Tadoku 4 Report

So, Tadoku 4 went off without a hitch… that is, for the first 17 days or so. After which, the hyperactive monkey pulling the switches in my head would collapse face-first into a mountain of beer cans, empty porkrind bags and debauchery – a coma he’d wake from only long enough to periodically stagger a few steps and collapse upon a different set of switches. Even now, the hyperactive monkey in my head still hasn’t recovered completely.

But you know what? That little fucker earned his keep all the same. Let’s go over my reading list and see what I got around to. I’m gonna color code it a little something like this:

• Green: Read to completion!
• Yellow green: Read partially, but a satisfactory enough chunk
• Orange: Barely chipped
• Red: Didn’t touch at all
• Blue: A NEW CHALLENGER HAS APPEARED

Books

• サクラダリセット
• 1Q84
• ダンガンロンパ/ゼロ

Manga

• PLUTO
• Berserk (think I read three volumes, the last of which was WORDS WORDS WORDS)
• 賭博黙示録カイジ
• ΠΛΑΝΗΤΕΣ
• 聖☆おにいさん
• Vinland Saga (roughly a volume worth)
• ヒストリエ (most of volume 1, but kinda lost interest)
• スレイヤーズ

Visual Novel

• Ever17 (finished – oh, was it ever finished.)
• 428 〜封鎖された渋谷で〜 (scratched the surface, but got tired of counting screens ♪～(´ε｀ ))
• Chaos;Head
• 彼岸花の咲く夜に
• うみねこのなく頃に (episode 4 completed!)
• Remember11 (left off exactly 25% of the way through)
• うみねこのなく頃に散 (barely scratched the surface, and will likely wait for the PSP remake)
  
• ひぐらしのなく頃に (PS2 version – again, counting screens was getting tiring)

And there you have it. A small portion also came from various web pages and articles, J-subbed stuff and a few misc games.

So as I mentioned, all went well from the start of Tadoku, up to around the 17th or 18th… when I blazed my way through the latter half of Umineko 4 (which was excellent), and then picking up where I left off in Ever17 (about a third of the way through) and eventually coming to the final arc, which had me in a stunned stupor for three straight days (where I must have logged 700 pages or more).

I feel like it’s necessary for me to talk a little about this visual novel here, since it so dominated my brain matter in ways few things ever have.

Simply put, Ever17 was: the best visual novel I’ve ever read; the best science fiction I’ve ever read; and quite frankly, some of the best fiction, period, I’ve ever read. This visual novel manages to make use of plot twists I’d normally hate to mind boggling effect, and plot mechanics I never would have even dreamed of. Holy shit.

I was instantly drawn to this game thanks to its precipitous situation involving a small group becoming trapped inside an underwater amusement park with only a limited amount of time before the whole thing implodes under massive water pressure. I tend to enjoy survival situations such as this either way, but the deep sea setting somehow does wondrous things with my imagination.

I’m not sure how to explain the brilliance of this VN without giving away elements key to its mindblowing-factor, so I’ll try to keep it short. It’s a visual novel that makes use of its platform to the fullest, taking advantage of the perspectives of the game’s two characters, the choices of the player and subtle details sprinkled throughout practically every scene which constantly hint at something juuust beyond reach and comprehension… Elements which all come together by the (very, very long) end to blow the reader’s mind into the stratosphere. It really is that good, and worth every minute spent reading through its various routes (yes, even Sora’s somewhat lame route!).

So yeah, do yourself a favor and read this mutha. Required reading for every fan of science fiction and visual novels as a platform, absolutely.

Now, the problem came after finishing Ever17, for you see, I’ve come to realize that there exists such a thing as Post-Mindblown Disorder (let’s abbreviate that as PMBD). PMBD is a phenomenon I’d experienced multiple times in the past, most notably with having finished Danganronpa and Steins;Gate; two incredibly mindblowing experiences, to be sure. It’s best described as a euphoria, a powerful high where I’m unable to do much but rave about how fucking awesome that just was, and everything else just seems bland by comparison. Perhaps there’s a mental fatigue element to take into account, as well, since invariably said mindblowing experiences will have me hooked for hours upon hours until completion, leading to a period of time where I’m simply unable to focus on heavy reading again for some time.

At any rate, I finished Ever17 on the 18th, and I never fully recovered. Such was my PMBD that I jumped straight into the game’s “sequel” (completely unrelated world, but same ‘Infinity’ series and author), Remember11, ignoring my existing stack of planned reading material. Whereas I had several days straight of 200-page days with Ever17, I’d only have a small handful of 100-page days with Remember11, ending up just under 2,900 pages – far less than I’d hoped, but pretty damn decent all the same.

