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Achieving Your Japanese Goals – June 2017 — 52 Comments

  1. I just got an offer from ECC to teach English in Japan starting this fall/winter (no firm date yet) so I am getting serious about Japanese again! I will also be travelling in Europe with friends all during June and part of July, so I will have priorities other than studying, but I am still going to try to buckle down.

    Goals for June:

    Finish Japanese Beginner on Jalup NEXT (I am currently on card 544/1000). That will require doing about new 14 cards/day.

    Finish Stage 2 of Kanji Kingdom on Jalup NEXT. That will require learning ~2 kanji per day. I am really slow with kanji and just end up forgetting everything I try to cram and quitting if I go at a faster pace, so I have resigned myself to chipping slowly away at it.

    I no longer own a laptop (I am on kind of a minimalist kick), so I will be studying on my phone.

  2. 1. Get up to at least 500 cards in Jalup Advanced on NEXT. I am currently at 900 cards in the Intermediate deck, so a minimum of 20 cards per day will get me there.

    2. Spend at least 1 hour a day reading native Japanese blogs/dictionary entries [using the randomize feature on Weblio]/J Facebook posts, etc. I will keep reading regardless of how much I don’t understand yet.

    3. Spend at least 1 hour a night watching J Netflix/YouTube [luckily, 月曜から夜ふかし is available on J YouTube–it’s enjoyable and hilarious, even if you don’t understand everything. I finally got a new VPN service. After the last service I subscribed to stopped working with Netflix (within about 4 months), I gave up on VPNs, but I am back in the game now!

    4. Listen to J podcasts (active and passive) for at least 3 hours a day.

    5. Shadow for a few minutes every day.

          • Personally, I have to use Tokyo server #2. Also, sometimes I get a proxy error when trying to play something after signing in, so I turn off the VPN (while staying signed in to J Netflix) wait a few seconds, turn the VPN on again, and it works fine after that!:D Sometimes I need to repeat the process a couple of times, but I can always get it to work. Their customer service is top-notch, so if my tips don’t work for you, just open up a chat session with them and they’ll have you up and running in no time.

            Good luck.

    • Change to goal #1: My revised goal is to reach 800 cards in Jalup Advanced by the end of this month. Since this is not my first time through Advanced, I’ve found I’m able to add 25 cards per day without being too drained, while still having enough time to hit my immersion goals. Upping new card additions to 27-30 a day will get me to my goal, leaving a bit of breathing room if something comes up in my life that eats into my study time. I’m currently at 210 cards in Advanced.

    • 1. I hit my goal and reached 805 cards in Jalup Advanced!

      2. Fell short a bit on reading 1 hour per day due to a combination of the time demands of adding 27-30 cards per day, keeping reviews zeroed out, and the typical “life stuff” that comes up and eats into J study and immersion time. I tried to make up for this by reading (and pausing, when necessary) J subtitles during my nightly, pre-bedtime J Netflix immersion. Also, I shifted from reading the sources I initially listed to reading a memoir: 極道な月 (ヤクザなつき)

      https://goo.gl/r6tXMS

      I don’t understand most of it (lots of 関西弁 and rough slang), but it has really held my attention. If you’re curious about the life of the daughter of a yakuza boss who ran around with a pack of fellow ヤンキー teens (“bad kids”), indulging in sex, drugs, and … disco (?!), then give this memoir a shot. I find her story compelling, so far.

      3. Hit my nightly J Netflix viewing, but ended up doing a lot of J subtitle reading, per #2.

      4. Nailed my podcast immersion with well over 4 hours a day.

      5. Accomplished shadowing for a few minutes per day.

      I ended up feeling pretty burned out by the end of this month due to the high daily add counts, so I will be slowing down card additions for July. Overall, I’m happy with what I accomplished in June, except for turning 51.

  3. Two hours of Anki and two hours of immersion every day. I’ve just begun J-J and don’t know how much that’s going to slow me down, so my goal is really to fill the time I have available with study, and see how far that brings me.

