mainichi-nihongoal

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📝日本語ログ ー 2/2/23-5/2/23 (木曜日ー日曜日)

Once again, doing a batch update because I apparently (read: truly) suck at noting down daily updates. The consolation, though, is that I actually haven't missed a single day of Japanese since I started the No Zero Days Langblr Challenge, though I wish I could be equally active with tracking my progress (since I'm not using any progress tracker at the moment). Anyway, here's the update for the last few days -

🦉Duolingo

Unit 36 contd. (Talk about school)

5x+ lessons

💜Drops

Completed Theme: Fruits

Current Theme: Vegetables

📖Reading

Read 4x Tadoku Books on Ask Online

Attended a Book Donation Fair organised by the Japan Foundation on 2nd & 3rd February. There were mostly Japanese books there, so I spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out which books to get by reading the titles and synopsis (with some help from Google Lens😅). It led to some very surprising yet good discoveries – along with ample amounts of reading practice🤓

🎧Listening (+ Speaking)

My current favourite part of Japanese immersion! Continued with more podcast episodes while also watching jdorama and anime!

Started watching the anime The Case Files of Jeweler Richard/宝石商リチャード氏の謎鑑定 on YouTube – it's available on the official channel of Muse Asia! I have only watched the first episode but I'm loving the story so far, especially the main characters Richard & Seigi. The conversations around the precious gems are also very illuminating. It's based on a light novel, so I'd love to read it in Japanese someday. (2nd Feb)

Continued watching the jdorama Kounodori. Finished the 5th episode. Each and every episode of the drama is honestly so heartfelt and emotional. I'm so glad that I gave it a shot🥹

Attended an online Tadoku club meeting where we silently read short Tadoku stories and then discussed them with other members in the meeting. These meetings lend a very good opportunity for speaking practice😀

Podcast episode link:

🎶song stuck in my head:

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📝日本語ログ ー 1/2/23, 水曜日

皆さん、お久しぶりですね!😅

I hadn't been able to keep up with my daily updates for January, though I'm happy that I did manage to not miss a single day of practising Japanese – even if it was for a few minutes on some days – and I hope to write a learning summary for January later. I can't believe it's February already! I'd initially planned to finish the Activate Your Japanese series in Jan, but ended up binging on the jdrama MIU404 instead😅 I do plan to finish the series this month, though! Let's see how that goes :) Here's the update for today:

🦉Duolingo

2x lessons

Unit 36

💜Drops

5min30secs

Theme: Breakfast foods

📖Reading

Read the story 「猫の皿」 on the yomujp website - it was such a humorous story! Highly recommend!

🎧Listening (+ Speaking)

Had a session with the Tadoku Ga Suki Club today! All of the members did silent reading in the meeting after which we all discussed what we read. It's during this session that I read the story mentioned above and later discussed it with the other members. Since the meeting was held entirely in Japanese (except when we got stuck while speaking and could use a couple of English words), I got the opportunity to practise speaking too. It went well (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)

Watched the 3rd episode of the drama Kounodori – another super emotional emotional episode, this drama is really a tearjerker!😭

Also listened to a few songs, as usual :)

Wishing you all a very happy February!🤍🤍

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📝日本語ログ ー 16/1/23, 月曜日

🦉Duolingo

1x lesson

Unit 1 (did a quick lesson to keep my streak)

💜Drops

New Theme! - Tea

5min30sec

📖Reading

Read a Tadoku Graded Reader - これ、なあに? This one has lots of new vocab!

