#immersion overview

[meimae]

30/09/21

I'm early once again! Brought to you by my desperate need to continue my reading streak, here's a look at my September Immersion Overview!

This was an interesting month - I limited myself fully to just dramas (and a bit of Youtube) as listening and VNs as reading immersion and it has been pretty effective as I managed to immerse another 100 hours or so despite being busy. I remember dabbling in so many different media in April, and I honestly can't imagine how I managed to keep up with all those. Hopefully I can continue at this pace since this has been quite a fun month of immersion overall.

The Anki side of things have been quite successful as well since I was able to add so many new cards that I have now a total of 10,077 words in my mining deck only a few days after I hit 1.5 years of immersion. I wasn't too far behind after all!

DRAMAS

43.47 hours of dramas and Youtube

Code Blue 2 + 3 + Movie

Binged these at the beginning of the month. There was not one bad episode in this whole series, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to test their listening ability. It's extremely fast paced and there's never a dull moment.

Also, what a tease, my ship never sailed despite there being so many allusions to the possibility of there being more. (´；ω；｀)

ごちそうさん

I think I watched til Week 2 of this before stopping in exchange for reading instead. Might pick it up again later. Really liked the kid version of the protag in the beginning, but there was so little of her.

社内マリッジハニー

Wanted something really easy to listen to and this was a good choice for that. This is one of those dramas that tries very hard to have a dramatic plot, but fails since its so short there's barely any time to do anything about it. Still, if you just want some really short and simple SOL drama that's pure fluff, then this is decent enough.

彼女はキレイだった

Was waiting the entire month for this to finish airing so I could binge it. This was fun to watch, and had a pretty fast paced story til the end. Could have stopped at episode 7 and not gone the stereotypical hospital scene route I would've been satisfied. This overused story trope of the girl being "ugly" and "changing" should really die though. Anyway, I don't think I've ever watched the original Kdrama, but I just might have to eventually.

VISUAL NOVELS

Reading has been so much fun lately thanks to visual novels. I managed to read another 67.83 hours this month, and I feel like I've gotten into the groove of reading again. I've been better at picking reading over listening for once and I'm really hopeful about keeping up with it in the months to come.

Continuing my streak from last month, I not only read a total of 1.15 million characters this month, but hit a few reading milestones such as reading for 7 hours and reading 100k characters in a day a few times. Pretty exciting to actually hit some of my reading goals, some of which at some point felt impossible.

A-are otoges the key? ( ﾟдﾟ)

剣が君

I can't stop thinking about this, I genuinely love it so much. I rated it a 9 in my review, but I keep thinking its worth a 10 since then.

Don't mind me, I'm holding myself back from giving an otoge a 10 when I really shouldn't be. I just need to read more VNs to be able to justify it. Like I don't want to be that person who hasn't read Fate or Higurashi or Clannad yet and rating stuff a 10 already. Lmao.

Read my review here!

あやかしごはん

Another otoge?!

This was my filler VN for the month - something easy to read while I was busy, so I can keep up with my daily character reading goal while spending less amount of time with it. This one feels really ridiculous, because my stats for this one is just as crazy as it was in 剣が君, and hopefully I'll be able to show you next month.

Gotta love the good and easy SoL VNs where dictionary lookups are minimal.

-☆-

I'll be reading more next month - yet another otoge won the vote at TMW VN Club! Love that the otoge fans have the opportunity to actually vote for and win the polls in the club. Also pretty happy that the guys who did venture into reading 剣が君 have been seemingly as floored as the rest of us. Pleased that I found a really good, non-toxic Japanese language learning community online. ( ´∀｀)

That's it for this month! Thanks for reading, and updates in the future as always.

[meimae]

I'm a few days late but its finally time for my February Immersion Overview!

In a strange way, I feel as if I did significantly less immersion this past month. That doesn't seem right though because all I did was I switch up my immersion to more reading and less listening, and ultimately that can quickly bump up language gains since I try to intensively read all the time (look up every new word and every unknown grammar point, and try to do those lookups monolingually if I can).

