Season ONE: Dazai Osamu, Daffodil

Day 12

May 2, 2025

Worked on the second question forている worksheet this evening. I was a somewhat lengthy passage for me to tackle (two or three whole sentences… ha!) with boat loads of kanji. If you’ve been following along, to date, I’ve been tackling unknown kanji by finger-writing the word in Midori, saving it to my favorites within the app, making a mental note of it, and moving onto the next word. With short sentences it’s worked fairly well.

Tonight, with this longer passage, I decided to write the passage out first without using the dictionary. I realized rather immediately that I wasn’t really getting anything out of it as I couldn’t connect my writing to any sound or meaning. It was a bit like trying to paint by numbers; pretty worthless it seemed… especially because I’m still weak on stroke order.

I mentioned it to Reiko and thought a good solution would be to have a recording of the sentence. She opted instead for sounding out the kanji I didn’t know, which I then wrote underneath the kanji as furigana. After more than a bit of erasing here and there, I was able to get it all down and run the exercise. Still, there are many things I have not internalized when it comes to writing even the simplest bit of hiragana. It’ll take time.

The good thing is, once again, my conjugation learning because of our verb conjugation course has paid off. I was able to answer the question correctly, and things were not particularly simple. Maplopo for the win. Ha! I also cannot underestimate the power of working with a private instructor. The work I’m doing would literally be impossible without the help of Reiko, and it is THE reason why we only accept committed self-paced learners who work with a tutor.

Running through this exercise reminded me of taking a hiragana writing class some six years ago or so at the Kobe YMCA. It was 50 minutes long I think, and an embarrassingly slow bit of work. That much has not changed. Still, it was well worth the effort (tonight’s lesson), and I’m learning.

On to tomorrow. Late here, and the little one is crying…

D

P.S. Andy, is midway through Week TWO, and has comitted himself to nailing each week as it should be completed. So far, he’s killing it. I should also say that he is also nailing the heck out of all the quizzes and such. As I’ve said previously, we’re fortunate to work with him, and you would be too if you need a Japanese tutor in London to help you with your learning! Get him before he’s impossibly expensive –> Andy Foord.

Time spent: @ 1 hour
Completed Anki deck: No. Revamping my approach to this beginning on Sunday.
Start time: 10:39pm (originally started at 9:55pm, but work came up and had to sidestep for a bit!)
End time: 11:24pm