    • Anki only shows 88.7 minutes per day, but I also spent a lot of time looking up difficult cards and writing kanji mnemonics. I’m going to call this a success. I imagine my immersion time was under the goal, maybe 90 minutes a day.

      J-J is hard! But in order to fill my review time every day, I actually added more cards each day than when I was doing J-E. Hours/day seems to be an effective type of goal for me.

  4. 1. Add 10 Jalup Advanced cards on NEXT.
    2. Add 10 Kanji Kingdom cards, but learn 30, (only add the last card in the series)
    3. Read 日本語文型辞典, 8 pgs per day.
    4. Play Japanese video games regularly, especially when traveling from one place to another.
    5. Have at least one Japanese Conversation a day.
    6. Every night: Watch Dubbed shows on Netflix that I have been missing out in the States because I am only watching Japanese content.

    Strategy:
    Wake up around 5AM to get through reviews and add new cards and read 8 pgs.

    Play video games on the train and when especially bored or when want to read more Japanese.

    Go to a bar to drink and speak with the locals in Tokyo.

    Before I go to sleep, watch Netflix.

    • I’m cutting out 3. And am going to work harder on 5 and change 4 to everyday not just regularly. New strategy added for 5: mylanguageexchange(dot)com. Also, maybe bother the staff of the hotel more for help I don’t really need.

      • Check out Meetup.com too if you don’t know it already. It’s good for meeting people. Pick and choose your events and you can end up with mostly Japanese people.

    • I failed my, “have a conversation everyday in Japanese ” goal because I wasn’t comfortable interrupting the dead silence in the dim basement where conversation didn’t seem to be anticipated. I did manage a few conversations this month before I started my woofer stay,and they were fun, 2 were paid for on iTalkie so that I didn’t feel like a complete failure for not managing anything but a single extended conversation and whatever conversation is possible when paying for food at the コンビニ or レストラン.

      @lostasock, I did end up trying Meetup.com. I managed to find some conversation exchanges and even a Jam Session, I could have gone to up to 3 meetups a week, but I became so despondent that I didn’t even try for that. I chose the wrong place to stay at while biding my time for when my wwoofer stay started. It was south of Tokyo and pretty populated, but the hotel I stayed at was pretty sterile and I knew from the moment I saw what the facilities looked like, how everything was too clean, too white, too quite, that I was not going to enjoy my time there, yet I had already paid for my stay in advanced, got a discount and couldn’t get a refund, so I felt stuck and it really started to dissolve away all my confidence in approaching people or even going out. It is amazing how much an environment can affect us. At my wwoofer stay, the first day, it was obvious I was going to enjoy myself and so far things are going great and my attitude has improved a hundred fold.

      I did pretty good at 4 and 5 until my Wwoofer stay started.

      I revved up 1 in order to make up for the lack of progress I was making with Japanese Conversation and also because I stopped studying 日本語文型辞典. I’ll be done with Jalup Advanced by the end of the month.

      See ya in July’s Achieving Your Goals section.

      Cheers!

  5. Having just completed the first 6 grades of Kanji, I think I need a bit of a breather to allow my reviews to come down, so the goal for this month is just to complete daily reviews in all decks. My Kanji reviews are currently around 100 per day, which is not sustainable, but this should allow them to come down to something more comfortable.

    I might add some J-J sentences from immersion material, but I will intentionally not add any goal for that, as it would also be nice to have those reviews calm down a bit.

    • Immersion stage 3 was released, so I have been adding 5 cards per day from that. I have added a few sentences and kanji as well, but nothing significant. All in all a good month and I definitely outperformed my goals above.