In any case, doing either or will still improve some aspect of my language skill, so I'm not too fussed about the numbers too much, at least I don't think so.

Condensed Audio

Here's what I listened to repeatedly in condensed form:

L-R: ビースターズ, 3月のライオン, ハウルの動く城, なつぞら, 花より男子,ちはやふる, けいおん, 借りぐらしのアリエッテ, コクリコ坂から, & 千と千尋の神隠し

Relied on a lot of condensed audio for my listening immersion. I have been lagging behind on my reading so I wanted to take a break from watching shows. Crazy how a whole season of anime that's over five hours can be compressed into only two hours, cutting out all the unnecessary background music and sound effects, and honing in on the conversations turning 25 minute long episodes to nine minutes of pure listening comprehension.

Let's Plays

Watched several hours of let’s plays from my now favorite Japanese Let’s Play channel. I don’t know how, but TPさん just plays all the games I’m interested in, and since his Let’s Plays last several hundred episodes sometimes, I never run out of immersion content from his channel. I’ve gotten used to his voice now, too, and because his pacing is easy to follow, I can even listen to him talk at 1.5 speed without issue.

I read a discussion some time ago debating the usefulness of Let's Plays (especially involving multiplayer modes in game) as immersion material. A lot of people argued that conversations can get extremely casual and sometimes all over the place that it can be really difficult to follow especially without subtitles. The type of game as well can greatly effect the commentary during a recording.

I found that the most comprehensible games are story based - ones that require the player to read a significant amount of text out loud for their audience- and that even if they start casually commentating on the events in game, there is still plenty of pre-set comprehensible input available.

Also, I find that you almost never encounter everyday nouns (vegetables, fruits, tools, etc) in a regular drama or anime unless it specifically talks about those topics. I always thought it silly to know oddly specific words like 美人局 (thanks 君の名は), but not the word for onion (玉葱, thanks Stardew Valley!).

So, long story short, yes, I am absolutely using this as an excuse to watch and play the 1.5 update for Stardew Valley. Hooray for game localizations!

Manga

Read both 狼少年は今日も嘘を重ねる (5.66 hours) and ひるなかの流星 (11.13 hours) to completion.

狼少年 was part of a reading challenge in a Manga club I joined. Short and simple story, and very accessible reading material for beginners.

ひるなかの流星, however, was something I read in uni and enjoyed. If this gets a anime adaptation I'm going to be all for it because 獅子尾先生 animated is :heart eyes:. He's super bad for すすめ though, don't get me wrong.

Visual Novel

Finished reading ATRI - My Dear Moments - (41.48 hours). Check out my full thoughts about it on this post. 

Future Immersion Plans

I’ll probably continue reading more going forward. It just solidifies the vocabulary I know more than Anki sometimes, and it’s also highly motivating to start ticking off manga/books/visual novels from my to read list. Reading is also where I really notice my language gains, since I notice that I can read more and faster for longer periods of time the more I dedicate time to it. 

That’s pretty much it for February! 

I’m about to hit my first year immersion mark this March, and I would like to share my reflections on the past year in my next post. Stick around for that!

Also, hello to all the new people following/liking my posts! 

[meimae]

I definitely took my time with this as I had to collect my thoughts a little, but it’s finally time for my March 2021 Immersion Overview!

Something I never included in my language learning tracking sheet before was my daily/monthly hours spent for reading and listening. It was always a cumulative total for each, one for my short term daily goal that I fill in and wipe away the next day, and one for my yearly long term goal that slowly ticks down as I input my numbers throughout the year.

Tracking language learning can be both very motivating and stressful so I didn't want to permanently track my daily inputs (a.k.a. putting a date on everything and knowing exactly when I goofed around and didn't take in enough input for the day). I always felt that that will only make me look at the days where I did not hit my daily goal, and feel bad about it, which can inevitably cause myself to burnout.

