nearly impossible.

  94. 1. Continue adding 6 cards/ day from JAL beginner deck
    2. Move all kanji reviews from kanji koohi website to rtk mod deck in anki. I finished book 1 of rtk already so it is just reviews.

    • Yes, successful with 6 new cards / day. Reviewed first 1774 kanji cards from RTK mod deck. Will save the kanji I didn’t learn from book 1 of Heisig for a later date.

  95. 1. 10 cards per day from Jalup Intermediate.
    2. Read something every day
    +. Bonus goal: Read Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar more systematically. This book has cleared up so much for me already.

      • I usually just read the book when I come across some grammar that I don’t fully understand. For instance, a few days ago, I could feel that my understanding of “ni suru” was somewhat lacking. The book has entries for all the variants of it and helped me to better understand how it is used. Apart from the romaji, it really is a great book.

        I don’t add anything to Anki, but that is because I don’t want to use anymore time with Anki than I already do. It simply drains me too much, so Anki time is reserved for the Jalup decks.

    • 1. Done, no problems here, and Jalup Intermediate is starting to click.
      2. I have either read something or watched Anime most days. 90% met.
      +. This goal sort of lost its purpose as Jalup Intermediate started working out for me. I look up lots of grammar, but I no longer see a need for systematic studying of it.

  96. 2000 overall pages for tadoku! It’s a big goal, but I have a lot of time. I usually do around 1000 overall pages. But since I’m not working full time right now I thought it’d be a good chance to give it my all before I do work full time!

    Normally, when I do aim for overall pages, in the back of my mind I also am aiming for that many novel pages. Manga pages are just kind of bonus for me. So if I reach 2000 novel pages, even better!

    • I have another goal too!

      As I’ve mentioned in the past, my goal is to eventually read a novel a week. Another new goal of mine is to transcribe a little every day. Make it into a habit, like all my other Japanese habits.

      I’ve already been doing this (not every day, but regularly for the past week) and it’s very relaxing! Especially the aspect of working on a difficult video over time. It’s kind of like my extensive listening over a long period of time, but instead my intensive listening.

      So I’d say, if I make it into a habit by the end of the month and spend most my days transcribing a little, I’ve reached my goal! It’s not qualitative, but I’ll know when I reach it.

      Since this month’s Tadoku I won’t know when I’ve reached my read a novel every week goal, since that’s a give in with Tadoku. It’ll help, but the real test comes next month when Tadoku’s over.

  97. 1. Finish JALUP Intermediate. I’ve got 195 cards left.
    2. Catch up on my backlog of reviews. I’ve got 700 as of right now.
    3. Complete the main story in Pokemon Alpha Sapphire.
    4. Really bump up my immersion big time. A lot more active AND passive Japanese. Want to spend as much of my waking moments having contact with Japanese.

    5. (MAYBE) Start a new character in Final Fantasy XIV and set my game to Japanese. I think the language might be too advanced for me, but I’ll try it out and see how it goes.

    • I just finished the main story and beat the Elite Four in Alpha Sapphire not so long ago. Best credits ever (^_^)!!! It was so sweet. First time I ever wanted to watch the credits. Good luck!

  98. 1. Finish Tae Kim’s Complete Guide to Japanese.

    This alone is gonna be a bit of a stretch. I have 33 lessons to go. I finished about that many last month, so I think I can do it. But doing that should bring me up to level 20. I’ve already gone from level 7-ish to level 15 in the first half, so I have hope.

  99. Gradually accelerate from 5 JJ cards a day to 10 as RTK reviews fall off, bringing me to 505 Jalup Intermediate by end of month.

  100. Hi guys! First post here. My goals are to
    1) Finish all reviews on Wanikani at least once a day
    2) When I have new lessons on Wanikani, learn at least 20 new cards a day.
    3) I recently bought some material to help me pass the N3 because I plan on taking it in the winter. (There isn’t a summer test unfortunately) Because I have 4 books, my goal is to read at least one lesson from a book a day and one lesson from each book on each weekend day.

    I hope I can do more but this is all I’m willing to be held accountable for this month. Work really takes a lot of time out of the day!

  101. 1.) Read through (and listen to) 30 NHK News Web Easy articles (preferably one per day).
    2.) Read my first Japanese children’s book (あらしのよるに)
    3.) Make it to level 10 on WaniKani
    4.) Work through WaniKani reviews until finished or for at least 30 min. a day.
    5.) Listen to the Bilingual News podcast each week as it comes out.
    6.) Work through JALUP Beginner Stage 1

  102. 1. Significantly increase my passive Japanese immersion. There are a lot of “mini-goals” to this one: rip the audio off my anime episodes, locate the cord charger for my iPod and transfer everything, place that iPod in a conspicuous place to remind me to use it whenever I’m on my computer…
    2. Beat the Elite Four in ポケモンオメガルビー. This will probably be my hardest goal since I’m not even at the first gym yet, but I’m going to try!
    3. Read the second half of よつばと!vol 1.
    4. Get to at least 630 kanji in my attempt to (re)learn RTK with the other 夏の漢字ライダーズ :)
    5. Keep doing sentences. I might lower my number to 10-15 sentences a day since I’m doing quite a lot this month.

      • Ahh, if only it wasn’t Nintendo exclusive. I can’t bring myself to buy a console just for Pokémon, but it sounds like they’ve gotten really good XD

        • Haha, Pokemon would be one of the last games to spread to multiple consoles. It would never happen!

          My suggestion is to wait until the used console gets really cheap! My husband just got his first 3DS and nintendo console while we were in Japan for about $70 at BookOff!

          • Or get the 2DS if he’s not feeling picky with Pokemon already loaded onto it. 112 or less on Amazon and you get the option to put the language in JP! You guys got me wanting to play ORAS.

      • Haha, ORAS is amazing! Ruby was my very first Pokémon game and I loved how OR was so similar, but not quite (the very first scene in the moving truck brought a huge grin to my face XD). I’ve already played it through once in English, back when I first got it, but I restarted the game in Japanese about a month ago. I’m really looking forward to doing it again, and I’ve caught some interesting differences already (your character says やった!whenever you use a super-effective move, for example).

    • Gah, this month was not a good one. Quite a few trips out of town (some I wasn’t expecting to take) and generally being unproductive. Hopefully July will go better.

      1. This was an easy one – it’s done. iPod on as I’m typing this. ^^
      2. Nah, not even close. I might push this one and make it next month’s goal.
      3. Almost, but not quite. I still have the last section to read.
      4. RTK probably suffered the most this month out of everything. Thankfully, I realized I’d been neglecting it last week and powered up my kanji studying as much as I could. After 6 days of 60 kanji a day, my total for this month is 560 kanji. Had to really work for that number, though, so I’m a bit more satisfied.
      5. A surprise accomplishment – I’m done with my Tae Kim sentence deck, all 785 sentences of it! I was so surprised yesterday when I opened Anki and there were no more new cards. :)

  103. Haven’t been doing these the past couple of months, gotta get back into it and stop playing so much league of legends, setting these goals again should help.

    1. Finish season 4 of Hunter X Hunter, currently in the middle of season 3.

    2. Finish the manga i’m reading, and read at least 2 more.

    3. Start adding at least 10 new vocab cards to my sentence deck a day.

    4. Listen to at least 2 Japanese podcast a week.

    I want to get back into immersion because I feel it was really helping me improve quickly, but this will be a good start to getting me back into it.

    • LoL has a good-sized following Japan. You should try to make some JP friends to play with so you can get the best of both worlds =)

  104. Hello, June!
    1. 多読(Goal: 1000 pages, including music!)
    2. 夏の漢字ライダーズ/Summer of RTK(Goal: catch up on reviews, add ~600 more 漢字)
    3. 中級の日本語/授業 (Goal: two chapters, shadow all of the readings; speak 日本語だけ in class!!)

    ~finish the rest of the picture books on this list: http://joechip.net/extensivereading/2013/01/12/japanese-childrens-books-from-ehon-navi-sorted-by-word-count/
    ~attempt new summer dishes〔冷やし中華(ひやしちゅうか)/冷奴(ひややっこ)/冷しゃぶ(れいしゃぶ)(using Japanese Cookpad and shopping at a local Japanese store, of course!)〕
    ~practice けん玉(learn rest of「もしもしかめよ」https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXG4H7t5pwE )
    ~finish learning two new お盆踊り (for 夏祭り — improve posture, hands, feet to be more aligned with the group’s cultural sense of beauty; note: I’m in a local Japanese group, so it’s great listening/speaking/body language practice)
    ~sew at least one new 刺し子(さしこ)pattern (and show Japanese friend for more advice on how to improve; note: I use a Japanese pattern book a friend gave me, so this is great immersion…)

    I can see it’s going to be a busy month for all of us, but we’re a strong team. Let’s go for it. 頑張りましょう!