  6. I am going to use this month as my review month because I have been missing my Japanese lessons.

    Not very systematic I am…
    so I will be making some easy goals this month…

    1. Specific goals:
    (a) Hiragana and Katakana review – I really need to do this as soon as I am back from my summer break. I am good with Hiragana because this has been the medium of my current Japanese studies but obviously, there are chances that I may forget what I learnt over my break. I need to study Katakana seriously because I realise I will be getting nowhere if I don’t know how to write words written in Katakana.
    (b) Vocabulary lists and textbook lessons – I have been following Genki I and Minna no Nihongo I for reference. I intend to pratise vocabulary and finish the first four chapters of Genki I. I should be quite happy with this progress. I have already finished two lessons from Genki I should I hope this won’t be going overboard. ^^
    (c) Begin Kanji – I am planning on breaking the ice. Finally. I have my grid notebook ready, handwriting sheets handy and a reference booklet by me. I plan on getting acquainted with Kanji and memorise 17 Kanji. Why 17? Because all numbers related to 7 makes me lucky. It’s just that 7 Kanji in one month is too less for me.

    I might not meet all my expectations but if I do I would feel dejected. Because, I haven’t challenged myself enough.

    2. Resources I will use:
    (a) For Hiragana and Katakana –
    (i) Hiragana – Memrise and my Hiragana chart
    (ii) Katakana – Memrise, Tiny Cards, my Katakana chart and an
    e-course from Meguro Language Centre.
    (b) For Vocabulary lists and lessons – The Genki and Minna no Nihongo textbooks that I have, several websites to help me with grammar and most importantly, japaneselevelup.com to aid my learning.
    (c) Kanji – The guides I use, Memrise, MLC e-course and handwriting sheets. There are a few more websites I intend on using but I am not sure whether I can use everything, I know the type I am.
    (d) Facebook – The best of all resources. It has everything I need. Grammar, friends, stories, lessons, videos, and most importantly, motivation.
    Let’s hope Duolingo releases their Japanese course on web soon, I could add another useful resources to my list. Only web, though. I have no use for a course without instructions and notes, the stage I am in.

    3. Game plan/strategy: I have none. The best strategy I could use for language learning is to do it with the flow. I don’t know how my progress would be and estimating it at such an early stage would only create a major dent in my language plans. The idea is to keep doing it consistently and not skipping any part of my plans. That would be it. :)

    Till next month…

  7. 1-Learn and memorize the basic 100 Kanji
    2-get rid of my shyness to converse in Japanese
    3-improve in grammar

  8. While June was not a failure (I am very happy with what I did this month), I did not achieve my goals from last month, and I am reprioritizing a bit.

    Finish Advanced (~600 cards left)

    Get through 600 RTK cards (getting to around ~1625 cards total)

    Read one dead tree novel all the way through. I love me some VN’s but I think novels are a different beast and I need to just start reading

    I also have decided to study for JLPT N2 so I will be spending time getting study materials and casually adding grammar. But I think I need to finish RTK before I can get serious on grammar studies as I can only add so many new Anki cards a day.

  9. I’ve been in South Korea this month and I’ll be heading back to Australia on the 6th of June. My focus will be to swap my study focus from Korean 80% Japanese 20% back to the way it was before (Japanese 80% Korean 20%).

    I’ve still been using Japanese only to communicate while I’ve been over here so this is the first time I’ve gone a long time without speaking any English which is a first for me.

    My readings have slipped on some vocab like for example 駐車場 [ちゅうしゃじょう]

    Sometimes I’ll read a flashcard like that and say じゅうしゃじょう.

    Yet when I hear the words in conversation I understand them fine. It’s just a case of neglecting reading.

    So….

    1. Improve my readings of kanji compound words
    2. Anki and Manga
    3. Take note of the words I keep messing up and write post-it’s of them to stick at my desk at work so I don’t forget them. Also, work through some manga I’ve been putting off due to Korean studies

    Forgetting kanji readings is nothing unusual for me, haha, but I’m forgetting a little toooo many at the moment.

  10. 1) keep going with jalup intermediate and kanji kingdom, 7-8 cards per day on each.

    I honestly don’t know how you all seem to blast through like 20 cards of jalup intermediate a day; with just 14 new cards total my anki session still takes like 2 hours! And then there’s still immersion to do! Teach me your secrets, folks.

