I have a thing for languages. All of them. But French, well, never appealed to me much.
That has all changed with the single, simple, perhaps fad-ish song, Même Pas Fatigué. It’s French mixed with Arabic in rap form, and it is the epitome of awesomeness.
Songs have a way of affecting my mood, and I now officially say I can enjoy French as much as any other language. The more I look into it, the more charming it is.
Perhaps it now goes onto that ever-growing list of languages I’d love to get to.
..very, very slowly.
Just starting to take this a bit more seriously now, since I’m realizing it’s about the only thing I have left to hold on to and be proud of.
I’m just now buckling down and eating the Read the Kanji JLPT 2 word list and I’m failing everything miserably. But that’s ok, I’ll make it if I keep going.
I still have some things left to do in An Integrated Approach, namely finish reading through all the chapters and catch up in the workbook. I’ve read through chapter 10~11 or so of the book but haven’t even done chapter 3 of the workbook! :O
If I could nail the grammar a lot better and I had someone who could check the workbook I’d be golden. But as it is, I just do the workbook the best I can. I flipped through some of the older ones and ended up saying to myself, probably more than once, “That’s a stupid mistake..how’d I do that?”. I hope that’s a sign of progress.
I’m trying to commit to a Japanese RTK Anki deck, but I’m finding it hard. To compensate, I’ve decided to try timeboxing them (along with Read the Kanji). It makes reviewing go much smoother.
Viva la fluency!
*breaks into that song from Matilda*
Yes yes I did already go through RTK1. Almost twice. But I still don’t see a lot of benefit from it.
An Anki deck is available with Japanese keywords. Problem is, I don’t know a lot of those words, or have the ability to understand their definitions.
So, what I’ve started doing is looking up the kanji/example word, chiefly on Yahoo! JP Dic, and using either the E-J dictionary to have an example sentence or using the J-J dictionary if I can find a definition I’m reasonably sure I understand.
Still, I’m only 200 or so cards in. Should I keep going with it?
I’ve barely used any flashcards for my Japanese learning. I could probably make much better progress if I did, but they’re, honestly, just so boring. Even mining my own stuff is a bit painful. So, I just don’t do it.
I’m not making fast progress but I think I’m doing rather good for myself 
Japanese numbers are simple, right? At least until you get into that whole “group by fours instead of threes” problem. But I digress.
I noticed this the other day on Google Translate:
..What?
Actually, playing with it a bit more, the numbers are fine up ’til 十. If you try 十一, you end up with 10 again, and that’s why 十二 shows up as 20, 十三 as 30, etc.
十一 is being interpreted as “one ten” instead of “ten + one” (hence it showing up as 10 instead of 11), 十二 as “ten two” instead of “two ten”, etc.
Interestingly, 九十九 is interpreted correctly as 99, but 九十一 is shown as 19, 九十二 as 29, etc. What really kicks the bucket is the only reason this is right is because it’s off-counting by tens, and since 九十八 is interpreted as 89, the next number is 10 more, which makes it 99, which makes it right by way of being wrong.
It just occurred to me: The numbers are being parsed backwards.
At least there’s an alternate dictionary definition. I’ve sent a “better translation report” for a couple of them, but they’ve not been changed yet.
Woo! Took me long enough.
Like I’ve mentioned before, I started completely over at around frame 1730 or so because I started getting lazy and overwhelmed.
Heck, I can’t really say I’m finished, even now, because I still have almost 200 cards to add stories for and re-add to the review stack (I had a weird study method ok?!? 
)
But, I have seen 2,042 kanji. Remembering them is an order of magnitude different though. I still suck at story-making.
I am still alive, and still studying, as dedicated as ever.
I have almost finished RTK1. I’m pretty much at the point where I stopped last time, but things are going much smoother now. At the current rate of (usually) 20 a day, if my math is right, I’ll be done in about 11 days.
As for the actual language part, my Intermediate Japanese book is going largely unused. I still go through it, but my humble opinion is that it wasn’t worth $40. I have the workbook, but I’m not very motivated to do the exercises since the book explanations are so short and I don’t have a definitive answer key I can refer to.
My newfound method for learning is just reading. Read Real Japanese Essays was by far probably the best choice in books I could’ve made. The fiction editon of the book would’ve been a good idea to get, considering I’ve read through this one almost 3 times now. Still great reading, but kind of ho-hum when you get used to it.
Except for a few sticky grammar points, I can declare myself essentially between 3級 and 2級 of the JLPT. I still don’t know a lot of the basics though. Hell if I could explain causatives, passives, or even how to conjugate verbs. I just know that I can understand.
I still have loads of trouble, especially with long sentences.