  105. This month will be a “getting back into it” month; I want to catch up on my reviews, and finally finish Jalup beginner (~60 cards left only)!

    • Well, I didn’t catch up on my reviews… BUT! I DID finish Jalup beginner! woo! Now right now I dont have money to buy the next parts… but it’s okay; Ill use this time to do something else.

  106. I completed JALUP Intermediate last month and bought the Theme Pack, deleting the J-E section! Yay, life is harder!

    1. My eternal struggle: commit 60 minutes daily to completing anki.
    2. Learn 3 new One Deck sentences and 1 new Theme Pack sentence per day.
    3. Build my Branching and Grammar/JLPT Review decks every weekend. I anticipate studying the latter deck next month; not sure if I should wait until next month to use Branching. I have been suspending cards I don’t get and using J-E-J.
    4. Read half of Read Real Japanese Essays, so 2-3 more sections.
    5. Read this volume of Brutus about Inoue Takehiko.
    6. Finish watching FMA Brotherhood with JP subs.
    7. Listen to Asa no Gaijin and PDR Youtube every morning before work, during my breaks and repeat after work.
    8. Clock in at least 90 minutes of passive listening per day; update immersion iPod every weekend.

    • Haha, so much failure! I dumped all my cards and started from scratch–I am relearning RTK. AGAIN! I have done the grammar and branching decks a bit though…

      Try again for July! I am committing to consistency now and narrowing down my study material. I started rereading AJATT posts and decided to stop being so ambitious with Japanese to release some of the pressure I have been putting on myself to “become marketable.” I am studying Japanese for my own enrichment, pleasure and development. Finally embracing baby steps and consistency!

  107. I know it’s halfway through the month, but I’ve been on holiday so I couldn’t post :)

    1) Work my way up to somewhere between 25 and 30 new kanji per day from RTK (and I’m already getting comfortable with 20 – for me this sort of thing is a matter of momentum and getting my brain and routine used to what I’m doing)

    2) Input all of jpod101 newbie series 2 sentences into Anki, and start reviews

    3) Put manga on my tablet and start reading – I already have physical copies of a few things – like bleach, which is so hard to read because he uses loads of complicated kanji and there’s few furigana and some other odd linguistic tricks like archaic vocabulary and the like. So I need something a bit more accessible. Recs welcome!

    4) Up my immersion a bit – I’ve been slipping of late, and I want to listen to at least some of a drama CD every day in addition to music.

  108. 1. I will spend 75 minutes every day doing Anki.

    2. I will never miss a day of reviews. By this I mean, all reviews for the day.

    3. I will read at least one story from Jalup Stories, or one Volume from White Rabbit’s Graded Reader series <3 per day.

    4. I will listen to Japanese everyday on my commute to work (40 minutes total).

    6. I will spend at least 2 hours every day listening to Japanese (can combine time with above).

    I've gotten a little tired of reading Manga (sorry よつばと <3) so I'm gonna switch it up a bit (to prevent boredom/burnout) by reading 1 Jalup beginner story or 1 Volume from White Rabbit's Graded Reader series per day. I need a lot more practice reading longer sentences.

    I've been combating Anki boredom by either watching (listening to) a drama episode or listening to music while I'm doing my reviews. It helps with my tendency to look at the clock, and keeps my mind focused on the task at hand.

    My heart hasn't been in my studying lately, but I think it's to be expected. I have my schedule to keep me on task, so I just need to wait out this lull, or overpower it <3

    • I didn’t do so good this month. Life is happening (in a good way) and I’m having a hard time concentrating for very long.

      1. Failed pretty badly.
      2. Failed.
      3. Failed
      4. Succeeded.
      5. Failed.

  109. I will set the goal a bit low. “Finish Advanced [Currently 400 Cards in] and Stage 1 of Expert Series.”

  110. The past month has been crazy with work, and this coming one will only be busier, but…

    1. Finish JALUP Expert Stage 4 & 5 (~300 cards remaining)

    If I’m lucky maybe I can also fit in some time for games? XD

  111. Since I’m going to be in Japan for the latter half of July, I get to have some fun goals this month. (笑)
    Goals for while in Japan:
    1. Take pictures of signs, advertisements, kanji, etc– anything with Japanese on it, and start making that into an Anki deck on the plane ride back.
    2. Buy a couple volumes of manga, or maybe a light novel or two.
    3. Speak in Japanese when given the chance– minimize use of English!

    Goals for July as a whole:
    1. Reach 1500 kanji in RTK.
    2. Finish second half of second Genki textbook.

    • 1. Ha, I was asleep most of the plane ride back, and have been too jetlagged to do much in terms of Anki deck creation. I took pictures of stuff though, so half-completed.
      2. Eheheh, I went a bit overkill on this one, buying a total of 16 volumes of assorted manga and 1 novel. Completed.
      3. Success.

      1. Failed. I stopped adding new cards to my RTK deck while I was in Japan, so I’m behind on this one. I’m at slightly over 900 kanji rn.
      2. After looking through the lessons, I already know pretty much everything except for the couple lessons on 敬語. So, basically completed, but not quite yet.

  112. 1. 6 new cards per day from JAL beginner deck — should be nearly finished at end of month.
    2. Continue daily reviews of first 1774 cards from RTK mod deck
    3. Had some difficulty with grammar points from JAL beginner deck so want to read Japanese in MangaLand book 1 focusing on the grammar, not learning all the new vocab, in evenings when I have free time. Currently on lesson 19
    4. Continue to listen to Japanese audio while driving to work (about 40 minutes a day)

  113. Just watched Doraemon Stand By Me [The 3D movie]. 1-2 stars.The series is already mentioned in the guide けど….

  114. 1. 10 cards from Jalup Intermediate per day. This should put me around 750 cards by the end of July.
    2. Either read or watch something Japanese every day.

    I’m keeping my first and primary goal simple to make room for immersion. That worked well for me in June.

    • 1. No problems here, I will meet this goal without issues. I’m starting to get comfortable with the deck. It really works and is a very efficient way to learn, but I just don’t enjoy it very much.
      2. About 70% for this one. Most days I get in a decent amount of either reading or listening, but I have days where Anki just drains me too much, and I never get around to it.

  115. 1. Keep up with the 夏の漢字ライダーズ challenge. Upping my new cards per day to 25 compared to the 20 I have done in June. This should give me a little room for a few days without adding new cards in August if needed and put me at 1375 漢字 at the end of July.
    2. Finish Jalup Beginner Stage 3. Currently 180 cards left, so that will leave me with 5-6 new cards per day to be able to finish.
    3. Finish watching the original Yu-Gi-Oh series
    4. Listening to my immersion playlist at least 1 hour per day

    My ambitions are a bit high, but I’m confident I can make it!

    • Vacation have taken somewhat more time than expected, but I have kept up as good as I could…
      1. I have missed new cards for a few days, but otherwise I’m doing good. Still need to keep a pace of 25-30 new cards a day to complete the challenge. I’m optimistic yet.
      2. With 4 days left I still have 80 new cards in Jalup Beginner 3. I’m not sure I will make it, but 100+ new cards in July is not too bad either.´
      3. All done, yay! :D
      4. For this part of my July goals I am a bit disappointed with myself. I started out okay, but the last half of July I have almost not done any immersion listening at all. Got to do this better for August.

      As stated in my goal post the ambitions were set quite high, but overall I am pleased with my July-progress.

  116. Osuuu.
    This months goals are seperated by day.

    Mon, Tue, Thur, Fri (do each day)
    Do all Anki reviews, plus 40 new sentences
    Go through 2 episodes worth of anime sentences
    10 pages of ‘A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar’
    2 pages of 日本まるごと事典
    1 Japanese Pod101 lesson listened to
    Read though new blog posts of followed blogs and add sentences to Anki

    Weds
    Do all Anki reviews, plus 40 new sentences
    Go though 1 episode of anime sentences
    1 JapanesePod101 lesson listened to
    1 hour Japanese lesson through Japonin
    Read though new blog posts of followed blogs and add sentences to Anki

    Sat
    Do all Anki reviews, plus 40 new sentences
    Go through 4 episodes worth of anime sentences
    Review the 5 eps of Jpod101 listened to thoughout the week to add sentences to Anki
    10 pages of ‘A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar’
    6 pages of 日本まるごと事典
    Read though new blog posts of followed blogs and add sentences to Anki
    Practical experience though reading manga and watching anime, and adding unknown words in sentences to Anki

    Sun
    Do all Anki reviews, plus 40 new sentences
    Go through 4 episodes worth of anime sentences
    Review Wed’s Japanese lesson, adding sentences for new words, and reinforcing grammar
    10 pages of ‘A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar’
    6 pages of 日本まるごと事典
    Read though new blog posts of followed blogs and add sentences to Anki
    Practical experience though reading manga and watching anime, and adding unknown words in sentences to Anki

    • Was sick for a week and had my room taken over for 2 weeks by visiting relatives leaving me no where quiet to study so it was a very unproductive month. I’m not going to make specific goals for Aug i’m just gonna study my ass off.