    2) keep reading Harry Potter book 1. I’m enjoying this so much and it’s really, really helping my japanese. I’m anki very slow reader right now but hopefully I can get to at least the halfway point?

    I’m eyeing a few more books – the Haikyuu! Novelisations and the japanese translation of Sabriel. Hopefully I’ll eventually be able to read the No Game No Life novels, which have loads of kanji I don’t know and barely any furigana. Of course, I may also continue with the Harry Potter series…I wonder if the reading level increases along with the books?

    3) put more listening resources on my phone; I’ve listened to everything I’ve got a bunch already and need some new stuff. Going to start with the remaining eps of イタズラなキッス: Love In Tokyo

    (Does anyone else look at the regular English spelling of Tokyo and have their brain go “that looks wrong…”?)

    4) Watch SOMETHING. I’m not very good at watching TV even in English…but I’m really enjoying the nihongonomori educational videos…wow. But I think it’s because they’re short and fun and I can understand most of the japanese. I’d like to watch other japanese youtube videos but have so far struggled to find stuff that doesn’t have English in.

    The only other thing I’m successfully watching is league of legends videos by japanese streamers and casters.

    • I’ve never been able to add that many cards from Intermediate. The only time I could safely add 10 (or more), is when I’d hit a long string of words I already knew. If this is your first time through the Intermediate deck and you aren’t already familiar with the words, then instead of focusing on the number you can safely add just focus on training your brain not to translate. Forget about numbers for now, just concentrate on the Japanese and pushing all the English (or whatever) inner monologue out of your head while you are studying.

      If you can keep putting in 2 hours a day on anki or NEXT without getting burned out, you are on an amazing pace.

      • Thanks, that was super encouraging!

        Er. Don’t shoot me, but I don’t seem to have that much trouble “not thinking in English”. But then, I slipped easily into thinking in French patterns when I became conversational in french back in high school, so maybe my brain just does it *shrug*.

        Jalup Intermediate is absolutely helping with that though. It does take longer to solve the cards, though, and strangely I’m finding it more difficult to pick up the pronounciation – though that’s possibly because I knew a bunch of the vocabl (if not grammar) that’s in Jalup Beginner already.

        I’m not burned out YET (hah) but I do find myself taking the odd day where I don’t add any cards, or only do one of my decks, or add fewer cards than planned. So that’s probably why. I refuse to force myself to stay up late to finish cards if I ran out of time during the day because that way lies disaster, long term – I’ll be too tired to retain them and won’t manage my usual early start.

        • Oh I’m glad it was encouraging. Sorry if I sounded a little preachy. Half the time I’m giving advice, it’s advice that I’ve given myself so sometimes I get a little carried away.

          When I started Intermediate the first time (it took 3 tries and Jalup) I just focused on the number of cards thinking the number per day was the most important thing. It wasn’t until my 3rd (and successful) attempt that I realized for me, the best path was to focus on the JJ process and ignore everything else. Not to suggest anyone else would have that problem, but I guess I just wanted to share anyway. Good luck on your JJ journey!

    • Ha, ha–I wouldn’t describe my Intermediate 20 per day adds as “blasting through,” more like an exhausting, half dead crawl I subject myself to daily. :D

      I don’t have any secret tips to share–for me, it’s all about hard work (and play) over time, following the Jalup method, of course.

      Also, this is not my first time through Jalup Intermediate. At one point, I was actually well into the Jalup Expert series, but I got so busy with college coursework that I fell many thousands of reviews behind. After I graduated, I decided to start over again. Luckily, I was able to to this on Jalup Next.

      I highly recommend making the switch from Anki to Next; this will help speed up the process significantly. For me, the card linking feature has provided a massive boost in my pace and comprehension.

      Beyond that, I trust that the J-J cards that I don’t understand completely will be smoothed out over time by immersion. I actually experienced this twice this past week while reading コンビニ人間 (Convenience Store Human): suddenly, the meanings of 確認 (かくにん)and 情報 (じょうほう)cleared themselves up in my mind. Originally, my understanding of them was murky.