It was good times. I still feel a little burned out from reading, so I’ll likely focus on Actual Studying Stuff for a while, including my foray into MCDs, something I’d been stubbornly resisting beginning for a very long while. Early impressions is that this is really enjoyable and effective, and super comfortable now that I’m getting good at reading. I’d also like to get back to the grammar deck, because that’s something I could always improve.

But for today, I plan to kick back and chill out. Good game, y’all.

Tadoku: The Next One (The Sequel): The Stuff [updated]

Time flies, suckas!

You know the drill. Materials subject to change, as usual:

Books

• サクラダリセット (thanks to BDH殿!)
• 1Q84
• ダンガンロンパ/ゼロ

Manga

• PLUTO (thanks to sloppie先生!)
• Berserk (vol. 15 and up)
• 賭博黙示録カイジ
• ΠΛΑΝΗΤΕΣ (PLANETES)
• 聖☆おにいさん
• Vinland Saga
• ヒストリエ
• スレイヤーズ

Visual Novel

• Ever17 (about 30% complete, currently)
• 428 〜封鎖された渋谷で〜 (PSP)
• Chaos;Head
• 彼岸花の咲く夜に
• うみねこのなく頃に (episode 4; however, I’m very tempted to hold off and play the PS3/upcoming PSP versions for the huge benefit of voiced dialogue)

Though this list was originally a little on the light side, I’ve decided to go a little more nuts and flesh it out proper. Obviously, it’s not very likely I’ll get around to all of them, but I’m feeling especially enthusiastic on the manga side of things lately; better to have a nice stack of material ready to rock. In fact, it was just about one year ago that I began my very own extensive reading spree with Berserk, so perhaps this sudden surge of enthusiasm isn’t coincidental after all.

Looking back now, it’s mind boggling to me how far a year’s worth of extensive reading (albeit, in a rather on-again-off-again fashion) has taken me. Where once I struggled, now is largely natural and fluid. Material I’d thought permanently outside of my grasp is now accessible, comprehensible and enjoyable. Traditional study methods are mostly obsolete to me now; Japan is my overworld, native materials are my dungeons, words are my monsters and I am the adventurer. It’s sorta like 世界樹の迷宮 on scale 100, 1,000 times larger, and with less F.O.E waiting around every corner to crush my spirits (though those could be viewed metaphorically as rare kanji; R07 fricking loves tormenting me with those).

But enough about that – are you ready for the SPACE JAM? (´・ω・`) うぷぷぷ・・・

Tadoku 3.0: The Aftermath

And I am beat.

Anyhow, my list of reading material by the end looked a little something like this:

• NHKにようこそ！(novel)  — Complete
• Steins;Gate (visual novel) — Complete
• 人間失格 (novel) — Stalled
• うみねこのなく頃に4 (visual novel) — In Progress (still)
• Ever17 (visual novel) — In Progress

Not exactly the most diverse of lists, surely, but the experience was every bit as rich as any of the previous Tadoku (or perhaps, Tadoki?!).

This time around, as planned, I used the dictionary less than I ever have. My reasoning behind this decision is beyond the scope of this post, but suffice to say that it worked out spectacularly well. I don’t recall having looked up a single word for NHK, even. I did hit the dictionary a few dozen times for Steins;Gate (a manly man’s visual novel of sizable girth, mind you), but with few exceptions, these look-ups were out of sheer curiosity of a particularly interesting word (most likely containing an unknown kanji, which I eat for breakfast) rather than a compulsion to know every single unknown thing I come across. Pretty sure I only looked up two words in Ever17, despite its surprisingly technical vocabulary, though I’ve really only skimmed the surface of that badboy yet.

I’d wanted to read 人間失格 as well, but just couldn’t really get into it – or rather, I was really craving another visual novel to fill the Steins;Gate-sized void in my heart and 人間失格 wasn’t up to that task. I was encouraged to discover just how readable this book was for me, though! I once thought classic Japanese literature would forever be beyond my grasp, but it just goes to show how far I’ve actually come.

And oh, what’s this? Umineko somehow worked its way into the list! I’ve certainly not giving up on this “little” fellow, and decided to flip through to see how manageable it would be without the ridiculous quantity of dictionary look-ups I’d given it in the past. Again, I’ve come a long way and it actually seems a lot closer to my level now. However, エンジェ is still a very uninteresting character to me and I was unable to keep my interest. Perhaps one day when you’re voiced, Umineko… perhaps then.

This Tadoku also marked the first time I largely ignored competing with my kuh-raaazy peers, and simply looked to beat my last record. Turns out that 3,000 pages (roughly 100 a day) is just about optimum for me, and will probably be my target for each Tadoku from here on out. Thinking about it, 100 pages of Japanese a day is still a little mindblowing to me – I’m the kind of reader who chips away at one chapter a night before bed in my native language (at one point or another, anyway), so unearthing my innate ability to plow through 100 pages of Japanese a day for 31 days is… really something I can’t describe. Was amazing to me when that number was 50, and even 30. Not to pat myself on the back, though – one of the coolest parts of being involved with Tadoku every 3 months is seeing just how much everyone has improved. It’s incredible seeing those numbers of pages logged doubling, tripling since the last competition. Seriously shows the effectiveness not only of the extensive reading tadoku principle, but also the effectiveness of the competition aspect (personal or otherwise) of Tadoku. Color me impressed.