  117. 1. Commit to completing Anki reviews daily. Card numbers don’t matter–still trynna build the habit.
    2. Continue reading Naruto when I have downtime and Bakuman during my commute. Once I am done with Naruto, read Dr. Slump and Dragonball.
    3. At least 30 minutes of active listening daily.
    4. At least 2 hours of passive daily. Update my immersion iPod each weekend.
    5. Spend each weekend building my branch deck and ultimate Grammar deck. Start using the branch deck!Grammar deck will be saved for August.

    Staying incredibly simple now. No powerleveling–just implementing daily habits.

    • 1. Fell off my consistent Anki studies. Did substantially bettet than before!
      2. Stopped reading Naruto and Bakuman mangas and started reading Naruto: The Last novelization. Just gotta stay consistent!
      3. Total failure!
      4. Another failure!
      5. Didnt stick to it each weekend but made some progress on building these decks. Gonna save the grammar deck for September.

      Fell off the wagon at the end. Just gotta stay more disciplined with my consistency!

  118. 1. Continue to go through JALUP Advanced at 20 cards a day. I have 820 cards left.

    2. Finish volumes five and six of 進撃の巨人

    3. Continue through Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories, and work towards 100% trophy completion in Kingdom Hearts.

    4. Continue watching 鋼の錬金術師, and then move on to Brotherhood.

  119. 1. Finish Core 2k Step 05. This is the last Core 2k I’ll be doing since this will put me at 1000 J-E sentences.
    2. Finish ソードアートオンライン ロソトソング
    3. Finish a manga, probably よつばと!or 進撃の巨人.

    • 1. Done, now I’ve started Jalup Intermediate, wish I had been using Jalup decks to begin with.
      2. Wow I could not do this. Got impossibly busy during the time I can usually play games.
      3. I finished a よつばと!, one a month is too little though.

  120. 1. I will finish the first two stages of JALUP Beginner 1000 and get about halfway through the third stage.
    2. Get through the first 600 Kanji in RTK.

  121. 1. Finish a 1000 J-E and get a good start on my J-J sentences
    2. Read “Japanese: A Comprehensive Grammar”
    3. Finish ワタモテ manga
    4. Write a journal entry on lang-8 every day using new vocab from sentences

    • Small update, I have already completed 500 J-E sentences and I’m excited to get to J-J! Right now I’m doing sixty sentences a day and it’s smooth sailing but this has eaten up all of my free time so I haven’t started any of my other goals (other than reading ワタモテ)

    • Only got to 691 due to significant external disruption. Rattled along nicely for the first couple of weeks and completely fell apart when outside pressures blew up my routine in the second half of the month.

  122. Well, now I have finished Jalup Beginner; but I have no money to buy the next part. So this month, my goals will be…

    1. Catch up with my reviews
    2. Make some more non-music audio file for my phone, and adjust their volume so that they are about equal. (Week 1)
    3. Listen to above mentioned audio files on my way to work / back from work (~40 minutes total) (week 2+)

    That’s not a lot; but like last month, I want to get back into it, instead of going full force, since thatll just give me a burnout like the many times before. So, I’ll stick to this for this month, and go a bit more intense next month!

    • I achieved all of my goals! I sadly didnt do reviees every single day (but probably 20-25 days so not too bad). Everything else though was done! I will make my new comment tonight when I get home

  123. Simple. Keep up with the Summer of Kanji challenge. 25 new kanji/day plus all of those reviews.

    Nuff ‘said…….

    :)

  124. I got very busy last month and didn’t end up reaching any of my goals, and ended up falling behind on my Anki reviews, so this month I just want to set goals to get me started again.

    1. First and foremost, get caught back up on Anki reviews!!

    2. Watch at least 30 minutes of either anime, Japanese youtube vids, or a movie a day.

    3. Read 1 manga, and get more active on twitter to practice my reading and writing in Japanese.

    • 1. Completed! Was over 1k reviews behind and got caught back up, this was the goal I wanted to finish the most.

      2. I was doing good on this one for the first half of the month, then some major things happened in life so I stopped during the second half to get things sorted out, so I failed this one.

      3. I had time for this one, but kept putting it off and didn’t do it, although I did end up buying 4 more manga this month, so now I have quite a few to read when I get around to it.

      I failed this month, but I finished the most important goal, which was getting caught back up in Anki so it doesn’t feel like a chore to do it anymore since its just a few cards a day now. Hopefully next month will be better!!

  125. 七月、私の目的は:
    夏の漢字ライダーズ
    毎日使う必須なアプリ:暗記とメモライズ
    ドラマソン(ドラマ・マラソン):できるだけ、日本のドラマを見るつもりです。:D

    • まだ夏の漢字ライダーズをしています!頑張ります!
      アプリについて、毎日できませんでした。でも、頑張りました。:)
      色々なドラマを見ました。本当に楽しかったです!^w^

  126. -200,000 Memrise points
    -20 episodes of Detective Conan
    -5 Chapters of “An Integrated Approach to Japanese”
    -Take at least 2 Japanese CafeTalk lessons
    -3 GoVoluble Journal Entries
    -1 new “word of the day” everyday too

  127. -Complete Expert Stages 2,3 and 4
    -Some immersion
    This will be an insanely busy month for me. I hope I will be able to find time and meet these goals.

    • 1. Competed. So I managed to complete Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Expert in 3 months.
      2. I do a lot of active immersion, but I cannot bring myself to do passive immersion. I’ll try next time.

  128. 1. RTK, RTK, RTK. I got this.
    2. At least make a start on the サイコパス novel, even though it’s levels above my reading abilities. (フリガナがないから!)
    3. Finish 進撃の巨人 vol 13, 東京喰種 vol 2, デュラララ‼︎ vol 2

    Bonus Goal (don’t have to complete but should think about at least):
    1. Make a start on the monster that is 敬語

    • 1. Done.
      2. I read the prologue and three pages of the first chapter, so I guess I completed this goal? Maybe?
      3. I read 東京喰種 and デュラララ‼︎ but then got distracted by ハイキュー‼︎ and No.6 so I did not read 進撃の巨人. So, partly failed. I’m getting the vibe that 進撃の巨人 is slightly above my reading level, and I found the manga a bit confusing even when I read it in English a really long time ago, so I think I’ll hold off on it for now.

      I didn’t really do anything about the bonus goal, but keigo currently is not that important to me, so it’s a challenge for another time. My Japanese class will go over it eventually, and I know some keigo from my Anki deck, so I’ll get to it within a month or two.

  129. 1. Read two Manga
    2. Get to 300 on Jalup Intermediate. At 50. Wish I could do more but RTK reviews like to haunt me.
    3. I haven’t been watching much anime recently so… 20 anime. You’d think I’d watch more not being at school but I don’t.

    • 1. Just barely but yes.
      2. Done. That went really well, I’m getting used to J-J.
      3. 31 episodes and 2 movies.

  130. > learn the last 696 kanji on my RTK Anki deck
    > finish remaining 3 triangle ends for this 乙女ゲーム I’m playing
    > finish 2 character walkthroughs for the same game

    …but I’ll also be starting school, so I hope I’m not biting too much.

    • Wasn’t able to play any games at all (school is challenging), but I managed to finish the last 19 characters in RTK!

      (-considers it achieved-)

  131. Work should be quieting down a little this month, aaaand barring the release of another Expert stage I’ll be officially out of JALUP cards T_T

    I guess with that in mind, my task for this month is to figure out how to proceed into dungeons that are still poorly illuminated. I’m not really feeling the One Deck, so I might try my hand at making my own cards. Wish me luck! =)

    • I feel your pain, doing the one deck for so long really drains you. When I have an expert deck it takes like 45 mins to do all my cards but if it’s one deck then it’s almost an hour and a half :/

    • I feel like this has worked out pretty well. Making my own cards is significantly slower than using an Adam-made deck, but I’m having fun with it, so yay! =)

  132. 1. Finish JALUP RTK mod deck.
    2. Watch the rest of Sword Art Online II (22 episodes)
    3. Listen to my immersion playlist at least 1 hour every day
    4. Finish Jalup Beginner 3, getting started with Jalup Beginner 4

    • 1. I am on track with this goal. 75 new cards to go and I plan on getting 30 of them down today, 30 tomorrow and the last 15 Monday. I am so excited to reach the end of RTK finally after first discovering the method more than 6 years ago!
      2. I switched from watching SAO II to watching D.N. Angel instead. I have seen around 10 episodes of that. A lot of time this month have been spent on getting my apartment clean before starting my new job. That has meant not much time for Japanese. My Japanese hours have been spent with Anki.
      3. Well this one I’m still struggling with sadly. I have a hard time focusing with any noise around me, be that music, radio or immersion playlist. It wears me out quickly to a degree that I can’t focus at all. Over the next few days I will try to think up a strategy to be able to fit in an hour of just relaxing while listening to my immersion playlist. I’ll put whatever strategy I come up with in my September goals.
      4. I started Jalup Beginner 4 yesterday, so this one is a success! I will be adding cards at a rather slow pace, which will fit nicely with the J-E sentences challenge.

