Jalup Group Challenge 11: Journal Journey
Join the next group of people trying to accomplish a major Japanese goal, set a reasonable but challenging time frame, and reach for a grand win together.
Task
Write a journal entry in Japanese every day (handwritten or typed) on paper, website, blog or social network. It can be as short (a few sentences) or long (a few pages) as you want, but every day, write something.
Initial Instructions
Leave a comment by November 1st and include:
1. Your level
2. Resources you will use
3. Game plan/strategy
Completion Instructions
Reply to your comment by November 30th and include:
1. Completion date
2. Completed or failed? How far did you get?
3. Your experience (issues, struggles, discoveries)
Current Challengers
BM ● Toshi ● Stewie ● Chase Kolozsy ● Cure Yasashiku ● ネラ ● Silwing ● Addie ● Emmah
● See past challenges, attempt any that you missed, and make your way into the Hall of Honor...
● Remember to update your progress on the October Group Challenge!
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
I’m in!
Level: 2
Resources: Notebook
Game Plan: Anchor the habit of writing to another routine. I’m picking pre-bed Anki time and will have the notebook left by the bed as a visual reminder.
皆さん頑張って下さい！
P.S. Adam, this site is awesome. Only just found it and I love it. So thank you :)
Thanks! Welcome to the site, and good luck on next month’s challenge!
FAILED (But it was still a great month).
I managed to write short stories 6 days out of the month and 5 days were in a row.
My experience: it was fun when I was actually writing the stories. I had a blast and it really helped improve my Japanese. But I would just plain forget most days or I would be too tired by the end of the day and end up doing another type of study (e.g. SRS/anime).
I levelled up from level 2 to level 9 so I consider it a great month.
Now time for the December challenge :)
Oh this looks like is going to be a real challenge lol I’m focused on input rather than output, but I’ll give it a shot anyway. Let’s see where it takes me.
1. Your level – 30 something
2. Resources you will use – I’ll probably use my abandoned ameba blog for this, since I’m not that good with writing kanji by hand yet. Which is another thing I should practice, but first things first lol
3. Game plan/strategy – Try to write the journal everyday when I come back from work, because before that I have nothing to write about my day, and later than that I have no willpower.
I’ve already failed the challenge since I couldn’t write anything for the past 3 days. Even with that though, I’ll try to write more journals this month anyway :3
This is just what I need to keep some Japanese going. But thinking of combining it with my uni course so I can justify putting time aside to do it
Level: 60
Resources: Images (see below)
Strategy: I’m studying Japanese art history and I have an image test at the end of term, so I’m going to write about a Japanese art work/artefact in Japanese for every day of November :) This should teach me some technical vocabulary in Japanese too ^^
Sigh. I should do this. Written output is my weakest skill, and the one I practice the least. I have a love/hate relationship with writing, even in English. Sometimes I feel like something is in me that I have to write, but I never *want* to write, if that makes sense. On the other hand, I think I need to write to take my Japanese to the next level.
Before I take the plunge and commit to it though, I have a question. Does it have to be in the same place every day? Here is what I am thinking. I really should write more on the Kawaii Japanese forum, and perhaps even on the Ameba blog I opened but never used, but I am not sure if I can summon the courage to do that every day. My thought was that I would use a private journal, but if I wrote somewhere else, I could have that *count* and be excused from the private journal.
Would that be acceptable for the challenge?
Yeah, using multiple sources is fine, as long as you write something somewhere. I hope you’ll join!
Ok, I am in.
My level….somewhere around 50, perhaps. I just started dipping my toes into 5th grade 小学 materials, although I am still working mostly at the 4th grade level.
I will use a kawaii Rilakkuma notebook I bought last spring that I have written three entries in since I purchased it as my default. I will try to post other places online such as the Kawaii Japanese Forum or my up until now unused Ameba blog when I feel brave enough.
I use Habitica to for my daily tasks, and I have added this challenge as a daily to start on Nov. 1
この投稿して終わったら出来ます。主に手書きで自分のノートを使ったけど時々フォーラムで投稿しました。
やっぱり書くのがあまり好きではないけどいい練習と思います。特にいい漢字の手書きの練習と思います。手書きのドリルよりのほうが楽しいですね。
チャレンジはありがとうございます。
I’m nearing Level 20.
I’m in the fourth stage of both Jalup Beginner and Kanji Kingdom.
I will be using Lang-8.
I will carve out some time from my evenings to make a posting on Lang-8 and try to makes sense of the feedback I get from the website.
I had 50% success rate with this one. It is the end of the semester for me and to be honest, I got lazy. However I did start reading Manga. I bought よつばと. I’m on the second volume chapter 10. Totally worth the $105 I forked out for it including shipping and handling. Highly recommended.
Level ~40s
Will be handwriting (will be getting supplies for this)
It’s time to work on those writing skills!
Just barely made it. I learned that my handwriting is terrible regardless of the language hahaha. It’s helping me push myself more on kanji. I will definitely be keeping it up!
Level: 30-ish I think
Resources: Wherever I can fit a few Japanese sentences. I think I will try to hand-write at least some of the days. Would be good to practice that some.
Strategy: I will probably not be writing any long-winded journal entries, but writing some every day would be good for keeping my mind in Japanese. December 4th I’m taking JLPT N3, and I have not been doing as much Japanese as I had hoped for the past couple of months.
This didn’t go all that well. I managed to write 6 short journals during the month. 6 is definitely better than 0, but no-where near enough to beat this challenge.
We will meet again sometime, Journal-challenge!
Level: Not sure. Somewhere between 10-30.
Resource: My personal Japanese language journey blog. Although, I may alternate between handwriting and then typing it or just typing it directly.
Strategy: I will focus on what I’m learning and studying (Japanese expressions and vocabulary) so the sentences might be disjointed and not go together. But I really really want to write lengthy paragraphs and express myself in greater detail. I don’t expect to do this everyday, not even once a week — but I want to do it at least twice :D.
Joining in at the last minute! I’ve been reading the site for a while but this will be my first challenge. :)
Level: Around 30
Resources: Notebook and pencil
Game Plan: Keeping it simple. I’ll write about my day an hour or so before going to bed. I’ll be keeping it private for now, but I’m hoping that writing something everyday, even if it’s not perfect, will help me to draw on all the expressions/vocab that I know by recognition but struggle with in production.
じゃ、これから頑張ります！
Good luck on your first challenge!