JPN review for 2024
This is a copy of my 2024 reading log summary from the Wanikani community.
Speaking of, maybe it's time to interrupt this travelogue (this will take another two months to finish at this rate) for a year end study update...
Jintor, JPN and 2024
According to Natively, I'm sitting at:
- 90 vols of manga
- 7 books of prose
Let's just look at some highlights.
- My aim for the year was to read '1 book of prose'; I ended up reading 7.
- For kid's books on my own time, I started with 夜カフェ 1 which took about 10 days, then 四つ子ぐらし 1 (14 days). Then a new read, 泣き虫スマッシュ!1 (16 days). I'm currently reading the second 四つ子 novel and trucking along happily.
- Then a book I would actually classify as a novel (in that it didn't seem aimed at primary schoolers): 元カレの猫を、預かりまして, which I found absurdly difficult, but managed to get through regardless in about a month. I will enjoy revisiting it.
- I also read ふしぎ駄菓子屋 銭天堂 1, また、同じ夢を見ていた and 世にも奇妙な商品カタログ 1 with various book clubs. With また同じ夢 especially I'm afraid I felt like I didn't entirely 'get' it (or enjoy it), but it was good to get through anyway.
In terms of manga, let's just look at stuff where I read more than one in a series...
| Series | Type | Status | Volumes read |
|---|---|---|---|
| ダンジョン飯 / Delicious in Dungeon | Manga | Complete | 14 |
| 僕の心のヤバいやつ / The Dangers In My Heart | Manga | Up to date | 6 (vols 5 -> 11) |
| 甘々と稲妻 / Sweetness and Lightning | Manga | In Progress | 7 |
| ふつうの軽音部 / Girl By Rock | Manga | In Progress | 3 |
| 焼いてる二人 / Taste the Grill of Our Love! | Manga | In Progress | 7 |
| 葬送のフリーレン / Frieren | manga | In Progress | 4 |
| 隣は何を食う人ぞ〜ほろ酔い〜 | manga | Up to date | 5 (vols 7 -> 12) |
| こういうのがいい | manga | In Progress | 2 |
| 日本へようこそエルフさん。 / Welcome to Japan, Ms Elf! | Manga | In Progress | 5 (vol 4 - 8) |
If I was going to shout out a single accomplishment this year, it would be completing Dungeon Meshi. While 'reading' a manga at my current level is not the same as 'now I am able to read it at the same level as if it were in English', it's still very gratifying to know and to complete something I felt was a very mature, complicated story and long-ish story in a foreign language.
Similar shoutouts to The Dangers in My Heart, which I rank as a great discovery – one of the first series I got into from a start of Japanese and not from the anime or a scanlation, which makes it feel very special to me. A similar thing for Girl by Rock and こう言うがいい.
I'm really happy to be up to date on 隣は何を食う人ぞ〜ほろ酔い〜 as one of the reasons I started seriously reading Japanese was because the scanlators dropped this about halfway through and I wanted to keep reading. Same for 日本へようこそエルフさん, though that is a lot harder due to the fantasy vocab and takes more effort.
Sweetness and Lightning was the manga I read this year where I realised 'Oh... this isn't nearly as tiring as it used to be'. A volume is a nice snack now instead of work – I mean, there's still loads to look up, but I was actually looking forward to reading as a full-on leisure activity instead of half-leisure half-study.
Shout outs to a few other manga:
- There's a lot of manga for me right now where the effort-return ratio is not compelling enough to keep going at the same rate as the others; among these are Frieren and Grill of My Love (this is actually not too hard, just a bit boring).
- On a similar note, loads of volume ones of things above my level right now (at least for comfortable reading): Virgin's Empire, Fullmetal Alchemist, Magilumiere and Villainess Ojisan, Otome Taishou, Yuru Camp
- Vol 1s I intend to buy more of the series of: Witch Hat Atelier, Girl That I Like Forgot Her Glasses, Hana ni Arashi, Yamada Lvl 999, Little Granny Girl Hinata-chan, Delusional Telepathy.
- Vol 1s I have and intend to read since they're 'easy': Tomo-chan, Karakai Jouzu Moto Takagi-san
- One-offs that were great: Look Back, Goodbye Eri, Telework Yodabanashi, Love Bullet
Oh, and I've been playing through a lot of 逆転裁判. I've nearly finished the equivalent of the first GBA release (helped heavily by complete Japanese transcripts some fan has very kindly uploaded online; it makes it very easy to go back later and look up sentences for proper contextualising).
I've also been listening to a bunch of JPN podcasts but I don't really count them as learning because it's kind of just background noise to keep my brain active listening to more naturalistic Japanese pronounciation, since I don't really do anything else in this area besides anime.
All in all, a really great year. Between the vacation and now it's time for some gear shifting, though.
Da Plan (2025)
- I nuked my Anki deck and redid it to focus entirely on word recognition (pronounciation/meaning), mainly to reclaim a large chunk of time per day. I still use it, but hopefully it's a bit more directed now with some card redesigns and such.
- At this point hopefully the reading is largely self-sustaining; I read for pleasure a lot at this point and don't see that changing soon. Hoping the Anki changes will mean the SRS won't expand outwards again too much, but if that happens I'll probably just nuke it again and restart.
- The real question is training listening and output. Me and my wife both are thinking about doing N2/N1 (respectively) this year, but we'll see how that slams up against reality. Specifically, we're thinking about one on one tutoring for speaking, but we have to find time in our lives for that to open up...
- Anyway, my current goal is to read the LN of 日本へようこそエルフさん, because I'm finding properly converted ePubs to be less rage-inducing to look words up than manga. I should probably set another year goal, but don't know if I have anything in mind besides 'read more books' (since it seems to have the best ROI right now).