Last month I ordered some readers from White Rabbit, which finally arrived today. I think the one I’m most interested in is 「なぜ?どうして?みぢかなぎもん(1年生)」since it addresses cultural things about Japan like, “Why do you say もしもし when you answer the phone?” and also more generalized things like why are stoplights red/yellow/green. Which were the two I read tonight, though honestly I didn’t quite follow the entire explanation of the stoplights.

The other two books I got were 10分で読めるお話 and イッキによめる! the latter of which has some reading comprehension questions (and answers) which is interesting. I didn’t really make it through a story in that one yet, though. I may wait to read this one last, since it seems slightly more advanced than the other two (or at least I lack the vocab for it still).

10分で読めるお話 (at least for the first grade level) seems to be kind of Level 3 絵本, I’d say? Not enough that you could get the whole story from the pictures, but enough to help you along if you’re stuck with the basic idea. It’s interesting reading this one after all the Level 2 JGRs which are theoretically about the same level of picture book. It’s definitely more written for a native Japanese child, with kind of a simplistic idea, but it’s oddly harder to read for me than the JGRs were. I think part of it is that the first story has a lot of dialog that was written as if it was a parent/child talking, which is kind of different, grammatically and in vocabulary, from the focus of student/teacher or colleagues at work that my textbooks tend to take.

Ugh, I haven’t really done actual homework in so long, and it’s so hard to be motivated for it. I’m reviewing with my old J301 book for realz now, re-answering all the exercises and whatnot. So that on Wednesdays I can have something to do with my tutor. And that’s one of the books I don’t have an answer set for, so he can at least tell me if I’m totally on the wrong path.

What’s interesting is that I tried to do this a couple months ago, because I realized I could kind of read the book. But didn’t have an answer key, so I couldn’t figure out if I was totally off or what was going on. Really, I was still only half-understanding, so it was really difficult to tell, and I just gave up. But this time it was more like. Lol, why did I try to answer it that way before, CLEARLY that is incorrect. Still some things I’m unsure of, but I feel more confident I at least am mostly on the right track.

If I do one section a week, I’ll be done with this book by April and can start on one of the other books, perhaps. I keep thinking I’m getting close to being able to read real books (as opposed to graded readers/picture books for 小学生) or something, but not quite being there? Hoping by the end of the year I’ll be able to do that.

Meanwhile, I did a really poor recording of me reading something in Japanese tonight. My roommate started cleaning in the kitchen halfway through which distracted the hell out of me, not to mention is hilariously recorded as well. But it’s also pretty exemplary of my failure to read/say even words I know correctly sometimes, lulz. Maybe in another couple months I’ll do another one and see if I’ve improved.

The funny thing is, even though I’m only at ~5.5 “books” (aka approximately 100 pages) by all the official books/manga I’ve been reading and counting pages on, I think I’ve probably read at least another “book” worth of random, one-off sentences, or more? I cannot be arsed to count up individual sentences and estimate when I hit a page of them, though, so oh well.

先週チューターと会えたから、少し宿題があって、毎週小さい作文/日記を書く。もう終わったけど、今「日本語で何かを買いたくて、練習したい」と思って、ここも書く。

今週JOIのレッスンに使役形を習った。でも例文を書く見ているときに何も考えなっているんですよ。例文を考えるのはとても難しいと思う。

I feel like I have terrible grammar all over the place in this.

So I keep being really lazy about reading or recording reading in the twitterbot, but I am still plugging away at iKnow and also waiting for my new books to arrive and now I have two hour-long tutoring sessions a week, so at least I’m getting conversation in. My new tutor suggested I write a short journal entry every week, so I’m going to try that. Output is easier than it was last year, but I still spend so much time trying to think of the right word/way to describe what I’m talking about.

I did realize that I really started getting serious with iKnow in like, July, and granted I was mostly through the step 3 on core 1000 already by then, but counting from there, I’ve apparently finished 9 courses in six months, and I’m fairly close to the tenth. If I can keep up this pace, I might be able to finish core 3000 by December?

Hilariously, it’s still a year away, but I’m already kind of worried I’m not going to be ready to take the N3 by December. Except if I keep going with vocab, and really learn all of the N3 prep book grammar points I have, I really should be okay? And I have a year to get through it all, so it should be fine. But ugh, worrying anyway.

Still waiting on a new shipment of reading material, but meanwhile I’ve been reading this really old Japanese Reader that was lying around my parents’ house. Written by a somewhat famous Italian guy and his wife. It’s interesting since every piece in the book is written in katakana, hiragana, romaji, and is also translated both by word/phrase and as a full English text. I don’t find the romaji that useful, and the English is sometimes distracting, but it’s kind of nice having large blocks of katakana to practice reading, since my recognition of katakana tends to be lesser. I just finished the kana-only passages, so I’ll start on the “with kanji” section soon. It’s very … old, though. Like the style of dialog is clearly old-fashioned, with keigo, also. Which isn’t bad, but it is weird.

耳から覚える日本語能力試験文法トレーニングN3 I bought the whole 耳から覚える set a little while ago, though I haven’t really been able to put the vocab or listening books to much use yet, actually, so mostly I’ve been using the grammar book (link to Amazon.co.jp’s version, though I got it at White Rabbit). I never really know what to do with textbooks? I’m going through this one with my teacher, at least, so she usually has some other things prepared, and then once I finish a section there are exercises to do for review. But I try to go back and study them, and find I’m not really sure what to do with it except re-read the definitions and practice sentences. Making my own sentences would be a good idea if I didn’t feel like I had writer’s block whenever I tried to think of anything to say. Sad excuse, I know.

Contacted a tutor who’s closer to my workplace, so I might try to meet up with someone in person once a week also. In iKnow, I finished the first step in Core 2000 a couple days ago, and I’m more than halfway through step 2.

In general there’s a sense of progress, but also of being stuck? I haven’t progressed much on my extensive reading goals (or listening), at least, not with twitter and the super challenge bot, partly because I am too lazy to count up every off sentence I happen to read in textbooks and whatnot. I think I’ll be glad to get the new reading set, which should be arriving either this week or next? Though I don’t have delivery notice and my post office is weird about notifying me, so I might just have to check in with them on Saturday if I still have no word to make sure it’s not sitting there and no one’s told me. I read through all the Level 2 Graded Readers I bought earlier, and I started doing re-reads, but I’ve only gotten through the first set on re-read.