Season ONE: Dazai Osamu, Daffodil

Day 27

May 17, 2025

Dove into the next grammar module this evening. Given it’s still got me in paragraph two, it’s remains a refresher of the kanji and vocabulary I’ve been working on without keeping me literally stuck staring at two sentences, or working out rows of kanji by hand. This 9th module was about ～ていたら～た.  Shifting gears with the intent of avoiding too much focus on understanding every bit of the vocabulary to get through the sentences in the workbook lesson was difficult and frustrating; yet, where I need to be as a learner. I’m reminded of my former English students here in Japan who faced the same dilemma, and who despite my continual advice, were constantly slowing down to (as it’s often explained here in Japan) “get everything right.” It’s the sort of labeling of behavior we hear constantly here in Japan, and it’s about as accurate as the statement that Japanese people are “shy.”

Trying to understand that which is completely foreign to you, is natural, and in wishing to understand, you naturally want to slow down to get your bearings. If you’re a runner and know about Phil Maffetone’s approach, you know this makes sense unless the workload is as massive as learning a language. Regardless, I’ve followed the advice I was given and pushed through with my skimming.

The result? It only got me so far. As in, I could recognize particles. That’s about it. Of course, in a sense, this is precisely what Reiko and Andy want me to get stuck on. If you check out my notes, you’ll see my first attempt to keep track of the words I didn’t know was to write them down by hand. Well, that’s slow. It’s also messy, as I’m writing without the benefit of checking the stroke order first. Too slow. So, I resorted to Midori and finger-wrote just enough of the kanji I needed to give me a feel for the sentence. Fast. Very ugly.

My task in the practice sheet was to match sentence parts… the first part with it’s latter part. I had three sentences (1, 2, and 3) in my notes, and five potential answers (a, b, c, d, e, and f). You can see my skimming at work… I only wrote down a hodge-podge of nouns and verbs. And yet, that was enough; I was able to get all the answers correct. That felt good (and bad) because I’m left with not knowing precisely what the sentences say. (Am I really learning, I’m asking… the armchair quarterback would label me a “perfectionist.”) I’ll ask Reiko how I should handle not being able to understand the sentences in full tonight.

In the end, I understood the structure I was tasked with understanding, and this was my main goal if you remember my tasks from yesterday. I also made a number of “bookmarks” within Midori that I’ll turn into flashcards, noticed bunches of things I’ve learned due to Maplopo’s Verb Pro, and I completed the lesson so I can quickly move onto the next tomorrow.

On this night, if I were still teaching a classroom of college aged learners in English in Japan, and they all managed to figure out the answers to these sort of questions, I’d be over the moon. Then, the following day, I’d review at a slightly deeper level to give them more to the puzzle they so adroitly solved thus far.

So, all good. Gonna shift to the Anki deck now. Earlier today, I bumped myself up from 5 to 10 cards a day. We’ll see how we fare!

Cheers,
D

P.S. Did you catch my struggle with Yokohama in my Midori word hunting? “Fun,” eh?

Time spent: @ 1 hour
Completed Anki deck: Yep.
Start time: 8:28pm
End time: 9:17pm
Disturbance-meter: Very High… little one not wanting to sleep AT ALL, and computer that was deleting my work without my approval. NOT fun.