Oh hey, let’s touch on some of the stuff I read, for the heck of it.

NHKにようこそ！

NHK is somewhat special because it marks the first true novel (light or otherwise) I’ve read from cover to cover in Japanese. Somehow, the accomplishment feels a little less impressive after having completed three Umineko visual novels of greater length (and far greater difficulty), but hey, it’s something! More importantly, I loved the heck out of this book and it surprised me on multiple levels.

NHKにようこそ！is a dark comedy about the miserable life of a young man and his misadventures in attempting to escape from it. At first glance, the story sounded downright depressing (and not all that far from home at times), so I’d ignored it despite the anime adaptation being recommended to me numerous times. Indeed, the story is depressing – the cast of characters each has his or her massive collection of skeletons in the closet, from the crippling depression, paranoia and isolation of its main character, to the themes of suicidal tendencies, mental instability, sexual deviance and drug use of his peers.

In fact, this novel contains more illicit drug use and detailed description of said drugs than I’ve encountered in any (perhaps, every) Japanese medium so far. I suppose the world of novels can afford to be more open than the fiction of manga and television about the reality of drugs, but I felt these scenes (which are apparently cut from the anime entirely – bah!) were important in further establishing the human elements that make the characters of this book so damn enjoyable and easy to identify with.

Bleak subject matter aside, the ridiculousness that occurs between the many, many downers of this book as well as the witty, humorous dialogue of its characters almost always keeps the mood hovering well within the realm of comic. It takes a talented writer to turn the screwed up situations of Satou and company into something we can laugh at – perhaps laugh with would be more accurate, as they always seem aware of just how ridiculous things are – but author Tatsuhiko Takimoto pulls it off beautifully.

Highly recommended, and a moderately easy read to boot.

Steins;Gate

Perhaps fueled by an insatiable hunger for more eccentric protagonists, I dived into this puppy shortly after finishing NHK. I’d actually completed the first chapter some weeks prior, so I knew exactly what I was getting myself (back) into.

Steins;Gate is a time travel-themed science-fiction visual novel, but the time travel elements are executed in ways I’ve never even imagined, and consistently blew my mind into the stratosphere. Most fascinating to me is the fact that S;G not only uses heaps of real scientific theory (quite liberally) to explain the phenomenon of time travel, but also real-life conspiracy theories such as the exploits and predictions of John Titor. It’s a super intelligent, brilliantly written visual novel that, while certainly taking more than a few liberties, successfully suspends disbelief often enough to almost make the events of the story seem plausible. Almost.

I’d rather not go into great detail about this VN, as I believe it’s best left up to the reader to experience how the story unfolds, and how manipulation of time – even the seemingly limited act of sending text messages to phones back in time – ultimately impacts the story. Simply put, this is a story of cause of effect – for every action, there’s a reaction; the butterfly effect; karma, even (in fact, one can probably draw some fairly convincing philosophical parallels, but I’ll leave that to sharper minds and/or bored English majors).

Steins;Gate was actually the first visual novel I’ve read with fully voiced characters, and quite honestly, it’s difficult to imagine trudging through another non-voiced VN any time soon (Umineko being a lucky exception), because the voiced element helped my comprehension tremendously. I really can’t overstate just how beneficial a voice acted visual novel can be to a learner of Japanese. I hadn’t intended on beefing up my listening comprehension during this Tadoku, but by the end of S;G, I could seriously feel a massive difference. It doesn’t hurt that the voice acting in this game is utterly incredible, most notably that of the main character, whose over-the-top eccentricism took me a while to warm up to, but ultimately became one of my all-time favorite protagonists.

As for language difficulty, Steins;Gate can get a little brutal, especially during the scenes involving SCIENCE!, of which there are many. Some rudimentary knowledge of the theory they go into certainly helped me, but I’d be lying if I said that a few of the science-y scenes weren’t a little hazy to me. Scientific terminology aside, though, S;G didn’t pose much trouble to me. Unlike, say, Umineko which goes into incredible detail with abstract concepts very frequently, S;G is much more straight-forward and dialogue-based in comparison.