      All in all this month hasn’t been too bad for my Japanese studies :)

  133. Life is happening in a good way and I’m having trouble concentrating for very long. Today was the first time I hit 75 min in Anki in a long time. I’m still committed to doing this, and there is no chance my immersion will stop, but my active study is taking a beating for now. Hopefully this will pass soon.

    1. Spend 75 min every day in Anki.
    2. Listen during commute.
    3. Spend at least 2 hours every day listening.

    • I’m going to change goal 1 to be at least 10 new cards a day. I’ve rediscovered my programming passion and it’s really taking up a lot of my time and energy. God programming is so much easier than learning Japanese. But I have no intention of giving up, my AKB48 addiction would never allow it.

  134. 1. Finish Jalup beginner (only about 30 cards left)
    2. Finish Rtk mod (about 80 left)
    3. Continue listening Japanese when drive to work
    4. Continue reading grammar chapters in Japanese the manga way and look up unclear beginner cards in there
    Basically solidify knowledge before starting jalup intermediate in September.

    • 1. Yes
      2. Yes
      3. Yes
      4. Read through most of the grammar chapters through book 2 and then decided to start J-J only did about 40 cards though.

  135. I have started learning German this month and have other things to do as well, so my goals in Japanese will be simple this month since I will be busy.

    1. Stay caught up on my Anki reviews. I’ve been letting this one slip to much, need to get back into the habit of doing it everyday instead of letting them stack up.

    2. Watch 7 episodes of Ace of the Diamond to finish the first arc.

  136. My goal for this month is practicing more of reading comprehension (読解) and kanji (漢字) in Japanese , hope i reach this month’s goal

  137. My goals for August:

    I’m starting school, so this might be a bit hard to keep up with, but I think I can do it.

    -I have 1559 unseen cards in the first RTK mod anki deck, and my goal is to get below 1000 unseen cards. I’ll be learning 20 new cards per day.

    -I want to finish the first 2 books in Tokyo Mew Mew, currently 60 pages into the first one.

    • Finished the first book! I’ve burnt out on Anki, though, so I’m just going to try to get back in the habit.

      • Aaand finished the second one a few days ago! Around 50 pages into the third one now! Gotta order the last four on Amazon asap!

        Also: My friend showed me the english version of the Black Butler series. Along with FMA, it’s definetely going on my “order from amazon.jp” list! It’s really cool.

        e: I really love the edit feature! It’s a great addition (that I haven’t seen before now… apologies if it’s been here for a while.) This is a useless edit, though.

  138. 1. 10 new cards from Jalup Intermediate per day. 260 to go, so this means I will finish the deck this month (yay!).
    2. Continue with Jalup Advanced after I finish Intermediate – 10 new cards per day.
    3. Try to read and watch Japanese material each day. I have been struggling with this one, but I really need to, so I am keeping the goal as is.

    I am getting quite comfortable with the J-J process now, but I am having serious issues with Anki burnout. I really dislike doing Anki and have to force myself through it every day, but on the other hand the benefits are obvious to me, and I can’t think of a more efficient way to learn new vocabulary. I also find that the Jalup decks are outstanding. At my current pace I will complete all the Jalup decks in less than a year, so I will just stick with it. I have managed to do Anki for 6 months without missing a single day (new and review), so I must be doing something right :)

    • This may not work for you, but some tricks I’ve used to power through my reviews are listening to music or having a drama playing in the background. Good luck.

    • 1. Done
      2. 30 cards in as of today, so on track.
      3. I have not read and immersed as much as I would have liked, but I have at least done additional study activities on the most days where I did not read anything, so I’ll mark this one as partially complete.

  139. First month this year with no planned disruptions!
    No reason I can’t finish Jalup Intermediate.
    Then I am not sure if I should
    (a) Read through some grammar books
    (b) Read through and make Anki cards from some grammar books
    (c) Just plough on with Jalup Advanced

    • Personally, I think you should plow through [assuming plow means ~40 cards/day and not 100] Advanced. The immersion from then on will be really enjoyable. You won’t be requiring grammar other than JalUp decks and N4.

  140. With the proviso that classes start at the end of the month:

    – Go through Tae Kim’s Guide and type up my own sentences.
    – Read/Skim 青の炎 (I keep putting this off, because I’m a lazy butt, but it’s something I want to do pretty badly).
    – Marathon various dramas/movies/stage plays, to keep my listening skills up.

    (I’m also planning on ordering volumes 2 & 3 of White Rabbit’s kanji flashcards, since the first volume was pretty helpful.)

    Yay pressure! 8D

  141. This month is a very busy month for me; so this month I really dont have a lot. Also, still dont have the money to buy JALUP Intermediate, so all I will do is make sure I keep on with the reviews.

    1. Keep up with the reviews
    2. 1 hour a day of passive listening (I know that is not a lot at all… but august is my busy month; so I feel this is not the good time to start increasing how much time I spend on this)
    3. Save money for JALUP Intermediate for september!

  142. 1. 300 sentences in J-J challenge! It’s my first time trying J-J, and I’m really excited. 300 sentences in one month will amount to 10 sentences a day. This feels like a lot to me, but I can totally do this. I’m making my deck from scratch since I am a broke high school student, but I get the feeling that doing it myself will be more beneficial in the long run.
    2. Read ハイキュー‼︎ volume 3, No.6 volumes 4 and 5. Don’t forget to steal sentences for J-J deck.
    3. Finish the first chapter of the first サイコパス novel, and lift some sentences from it.
    4. Keep up with RTK reviews.

    • 1. Nope. I’ve done maybe 10 sentences. This is really hard and I don’t feel ready at all.
      2. Completed, and also finished 進撃の巨人 vol. 13, started ハイキュー‼︎ vol. 16, started 進撃!巨人中学校 vol 1
      3. Nope. I read maybe one page. However, I ordered some different books on amazon last week and they’ll come at the end of October, so maybe I’ll try one of those instead.
      4. Yep.

  143. -Start passive immersion sometime this month.
    -Never miss a day for Anki reviews
    -Add only 10-15 new cards from Expert stages 5+. Sometimes I get carried away and add 50+ cards, leading to a huge pile of review the next day.
    -Create motivation. I feel I am losing motivation, like I have done “enough”. I will never understand more than I already do. I cannot understand most of what I listen, or most of what I read.Srsly guys, I think I need some help. Somebody quickly tell me it gets better!

    • Your pace has been pretty insane so far. It’s awesome, but I suspect a side-effect of that is a lack of time to internalize things. Time is an important ingredient in the mix, and simply being patient and keeping up on your reviews and immersion can yield surprising rewards.

      Most recently, I started playing アルノサージュ again after taking 2 months off because it still felt too hard. That game is loaded with huge and difficult words, but this time I found it much more manageable. I know a broader range of words than I did a few months ago, have a better idea of how they fit together, and have learned a lot more kanji readings.

      My favorite example is probably the “official” name of the game’s main city – 天文中央司令塔所属居住区フェリオン. The first time I saw that (6 months ago?), my immediate reaction was “NOPE. Maybe some day I *might* understand this”. So imagine my surprise when I fired up the game again the other day, saw that text, and started reading through it without thinking- “てんもん...ちゅうおう...しれいとう...しょぞく...きょじゅうく...eh?!” “てんもんちゅうおうしれいとうしょぞくきょじゅうく – OMG I can read that!!!”. Awesome, awesome feeling.

      You’re going to have a lot of those moments, too, and lemme tell you it’s really satisfying when you realize how far you’ve come. Sometimes all it takes is a bit of time and enjoyable immersion to give your hard-won study knowledge the chance to really sink in =)

      • Thanks Matt (and Adam too)! I watched this video https://goo.gl/NldaqY and it kinda relates to my journey and how I was feeling(Hercule).

        After a month of understanding almost everything (Unjash, Jinnai Tominori, Shinchan, Doraemon, Anime Songs etc.) I laid my eyes on, I got too comfortable with 99% understanding. I ignored all the little pleasurable moments. Got a reading correct? Of course I did. Understood a word from context?あたりまえじゃないか? Did not pick up a word? My ability’s decaying!