Though, one really cool thing is that when going through the textbook, I find that I already know a lot of what they explain (especially vocabulary). There’s still a lot for me to learn though.
Now if I could just import a few books..
I was finally able to jump the gun and buy a couple of the books that I’ve mentioned here before.
I got Read Real Japanese Essays and the titular An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese (sample available at the bottom of this page), as well as a schweet magazine to keep up motivation.
I’ve reached chapter 5 in Integrated Approach, and about the 6th essay in Read Real Japanese. I’m currently waiting on the textbook’s accompanying workbook to arrive.
I have noticed an increase in my abilities, which I admit made me ecstatic.
The other day I was randomly browsing JLPT papers and clicked on a 2級 from..well, I’m not sure. I went to do something else and when I came back, I forgot it was ２級. I hit a random vocab question, and could answer it. I did another, and another, and I had to hold myself up: “Wait wait wait, this is a @#$*(&ing 2級 test!” Though, it wasn’t the most recent one so it was probably easier than they are now. Still made me feel all awesome inside though.
Fun experience, actually. I knew the reading for a couple without ever formally studying them.
Now, I’m not sure how to use the textbook. So far, I’ve just been reading, listening, and doing the 聞き取り練習 without paying particular attention to grammar points or vocab. I do look at them when I don’t understand the text, but honestly I’m just too lazy to study.
Hence, the workbook. I debated getting it, because I don’t like the idea of grammar drills, but it’s my only shot at decent aquisition of the topics it covers.
Chapter 3 was fun. As in “fun”. It was the first 読み物 that I had a lot of trouble with, meaning I’m learning something new, yay! The last couple chapters have been brutal as far as understanding thoroughly goes, but a few thousand more rereads and relistens ought to make it click.
I’m not disappointed with the book, I just wish it had more to read.
After almost a solid year of reviewing every day and building up, I just can’t take it anymore.
I got to almost 1800, but I was doing so poorly that I couldn’t say that I knew half of that. So, here we go again. My biggest problem was that I was going too fast and just did not have the brains to create stories for all the characters. I figure if I go back through and actually LEARN the primitives this time (as opposed to glancing then working them in a story) then I’ll have a lot of an easier time of it. Another mistake was spending so much time on it.. it took me like 11 months of steady review to get to 1800 (though my earliest story dates to Jan. 3 ‘08 ) and it would’ve been well over a year before I hit 2042.
I promised myself that I would finish without starting over, but maybe this is for the better.
Since I have the book now, I might be able to manage everything a lot more cohesively (and faster! 
)
Well, not in the hackish kind of way.
Remember that e-mail I sent to notify them of the broken audio and kanji pages? I have a hunch that tipped them off to something and now the site doesn’t work.
And no, I didn’t save the texts. I did download them once but my stupid side said “There’s no way it will go offline”, not to mention it was a beast trying to get them organized so they wouldn’t overwrite each other.
I hearby declare to the author and every user of this resource, I’m sorry, but for the learner’s sake please bring it back. I ask you, are you really so greedy that you would remove a resource that’s been online for years just because someone actually used it and wanted to help you improve it?
Another failure in the freedom of information. Either that, or I can be hopeful that they’re just updating it. In that case, ignore the previous commentary
Well, once again thanks to the fine folks over at kanji.koohii, I was able to finally find something good to read that pretty much suits my level perfectly, if not a bit above.
It’s called すらすら, published by Yale University Press and available on Amazon (albeit without audio), but the best part is, it’s available online….for free.
The site is here, and it’s a superb reader. Why? It isn’t dry. It’s stuff I actually crave to read. They don’t dumb it down and cover subjects that aren’t pertinent or interest-sparking. Within its 12 lessons are essays about religion, the Japanese language, and cooking, along with two classic children’s stories, among others. This is stuff I’ve been dying to find a way to read.
The grammar is presented in nice little chunks with solid examples, with plenty of exercises, although since the audio links for the answers are dead some of them are pretty much impossible to do (unless you don’t want to check yourself :O)
Someone said it was about the same level as An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, and while it’s a bit light on the kanji and vocabulary, it nails the grammar.
There are a few problems I’ve noted with it though. As I said, the audio links are dead, and the kanji pages are “403 Forbidden” errors (although I think I did find them elsewhere). Also, it looks like it’s been OCR’d because sometimes there’s a space missing or the text gets jumbled.
It dates back to circa 2000, so the death of the links and pages is no surprise. Mayhap I should save the remaining pages just in case it does go offline.
I emailed the author, but to be honest I’m not expecting a reply. It would be a shame to lose such a resource.
Lang-8