Though I can’t claim to have read all that many visual novels yet (Tsukihime in English several years back and three and a half Uminekoes and currently making my way through Ever17), Steins;Gate easily reigns as my most memorable one yet. It’s not without its flaws – pacing feels awfully trudging at times, and I wasn’t a big fan of two of the characters (take a guess which ones!). Some may find it difficult to stick with the (nearly) first half of the visual novel that is dedicated to establishing characters and building up for the (ultra-exciting) latter half of the story, which tears it all down mercilessly with hardly a pause. By the end, though, trust me when I say that these are all trivial complaints, and holy crap you need to read this. I plan to marathon the anime shortly, which is superb from the two episodes I’ve seen so far.

Ever17

This is a visual novel I’ve heard many speak highly of for some years now, yet one I knew little about until recently. Turns out the story is right up my alley – like Steins;Gate, Ever17 uses plenty of gen-you-wine science to establish an almost-believable situation. In this case, a group of people become stranded in an underwater amusement park of sorts known as LeMU, with only a matter of roughly 6 days to escape. All the while, various sections of the park are falling apart around them to ever-increasing water pressure and mechanical failures. Of course, all the while, mysteries abound… which I’ve only scraped the surface of.

I can’t really give a more thorough review of the VN yet, as I still have quite a bit to go. I can say that it immediately clicked with me and I’m really enjoying it, however. It begins almost deceptively whimsical – this is an amusement park, after all – but unlike, say, Steins;gate, Ever17 gets into the thick of things very quickly. Compared to every other VN I’ve read so far, E17 is relatively fast paced and seems almost a little jarring in its transition between scenes at times. Even so, this is an incredibly meaty VN with about as much text as Steins;Gate, so there’s room for a massive amount of substance in this sucker.

Ever17’s language level seems to begin on the easier side of things, but quickly becomes quite difficult when it goes into the technical side of LeMU, or during one of the several medical-related scenes and explanations. I was honestly expecting an easier, more relaxing read as Steins;Gate, but Ever17’s language might quite possibly be the more difficult of the two!

At any rate, as of right now, I’m working my way toward one of the endings and have tons more to see, so I’ll have to leave it at that for now. Excellent, highly recommended visual novel (with voice acting, I might add) all the same.

I suppose that just about wraps things up. I have a heck of a lot more to post in the coming days, especially regarding a certain anniversary, and current/future plans, among other things. For now, I think it’s high time to veg the heck out with some of the many animu episodes I’m behind on.

And how was yooour Tadoku?

Tadoku 3.0 Report: Day 17

Taking a cue from resident reading maniac BlackDragonHunt, I’m taking a few minutes out of my reading time to post a little status update of sorts. We’re a little over the halfway mark and things are still as crazy as they were in the first few days of the competition – consider that the combined total amount of pages in this Tadoku has already shattered the combined total of the last Tadoku, and I’m pretty sure you can imagine how intense things have gotten. Usually, I notice a pretty sharp drop in momentum from a lot of competitors by this point in the game, but with few exceptions, that doesn’t seem to be the case this time around.

As for myself, like always, I’m trying to stick to a steady pace – in this case, roughly 100 pages per day. For the most part, it’s been going great, and honestly, it’s a bit difficult for me to believe that only a handful of months ago, I was struggling to keep a pace of 30, 40, 50 pages a day (bit of deja vu here). Of course, reading NOT-UMINEKO seems to help a bit.

I’m currently a bit ahead of pace for my previously stated goal of 3,000 pages. Making the top 5 looks to be all but impossible at this point unless I crank that goal up by a few thousand more pages, which doesn’t seem all that likely (or healthy) at this point. We’ll see – I predict I’ll probably end up between 3,500 and 4,000 by the end, momentum (and awesome reads) willing.

As for my reading material, it’s looking a little something like this:

• NHKにようこそ！ — completed on day 4 (or somewhere around there)
• STEINS;GATE — in progress, maybe 3/4 of the way through? I expect to be finished in a week or so (the vast majority of my pages have come from this badboy)
• 人間失格 — in progress, surprised to discover how readable it is, though I most likely won’t get back to it until after I finish S;G

Throw in a few J-subbed episodes of Jin season 2 and that puts me just under 1,700 pages currently. Not bad!

Many more thoughts to come, but I’ll probably share those in early August. For now, I have some reading to do! (ノ｀Д´)ノ彡┻━┻

Tadoku 3: 発進準備！！

It’s almost difficult to believe that it’s already been nearly three months since the start of the last Tadoku competition, but again, here we are. Time flies when you’re playing Monster Hunter— er, cramming huge amounts of vocabulary and perusing the near-infinite amount of text and video available at your fingertips.

I knew I’d have a pretty hefty amount of material to read (and play) through this time around, and indeed, such seems to be the case. Heck, I could probably name half a dozen different games alone. Add to that stack a number of light novels and short stories I’ve been dipping into, one or two visual novels (though nothing nearly as difficult as Umineko or most VNs by nitro+, mind) and maybe even a manga, and I should be quite busy this coming month of July.