        The gist of my problems (surprisingly common)which I realize were all in my head:
        -Missed my Anki review for the first time on 一昨日 and yesterday.
        -Not being able to listen as well as I can read.
        -Not being able to read what I really want (AKA Muv Luv Alternative)
        -Not being able to speak on certain topics
        -Even at 4250 sentences, I feel that there are many more words to learn.

        How I (kinda) solved them:
        First, I compared myself to me 3 months ago. What happened then?
        -Less Study=>Less review cards=>No miss day.
        -Not able to understand even Chi’s sweet home.
        -Not able to read Yotsubato
        -Not able to maintain a conversation let alone talk politics.
        -Had a Vocab of ~600 words and was thrilled with it.

        Then I tackled them head on:
        -Phew…tackled my reviews. I also found out that 500 reviews is not that big a number. Reducing new cards so that I have more time for the following.
        -Starting passive immersion.
        -Increasing reading frequency.
        -I’ll just read the news and let the words come out of my mouth.
        -As for too many words, I’ll just blindly follow the 10,000 sentences method. Let this be engraved in the posts of Japaneselevelup.com, until I reach 10,000 sentences, I’ll never question the method.

        Sorry for the long post but I has to take it out of my system. I have been feeling this for a past week. I think these are the REAL mid-level blues I am feeling.

      • Matt!!! I can read that toooooo!!!!!

        I wanna Punch the guy above me sooo hard right now.

        Btw, 140 cards to 10,000!

        • hurry upppppp ;) Also, are you using epwing to anki to make cards lol. Your explanation is buried in commments now… But i still have your excel and other thing. Or do you just copy and pasteeee into excel from sanseido arrrgh I can`t remember.

    • Aah, this month was insanely busy.
      -I am doing a little bit of passive listening (~20 minutes/day?).
      -Failed. Missed a lot of Kanji review (~500).
      -Failed. Kinda. Like the M I am, I started adding 50 cards/day again i.e. I am 350 cards away from reaching 5000 cards. Weirdly, I made 500+ cards (self-branching), so my anki deck says 5300 cards. Gotta clear the backlog.
      -In other news, self branching provided JUST the challenge I was looking for and consequently created motivation. Studies just got spicy again.

  144. 1. J-J challenge so 11 cards average per day from JAL intermediate
    2. Continue daily anki reviews with Jal beginner and kanji deck
    3. Continue audio immersion when drive to work and other down times.

  145. I’ll keep it super simple this month.

    * Continue Jalup Advanced at 10 new cards per day.

    Reviews are slowly increasing as I get further in, so this one is going to be relatively tough, but I think I am actually beginning to see the Anki light at the end of the tunnel again, so I think I’ll be OK.

    I will be starting a weekly 2 hour course with a colleague from work in the middle of the month. I hope this can give me some speaking and listening experience, which are definitely my weakest points. I only see it as a supplement, however, so Anki and reading on my own will still be my primary ways to learn. We’ll see how it goes :)

    • Well, this was a good month. I think I was actually in my mid level blues without realizing it and I just broke out of it.

      Regarding my goal, well… I have been doing 20 cards a day on average, which is twice what I planned! Anki no longer drains and I’m really beginning to enjoy learning again.

      I have been doing quite a bit of immersion as well, mainly reading. I guess the key to getting that immersion done is to remove the goal :D – More likely because I managed to get out of the blues.

  146. I had some unexpected travel to visit a family member in the hospital, and I got in a car accident the week after I came back. Gonna be modest goals this month.

    1. Complete all reviews for the day.
    2. Listen to Japanese on commute.

  147. 1. 11 Jalup Intermediate cards/day
    2. 10 Kanji cards/day
    3. Read through several volumes of 魔法先生ねぎま!
    4. Start passive learning
    5. Don’t let college and work ruin everything.

    • 魔法先生ねぎま!

      That’s a fun series! I ended up binge reading the first half of the series. Unfortunately couldn’t finish it as I now live in Japan and my complete set is still in the US.

      • Yes it is! I have finished it and am caught up with its sequel in English. I have up to volume 24 in Japanese.

        • 1. Missed 3 days. Upped to 12/day to compensate for challenge.
          2. Missed 3 days.
          3. Just started reading this. Did read a volume of よつばと! and RAVE! though.
          4. Other than listening and singing along to music in the car and at home, I have not done this.
          5. Mostly successful! Very very tired some days.

  148. tl;dr – I started RTK1 in mid August and am targeting completion before Halloween. I’m currently at #600 and my goal for September is to be at #1500.

    As of mid-August I’m taking a break from the JLPT N2 Kanzen Master books and my homemade J-J Anki deck (consisting right now of example sentence for the top 2000 most frequently used words, some Genki grammar, and some JLPT N2 vocab) in order to do RTK1.

    I realize dropping my J-J Anki reviews for 2.5 months is terribly inefficient, but I am doing so for 2 reasons:

    1) To prevent a complete burnout. I’ve been entrenched in Anki reviews and flashcard generation for 10-15 hours a week since September 2014. Lately, it has not been fun/exciting but feels like work. If I’m not enjoying studying Japanese, what’s the point?

    2) To focus on RTK! I seriously started considering it a few months ago when I felt like my retention for new kanji was just not there during my Anki reviews. I also want a deeper understanding of kanji and a familiarity with all the constituent parts. I wasn’t sure whether to devote the few months to it as a non-beginner, but I came upon Jalup and this post specifically which convinced me to go for it: http://japaneselevelup.com/its-never-to-late-to-remember-the-kanji/ RTK is tough work, but its fun. I am looking so forward to the payoff and returning to my more immersive studies with a new relationship to kanji.

    I’m quite happy to have found Jalup. Thank you Adam for this amazing community and wealth of knowledge/advice/resources.

      • Thank you for the encouragement and congrats on finishing RTK!

        I have been reading that post actually and it is very helpful as you say. I was excited to see the group challenge, but found it (and Jalup) too late to join.

        I was just about to paste one of my favorite comments from that post and realized it was yours! lol. Thank you for providing so much useful feedback on your RTK experience as a intermediate-level learner. I find your comment here especially encouraging: “SO worth it. Can’t reiterate that enough. RTK works so well it feels like cheating.”

        • Was a good month. I went from 600 to 1354 in RTK and although I didn’t hit my September goal of 1500, I’m happy with my pace and am still on track for finishing all 2200 RTK before the end of October.

  149. 1) 300 new cards from JALUP Intermediate (10 a day). I have 453 left in total.

    2) Decide and implement how I want to go about (re)learning the kanji. I’m either going to go through RTK again or the JALUP kanji assist.

    3) Come up with a method for reading 美少女戦士セーラームーン and 魔女の宅急便 where I can get as much from it educationally as well as enjoyment. This will mostly be for research purposes on how to read effectively, but I will try to implement into my routine and try to get some reading done.

    4) Finish the main story in Pokemon Alpha Sapphire (this has been an ongoing goal for a few months now)

    5) Overall, just establish a routine and stick with it for more than a couple weeks, which is my problem every time I try getting back into studying Japanese.

    • 1. Did way more than intended. Finished all 453 by the 12th, did a few of my own cards (35) and ended up purchasing JALUP Advanced so I’m working through that now @ 9 cards a day.

      2. I did ~300 of RTK this month. I’m satisfied with this. I’m not trying to rush through it.

      3. Didn’t really go through with this yet. I think I’m going to wait a while before I start reading as much. I get tired relatively quickly. I don’t think I have enough vocab yet.

      4. Played more than I thought I would but I don’t think this is going to be a feasible goal to finish within a month for a good while for me. Especially with me talking to every NPC.

      5. Done.

  150. 九月:まだ夏の漢字ライダーズするように、頑張ります!(ง •̀ω•́)ง✧

    「音楽♬九月・おんがっくがつ」にも参加するつもりです!
    つまり、できるだけ、色々な音楽を聞くつもりです。

    [I wish I could join one of the sentence challenges. Hopefully I can participate in the next round!
    In the meantime, I’m cheering for the participants!]

    • まだ漢字を勉強するように、頑張ります!(秋の漢字ライダーズ)(ง •̀ω•́)ง✧
      [その薬の効果のおかげで、足の怪我が治りました。でも、毎日、気分がよくなかったので、学業に専心できなかったです。残念ですけど、仕方がなかったのです。今、漢字を勉強にもっと専念するために、秋の漢字ライダーズしたいです。頑張ります!]

      PS 私のブログ閉鎖を決心しました。インタネットで多くの時間が無駄になったので、私の実験がやっと終わりました。[実は、私の心にはブロガーさんじゃないのです。そのサイトはほとんど同級生のお友達のためのことでした。でも、その方は全然使わなかったのでせ。面倒くさい〜ね。ふ^笑^ふ]

  151. 1. J-J Challenge! 10 new cards per day for JALUP 1000 Intermediate and 1 card per day for Theme Pack. For the first 30 minutes after I get up and during commute to/from work.

