I finally added all the N3 kanji and vocabulary about a week ago.  So I’ve decided to branch out from anki exclusivity and start dating other apps.

I spent last week keeping up with anki reviews and reading actual Japanese.  Each day, I read a story from Japanese graded readers and an NHKeasy article(on reddit because there’s no furigana and people have translated the articles, so I can check my understanding).  I’m reading NHKeasy with a cool app called wakaru which has a built in dictionary so I can click on words  that I don’t know and get definitions.  I can also add the unknown words to a study list and export to anki.  I plan to keep up with anki reviews and read at least one new article per weekday while adding unknown words as I go.

This is finally where I’ve wanted to be since I started this odyssey – where I can understand enough Japanese in order to directly read things other than textbooks.   In other words, from now on I will be learning japanese by using Japanese.

For the next few months, I think I’ll stick with 1+ NHKeasy article per weekday or at least until it gets too easy.  I might mix other things in to keep it interesting, but I’m hoping to leverage narrow reading to the point where there is something I can do in Japanese that comes relatively easy. Already read one article 2 days ago that seemed to go pretty smoothly and it was a joy to actually just read without stumbling over difficult words and grammar.  I’ll probably continue with NHKeasy until every article goes as smooth as that.

Probably sometime towards the end of the year, I will switch to some other materials which I’ll list here just so I don’t forget:

• Subs2srs for shows I’ve seen before (sikou no rikon, totoro, ect..)
• Finish RTK 1 (finally!)
• Read manga (Doraemon, Yotsubato!, etc…)
• Memorize song lyrics
• RTK 2 (or at least memorize perfect groups)
• Kanzen Master and/or So-Matome books
• Un-suspend partially learned leeches
• Add vocabulary which I already know the kanji for(kanji word association tool)
• Monolingual vocabulary cards

I’m also going to Japan for the holidays, so I’d like to learn some things that will come in handy while I’m there.  Stuff like navigating Japan’s trains in Japanese, place names, and the Japanese names of foods I’d like to order at the restaurant.  There are two events that happened when I was in Japan before and I’d like to avoid things like this from now on.  The first event is the first time I tried navigating the trains.  I got on the correct train going in the right direction, but one stop before the station I wanted, everyone got off the train and I was sitting there alone for a few minutes wondering what was going on.  Next thing I know, the train starts heading back to Shinjuku.  What I should have known was how to figure out that the train I was on only went as far as Nakano.  The other embarrassing event was when I went to a neighborhood ramen shop by myself and ordered a ramen. I’d studied what I wanted to order in advance, but didn’t anticipate everything because the lady who didn’t speak a word of english kept asking me if I wanted something that I didn’t understand.  Turns out she was asking if I wanted fresh garlic, but she had to bring it out the my table for me to understand.  So, at the very least, I’ll be prepared to solve those two problems by December.