Had my first full day of language study today for the first time in a couple weeks-ish. Felt good. I feel more settled in general after giving up some other things I was working on that can wait for a better time. Cutting out mental clutter and setting aside time for mental maintenance is so important. If you don’t make time for your body, your body is eventually going to make that time for you whether you like it or not.

For Japanese itself, I realized when listening today I still don’t have a firm grasp of a rather elementary concept (demonstratives with か or も) and that’s pretty frustrating considering how common they are. I’m going to drill them next month when I’m wrapping up Tobira.

In a bit of a funk and haven’t been playing much of anything. Did finish Dispatch a few weeks ago, which I think I enjoyed more on a technical/innovation level than for the story itself.

On the JRPG front, I’m still nibbling at Trails Beyond the Horizon. I’m about ten hours in and like what I’ve seen so far. Once I have more down time I’ll jump into it more, I’m sure.

No, been debating it. I keep hearing it’s worse.

Currently Anki for flashcards, Tobira for grammar and miscellaneous other practice, the Tadoku graded readers for reading practice and the Japanese with Shun podcast for listening (my listening comprehension is behind).

Anki certainly has a learning curve, but it can’t be beat for content and flexibility. However, I have a background in web design, which really helps a lot with making the most of it. My Anki workflow is rather customized at this point.

Yep, been hitting Japanese pretty hard the last eight months and finally feeling like I’m making progress on that intermediate plateau.

Come join us at !languagelearning@sopuli.xyz too, we’re active every week!

Got pretty busy this week so I slowed down a bit but I’m still keeping pace on my flashcards, which is the important thing.

The reading in this chapter of Tobira was about Japanese-style paper and was far more interesting than I expected. I’m also starting to feel more comfortable parsing intermediate grammar and Japanese sentence structure in general. I swear it’s like learning how to read backwards.

Nice, good work! What level?

TRON: Legacy, although “terrible” might be bit harsh on it. I first watched the movie when I had a fever of 103 and it was perfect for that.

All-time great movie soundtrack, though.

“Twelve megabytes of RAM, 500 megabyte hard drive. Built-in spreadsheet capabilities and a modem that transmits at over 28,000 BPS.”

74% describe Obama, someone that literally wrote a pro-deregulation op-ed in The Wall Street Journal while in office, as left wing.

This is what people are talking about when they say there’s no left-wing representation in America.

Yep, exactly, JLPT-prep. I’m going to grab Shin Kanzen Master, though I ultimately don’t know if it’ll be the right fit or not. My guess is once a student finishes Tobira (or Quartet now, I suppose), they pick a goal. N2 is the most common goal, I would imagine, so the student then figures out what part of the exam they need to focus on. For me, I know I’ll be okay on vocab and kanji, I just need reading speed and I especially need listening comprehension work. Beyond that, it’ll just be drills for the test format.

I think if one’s goal is just consuming native content, working in a job that needs Japanese, or just chatting with others, post-Tobira/Quartet is indeed when one starts a more self-tailored learning approach. I haven’t even started the “easy” native stuff like よつばと！or からかい上手の高木さん but it sounds like I’d be in a good position to do so maybe even right now if I wanted.

The good news is instance hopping is pretty easy. I’ve already done it twice now.

The “It’s like email” comparison is cliche for the Fediverse at this point, but it really is. Most people are gonna switch eventually for some reason or another.

Nice job on the card speed! I always start my day with my reviews and I feel my days go smoother when I get through them quick.

Big win yesterday: I have now gone through every card in my N3 vocab deck (about 3500 cards). Exciting. Feels a bit intimidating stepping into stuff labeled specifically as N2 content, but my retention rate as been great. I’m ready. It’s the clearest sign yet that I’m more advanced with Japanese than I ever have been. Wrapping up the latest chapter of Tobira either today or tomorrow, too. Four more chapters to go.

Seconding this on going without sex hormones, from first-hand experience: it’s absolutely not a place for a depressive to be, to the point where I would consider a psychiatrist willing to okay it for a depressive patient to be dangerously ignorant, at best. I urge you to seek out a new mental health team for this and other reasons.

Also, I’m surprised no one’s mentioned this: sex with friends is a thing. I’ve had just as much sex with friends in my life as I have in committed relationships. It just requires good communication and boundaries.

Last week I had the worst week of study since I started my new structured study plan in June. The good news is the cause is not burnout. The bad news is it’s related to bigger mental health stuff that’s going to take me a while to work through. I’m not great at relaxation/recharging. I can do individual days well, but like, I try to vacation for a week and I’m a disaster by the end of it. Ugh.

On the positive side, I finished a page of listening notes in my notebook and it felt really good to see:

Here I’m jotting down timestamps for stuff I’m struggling with and then go back over it with the transcript after I finish the podcast episode. The tactile notebook and pen gives my brain something to fidget with while I’m listening, and that might have been the magic key for me. I feel pretty good about it now, and if I were testing for N4 in December I’d be in great shape, but alas, I’m aiming higher. There are another 100+ episodes in this series and I might do them all. The great thing is, once I go a step higher than this podcast, there will be tons of content available to flip through and the conversation will be more interesting.

Concentrating on everyday usage is a great thing and I really should do it more. Especially stuff as simple as taking a few minutes each day to describe something around you or a thought in the language.

When one breaks something down to its components, nothing is new under the sun. I used to feel the same about games several years ago (albeit a little more about story rather than gameplay), but I eventually I reframed that into familiar systems and stories being comfort food. Now I actively seek those things out. That way, I’m generally assured of some enjoyment at worst, and at best I find some fun ways developers are putting twists on frequently-used concepts. Some of my all-time favorites are games I’ve played only in the past few years.

I also felt that way about time wasting, but once I started being more intentional and structured about my daily goal setting and time boxing my day, that went away. Now when I’m done for the day, I’m done for the day and I give myself permission to have downtime. Tangentially, Adderall also helped with this by giving me a hard physical signal to tell me I’m probably not going to get much more done for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, these days now I’m often too tired during the week. 🤷🏻‍♀️

That said, I also don’t like achievements. It’s something I would have loved 30 years ago back when there was way less to play, but there’s too much choice now. I’d rather see what else is out there instead of spending time digging into something I’ve already seen most of. Feels like diminishing returns. Some people really get into it, though.

For DS9, yeah, they don’t even introduce the main plot line of the series until the end of the second season. A lot of it early is continuation of the same threads from TNG, and it gets much better in the seasons where it finds its own identity after TNG went off the air.

Honestly, Lower Decks is the best Trek we’ve had recently.

Andor isn’t nearly that straightforward about it. It’s complicated and messy, with self-interested people juxtaposed against the idealists. Most of it is character-centered, soul-sucking spycraft tension like The Lives of Others or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but then also exasperating bureaucracy as in Chernobyl–and Stellan Skarsgard is equally phenomenal in Andor. Your toys aren’t here either; no lightsabers, few scenes with the old droids, very little time in space. Most of the time you need the architecture and the stormtroopers and Imperial dress whites to recognize it as a Star Wars setting.

It’s completely different than any Star Wars screen production before it.