    2. Read 村上春樹 book every night for 20 minutes. Learn 1 new word per page by looking up J-E and J-J definition.

    3. ALWAYS immersion iPod! Update every 2 weeks.

    4. Only speak Japanese during Meetup sessions and encourage Natives to correct me. Write down what I was trying to say.

    5. Think out loud in Japanese and keep track of sentences and vocab.

    6. Watch one anime/drama episode each night during the week; watch at least one feature length movie on the weekends.

    7. Complete steps required for enrolling in Yamasa Institute for January!

    8. Relearning RTK: 20~35 new kanji per day.

    9. Learn at least 2 more songs and continue practicing song from last month.

  152. Back on the boat for… the 4th time! Let’s do this.

    I resubbed to Skritter last week and I’m up to 350 in RTK1. So, my modest goals for the month are:

    1: Get to 1000 in RTK1.
    2: At least do 100 sentences of JALUP Beginner.

    I feel like these goals are well within reach, not overreach. I’m going to be busy this month, but I’ve got fire and a goal. I’m planning on taking my girlfriend to Winter Comiket in 2016, and having that tangible goal in sight for once has my fire reignited. Let’s do this!

    Side note: How do we change our avatars?

  153. I’ll participate this month :-) Sept was a bit slack cos I was sick for a week and the other weeks I always had heaps to do.

    -Continue the J-J sentence challenge, which I am well on track with.
    -Start creating more audio immersion files. I’ll pick some new season anime coming up and audio file what I watch.
    -Read 20 vols of manga in the month.

    Oct the focus will be on upping my listening and reading comprehension skills :-D

    • – Yep :-D
      – Still pretty behind on this. I’ll make it my goal for next month now that the manga goal is out of the way
      – Doooonne! 30 volumes of manga in total read in the month :-)

  154. * Continue Jalup Advanced at 20 cards a day until complete (currently 500 cards in).
    * Start Jalup Expert after I complete Advanced and do 20 new cards a day for the remainder of the month.
    * Read some Manga most days and do as much passive immersion as possible.

    • It’s been a good month for me.

      1. Done
      2. Done
      3. I’ve done OK with this one. Lots of passive listening and I have had some good reading sessions.

  155. I’ve been really busy these past couple of months and have let everything slide, but I’ve got back and caught back up on all of my anki reviews so now it’s time to start learning more instead of just reviewing the old!!

    1. My normal pace of adding cards was 40 a day, so I am going to start with 40 a day and see if I can keep up without getting to busy to finish, and if it starts to be to much I will drop it to no less than 15 new cards a day.

    2. Watch at least 1 episode of a tv show or 1 movie a day in Japanese. Now that I have Netflix in Japanese I have no excuses to not finish this one.

    3. Read at least 1 manga. I have been getting lucky lately and finding a fair amount of Japanese manga at a local bookstore for good prices, so now I have around 25 that I haven’t read, so I have to start somewhere in reading them all.

    4. Play Japanese games. Keeping this one vague since I currently have 6 fun Japanese games that I’m playing, don’t want to set a goal to beat a single one of them, just keep having fun with all of them.

    • 1. I did 40 for a good part of the month, then dropped to 15 for all but the last few days where I wasn’t having much free time so I didn’t add any new cards just to keep up with my reviews.

      2. Finished!! most days I watched multiple episodes, so this one was exceeded :)

      3. Finished. I only read 1 though, so while I finished it I should have read more this month.

      4. Finished.

      It was a good month overall, but I could’ve did more immersion, I’ve got to do more next month!!

  156. I think I have to put my studies on hold for this month…haha. I am planning to do reviews and maybe 10 new cards, just to not go out of touch.

    • I like how your “studies on hold” pace is my normal everyday pace XD

      I think it’ll do you some good though – level off your review counts a bit and give you more time for immersion next month. Good luck with your deadlines! =)

  157. 1. Continue on with JALUP Advanced adding 9 new cards a day. I might increase this limit once I get more of a groove going.

    2. Really buckle down on listening/watching immersion. I always seem to fall short on it. Right now I’m trying this thing where I watch one episode of anime with Japanese subs (right now I’m working my way through 夏目友人帳) per day, rip the audio and then listen to that on repeat throughout the rest of the day.

    3. Try doing some reading, whether its just skimming things or doing intensive/extensive reading. Nothing too strict. Just as much contact with the written language as possible.

    • 1. Done. Missed a couple days, but I did end up increasing my new cards up to 15 (and sometimes 30).

      2. Done. Did REALLY well with this from like the 1st – 20th, then I sorta fell off, but I’d say this was my best month immersion wise since I’ve been studying Japanese.

      3. Done. I’ve been doing pretty okay with reading NHK Easy articles every couple days and I started a Nuzlocke challenge in Pokemon X and its crazy how quickly I can get through everything now as opposed to when I tried to play in Japanese back in 2013.

  158. 1. Finish reading 進撃!巨人中学校 vol 1
    2. Create Harry Potter vocab deck for when the first book comes at the end of the month.
    3. Keep up with reviews.
    4. Rework J-J deck and finish unfinished branches.
    5. Get some new music because current playlist is getting old.

    • Vocab deck before reading a book, interesting idea. I have a Harry Potter book in queue myself. How are you identifying what vocab to put in your deck prior to reading?

    • 1. Yes.
      2. I did not end up doing this. The deck was mainly intended to be specialized Harry Potter vocabulary like マント and 杖, but I found a website with most of those terms and only needed to look at it a couple times.
      3. Yes.
      4. Didn’t do this.
      5. Yes.

  159. 漢字を勉強するように、頑張ります!(秋の漢字ライダーズ)(ง •̀ω•́)ง✧
    秋の座右の銘:(漢字を勉強に)集中!/(日本語に)夢中!

    • まだ漢字を勉強しています。
      三ヶ月→三季になりました。
      終わり良ければ全て良し!

  160. 1. Learn 15 new kanji, 10 new cards of JALUP Intermediate & 1 new Theme Pack. Complete reviews DAILY.
    2. Update Immersion iPod biweekly. Listen whenever I have downtime.
    3. Watch 4 hours of JP content weekly: at least one movie and 2 shows of some sort per week. Netflix Japan for Daredevil and an anime… not sure which.
    4. Learn a new song every week!
    5. Attend my weekly JP Meetups and commit to speaking Japanese-only.

    Limiting my goals this month so I can actually succeed. Will write them down and keep them hanging on my desk so I won’t forget!

  161. 1. Daily reviews on JAL beginner, kanji, and JJ intermediate deck
    2. Add at least 150 new J-J cards for the month
    3. Continue immersion on commute and during down time at work.

  162. Get to card 640 of Jalup advanced, i.e. another 485 cards this month.
    I am taking a week off work as a study break so there is a possibility I can do this, but it won’t be easy.

  163. Alright, here we go again.

    Aiming to be at least 1000 cards into RTK and 100 cards into Jalup Beginner. Since I start working from home this month, hopefully this’ll be easy to reach.

  164. Continue strong with RTK, finishing out RTK1. I’m currently at 1325 and will complete all 2200 this month. I’ve been doing about 25 new kanji a day in addition to reviews. Its been intense waking up early to study before work, studying sometimes on lunch, and studying when I get home until bed… but almost there! Also gonna order the Heisig kanji poster for motivation and a reminder of how far I’ve come.

    • I got to 2025 in RTK1 and am on pace to wrap up all 2200 by this Saturday. I’ve found 175 new kanji a week in conjunction with reviews is about the max I can do while remaining sane. Got my kanji poster as well.

  165. 1. Get past card 660 in intermediate.
    2. Read 5 volumes of manga.
    3. Play Little Busters or Planatarian.. a lot.
    4. Don’t let college/work ruin everything.
    5. Set up an immersion playlist that is not just music.

    • 1. Will certainly be there.
      2. Try 0. Too much slacking
      3. See 2
      4. Was like half successful with this one.
      5. Nope.

  166. Recently the hardest part of Japanese is figuring out where exactly I am so for goals this month(It’s the first time trying this) I’m just going to try a bunch of new things and see what works and where it places me level wise, hopefully I can figure that out by the end of October.

    1. Continue working on RTK daily and don’t neglect reviews!
    2. Work on putting more on my phone for another immersion aspect.
    3. Start on the J-J sentences. I’ve studied for years but I think this would be a good place to start even if it’s review for awhile.
    4. Focus more on reading and comprehension daily, even if only a little bit.

  167. I’m late to the party, but my main goal is to finish putting my first set of anki cards…into anki. I ha to pause for a few days because I ran out of new cards to learn – which, silly.

