Season ONE: Dazai Osamu, Daffodil

Day 24

May 14, 2025

Crazy busy day today planning for a very special Guests of Mapopo visit from Planners International Chairman, Jun Maeda which (among many other things) required keeping the little one up for all but one hour to ensure she was a sleep during the live call. Success!

Maeda-san was, of course, incredible, and we are beyond fortunate to have a man of such esteem and character join our very small group of learners. Our Guests of Maplopo series is one of those special Maplopo perks available only to those in our private cohorts, and we’re all very lucky to be a part of each and every one of them; to have an hour or so with so many special guests.

But the day does not, and did not, end there.
There is Japanese language learning to do.

And, I am, of course, half-dead.

So, I decided to tackle the vocabulary quiz for this second paragraph of Dazai’s 水仙. I took the quiz three times: 67%, 83%, 100%. What did I learn, and reinforce? Much!

1. Skimming remains an underestimated, and critical skill for test taking. The quizzes we run in Thinkific are built to test kanji knowledge of the included vocabulary. An advanced-beginner learner such as myself will have much difficulty with such a test without having yet memorized everything, but there are workarounds that help build confidence and aid in recognition. Skimming, being one of them. Skimming the kanji characters helps you look for visual cues you DO recognize, so just like with English… skim!

2. Guessing is important. Guess right, and you have reinforcement. Guess wrong, and you know you have to look elsewhere. That’s also a form of reinforcement. All good data!

3. Because I have studied my raaaaadicaaaallllls (Andy!) my guesses were GOOD guesses. See a sword? See a meeting place… probably, this… probably that.

4. Because I studied my vocabulary a lot yesterday, I absolutely recognized things today… first letters, last letters, 小さいつ, sounds attached to meaning…, etc.

I was pleasantly pleased with my first score. Quite pleased with my second. Proud with my final.

Most of our students re-take the assessments, so this tells me I am right on track. A guy I know, though, hardly re-takes anything… his name starts with an A, and ends with a Y. Any guesses?

Cheers,
D

Time spent: @ 30 minutes
Completed Anki deck: Yep.
Start time: 11:05pm
End time: 11:35pm