🎧Listening

Listened to Official髭男dism's I Love... on repeat since it was stuck in my head since morning😅

1x podcast episode

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📝日本語ログ ー 15/1/23, 日曜日

🦉Duolingo

1x lesson

Unit 34 (Give command, suggest activities)

🎧Listening

More podcast & songs! Links of the podcast episodes below:

🎧❤️special mention: song I listened to on repeat:

📖Reading

Read a paragraph of 「小さな闇」 by Banana Yoshimoto from the book - Short Stories in Japanese: New Penguin Parallel Text [Pg 13]

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📝日本語ログ ー 11/1/23-14/1/23　(水曜日ー土曜日)

I fell back on the daily updates once again😭

I did take notes for the days though, so here's a batch update for last week - it was a pretty generic week in terms of studying Japanese tbh, in that I ended up using the same resources I started with or was already continuing with in the new year. Still, it feels nice to look back even on the most mundane of days, so here goes nothing:

🦉Duolingo

Continued with Unit 34

~10x lessons (total)

💜Drops

Finished theme: Winter Holidays

Started new theme: Lunar New Year

🎧Listening

Watched four episodes (9-12) of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood with English subtitles. I did try to pay attention to the dialogues once in a while though, and at time was able to catch up what was spoken (Sat, Jan 14)

More podcasts! Started listening to the Thinking in Japanese Podcast and YUYUの日本語Podcast. Continued with the more episodes of other podcasts too! Links:

📖Reading

Read a couple of Tadoku Graded Readers - 彼氏がほしい! and 赤い。。。

Didn't read anything on 14th🥲 I was kinda sad about my reading streak being broken, but I had an event to attend that day and came back super tired to read anything...😔

That's it! Here to hoping I can be more regular with my future updates!

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📝日本語ログ ー 10/1/23, 火曜日

🦉Duolingo

10+ lessons

Unit 33 [Use Numbers] Completed!

Started Unit 34

~1 hour

⛩️Torii App

JLPT N3 vocab

22 flashcards - learnt

~30 mins

📖Reading

Read the Tadoku Graded Reader - 夜の空で [Natively Link]

🎧Listening

More podcast episodes! Links:

💭Others

Watched a video on 的 by Cure Dolly Sensei:

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📝日本語ログ ー 9/1/23, 月曜日

🦉Duolingo

1x Lesson

Unit 33 [Use Numbers]

💜Drops

6mins

Theme: Lunar New Year

📖Reading

Read the Tadoku Graded Reader - かぼちゃん日本の秋へ [Natively Link]

🎧Listening

Listened to the latest and the first episodes of The Miku Real Japanese podcast during my commute. Also listened to the first couple of episodes of Japanese with Teppei and Noriko. Links:

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📝日本語ログ ー 8/1/23, 日曜日

🦉Duolingo

10+ Lessons

Completed the January Challenge! (1000 xp)

Unit 33 [Use Numbers]

💜Drops

Theme: Winter Holidays

6mins

🎧Listening

Watched episodes 3 & 4 of the Jdrama Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna without subtitles! I feel I did miss some nuances due to the lack of subs, but I could follow the story nonetheless - especially the interactions between Nomoto and Kasuga - which I loved listening to without being distracted by subtitles. Will watch the episodes again with subtitles, for better understanding.

Finished listening to the podcast episode I'd started yesterday and listened to two other podcast episodes of varying lengths. One of them included shadowing practice, so I could repeat along with the audio. Here are the links:

📖Reading

Read the transcripts of two of the above podcasts episodes: Why do you learn Japanese? and Shadowing 58: 正月

💭Others

Wrote and published my Weekly Report for Japanese for the first week of 2023 on this blog.

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📑日本語 Weekly Report 2023: Week 1 » 1/1/23 - 7/1/23

The above picture was clicked by one of my close friends in our college cafeteria on the first day of our final semester (2nd Jan '23). We'd gone to the cafe after our classes ended and I decided to end the day with a cup of steaming hot chocolate (our college cafe's hot chocolate is DELICIOUS!) The book in the picture is Short Stories in Japanese: New Penguin Parallel Text.

🏮Highlights of the Week:

I joined the No Zero Days Langblr Challenge created by @chenopodiumlang and have been posting updates of what I've been doing daily in Japanese. I'm really enjoying the challenge so far as it is helping me be more mindful about how I'm studying Japanese and the time I'm actually spending on different skills. I hope to utilise what I've learnt from this week's challenge to make more realistic and mindful goals for the upcoming weeks.

