Third Week

Ezekiel 25:17 - The path of the righteous man ...

Another week of ups and downs, whilst still pushing forward with my Japanese input. 

I listened to one of Olly Richards' podcasts this week. He raised a point about focusing on one thing at a time. I see where he's coming from and seem to remember that on the very rare occasion where I've been concentrating on one aspect of learning Japanese, I've seen that improve in leaps and bounds. However, I think what I've arrived at is concentrating on one thing at a time, but having different times of day to be focusing on different skills.

My day begins with kanji writing practice, then wanikani for learning readings. Last week I had just managed to get my apprentice stack down to below 200. So this weeks target was to get the apprentice stack down to about 150. Mission kind of accomplished ... although, shortly after dipping below 150, the stack went up to around 160 today! But overall, everything is heading in the right direction.

Even if just for a short time, I got the stack below 150.

Then comes listening. I'm still making progress through the "Conversations" series and I'm still finding roughly ten new words or phrases per 3 to 4 minute conversation. This seems fairly ideal for me at the moment, but I had already got as far as conversation number ten when I tried to make listening a habit before. I came unstuck when I visited the UK for Christmas. Of course, it was lovely to see family and friends, but disrupting my routine clobbered my consistency and really, the end result was knocking me back about five months all things considered.

For passive listening, this week I watched another Japanese movie. Didn't understand a hell of a lot; usually a couple of words per sentence, yet overall comprehension was pretty poor. But that wasn't really the point; the main purpose is just to expose myself to the sounds of Japanese and get myself used to listening for long periods of time without turning off out of frustration. I also found a second-hand DVD stall while I was out and about. I bought "Castaway" with Tom Hanks; a movie I love and thought it would be enjoyable to watch in Japanese. It kind of wasn't ... lots of grunting and groaning in Japanese ... I thought I'd at least be able to understand his conversations with Wilson, but I can't say I did. 

One thing Olly talked about on his latest podcast was "not learning grammar you don't need". I thought about what he was saying and concluded that, yes, now that I'm listening to Japanese everyday, I'm becoming more and more convinced this is really the only way I'll be able to get from "sucky foreigner Japanese" to "natural Japanese".  However, I can't say that learning grammar beforehand was a waste of time; as even though I listen to incomprehensible Japanese, I'm hearing grammatical structures that I recognize all the time. When I recognize a word here or there AND comprehend the grammar structure; I sometimes grasp the gist of it ... and that I consider a win. 

However, I have been aware that my focus isn't as good as I'd like it to be. So tonight I bought a book on my kindle. "The Mind Illuminated - A Complete Meditation Guide".  For the last couple of weeks, I've noticed how meditation features heavily in the AJATT approach. I'd of course brushed this off as something to be skeptical about - having never been able to do it myself, but knowing I'm very good at maintaining daily habits these days, I listened to an AJATT video on the benefits of meditation. Really, both Olly Richards and Matt from Matt Vs. Japan talk about the benefits of being focused. Olly talked about studying at your desk, since you can benefit from having an environment where you know you're going to be studying rather than letting yourself get distracted by so many other things. Matt talked on a lot deeper level about the benefits of meditation and as much as I wanted to argue this wasn't for me ... I felt that if I could at least get over the first hurdle, I'd be in a much better place for achieving my goals in life. What really sold me was hearing how much faster you make progress when you can actually quiet the distractions from your life and really focus on what you're doing. I know that when I've been listening, from time to time I have been able to focus for short times on the audio ... and its then that I really feel I'm getting somewhere ... so I bought the book. I'll start reading it later tonight and try to introduce meditation into my routine in the not too distant future.

Anyway, I'd better head off as I've got a little bit of listening to do and then want to start reading this book.