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I finished Read Real Japanese Essays, so now I’m moving on to the Fiction book in that series. These days I feel like the only thing that matters is getting through as much material as possible. I don’t stop to read the notes or listen to the recordings. Sometimes I don’t even stop to look up words I don’t know. I just get the basic idea of each sentence and keep reading.
When you study, you constantly have to figure out what rules to follow and what rules to break. Sure, it is better to read the notes. There might be something useful in there. But the notes are in a totally different part of the book, and flipping back and forth is a hassle, and interrupts the flow of your reading. If you force yourself to always read every note, then reading starts to feel like a chore, and you stop wanting to do it.
And of course when you stop wanting to read, you have a harder time getting motivated to do it. That road leads to missed study days, which leads to quitting altogether. So you end up doing things in this sort of half-assed way just to cut down on the tedium, but you are always kind of dissatisfied with the fact that you aren’t doing things “the right way.”
I think your idea about marking the cards is a good idea. Alternatively, you could suspend all your new cards. To get a list of your new cards, type “is:new” in the search bar in the deck browser. Then at the beginning of each study session, un-suspend the new cards that you actually want to add to reviews. They should be easy to find, if you indeed have a field you can sort by.
> the deck I’m using for RTK doesn’t match the order of the kanji in the RTK book I have
I assume the reason you are not using a proper RTK deck is that your kanji deck has some fields that RTK decks don’t have, such as readings, or example words in Japanese, or stroke diagrams, or something else.
> seems like basic task
If one of the fields in your deck is a some kind of “RTK index” which tells you where the card falls in the RTK sequence, you can export your deck as a CSV, sort it by the appropriate field, and then re-import.
If you don’t have such a field, then you can grab a deck that has the kanji in the order you want, export both decks, join your deck’s extra fields onto the data that has the kanji in the right order, and re-import.
I finished “In a Grove” in Breaking into Japanese Literature and the first 6 essays in Read Real Japanese Essays. So far I like the content of the essays better than I like the fiction, but I like the layout of BIJL better than RRJE. The notes section at the end of RRJE is interesting, but it is awkward to keep flipping back and forth.
These days my study routine is:
* do 50 listening comprehension / kana dictation reps in Anki
* watch 1 Japanese TV show
* practice writing 30 – 40 kanji
* read 1 page of RRJE
* read 1 page of BIJLI usually do most of my studying in the morning, and then I read BIJL right before bed. Everything you need to read each page is right there in front of you, so you don’t need a separate dictionary. Reading in bed is a good way to get in a little extra time with Japanese each day. Really, none of my activities amounts to much by itself, but taken all together I feel like I’m making progress.
I have cut way back on Anki time, since it was getting really boring. I am actually doing reps at a slower rate than reviews become due, so it will be a while before I spread the cards out enough so that I can start doing new cards again. In this situation, I find the “Review cards from smallest interval” setting to be useful. It isn’t a big deal if a card with a large interval doesn’t get reviewed exactly when it comes due.
Eijiro is a good resource for researching phrases that you think might be idiomatic.
Today I learned another use of 中. You can make a kind of superlative.
男の中の男 – man among men
基本中の基本 – most basic [thing]
Interestingly, in the first example 中 is read なか, whereas the second is read ちゅう.
> 質問のある方はどうぞ。
That looks like a smart.fm sentence. Note that the の particle can be used as a subject marker (like が) in subordinate clauses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_particles#no
Literally, it says “Question-having person, please.”
> ついたち
That is used for “the first day of the month.”
http://assets0.smart.fm/assets/legacy/JLL/audio/JS05789A.mp3
> いちにち
That is used for a 1-day duration.
http://assets2.smart.fm/assets/legacy/JLL/audio/Int/JS03430A.mp3
> times per day
I don’t know. If you wanted to say “hours per day,” you would use いちにち. There are examples which use the に particle, and examples which don’t.
http://assets0.smart.fm/assets/legacy/JLL/audio/Int/JS02451A.mp3
http://assets3.smart.fm/assets/legacy/JLL/audio/Int/JS00160A.mp3
If you wanted to say “times per year,” you would use ねんに and かい.
http://assets1.smart.fm/assets/legacy/JLL/audio/Int/JS00136A.mp3
Generalizing from there, the answer is probably that you could say いちにちに なんかい.
Google (first page of results for 一日何回) confirms it:
http://www.maggiesensei.com/2010/04/15/%E9%A0%BB%E5%BA%A6hindo-frequency/
The moral of the story is that there are no rules, there is only usage. So it is a good idea to develop some research skills to answer questions like this. The smart.fm audio links I posted are from the Core 6000 sentences. You can use that set as a sort of searchable database for simple usage. You can search by kana, kanji, or English. You will of course have to use your research skills to find the set, because the old smart.fm site doesn’t exist anymore (even though their old media servers are still running…).
Of course 6000 sentences isn’t enough to cover everything. So Google is also really helpful. You can try searching for Japanese phrases, to see if they are used (like I did to find the page from maggiesensei). You can also try searching for topics in English, such as “Japanese time counter.” That search will give you a useful Wikipedia page, and a page from Tae Kim’s guide, both of which also address your questions.
> You’re really flying through all these books
Reading is fun!
For me kanji are just shapes, with no meaning or sound in particular. So I just practice writing them on graph paper. I think if you want to learn meaning and pronunciation, the best thing to do is to study sentences.
I finished 樹のおつげ, which is the last children’s book I have. The lack of furigana didn’t turn out to be a problem after all. Next up is Read Real Japanese Essays. I also finished all the Soseki stories in Breaking into Japanese Literature, and now I’m reading the Akutagawa stories.
I’m still working with the Core 6000 sentences, but only for listening comprehension / kana dictation practice.
Today I learned another use of the の particle. The phrase “妻のおりん” means “wife [whose name is] Orin.”
> My only question about this is, what is “そいうえば”?
I was guessing that was supposed to be そういえば, which I understand to mean something like “so anyway…”
> Please enlighten me on question 3.
The text talks about a certain exchange student he likes. My reading of it is that she is returning home soon, and he wants to confess his love for her, but he is worried his Japanese isn’t good enough, and besides that he is afraid of rejection. He asks for advice about what to do.
So to answer the question, perhaps he intends to spend all his time trying to win her heart, and has no time to waste on us poor fools.
It sounds like you don’t know her very well.
“It was nice meeting you. Let’s try to stay in touch! Here is my email address.”
Not one word more.
You are welcome back any time. Check in over on the study thread some time and let us know how you are doing.
