Progress as of February 25th

Oh dear! 4 months since I last posted something. >< Well, that's because I got a burn-out and I've been home with absolutely no energy since early November. So I also didn't have the energy to learn more Japanese.

I decided to stop doing RTK2, as it was taking up a shitload of time doing reviews and I couldn't add any more. Also, while I'm learning vocabulary, I'm also learning the pronunciation of the characters, so it would be doing double the work. I can always go back in a few years and redo it, checking what I don't know yet.

Last week I added some more words in my vocabulary deck, bringing me up to 239 words there. The Anki spaced review settings are a bit too spaced apart for me, but I don't know how to change that, except for the initial hard/good/easy settings. It's not the initial settings that are giving me trouble, it's the big space between the 2nd and 3rd and 4th review, etc. I fail a lot of cards due to that. But it's better than nothing, I guess. :)

I've also restarted Pimsleur (the listening/repeating Japanese course). I redid a lot of units I'd done before, and up to Unit 15 or so this was super easy, then I started making mistakes again (which is fine). The words that I often mix up or forget, I've added to Anki so I learn them a bit more, and things are going fine that way. I'm up to Unit 17 now. I put them on my iPod so I usually do them while doing the dishes or driving somewhere far (they're 30 minutes each). XD

It also helps that I've also studied some more Tae Kim grammar chapters. I now know more grammar, which can help me see the sentence structures used in Pimsleur and remember them more logically; so not just repeating them, but also knowing which grammar has to be used and falling back on that when I can't remember the actual sound.

I'm still going slow, but it's all I can do for now.

I did always keep up with my reviews, so I don't have a hopeless pile of reviews stacked somewhere that would make me want to just say 'f*ck it' and stop learning altogether. I still do want to learn this language, so I'll try to keep up. ^^ Ganbatte!!

Progress as of October 24th

So this past week I had a holiday and I got a lot of Japanese done. I've also got more of a clue now on how to progress, so I'm progressing faster and further.

So here's another update on how I'm doing.

I've started RTK2 again, so far I'm on 577 cards.
Vocabulary for N5 has me on 191 words (I think I'll add some more today, so I'll be past 200 then).
I've just finished Tae Kim's Basic Grammar, which contains 11 topics. Now moving on to Essential Grammar, which contains 18 topics.

Japanese-wise, it's been a productive holiday! ^^ Health-wise it's been a bit worse, but hey, you can't have everything.

Watch these little fish as they follow your mouse, waiting for you to click and leave them some food. (Warning: very addictive)

Progress

Wooooh I've finally caught up with where I left off in RTK2.

Like I said in my previous post, I had suspended all my RTK2 cards before my Japan trip, so I wouldn't have a whole load of reviews when I got back. And just now I unsuspended the last cards and I'm up-to-date with my reviews again! ^^ I am quite pleased with myself.

I have been studying more N5 as well. I am up to exactly 100 words now. ^^

Also I have caught up on my Tae Kim studies, reviewing what I'd learnt so far, so tomorrow I can start with a new chapter.

So all in all it's been quite a productive day and I'm pretty proud of myself! ^^

Progress

Well, it's been a while since I've updated. But I've started my studies again. I've been studying vocabulary off the N5 (former JLPT4; Japanese Language and Proficiency Test, the easiest level). That's going quite fast, because I know a lot of the words already and, which I am very pleased about, I no longer have to learn the kanji, because I know them all. So it's just learning the pronunciation, and no longer the writing. ^^

In Japan I bought Flash cards on a ring. They're basically plain flash cards but they are attached by the ring; making them very easy for learning words/sentences. So I've been using those and Anki to learn and review my vocabulary.

I got rather behind on my RTK2 work, so I suspended all my cards in Anki and I'm slowly adding them again, a few at a time (now I only have about 190 of the 560+ cards suspended, so hopefully soon I will have added them all back again and I can start learning more new ones. ^^

My Books

Over the years I have collected some pretty good (and not so good) books on the topics of the Japanese language and culture, so I thought I'd list them here.

It all started with 'Japanese in Mangaland' by Marc Bernabe, which is a nice book to get started with, as it touches on the most important topics and teaches you the most important words and sentences. All of this coupled with examples from manga books.

My bible is 'Remembering the Kanji 1' by James Heisig. I've written about this book before, you can find that post here. It's the best method I know for learning Kanji. It teaches you the writing and meaning of the most common kanji. When working with it, this website was also a lot of help.

The next book I have is 'Remembering the Kanji 2' which is the follow-up to part 1 (duh) and teaches you the pronunciation of the kanji learnt in book 1.

I also have 'Essential Japanese' by Berlitz publishers. This also teaches you the most important sentences and grammatical structures, but I haven't worked much from it. I prefer the website of Tae Kim for learning grammar.

Two books I've recently bought are 'All About Particles' by Naoko Chino and 'Making Sense of Japanese' by Jay Rubin. The former one is about particles, which is basically the hardest part of Japanese grammar. Particles indicate whether something is the topic of the sentence, you can use them to express things like 'also' and 'at/in', but sometimes it's very obscure which ones to use where. Hopefully that book will help me.
I've only just started 'Making Sense of Japanese', but it's subtitle: 'What the textbooks don't tell you', and the introduction by the author, in which he states that the Japanese language is not 'vague' seem very promising.

I've also got some dictionaries: '501 Japanese Verbs' from Barron's. Ever since Eddie bought this in Amsterdam two years ago I've wanted it as well, so I decided to just buy it at some point. It has most of the inflections of the verbs and their informal and formal usages.
The 'Oxford Beginner's Japanese dictionary' and 'Oxford Japanese Grammar and Verbs' were birthday presents from Eddie that I've used quite a lot.

Then I've got a brilliant book called 'Japanese Made Funny', by Tom Dillon. It's a hilarious book about people mixing up words and saying something completely different than they'd intended. I bought that in Japan, along with 'The Japanese Mind', by Roger Davies. This book explains certain aspects of the Japanese culture that are difficult for foreigners to understand.

Another treasure of mine is 'A gaijin's guide to Japan'. 'Gaijin' means foreigner (literally: outside person), and it explains all kinds of things, mostly from modern culture, in a fun and concise way.

I've got a little book called 'Living Japanese Style' which explains Japanese etiquette in a humorous manner.

I've also got a little book called 'How to sound intelligent in Japanese', which teaches you such things as 'I told the club president that in my opinion the rule barring women as members should be reconsidered', etc. XD

I've got a box with cards with opposites on them; the word for 'large' and a picture of an elephant on one side, and the word for 'small' and a picture of a mouse on the other side, stuff like that.

Then I've got some books about food: 'The Manga Cookbook' which has recipes for all kinds of cute stuff, like octopus-shaped sausages and eggs with faces, etc. And I've got a book called 'Japanese restaurants' which I should have brought on my trip with me, as it would have been a great help. It shows which types of restaurants sell what, how to recognise them, and how to write the food items in kanji (so you can also recognise them).

I think that's enough for now. Better use the books I have before buying any new ones, though there are still a few that I want... XD

Dreams

I'm now really beginning to process everything, I can tell. This past week since I've been back I've had dreams about being in Japan or talking about Japan every night. They're quite restless, though, so I hope they become more relaxed soon. :P I was pretty relaxed in Japan (after the initial few days) so I hope to get that feeling in my dreams as well.