A sampling of things in Tha Stack, tentative as always:

(Light) Novel:

• ＮＨＫにようこそ (a few chapters in already)
• 精霊の守り人
• スレイヤーズ！
• キノの旅
• 政治少年死す
• 人間資格 (a stretch, but short enough that I may manage it)

Game:

• Xenogears (currently about 6 hours in)
• 水滸伝１＆２
• Shining Force III

Visual Novel:

• Steins;Gate (a few chapters in)
• Ever17

Manga:

• Berserk (but of course)
• about two dozen others in my stack I know I’ll probably never read

I suppose I’m going for more of a kitchen sink approach this time around, though I’ll probably settle on a select few – my money’s on NHKにようこそ and Steins;Gate primarily, perhaps with some Xenogears here and there (super wordy RPGs are always welcome). We’ll see!

As for my goals, I’d certainly like to top my last page count, and making the top 10 again would be nice (though being July, I expect the competition to be much more fierce). For the moment I’m thinking 3,000 pages and making the top 5 would be my goal this time around, though as we all know, the actual reading is the true goal in Tadoku. If I’m able to complete even a few of the above listed novels or games, I’ll be quite content, no matter my page count or ranking.

That being said, I’ma totally crush some skulls.

What will yooou be reading? And if you’re not registered for this Tadoku, why not? (ノ｀Д´)ノ彡┻━┻

(A very, very late) Post-Tadoku Report

Well, at least I can say that the timeliness of this post wasn’t due to laziness, as it usually is.

I’ve been a busy, busy bee since the completion of last month’s Tadoku. Riding the high of my solid finish, my motivation hasn’t been this high since the earlier days of my studies when every day seemed to result in my knowledge doubling. More on that in a bit, though.

As for that finish? Well, I had set a few goals in mind, mostly toward the halfway point of the competition, namely:

• finish in the top 10,
• finish Danganronpa, and
• finish with more than 2,000 pages read.

Not only did I finish in 7th with 2094 pages, but with less than 10 minutes remaining, I watched the glorious Danganronpa credits roll. Fate smiled upon me that day, or perhaps I should thank my 11 hour PSP marathon and sore left hand (indeed, my PSP hand) instead.

More than the burning spirit of competition, however, was the impression Danganronpa left on me. Now, I don’t want to inflate the hype machine more than BDH and I already have, but I’m pretty sure you should take my advice when I say you need to learn this language, acquire a PSP and a copy of this game by whatever means necessary, putting everything else in your comparably insignificant life on hold until you, too, are savoring the quirky characters, mind-blowing plot twists and the heart pumping tension of the game’s amazing class trials.

That’s pretty much all I’m trying to say here, no pressure.

At any rate, I was left craving more. Sadly for me, there is only one Danganronpa (although possible sequels have been hinted at!), so filling that gaping void in my soul hasn’t been as easy as I had hoped. Nevertheless, it wasn’t long before I caved into my own curiosity, leaving poor ol’ Umineko 4 out in the cold yet again as my attention shifted to a prettier, younger lass by the name of STEINS;GATE, and we’ve been together happily ever since. Of course, I plan to get back to the Sea Kitties in due time, but I must admit I’ve become a little spoiled by these games and visual novels that I can actually read without having to look up every other word (I exaggerate, but it really is better in the long run for me to stick with stuff at or slightly above my level).

I recall mentioning  that I planned various words of interest and SRS them during Tadoku, which worked out… partially. For the week and a half or so that I was reading Umineko, I collected almost 200 words which were gradually added to Anki, though it wasn’t until much later that I began reviewing them regularly. Once my focus shifted to Dangan, though, that plan was put on hold until after Tadoku. Fast forward to today and this deck is healthy and lively as any SRS deck of mine in memory (note to self: don’t jinx it), with currently over 450 words gathered from Umineko, Dangan and S;G and growing by at least 30 every day.

The methodology of this deck is more or less the same as my good ol’ Berserk one (which may get merged with this one if/when I’m in the mood for 800-odd dark fantasy related esoterica) – copy down words of interest to a text file, slap those suckers into Anki with rough English counterparts and reading on back, done. I don’t really consider these words “in isolation” or “out of context” since I’ve already been exposed to their context from whatever I’m reading, although some words (mostly verbs) definitely benefit from example sentences (which Twitter search is surprisingly good for). I like to write words by hand at least once to get a good feel for them, which I think really helps to cement the word into my brain. All in all, this has been the quickest, most painless, and most enjoyable way for me to bolster my vocabulary and get a better grip immediately on what I’m reading, and I’m totally gonna keep it up.