Anyway, the point of this whole intro is, I think I'll at least try to start tracking my monthlies just to see if that's going to be motivating. It's a new year of immersion learning for me, so it's time to mix it up a little, and I am already seeing some interesting results, because oh boy, did I read last March therefore neglecting my listening rip.

READING: 95.1 hours

MANGA

ザ ·フェブル was part of manga club last month. It was such a surprisingly interesting read, and something I wouldn't have looked into if it weren't for the club. The humor and the cool art style kept me going for sure. Also, ようこさん is best girl.

ちはやふる

You guys have no idea how long I've waited to read ちはやふる Vol. 46, and I'm so happy to get my hands on it now finally.

Every discussion board I've been to for this manga/anime is just slathered with questions about who's going to end up with who, and I get it and I want to know, too. 幼馴染 romances are my favorite tv trope, especially when there are layers in the competitiveness of it all, but my goodness, please let us not forget how good the friendships are written in this manga I'm begging.

Here's a spoiler panel from the manga and my heart is weeping:

君に届け

Started reading this again from the start. I used to read fan translations of this and it took years to even get close to the ending, and before I ever did finish it, I had already started immersion learning so there's no point in going back to the English version. I forgot how messy the panels are my goodness. This would be an otherwise easy read if not for that.

VISUAL NOVEL

Island, man. It's still going strong. This is where the bulk of my reading immersion came from in the past month and I seriously don't regret diving into visual novels because of this.

I am so excited to finish just so I can show you guys the gains, the gains!

LISTENING: 19.68 hours

ANIME

I've felt kind of burnt out from anime, to be honest. Not that there's nothing good to watch, but in fact, there's plenty that I want to check out that I'm saving until such time when I can comprehend verbal input without thinking about it too much.

ラブライブ! School Idol Project was a club recommendation. I heard about it before, but was unsure because of the whole idol aspect (sounds familiar? あまちゃん anyone?) It was obviously very 萌 and suprisingly wholesome. I might watch the second season in April. I still prefer K-On! levels of 萌 tho.

DRAMA & MOVIES

Not gonna lie, I had a bit of a hangover from reading ザ ·フェブル and wanted more, so I was pretty stoked to discover that it had a live adaptation. As far as live actions go, it wasn't too bad and stayed true to the original as much as it could. The cast was good too. I do wonder if it would've worked better as a series though, because it ends in such a underwhelming manner, and I'm not sure if the second movie is still in the works.

Of course, after seeing 山本美月 cast in The Fable, I was reminded of パーフェクトワールド, something I saw very early on in my immersion journey, so I decided on an unsubbed rewatch. Still as heartwarming as ever. Was also reminded about how much I disliked the promotional poster which is basically an ending spoiler. I wish I can find the manga for this, because after looking at the volume covers, I'm positive it goes beyond what was shown in the drama.

I also missed 桐谷美玲's acting so decided to check out リベンジ Girl instead of rewatching 好きな人がいること for the nth time and was not disappointed because she portrayed a very different character personality from what I'm used to seeing from her. Nothing too plot heavy.

That's it for March! Really impressed with how much I managed to read which was my #1 goal entering my second year of immersion. Hopefully I can find a balance between reading and listening though, because I immediately noticed a drop in my listening comprehension (being unable to hear and understand some phrases that I should be able to parse by now).

☆

I joined my club's new immersion logs this April. Nothing too competitive so far, just a monthly leaderboard that is in its test run. I find it very motivating to try to immerse as much as the people who are somewhere within the N1+ comprehension range, so I hope they keep it. I'm also considering joining other reading challenges, but I'm on the fence with those, because there are a lot of people who are crazy good already and read very fast, and I don't want to start anything that could prove demotivating in the long run.

Also, hello to the influx of new followers the past couple of weeks! Hope you guys enjoy my posts and stick around. :)

I'll leave this post here and hope to catch you all again next time!