I joined the Read Everyday & Listen Everyday 2023 challenges on the WaniKani forums for the first time! Participating in these challenges has probably been my biggest impetus in trying to build a daily habit in practising immersion in Japanese. It does take me a long time to catch up on the replies on both of the threads & I'm not regular with the logs there, but reading about everyone's daily progress inspires me a lot! If any of you are participating in the challenges, please feel free to let me know, I'll support you over there!

I participated in an online zoom session of a book club where we read a story on how New Year is celebrated in Japan. It was fun to read along with everyone and listening to people from both India and Japan share their experiences on how they celebrate New Year. (4th Jan '23)

I've been regularly listening to podcasts in Japanese! Podcasts are my current ideal resource for listening practice, as I can listen to them during my commute from uni and then later read through the transcripts, if they are available. I've also discovered many podcasts lately, and I hope to create a post sharing them for other Japanese learners here :)

💭Some Reflections

Participating in the No Zero Days Challenge, I realised that I tend to feel overwhelmed if I end up doing a lot in Japanese in one go. Because of that, I've decided to space out my study schedule throughout the day instead of doing everything all at once. On weekdays, for example, I plan to do listening practice during my commute, so that I can have enough time for reading practice once I get back home.

It's taking me quite some time to create the daily update posts, which is why I haven't been creating and posting much on my main blog. I'm thinking of scheduling a particular time each day for writing and posting the update for that day (maybe 11pm), so that I can keep some time for creating Japanese posts for Tumblr.

I'd initially planned to dedicate Saturdays to studying for the JLPT, but couldn't make it this week. I feel I'll have to get better at scheduling if I really want to include everything I'm working on at the moment.

👀Week At A Glance

• Reading:

2 Tadoku Graded Readers

1 story on Yomujp

1 NHK Easy News Article

1 fanfiction on ao3

Pgs 1-13 of Short Stories in Japanese: New Penguin Parallel Text

• Listening:

7x Podcast episodes

Jpop songs

• Speaking:

1.5 hours of interaction with fellow learners and native speakers over Zoom

• Writing:

None :(

✨Posts for this Week

Day 1 • Day 2 • Day 3 • Day 4 • Day 5 • Day 6 • Day 7

That's it for this week! Here's to another week of productive and mindful Japanese learning! (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)✧

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📝日本語ログ ー 7/1/23, 土曜日

🦉Duolingo

2x Lessons

Unit 33 (Use Numbers)

💜Drops

Theme: Winter Holidays (contd.)

5mins 50sec

📖Reading

Read pages 9-13 of the book Short Stories in Japanese: New Penguin Parallel Text. The story I'm currently reading is 「小さな闇」 by Banana Yoshimoto.

🎧Listening

Listened to 3mins of a podcast episode from the Miku Real Japanese Podcast. Here's a link of the episode:

Approx Total Time: ~1 hour 15 mins

It's been a week already!! I'm enjoying the challenge so far and also writing the daily updates - even though I fell behind posting a few of them - as I feel more accountable about including Japanese in my daily schedule now. I'm going to create a Weekly Report post with notes on the progress I made this week, along with some reflections regarding the Zero Days Challenge and my goals for the coming weeks. Thank you for reading so far!(⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)⁠❤

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📝日本語ログ ー 6/1/23, 金曜日

🦉Duolingo

5x lessons - [Use Numbers + Leaderboard Challenge]

~20 mins

💜Drops

10mins

Theme: Winter Holidays

✍️New Words:

祝う　»　いわう　»　to celebrate

焼く　»　やく　»　to bake

ジンジャーブレッド　»　gingerbread

聖ニコラス　»　せいにこらす　»　Saint Nicholas

ロウソク　»　candle

贈り物　»　おくりもの　» gift

ポテトパンケーキ　»　potato pancakes

そり　»　sleigh

トナカイ　»　reindeer

煙突　»　えんとつ　»　chimney

📖Reading

Read an NHK Easy News Article after a long time! The article was 「予約した免税の品物をロッカーで受け取ることができる」 - I'm thinking of making a Langblr News Challenge post with the vocab from this article on my main blog (It's been ages since I last made a post for that challenge!)