      Don’t worry about long review/add times, and definitely don’t compare your current abilities/level to others (a potentially demoralizing mistake we have all likely made more than once on our journey toward fluency). You’ll get faster and more efficient with time and experience.

      • Yeah, I’m not surprised. I read the article, and it looks like basically powering through the kanji first helped significantly. If I were able to focus only on Jalup Intermediate without having to do kanji that would speed things up and I’d be adding 16 cards a day in intermediate.

        I am struggling a bit to keep up even that pace, though – the long slogs in anki are edging out immersion time and whenever that happens I start to flag. I am super busy at work right now, so I think it’s time to start getting up even earlier to see if I can get through as many reviews as possible in the morning.

        Oh yes, I’m not worried about how others are progressing because I’m pleased with my own level in the language – I was just curious how you all manage to add 20+ new cards a day when that seems to make my anki time amazingly long. It’s my own impatience getting to me – I want the kanji to be done with already so I can focus on getting them into context/through vocabulary!

        • Kanji is obviously a major challenge. I came from the old school mindset of focusing on completing RTK 1 & 3 before I even looked at my first J-E flash card. Like you, I wanted kanji to be over with as quickly as possible, so I was doing anywhere between 25-50 adds per day (it took me a few hours a day, though, and was exhausting). After using a flash card deck with over 3,000 kanji I learned from the RTK books for about a year, I became frustrated with forgetting kanji I never saw “in the wild,” so I deleted that deck and started over again with the Jalup RTK Mod Anki deck. That was one of the best decisions of my life, and any kanji beyond that deck I just learn in context when I encounter them in new card additions–there have been few of those so far, though. I have never used kanji kingdom, but since it’s a Jalup deck I’m sure it’s great.

          You’re adding 16 cards a day, it’s your first time through J-J cards, and you’re learning new kanji–that’s great! My 20 J-J additions per day are different (easier), since I’ve been up to Expert before and have known kanji for years.

          Getting up early to study is great as long as you get your full 7-8 hours of sleep. :D

          I became frustrated with my long review times, then suddenly realized I was spending too much time trying to remember the respective mnemonics I had attached to each card. To defeat that time-wasting habit, I started using the timer in Jalup Next for my reviews to add a sense of urgency (I don’t use it for card adds, though). I can get through my reviews pretty quickly now (around 50 cards in 15-20 minutes), so a review load of 100+ cards is no longer demoralizing.

          Keep kicking ass on those card additions! :D

    • How to “blast through” 20 card adds–and other things–per day.

      http://japaneselevelup.com/level-40-8-months/

      I hope Jonathon will write some new articles soon. I’m curious to see how he’s doing and where he is in his J studies. Even if you decide not to power level, or just power level in short bursts, this article is inspiring and encouraging.

      Good luck! :D

    • 1) Thank you everyone for your comments! Hearing the message of “yeah, actually, adding loads of cards is hard and takes a long time” was actually really helpful for me. It meant I was able to go, okay, this will actually take me ages, better schedule that time, rather than getting to the end of the day frustrated that I hadn’t got my cards done.

      I spent about 2 weeks adding 20 kanji and 10 Intermediate cards per day, just to feel like I wasn’t lagging horribly behind on kanji, and I’ve now settled comfortably into 10 of each. Something that REALLY helped was completing my reviews before adding any cards, which allows me to be more flexible with the cards I add while still getting all my reviews done. I’m also getting faster with my reviews as my reading speed increases.

      2) I actually picked up the paper version of the first No Game No Life novel and was so excited that I could read it more or less that I read like 65 pages. So…less Harry Potter. I gotta buy more paper books; having the book on paper reduces the temptation to slow myself down by looking up too much stuff and getting lost in my J-J dictionary. I’m not sure what else to get that would be suitable for my level…but I do have a cart on amazon.jp which I’m slowly filling with books. As much as I love ebooks it seems paper books are an essential part of my learning process. So far I’ve added the Kiki’s Delivery Service novels (Which are supposed to be easier, and hopefully I can use them for mining sentences) and some of the Sword Art Online novels because I love that anime series.