I figure that the amount of practical (and sometimes, impractical) vocabulary necessary for literacy and fluency is pretty damn finite. The exact number of words, of course, changes dramatically depending on who you ask, their definition of fluency and so forth, but I tend to agree that some number around or over 10,000 probably isn’t that far off (especially if said words are very well known, let’s say “active”). Personally, I’m currently aiming for literacy (the ability to read, and ideally also to listen, with very high comprehension) above fluency (writing and speaking), so I figure the bar is set a little higher, especially in terms of passive vocabulary, but that pool of vocab is still quite finite. Having no idea of how many words I currently know (somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000?), if I’m able to learn and solidify 1,000 new words a month through my reading and vocabulary grinding via Anki, I should theoretically be sitting pretty damn comfortably by Fall. Whether that will work out in practice or not, well, I suppose we’ll just have to wait and find out. But barring apocalyptic events and/or deathly illness, I have every intention of finding out.

Also, I plan on tweeting more in Nippongoes, so yeah, fair warning.

See you suckers at the finish line! ヽ(´ー｀)ノ

(happy belated) Mid-Tadoku Status Report

Less than 10 days to go as of this post, and things are going pretty swell.

I had planned on uber-focusing on Umineko 4, and was making solid headway in the first week until I decided to pick up my PSP and give Danganronpa another shot… and I just sorta never put it down since. I’m now roughly halfway through and hoping to finish it before Tadoku ends, but it’ll be a close one.

First, given the fact that Danganronpa is a great deal easier to read than Umineko – and much closer to my skill level – naturally, I’ve been able to read a heck of a lot more, and a heck of a lot faster. It’s difficult to give an estimate, given the nature of the game; some bits, such as the investigation phases, are slower since I’m wandering around searching for clues, whereas the (utterly amazing) class trials are light speed since they’re almost fully voiced and super fast paced all around. But I’d estimate that in general, I probably read at twice the rate in Danganronpa as I do in Umineko. Definitely not too shabby.

Oftentimes, Umineko was (and to a large extent, still is) filled with difficult, unknown vocabulary and grammar, preventing me from skipping over very much without becoming completely lost. Thus, my reading habit became something more like intensive reading rather than extensive, which Tadoku is really all about. AGTH along with Translation Aggregator makes lookups incredibly fast, without a doubt, and I learned a metric assload from the first three “books” of Umineko with my intensive stylez. But it’s far from ideal, especially when the material is a good league above my current skill level; I’m not a big fan of using JLPT as a metric, but I’d put myself right around JLPT2 (N2) at the moment, whereas Umineko’s vocabulary (and possibly grammar?) is well within the realm of JLPT1 (N1). I’d noticed that, especially in the past month or so, I had a lot of trouble getting words to stick, even those that came up a dozen, two dozen times. Something wasn’t working. As soon as I began copying words to notepad again (and eventually tossing them into SRS, which has been quite successful), I noticed a significant improvement in their “stickiness”. I’ll have more to say about this in a later post, I think.

The difference with Danganronpa is that I’m doing very little lookups at all. It’s actually not all that often that I come across a word I can’t work out one way or another. I forget readings pretty often, but if a word comes up frequently enough for me to look up its reading (and by extension, meaning), I’ll generally have it learned thoroughly by the time I come across it a few more times. Those words seem to most commonly be nouns – room names (保健室、物理準備室) or various words describing culprits or string-pullers (黒幕、内通者、不審者). The rest are easily skipped over and passively noted in my head, to be looked up only if they become common or “important-looking” enough. Basically, in other words, true extensive reading rather than the oft-masochistic intensive endeavors of Umineko, and it’s going wonderfully.

The game itself is just phenomenal, especially for a leaner of the Nippongoes such as myself. Perhaps I’ll go into greater detail later, but it gets my highest recommendation, especially to fans of mystery, 逆転裁判/Phoenix Wright style games.

Anyway, I’m clawing my way up the colossal stone wall known as the Tadoku top 10 and hoping to finish this game before the competition’s conclusion, so I’d best get on that.

Tadoku v2.0: IMPENDING DOOM

Three months went by in a flash, and already, we’re less than a week away from the next smacktalkin’ friendly reading competition better known as Tadoku. I’ve actually hardly given any thought to my plans regarding reading material. Although there are dozens of things I’d love to read, I’ll try and keep it even more streamlined with one item per “platform” – something along the lines of:

Visual Novel:

• Umineko 4 (and on, and on)

PSP/DS:

• Danganronpa

Manga:

• Berserk (surprise!)

Novel/Light Novel:

• Moribito series

And that’ll just about do it! I predict one of the above will dominate 90% or more of my reading time; one guess as to which that one will be.

I also plan to do SRSing during the entire Tadoku period, mainly drilling various words I come across in my reading. While I learn vocabulary rapidly purely from reading and repeated exposure, I feel like the added nudge from SRS will go a long, long way in solidifying those suckers. Ah yes, the eternal love-hate relationship continues. We’ll see how it goes.