🎧Listening

Did intensive listening practice with a podcast episode from The Miku Real Japanese Podcast - I'm really enjoying the podcast so far, and this one had some new vocab in it, so decided to patiently work through it. Will make a vocabulary post with the new words I encountered there! Here's the link of the episode:

Approx Total Time: ~1 hr 30 mins

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📝日本語ログ ー 5/1/23, 木曜日

🦉Duolingo

Unit 33 (Use Numbers) contd.

1x lesson

💜Drops

Theme - Friendsgiving (unit completed!)

5mins

📖Reading

Read one paragraph of Banana Yoshimoto's 「小さな闇」 from Short Stories in Japanese: New Penguin Parallel Text [Pg 9]

🎧Listening

A good listening day! Listened to quite a few podcast episodes in Japanese during my commute from college. Was able to get a gist of the ideas shared - though would love to listen to them again more intensively. I listened to:

That's it!

Approx total time: ~ 1 hour

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📝日本語ログ ー 4/1/23, 水曜日

🦉Duolingo

3x lessons

Unit 33 [Use Numbers]

💜Drops

5mins

Theme: Friendsgiving

📖Reading

It was a good reading day! I read a story on how the New Year is celebrated in Japan along with the Tadoku Ga Suki book club online on Zoom. All the participants in the meeting took turns in reading a paragraph of the story and then discussed the traditions followed in India and Japan during the New Year (the participants of the club are from India and Japan). Later in the evening, I finished the first story in the book - Short Stories in Japanese: New Penguin Parallel Text, which was a two-page short story by Haruki Murakami. So, to summarise, I read:

日本の行事 「お正月」 on yomujp

村上春樹の 「夜中の汽笛について、あるいは物語の効用について」 [In English - “Concerning the Sound of a Train Whistle in the Night or On the Efficacy of Fiction” by Haruki Murakami]

Approx reading time: ~2 hours (including discussion of the first story)

🎧Listening

No 35 How to say "That was close" in Japanese from the Miku Real Japanese Podcast

Approx listening time: ~10 mins (i had to rewind some portions to catch what was said accurately)

💭Others

I also joined the Listen Everyday Challenge 2023 on the WaniKani forums - I feel that participating in both the challenges will allow me to look forward to reading and listening in Japanese everyday (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)

Total time: ~ 2hr 20mins

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📝日本語ログ ー 3/1/23, 火曜日

Sorry for the late update! I did expect that I'd get tied up with classes at college since it's my final semester, but I ended up feeling even more exhausted due to the long hours of daily commute in this cold🥶 I'll try to be regular with my updates from now on (though i can never tell🥲)

🦉Duolingo

3x lessons

Unit 33 [Use numbers]

💜Drops

Theme: Friendsgiving

New words:

ごゆっくりどうぞ → Enjoy your meal!

[other meanings include ‘enjoy yourself!’/‘help yourself!’ - the literal meaning would be closer to ‘go ahead slowly (polite)’]

📖Reading

Read a few Japanese only posts here on Tumblr if that counts😅

🎧Listening

Finished listening to this episode of the Miku Real Japanese Podcast (started listening on 2nd Jan) - it was a super fun episode!

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📝日本語ログ ー 2/1/23, 月曜日

This is part of the no zero days langblr challenge by @chenopodiumlang! My aim is to track my progress in Japanese everyday throughout this year. がんばります! (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)

My final semester at uni started yesterday, so I could do very little in Japanese, but I'm happy that I could at least keep my learning streak going!