    I’m pretty happy with the slow-and-steady pace I’m learning new kanji and sentences at, though. This is going to be a tough month, life-wise, and I just want to make sure I do japanese every single day, don’t fall behind in my reviews – oh, and make that anime songs playlist I’ve been meaning to make.

  168. 1. I only have 20 or so pages left, but finish No.6 light novel volume one. Then, start volume 2 and try and finish it if it comes early enough.
    2. Haikyuu volume 4, and 5 if possible.
    3. Get close to finishing Tae Kim sentence and vocab decks.

    • 1. Partial success. Finished volume one, but volume two did not come early enough for me to finish it, so I’m going to start it over and use it for the j-novel challenge.
      2. Failure. Did not finish either.
      3. Success. As of today, 32 sentence cards remaining, and I’m 3/4ths of the way through the vocab deck.

  169. * Continue Jalup Expert at 20 cards a day. 13 days per cycle, so I get one “day off” where I only add 10 cards :)
    * Read some Manga most days and do as much passive immersion as possible.

    • My reviews are getting out of hand due to a recent strategy change to strictly fail all cards unless I understand both meaning and reading of the keyword. Previously I would use “Hard” for missed readings, but have discovered that this really doesn’t work at all, so I now fail these cards. The change is helping my retention, but the transition has temporarily left me with some crazy review numbers (300+ per day).

      I will reduce my new cards per day count to 10 for the duration of Jalup Expert 2. After that I believe I should have things back where I were and be able to proceed at my usual pace of 20.

      • For what it’s worth, I generally find that the words which fail to stick are the ones I’m not seeing anywhere outside Anki.

        If you’re not seeing those words in the wild yet, it might be more useful to step up active immersion time instead of review time. Just something to consider =)

        • That is my plan exactly. Even though I am motivated enough to force myself through hundreds of reviews, it eats into my immersion time. No good :)

      • Pretty good month.
        * I managed to keep the revised pace through stage 2, and I am now back to my normal pace of 20 per day.
        * I did pretty good with immersion and have even started creating my own Anki cards (50 so far), something I had otherwise been putting off, since I did not want to overlap too much with the Jalup decks.

  170. -Reach atleast 7200 total cards. Aiming for 7500 cards (level 50). My reviews are reaching over 400/day for sentences alone, so gonna do something about it.
    -Finish the ItaKiss drama I am watching.
    – Indirectly related to Japanese, I’ll take my first few baby steps for developing a near-Eidetic memory (like RTK).
    -Complete the RTK reviews I’ve been neglecting.

    • Small update of goals. There is one goal this month. FINISH KANJI REVIEWS. If I have to sacrifice adding new cards, so be it. I have 600+ kanji reviews….

  171. Almost no work in the Winter, so this should be a productive month.

    1. Finish Intermediate and RTK
    2. Read 5 Volumes of manga
    3. Actually use my Crunchyroll sub

  172. In December I’ll be taking a long-awaited vacation. Since I won’t get much done besides reviews then, I’d like to be extra-productive in November.

    1. Finish the JALUP Expert set (250 more cards)
    2. Create 200 of my own cards based on immersion material
    3. Finish Ar Nosurge
    -This is a big one for me, since assuming it wouldn’t be localized was the “last straw” that pushed me to get serious about learning way back when. I think as a game it’s a bit of an acquired taste, but the series is very special to me. I initially bought it in April of last year, but really wasn’t at a high enough level to tackle it until just a couple months ago. I’m ~75% done now, so I think I can actually make this happen.
    (And after that I can dust off Sen No Kiseki and finish the other half, because that game is also awesome)

    • 1. Done
      2. Nope. Work got super busy and I only ended up with like 140-ish.
      3. DONE! (with less than a day to spare XD)
      – Ultimately clocked in at ~160 hours of playtime for this one. Fairly completionist approach, plus aggressive sentence mining, plus having to re-read things sometimes to make sense of them. Still, given that it would’ve been ~80 hours in English, I think I did pretty good. Most importantly, I had a lot of fun and it was very satisfying to accomplish something major that I set out to do over 18 months ago.

  173. 1. Complete Beginner 1000. Already nearing 500 cards, and I am aiming for at least 20-25/day.

    2. Be more consistent with and focused upon immersion. I have an immersion device already set up with music, podcasts, and TV audio. Plus I recently bought a tamagotchi 4U+ to ease me into playing games in Japanese. Really I just need to get into a routine with it and make certain aspects of it into habits. This month I also want to scout out all the areas in my routine where I can fit immersion in.

    3. Reach level 12 and be on the way to level 13 on WaniKani.

    • Life hit hard in the middle of November. Whilst it has affected the reaching of my goals, it has taught me a lot about the importance of continuing on. Even if all you can do is half your expected new cards, or just your reviews, you’re keeping at it. Progress, no matter how small, is better than stagnation.

      1. Didn’t quite reach the goal due to changing daily new card count.

      2. Did really well on this. Music is one of my passions, and I found (and of course listened to) a wide variety of Japanese musicians I haven’t come across before. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the diverse range of Japanese music available on Spotify. It’s not all there, and some artists are missing a vast amount of their music, but it’s a welcomed start.

      3. Didn’t do as well as I expected. I’m on my way to level 11 from level 8 though, so I’ve made pretty good progress regardless.

    • done with rtk1 and rtk3, but I’ve changed my strategy, I’m going to study the chinese readings before finishing jalup beginner.

      • I would recommend against studying readings out of context with vocabulary. It makes it difficult to remember them when you have no context to remember them with, and you also risk learning readings that are rarely used.

  174. Setting my goals high…I’ve been a bit busy recently, and I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things this month!

    1. Catch up on my J-E sentence reviews. Made the mistake of neglecting these once school started, and I now have ~400 left to do. (I already caught up on my 800 RTK reviews, though, so I’ve made good progress!)
    2. Update my immersion iPod with new anime episodes. Should be pretty easy in terms of work, it’s just a slow process.
    3. Add 20 new J-E sentences per day for at least 20 days this month. If I manage to do this, I’ll have finished J-E. Which means…
    4. Begin J-J! I have material all ready for when (if) I start this. I’m a little terrified, which is why my goal is just to “begin”, not to get very far.
    5. Play 15 minutes of ポケモン超不思議のダンジョン every day. (and feel special because the English version hasn’t been released yet :P)

    • Meh…didn’t do all that much, but these goals were kind of high.

      1. Done!
      2. Done!
      3. I didn’t do this, though I made some progress. I think I’m at around 200 J-E sentences so far.
      4. Nope. Too terrified.
      5. I didn’t manage to play every day, but on the days I did play I played this game for way longer than 15 minutes. So in terms of time, yes, I did this.

      I’m hoping this month goes a little better, since I’ll be relatively freer.

  175. 1. Daily reviews on Anki of RTK Mod, Beginner, and intermediate
    2. Add 165 new J-J cards during the month
    3. Continue listening to Japanese immersion when driving to work and during down times in day.

  176. 1. Complete my anki reviews during work each day; on days off, sit for an hour in the evening
    2. Get a speaking partner to practice with twice a week
    3. Intensive Reading: Finish Read Real Japanese (Essays)
    4. Extensive Reading: Finish Naruto: The Last and read this Terada Katsuya interview book
    5. Practice Active Listening to my podcasts for at least 1 hour everyday (during chores, driving, down time); update it weekly and keep playing in the background for Passive
    6. 12 New JALUP Intermediate Cards per Day, 1 New Theme Pack per Day, 10 New Kanji per Day
    7. Chat in Japanese via FB, Skype, and HelloTalk everyday for 15 minutes

    I hope I made this doable for me!

  177. Oct focused on reading, so Nov will focus on listening.

    1. Watch at least 2 eps of anime or live action each weekday, and 3 eps on each weekend day.
    2. Make at least 1 audio immersion file each weekday, and 2 on each weekend day.
    3. Read at least 10 vols of manga in the month.
    4. Continue with J-J sentence challenge

  178. To kick off the new month, i’m starting the 30 day Japanese challenge!Everyday post yourself on twitter, instagram, and tumblr doing something in Japanese, and use the hashtag #30dayjapanesechallenge goodluck!

  179. I would like to hit the 3,000 sentence milestone by the end of this month, so that puts me at 20 new cards a day to reach it.

    1. finish watching Hunter X Hunter season 5. It is only a 25 episode season, so less than 1 episode a day and i’m done, shouldn’t be to hard.

    2. Read at least 2 manga. This one always gets to me because I put it off thinking its a quick one and then don’t get around to it, so I need to stick to at least 1 chapter a day to finish this one.