      3) Hah. Whoops. I played around with a few podcasts but haven’t found anything to really grab me, and just ended up listening to a few more episodes of Mischievious Kiss over and over. Look, I like them, okay. But still, it’s a bit discouraging because my listening is so far behind my reading…I understand a lot of words but still can’t follow new listening materials at all really.

      4) WILD SUCCESS! I set up Japanese Netflix and finally managed to watch an appreciable amount of japanese tv! Got further with Michievious Kiss, watched a few episodes of Jessica Jones (the US Marvel series, dubbed into japanese – the dub is FANTASTIC, I love Jessica’s voice actress, highly recommended), and tried out a new Japanese series about a japanese boy who gets his father into Final Fantasy Online so he can spend more time with him…it’s very emotional and the episodes are quite short so I’m going to keep going with it.

      I do go on a bit in these posts but I can only hope my ramblings are helpful to someone…it sure helps me to type them out xD

    • Sabriel is soooooo good. I’m going to have to track down that translation once I get back to the Intermediate world.

  11. With Jalup Beginner finished, I’ll use this month to let the reviews go down a notch, while doing a hopefully good pace of 8 Kanji/day. And so I can compare at the end of the month: have 563 Kanji done in KK.

    In addition to that I am planing on going through the next part of the walkthrough on here, thus building up my immersion game and reading the beginner stories.

    • Planned not much – achieved even less..Oh Well, here we go:
      No new Kanji this month, and I don’t feel like the review amounts reduced much.

      From the Beginner stories I read the first story, and added the new cards into my Anki deck.
      When it comes to immersion, I found a nice anime series to watch and to listen to at least: 月がきれい, but I couldn’t find much time to watch new episodes nor time to listen to my immersion device.

      This month pretty much follows a trend I’ve seen now a few times in my life: the less goals I burden myself with, the less actual work I get done. Thus, going all out next month should help with all of this, I hope.

  12. 1. Reach 4000 cards on Anki.

    2. Reach 2000 kanji with RTK from current 1742, so about 8-9 a day.

    3. Finish 4 volumes of manga. Read a couple of chapters everyday before bed.

    4. Listen to podcasts when commuting.

    5. Review JLPT3 vocabulary and add yet to be learnt words to Anki.

    6. Get in a conversation at least once a week.

    • 1. Done. Kinda overloaded Anki. Gonna take it easier next month.

      2. Made it to 2053, Yeah!! Almost done with the Heisig saga.

      3. Almost made it, 3.5/4. Was going at a good pace until this week when work became intense and I had to do overtime every day.

      4. Mostly done.

      5. Some work done, but it’s far from complete.

      6. Totally screwed up on that one.

  13. These monthly goals are such a great way to reset and get back on track.

    Japanese Goals:

    Last month, I kept up with my reviews but I barely put any effort into them. I did watch my favorite streamers on Twitch though. I need to reset and get back on track this month. I’m changing my strategy from # of cards per day to # of minutes per day.

    1. Spend at least 30 minutes doing reviews and adding new cards in NEXT.
    2. Shadow something, at least once a day.

    Spanish Goals:

    I studied absolutely nothing last month. This is a secondary goal, so when I get too stressed or busy I drop Spanish study first.

    1. One chapter per week of my textbook.
    2. I’m going to switch from Duolingo to Memrise for Spanish.

  14. I have 3 main goals this month

    1. Do my reviews, learn new kanji/sentences & immerse every single day. The amount doesn’t matter right now, I just need to start making it a habit. I will usually do a good amount but if on a day I have to learn just 5 new kanji / sentences, then so be it.

    2. I want to go through my immersion ipod and do some tidying up. By that I mean, remove any audio file that I dont like and add new ones that I like better.