And finally, the top 10 will be mine. I was close last time (at 15), and my reading speed has greatly improved since then, so I’ll be disappointed (death before dishonor comes to mind) if I don’t make it into the 10-club this time.

It’ll be a lot of fun as always, and another huge step toward my ultimate goal (which may or may not involve Human Instrumentality, but who’s keeping track). If you’re interested and haven’t signed up already, I highly recommend checking out the Tadoku blog at http://readmod.wordpress.com/. Everyone of all skill levels is welcome and encouraged to participate.

Tadoku Log: Days 16 through 31 (終)

Whew.

45.83 pages a day on average for the latter half of the competition, a Tadoku average of 41.9 42, closing at a grand total of 1,301.26. None too shabby, if I do say so m’self.

I finished at a cool 15th out of 99 participants, a position I vowed to hold by whatever means necessary (read: reading like a readaholic). I had hoped to hit a little over 1500 or an average of 50 pages a day, but a few slow/busy/lazy days managed to slow me down a little. Regardless, I’m very happy with my performance and extremely pleased with my improvements (which I’ll get into shortly).

In the end, nearly 90% of my reading came from practically a single source, which I’m still completely hooked to. One guess as to what that might be! I began Tadoku almost halfway into Umineko 1, and finished a few chapters into Umineko 3 – about 1,163 pages worth of greedy siblings, closed-room murder mysteries, witch denying and other assorted creepiness, and I’m fairly certain I can do another few thousand pages before I lose interest.

The various other bits of my reading came from a chapter or two of books (a few chapters into Harry Potter, and just a smidgen of Kino no Tabi), various manga chapters (Yotsubato!, Berserk, Historie, Vinland Saga) and games (ダンガンロンパ, 紅魔城伝説II 妖幻の鎮魂歌, シャンテリーゼ), but the vast majority of my time and energy was invested in Umineko.

As I stated not long ago, Umineko was a tremendous challenge for me. Emphasis on was. I recall running into an unknown (non-RTK) kanji within the first sentence, and wondering if I’d ever be at a high enough level to read and enjoy this thing. I struggled through the first several chapters at a snail pace, often having to look up a dozen words per screen just to make a shred of sense of things. Fast forward to now, and suddenly things are a whole lot easier.

The amount of vocabulary, kanji, grammar, expressions and even prose I’ve picked up is honestly a little staggering. I wish I had a metric to measure just how much I improved, but being able to pick up, read and enjoy something that was once incredibly difficult is really the only metric I need. It’s something I witnessed with Berserk not long ago; it’s as if I’ve chipped down a wall, brick by brick, and can now freely pass, and it’s one of the best feelings in language learning.

I’ve come to realize that Umineko never really was all that “difficult” in the first place – neither was Berserk, or anything I’ve truly picked up and really gotten into. All of these things contain a variety of common words, phrases, grammar and prose that you’ll see again, and again, and again until it becomes impossible not to remember them. As someone who’s been known to do a little writing myself, this observation should have been obvious from the beginning. Each author has his or her own styles, habits and preferences – I can recall having a lot of trouble reading English-language authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft for quite some time, until I got used to their writing styles. Of course, the same applies to Japanese authors. Some seem to love using and abusing rare kanji, or complex grammar patterns, or archaisms, or spend pages upon pages describing every delicate detail, and so forth – apart from the never-ending quantity of vocabulary, it’s all a matter of getting used to these intricacies. On a wider spectrum, the same can be said about learning the language in general. At any rate, difficulty is ultimately directly linked to familiarity, which is simply a matter of exposure.

Of course, then I open up another visual novel or book and immediately wonder how, in the ever-loving hell, I’m ever going to understand this thing, so I’m sure the cycle will continue for quite some time to come. I welcome the challenge.

I feel like my reading has improved several times over; my comprehension has never been better, things generally seem to flow much more smoothly and more naturally, and my reading speed is significantly better than it was at the beginning of January. I’ve picked up a countless amount of words without the aid of drilling or SRSing. Of course, I still have a long way to go as well; though I’m having to look up a lot less words, my overall understanding still probably covers only about 90% of vocabulary. I say “only” for a figure as high as 90%, but consider that 90% still requires me to look up or skip over one in every ten words. That’s a handful per screen, more or less.  Of course this varies, as there are cases where I’ll go a dozen screens without having to look up something (usually when the cousins are talking among themselves), and others where I have to look up practically every other word (Kinzo’s insane rants, financial discussions between the parents, any time Beatrice opens her mouth). Still, I’m seeing major improvements by the week.

I’ve also noticed improvements in my listening comprehension as a nice little side effect of my expanded vocabulary as a result of mucho-reading, but on the whole, it’s still one of my weaker aspects. I’ll focus on that quite heavily this month as I catch up on a massive amount of dramas, anime, podcasts, documentaries and movies I’ve been stocking for this very purpose.