✿ Duolingo

1x lesson, Unit 33

✿ Drops

5mins

Themes: New Year & Friendsgiving

✍️New words:

ホームシック　→　homesick

夕食　→　ゆうしょく　→　dinner (i wonder why i did not learn this word before🤔)

✿ Reading📖

Read my first fanfic in Japanese!! I had a sudden idea of looking for HP fanfics in Japanese on ao3 & found a Wolfstar fanfic titled 将来の予定 by SagaByakuya. It followed a short and simple conversation between Sirius Black & Remus Lupin, written in simple Japanese. I loved how the dialogue was written and how easily the conversation flowed between the characters. I felt the grammar could be improved, but the author mentioned they had been studying Japanese for less than a year and so I was deeply impressed! In fact, it inspired me to write my own fanfic in Japanese, which I definitely wish to do someday :D

Read another Tadoku graded reader titled 「ふしぎだな―ぼくが感じた不思議なこと」 where the narrator shares aspects of Japanese culture that they have found both fascinating and strange (the word 「不思議」 carries both meanings as far as the English translations are concerned, and I figured the same from the context of the story - would love to learn more about this word though; it feels kind of similar to 面白い in terms of the nuances it suggests across the meaning spectrum). It was a fun read!

✿ Listening🎧

Listened to the first 12 minutes of the podcast episode No 65 Girls Talk by Miku Sensei! Loved the conversation so far! I couldn't finish it as I was feeling very sleepy after a long day🫠

✿ Others

I joined the Read Every Day Challenge - Winter 2023 on the WaniKani forums! I got to know about this challenge thanks to a recent post made by @javerend (ありがとうございます!!) and decided to join it since I'm anyway trying to build a daily immersion habit. I've also always wanted to participate in the challenges there, so I'm happy to start this new journey! As always, がんばります!☆

[mainichi-nihongoal]

📝日本語ログ ー 1/1/23, 日曜日

✿⁠ Duolingo

Unit 33

x7 lessons

✿⁠ Drops

Theme - New Year!

5mins

✿⁠ Reading:

Read this fun story from Tadoku Graded Readers - it felt like a fictional story and historical lesson combined :D

✿⁠ Vocabulary:

N3 vocab flashcards on the Torii app - 22 learnt, 0 reviewed

(Approx) Total Time: ~50mins

That's it for today! Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year! (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)⁠❤

[mainichi-nihongoal]

ようこそ! Welcome! (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)✧

Thank you for stopping by!

I'd originally created this side-blog to track my progress in Japanese on a daily/weekly basis. However, I didn't follow up with it, which is why I'm creating this pinned post to keep myself accountable in 2023. This year, I hope to track my progress daily - even if there are days when I'm just doing a 3-minute lesson on Duolingo - as I believe this will help me set achievable goals for the future as well as understand which areas I need to work on more than others. I'll also be using this blog to post one kind of learning content at a time (a langblr challenge, for e.g.) and have this post to keep track of what I've done till date as well as where I'm going. Thank you for reading so far!

日本語を一緒に毎日勉強しましょう!!ᕙ⁠(⁠ ⁠ ⁠•⁠ ⁠‿⁠ ⁠•⁠ ⁠ ⁠)⁠ᕗ

🎯 CURRENT FOCUS FOR FEBRUARY 2023:

I'll be working through and posting vocabulary & notes from the series Activate Your Japanese - a drama by NHK focusing on using Japanese to communicate in real life.

🗓️Daily Progress Tracking: I'll use the hashtag #mainichi logs to track my daily progress.

📭Weekly Report: Every Saturday, I'll post a report of what I did in Japanese that week in terms of the four skills - Reading, Listening, Writing & Speaking. I'll also dedicate Saturdays to studying for the JLPT, so my report will include that as well.

✅Completed: This area will contain all the langblr challenges I've completed so far.

✅COMPLETED

✍️Six Words A Day Challenge (Masterlist)

Last updated: 6th Feb, 2023