Hey, guys! Long time no see, huh? Well, limited time left in Austria plus good weather means that I’ve actually spent a fair bit of time outside these past couple of weeks (and Amsterdam was amazing, but that trip really took it out of me) – but I’m back now and ready to get back on this blogging train.
So, how am I doing with Japanese?
Well, for one thing, I’ve passed the eight-hour goal I set for myself for this 6WC! Yay! I must admit, a lot of that has been either watching TV or setting up and working on my Anki deck, but that’s still been useful. I finished watching Last Cinderella today, actually; it’s been really handy for reinforcing those common greetings and phrases that you need when you start learning a language, so I’m happy about that.
Anki’s great (and I’m kind of quietly doing the SRS Challenge with my new deck) but I have so many reviews. Well actually, about 60 a day, but I’m trying to make sure I can write the words as well as say them, which can be kind of difficult when it comes to the kanji. Some of the kanji are the same as the Chinese characters I’ve already learnt, some are more like the traditional characters which I’ve seen (but not learnt), and some are entirely different, so this part’s turning out to be interesting. Still, I think I have more of a heads up than people who start learning Japanese with no knowledge of characters, so I should be grateful for that at least.
I haven’t refreshed all the audio from Easy Japanese that I wanted to; I think I did up to lesson two; but I have inputted the words and sentences up to lesson five (I think?) into my Anki deck, so I’m getting more used to the patterns and vocabulary. My issue is always that I race ahead without taking the time to let things sink in and then I have difficulties later (it’s one of the reasons why I do like classes; there’s an in-built revision system), but I think this method will work better for me.
I’m also now looking for a new show to watch! Does anyone have any suggestions, especially from anything that’s on Viki? I really enjoyed Last Cinderella, though it did get a little slow in the middle there. With only eleven episodes though, I didn’t just give up and stop watching – and the last four episodes or so were really compelling and fun. Having a show to watch really helps keep me motivated so I hope I can find something new.
Now, for next week (well, until Sunday), my goals are:
- Refresh the Easy Japanese audio up to lesson six (that should be four lessons, so about 40 minutes – I’m hoping I’ll do more than this, but we’ll see).
- Find a new show to watch.
- Keep up with my Anki deck every day.
I think that should be enough to keep me busy; like I said at the beginning of this post, my time in Austria is coming to an end soon so I have a lot of non-language things to do, but everything will be back to normal by the second week of June (when I’ll be in the UK again).
Let me know how you’re getting on with your studies as we slowly crawl into summer! Is it easier or harder for you to keep up at this time of year?