Weeks Four and Five

I'm still managing to maintain a regular routine with kanji study and listening to Japanese. The Wanikani stats might appear to be heading in the wrong direction, but the reality is somewhat different. 

The Ups and Downs of Wanikani.

The last time I posted to this blog, my Apprentice level was around 150, but my Guru level was around 770. Thus, my Guru level has decreased by 100, while my Apprentice level has gone up a little. In actual fact, there was a point a couple of days ago where my apprentice level was back up to about 250 - thus, I see the spread of my Wanikani stats telling me that I'll soon be in a pretty healthy state and be able to begin making progress again.

Writing practice hasn't been going so well. I've just started taking the practice tests for Kanji Kentei level 8 and my reading skills aren't so bad, but reproducing kanji from memory ... that's where I'm pretty damn terrible. It was pretty much the same back in January when I started working on level 9. I managed to pass that, but this time I only have two weeks before the test instead of six weeks. So, I've pretty much resigned to thinking that it's just going to be a practice attempt in the mid-June sitting and then I'll retake level 8 in November ... and really nail it.

Listening
Not too bad at all; I'm currently listening to Conversation 13 out of 20. It's hard to tell how much my listening has improved, but I can say that I'm hearing the conversation very clearly and don't seem to be wishing they'd slow down while I try and recall words. I'm still listening to other sources of Japanese with mixed results, but I've stayed away from the JLPT N3 materials for the time being ... I'll get back into the listening comprehension after the kanji kentei test / finishing Olly Richards' Conversations series. 


Meditation
I've read the first couple of chapters in the book about meditation. I've even started using breathing exercises when I do shodou (calligraphy) practice. I can't say I've really utilized the power of meditation to focus ... but I can at least say I've been able to focus a little better than before ... so watch this space.

HelloTalk and Proverbs
Something I've added to my toolkit is using HelloTalk. Previously, I hadn't been using it, as I tended to save up all my questions for my weekly meetup with my language partner. However, I thought I'd dabble with it a couple of weeks ago, as I'd started learning "kotowaza" (proverbs) and wanted to throw them into conversations. For example:

猿も木から落ちる。
Even monkey's fall from trees. (Even experts make mistakes).

Really useful getting instant feedback from native speakers. Also, I've had a few good conversations where I've made mistakes and instantly seen where those mistakes lie.

Additionally, I'm getting a lot more practice with grammatical structures. Most recently, expressing "The more _____, the more ____." For example:

勉強すればするほど、上手になる。
The more I study, the better I become.

and thus, try out other structures like:
食べれば食べるほど、肥満になる。
The more I eat, the more obese I become.

I know that I'm still trying to splurge out Japanese through an English processor ... and that's not good ... but in the absence of being at the point where my listening is providing me with an abundance of natural Japanese, getting patterns like this totally nailed, at least gives me the confidence that I'm able to instantly understand the grammar when I encounter it. Maybe that's not perfect for speaking Japanese well ... but it has value for understanding the Japanese in JLPT N3 tests.

Anyway, I will get back to some listening.