[M-32] First monthly report!

Dear Rine,

Yesterday morning I went cycling for about 45 km. When I got back, I just changed my clothes and went next door to help my cousin lay down some drain pipes in his backyard. Then I excused myself and drove to my sister’s house for my niece’s birthday, where I proceeded to stuff myself with barbecue and cake. By the time I got back home, I was tired and sickly. So I fell asleep before I could post an update.

I suspect this will become a more frequent occurrence, now that summer is approaching, and people in my social circles either already had Covid or are vaccinated.

Therefore, with your permission, I’ll skip Sunday reports from now on.

That said, yesterday was the fourth Sunday since we started this, so it’s time to do my first monthly recap.

Accomplishments this month

• N5 deck memorized in SM
• Sentence mining setup created and started mining (although some issues with Anki -> SM conversions remain)
• Passive listening habit developed
• Started clocking immersion hours

Goals for next month

• Lock in sentence mining habit and gradually arrive at 2 hours daily active immersion
• Migrate this blog to org mode for a more streamlined writing/publishing process

Obstacles

• By now I had pretty much used up the initial zeal – that burst of free energy – that accompanies the beginning of any project. Next month will be a test of whether I’m mature enough to maintain my habits and systems fueled by a less combustible, slower-burning grade of enthusiasm.
• Furthermore, I expect to be busier next month in terms of other obligations which will put further pressure on my resolve.

General observations

• Overall I got a little more comfortable with Japanese this month. I am no longer annoyed by not understanding something I imagine I ought to understand. And I sort of enjoy the process of watching something I don’t get.
• From all the hours of passive immersion, listening to audio from tv shows, I developed a better sense of what natural Japanese sounds like, I got an idea of how they slur words and such.
• That said, I also listened to some podcasts geared toward intermediate learners, with well-enunciated slow speech. I got a kick out of being able to discern what some words mean just from the context (of course, the script was intentionally engineered to give you that opportunity, but it’s a nice feeling) which made me appreciate the value of comprehensible input more.
• Active immersion and sentence mining/fishing is a slog, I move inch by inch, frequently questioning myself about whether I’m doing it right and whether I am learning anything. But I will persevere for at least the next two months before I make any conclusions on how to tweak the practice.

P.S. This little blog of mine is somewhat self-indulgent in that I freely write about whatever is on my mind without too much concern for what you’d actually want to read. So if there’s any way I can make my posts more useful to you, let me know, Rine.