As for output, it’s a difficult thing to gauge when I do so little output in the first place. Output (speaking and writing/typing) is another skill in itself, and one which I’ve barely even begun training. Certainly I can put together a simple sentence, and I think I can get my point across in most situations. The words I learn from all my reading become active vocabulary given enough time, which I’m able to use in my speaking without too much mental exertion, but too often there’s a way I’d like to say something which I simply don’t know how to express in Japanese. I believe that’s where the importance of output really comes in – showing us where we need to pay more attention in our L2. I still also have a hunch that output is what will eventually tie this language tightly together for me, but I have no way of explaining this yet. Regardless, I’m about 99% sure that I’m approaching a wall in which I’ll have to output more in order to really advance. We’ll see if my language intuition is correct, but I’ve learned to listen to that poor lil’ guy.

So basically: read like a mutha; it’s good for your noggin.

A special thanks again to LordSilent for all the work he’s put into organizing and administrating this shindig, including the time and work he’s spent programming the ever-awesome TadokuBot and backend; mullr for providing the hosting and having a sweet-ass hat; and mletterle for his simple-but-baller TaCriku, which I’m pretty sure I’ll continue to use while reading Umineko, just because.

Tadoku Log: Days 9 through 15

Things have been a little quiet around these parts, haven’t I? Obviously as a result of my super-charged reading habits entering the middle of this ultra-competitive Tadoku, right?

Well, not really. While I don’t necessarily feel like I’ve slowed down very much, my momentum has definitely fallen sharply from the level it was at in the first ten days or so. I’ll get to that in just a moment, though.

Average pages read for days 9-15: roughly 26.7 pages, for a current total of 613.81, and an overall daily average of 40.92. Short of my goal of 50 pages per day, yes, but not terribly so.

So what happened? Predictably, as Umineko episode 1 climaxed and carried me through the last few chapters with massive momentum, my pace slowed considerably as I tried to settle into a new medium; would that be one of the many manga I had planned on reading? Perhaps an RPG, or light novel? I knew right away that I wanted to get into Umineko episode 2 as soon as possible, but I also wanted to mix it up a bit.

What I found was that nothing really seems to hold my interest. It seems to take a conscious effort to push through even one manga chapter, let alone trudge through the intro segments of a new RPG or really get into a light novel or book. That is, with the exception of one particular item: Umineko episode 2.

I always dreamed of the day when I’d become hopelessly infatuated (those who follow my Twitter can attest to that fact) with something that could potentially occupy my attention and interest for months on end, and at the same time potentially propel my Japanese to brand new levels. I believe I’ve found it. The one small problem is the fact that this series of visual novels is still above anything I’d consider a comfortable reading level. Pardon my use of JLPT as a metric, but if believe if I were closer to level N1 (as in, damn near ready to take the test and have a chance of passing), I’d get a whole lot more out of this mutha. But alas, I’d place myself somewhere between N2 and N3 presently, and when I encounter entire paragraphs filled with unknown vocabulary and complex, incredibly varied grammar (which is one of the coolest things about Umineko, in my opinion), my head begins to ache as though it were pierced by the Stake of Beelzebub. One scene in particular just yesterday, in which truckloads of legal, business and financial terminology was used, simply forced me to set the VN aside for a few hours in (mild) frustration and… take up Smart.fm’s Core6000 again. Never thought I’d see the day.

This difficulty also results in comparatively slow reading speed – I estimate it takes me about an hour of uninterrupted reading to get through 60 screens, or approximately 10 pages worth of reading. This includes various lookups and note-taking, though I try to keep those to a minimum. With that having been said, I can’t say for sure whether or not my reading speed would be much faster if I were to, say, marathon Berserk. I think the difference is that I’d be making fewer lookups in another medium (mostly due to the lack of the super convenient Translation Aggregator, of course), resulting in theoretically faster reading, most likely at the expense of some comprehension (though that’s technically how the game of Tadoku should be played).

I guess my point in a nutshell is that I’m totally hooked to Umineko above all else, it’s difficult as hell, and with the exception of some rough bits, I’m totally digging it.

My attitude right now isn’t optimistic nor pessimistic, but realistic. I’m seeing my progress in a way I’ve never observed it before, putting my abilities to the test against a very high benchmark. I can’t honestly say that I’m content with my current level, nor my rate of improvement, nor can I say any longer than I believe any meaningful level of fluency is practically attainable in a time span as short as two years – not for me, anyway. But again, this isn’t pessimism, but my realism speaking, and I’m perfectly fine with that. I’ve already set up some challenges for myself for the coming month which I really look forward to, and I can honestly say that I’ve never felt this passionate about my studies. There’s only one way to go, and that’s up.

And with that, I believe I have some reading to do…