    3. This one isn’t specifically japanese related but it will help me a lot: I want to stop tracking what I’ve done. This probably sounds weird but I have many google sheets in which I track how many reviews I do daily, new cards, how many minutes I do active immersion and passive immersion, etc. Which sounds great, because I love making lists and seeing stats and everything… but in the end I’ve realized that in my past attempts at japanese, it has had the reverse effect: I spent too much time tracking and worrying about efficient ways to track, and I ended up spending less time on japanese. So this month, I am dropping all of these tracking spreadsheets, and I want to just… do. Turn on the immersion ipod even if it’s only for 2 minutes of waiting without having to worry “but how will I remember to add this 2 minutes??”, watch anime even if I don’t have time to finish the episode. I want my focus to be on LEARNING japanese, not on TRACKING what I learn.

  15. I took a break from Japanese to deal with some mental health and work things.. Now that things are becoming more normal, time to make time for Japanese!

    1. Finish beginner deck by the end of June. I have seen 700/1000 cards, so doing the last 300 should take 10 cards per day.

    2. Add 100 Kanji in June. This will be a relaxed paced from when I normally learn Kanji. I’ve been having issues with the last 50 that I’ve learned. I never seem to remember them when doing reviews..

    3. Immersion at work. I work in a laser lab, and a lot of what I do on a daily basis isn’t too thought intensive. I found an app for my phone that allows the screen to turn off without disrupting audio from YouTube or web browsers. This will be a good opportunity to “re-watch” anime when I’m at work.

    4. Actually try to talk Japanese to the Japanese guy across the hall from my office, lol. I’ve always been so scared of conversations.

  16. I’m still considering exactly what I want my goals to be. I’m done with beginner but feel I need to solidify some grammar a bit more, and I’m having a tough time memorizing the last batch of vocabulary, which made me a little nervous for intermediate. I think finishing RTK would help with that since they just look like gibberish if I don’t know the kanji.

    1. Finish 1000 kanji which will bring me to around 1800 known.

    2. Brush up on all the grammar on beginner so I’ll be in a good place when I start intermediate.

  17. 1. Read and finish the Hobbit vol. 1 in Japanese.
    2. Anki reviews are not optional, please do them all every day.
    3. I’m going to make this month manga reading month. I have approximately 70 volumes of assorted manga in Japanese on my bookshelf, many of which have been untouched for far too long. This month, I am going to read 20 volumes of manga. 20 whole volumes. I’m going to aim for about a volume a day.
    4. Find a jdrama and watch the whole thing. I’m very, very picky about what kinds of shows I like, but hopefully there is something out there that isn’t too cringy.

    Bonus: I’m entering the fundraising stage for a potential volunteer trip to Kumamoto Prefecture in early August to help with the aftermath of the earthquake last spring. 頑張りましょう!

    • In case you’re interested, there’s an audiobook of The Hobbit that can be found here: https://www.febe.jp/product/204769.

      You could try adding the chapters you’ve already read to your daily listening immersion. I did this with Harry Potter and I feel I got (and am still getting​ as I continue to listen) a lot more out of it.

  18. 1. Stay on pace with JalupNEXT to finish beginner by the end of July. Currently that means at least nine new cards per day, aiming for 10. Should reach about 800 cards by the end of June at 10 per day.
    2. Continue 80-20 Japanese read through, taking notes and consulting other sources. Chapter 3 at least.
    3. Read at least 3 Satori Reader articles per week, 1 per day would be best. Look for some easier manga to read than what I’ve tried so far.
    4. Immersion, at least 2 hours per day of passive listening. Also try for 1 hour of active listening.
    5. Post to HelloTalk at least 2 times per week.
    6. Vocab. Stick with the new Memrise course. Aim for completing at least half of the course by the end of the month.
    7. For WaniKani, I don’t have a level goal this month. Just a goal to dig out of my lesson backlog. I’ll have to do about 20 lessons per day, maybe 25 if I do level at all, to get my lessons under control again.

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