Language Journal: July 18th 2020

Just got my most recent shipment of Japanese items in, including 天気の子 (I refuse to call it by its English title, because it is silly to me). I also grabbed two more volumes of 銀の匙 and the second LN in the 盾の勇者の成り上がり.

Since I've run out of new Anki cards and have just been watching the daily amounts slowly decline I haven't had as much chance to test my development. Also, Anime which I can watch with my wife has been sparse the past few seasons which hasn't helped.

So, this was a great chance to test myself. This is the Japanese release of 天気の子. It does have English subtitles (though what I saw briefly leads me to believe they are amusingly bad). But, I'm much more interested in the Japanese subs and listening to it devoid of any subs. And, my first pass through wasn't bad at all. I would say my comprehension was close to 80-90%. And, perhaps more importantly, that was without pausing or slowing or anything like that.

I also read a few pages of Silver Spoon and was pleasantly surprised with how that went. I'm still somewhat dreading Shield Hero though. The first LN took months to get through, and it wasn't until the final chapters that I could read more than a few pages without extreme mental exhaustion. It is combo hit; somewhat esoteric fantasy terms mixed with language aimed at a slightly old audience.

Mastering reading something like Shield Hero isn't going to add much to my general comprehension skill. But, it is something I expect a native speaker would have very little problem with. And, as with anything it is a good mechanism to reinforce the most common words and grammars. After all, as a LN, it has far more text than multiple volumes of a manga or even a whole movie.

I think the hardest part is that I know I've let myself slack a bit. I'm still doing it every day. But according to my stats, I spent just 11 minutes on my Anki deck today. That is part good and part bad. The good is that I still have over 100 cards a day. Historically, 200 would take me 30-40 minutes. I only regularly scored under 30 minutes when the load dropped under 200/day. And that means I am getting faster and more accurate. But, it also means less time guaranteed per day and less volume.

In that way, I was kind of glad when CDJapan let me know my points were expiring which gave me a push to get some more material. I'm hoping they open up SAL back to Canada again though. DHL seemed like the cheaper option at $22USD compared to some others.

But, then there is the conversion which is terrible lately, and I got charged import fees, which didn't happen for some reason last time with SAL. Basically, shipping ended up costing half. So, I'll either need to make bigger purchases in the future, or hope for more affordable options.

Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying that while I feel I've been falling behind, keeping up on the little things does still seem to be pushing me slowly forward.