    3. More immersion!! I play a lot of games in English that I can easily listen to Japanese podcasts over while playing, so this month I am going to try and listen to Japanese every time I play an English game (unless i’m chatting with friends while playing of course)

    • This month was a pretty big failure, partly because I was wrong on how many cards I already had finished and partly because life got in the way part way through the month and I had to slow down.

      To start off I had my card count wrong, I averaged 18 new cards a day, and will end the month with 2550 cards assuming I do 10 tomorrow. Somehow I didn’t figure how many I had right, so even though I was really close to staying at 20 new cards a day, i’m still 450 off of reaching the 3000 goal.

      1. Probably a failure, but fairly close, right now I am watching episode 15 while typing this and will watch at least 1 more episode tonight and watch a bunch tomorrow, so I will probably have it done 1 or 2 days late.

      2. Failed this one again, read around 1 and a half, the first one I finished fairly quickly, but then started reading Detective Conan and didn’t really care for it so my pace slowed down a lot and I’ve only got around halfway through it.

      3. I just flat out forgot about this. I did it for a few days then stopped thinking about it.

      Overall this month wasn’t to good, and I don’t see next month being much better since I will be busy.

  180. Only gonna give myself one goal this month: Get to note 1283 on RTK by adding 22 cards per day. If I carry this on into the next month i’ll be finished by the end of the year! Having to put JALUP beginner on hold for this as i seem to be incapable of adding new cards in RTK at the same time as sentences. I’m already dying to get back to doing sentences so wish me luck!

    • Only managed to get to 994. Managed to burn myself out by starting with 44 per day, motivated by a desire to finish all of rtk by the end of the month. after about 2 weeks i reduced it to 22, shortly before stopping adding new cards for rtk completely. Not learning any new grammar started to really get to me so I decided to blitz through the rest of the jalup beginner deck, of which I now only have 50 cards to go left! looks like I wont be done with rtk by the end of the year, but at least I’ve gotten a lot further than I would’ve otherwise!

  181. 夏・秋・冬の漢字ライダーズ、春リテラシー・レベル・アップ!(ง •̀ω•́)ง✧

    秋の座右の銘:(漢字を勉強に)集中!/(日本語に)夢中!

  182. Finish at least half, if not 3/4 of JALUP Beginner, with proper comprehension of the sentence rather than lots of head scratching.

    • A failure this month, life and work sped up and plunged into lack of function of an evening, so no study.
      Going to fix sleep and try and get 30 minutes in the morning to start reviewing then try restarting.

  183. Hi there, first time posting here. Wish me luck :)

    1. Finish adding all missing jouyou kanji to anki – there are about 150 missing
    2. Finish playing Summon Night – yes I like old games :). There should be about 20-25 hours left unless the later chapters are a lot longer/shorter.
    3. Finish playing Atelier Ayesha – Should be around 10 hours left
    4. Learn 10 cards from the Core 6k Deck a day, more if I have spare time in the evening
    5. Last but not least a task that is not so much about numbers: book the next trip to japan! We want to go around April, so we should start some concrete planning/booking now.

  184. Just realized I never did a November goals comment, oh well. I’m on target to finish the J-J Group challenge which is pretty much all I had in mind.

    1.) I’m still debating on whether or not I want to join the novel challenge. I’ve made a couple attempts at reading novels but it doesn’t really go well as I don’t really know HOW to go about it. I’d have to read extensively. If I go intensive I wont get past the first chapters without a bunch of look up. Tho whether or not I take the challenge I’m going to try working my way through 魔女の宅急便 regardless. If I do take the challenge I’m going to try that and ナルト- 白の童子、血風の鬼人.

    2.) Instead of focusing too much on sentences, I’m gonna buckle down on trying to get RTK done again. Or at least a sizable chunk of it.

    3.) Continue to immerse. Listening to more than just music.

    4.) Since I’m not going to add as many sentences this month, I’m going to be a lot more strict with my reviews. Sometimes I’ll choose ‘hard’ even if I didnt get the reading right or was a little hazy on the definition.

    EDIT:

    5.) I want to try a bit of writing so I’m going to try making a few journal entries on Lang-8 this month. I haven’t done any output since earlier this year.

  185. * 20 cards per day from Jalup Expert. I have just started stage 3 and should be in the middle of stage 5 by the end of December.
    * Immerse, immerse, immerse.

    • 1. Succeeded, and I my reviews are getting faster and smoother day by day.
      2. Didn’t do quite enough of this, but have instead starting making my own cards, which is quite satisfying.

  186. 夏・秋・冬の漢字ライダーズ(終了:平成28年1月)、春リテラシー・レベル・アップ!(ง •̀ω•́)ง✧
    冬の座右の銘:(漢字を勉強に)集中!/(ドラマや音楽に)夢中!

    • 新しい終了:平成19年2月
      I changed my schedule a bit, so I have Saturdays “off” to do review/catch-up as needed.
      This was especially helpful over the holidays (keeping studies afloat while playing hostess/etc).

  187. This month is gonna be busy so I don’t plan on being able to get much done.

    1. Finish the Detective Conan manga i’m reading. (about halfway through it now)

    2. Keep up with anki reviews, with 10 new cards a day in my sentence deck on days i’m not very busy.

    I am also going to use this month to find new things to do in Japanese, i’m getting pretty burnt out on just watching anime and reading manga so it’s time to find other things to keep me interested.

    • 1. I didn’t finish reading it because I wasn’t enjoying it, instead I read more Japanese news articles.

      2. I have kept up with my reviews this month, but didn’t add any new ones, I’ve been busy so just keeping up with them was good enough for me.

      I have found some new things to do in Japanese and have become more interested in it again. I have started watching New Japan Pro Wrestling and found a few Japanese Youtube channels that I liked and have started watching those videos.

  188. 1. Continue to make my way through Gintama anime, and maybe buy a volume or two of the manga if I can.
    2. J-novel challenge: Read No.6 novels volumes 2 and 3.
    3. Finish Tae Kim vocab and grammar decks.
    4. Get caught up on reviews for sentence deck– I let things go a bit. A couple days ago I had 1000+ reviews due, but I’ve been able to get it down to less than 300 due to Thanksgiving break.

    Bonus goal: Ace my Japanese 104 final next week! ( ・ㅂ・)و ̑̑

    • 1. Yep. Coudn’t find volumes I wanted on Amazon, though.
      2. Still working on volume 3.
      3. Finished grammar, but have a couple dozen more vocab cards.
      4. Failed. I currently have 200 cards due.

      Bonus goal: I didn’t even have to study!

  189. Similar goals as in November:
    1. Daily reviews on Anki of RTK Mod, Beginner, and intermediate
    2. Add at least 180 new J-J cards during the month
    3. Continue listening to Japanese immersion when driving to work and during down times in day.

  190. Getting burned out.
    I am taking a break for December.

    Complete all Anki reviews, reduce review burden, get psyched for a rebound in 2016.
    Read through more of Tae Kim.

    • Yep. Read through Genki I and started Genki II rather than Tae Kim. Reassuringly easy.
      In 2015:
      Started to learn Japanese
      Completed RTK, Jalup Beginner, Jalup Intermediate, half of Jalup Advanced
      Went to Japan, made some Japanese friends

  191. Well, I fell off the wagon for a bit from the beginning of September, but I came back strong about two weeks ago and went from 516 in RTK1 on 11/19 to 1021 today. Whew! Work has kind of suffered for it… but I’ve crossed 1000 kanji once again, which is always an exciting milestone. Now I just need to stick with it! So for the end of December, I’m setting the goals of:

    1. Get to 1500 in RTK1
    2. Get to 250 in JALUP Beginner

    I can do this!

  192. Hmm…there’s so much I want to do, but experience tells me I won’t be able to do it all!
    1. Watch (at least) 2 more episodes of GTO and add them to my iPod.
    2. Catch up on Pokemon XYZ – I think I’m 3 episodes behind now.
    3. Get into J-J. I didn’t do it last month, so I’m doing it this month. No questions.
    4. Continue playing ~15 minutes of ポケモン超不思議のダンジョン every day.
    And of course,
    5. Keep up with reviews.

  193. My goal is to complete RTK by the end of December. I’m up to no. 1695 at the moment.

    I’m currently completing all reviews and adding 15 – 20 new kanji to my deck per day. If I continue my current streak, I should be able to meet my goal no problem.

    Also, continue listing to listen to audio lessons every day.

    Once read through the rest of RTK and have all the kanji in my deck, I’ll continue to review, and focus on new vocab and Genki.

    In the new year, I also hope to start taking some Japanese classes in Melbourne, as I think that jumping into speaking would really help me out for my trip to Japan at the end of 2016.

  194. I plan to read through at least one manga, currently Doraemon.
    It would also be great to get my reviews under control and have a new start for the new year!

    • Doraemon done. Barely made it work has been hectic planning to be more on top of things next month :)

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