This is the third article about my way approaching this project of reading an entire physical novel in Japanese. After recognizing that my goal was way too optimistic, I had to change the measurement from pages per day to minutes per day. By doing so the very precious resource “time” can be calculated more reliable for an average workday.
This is my workflow: I read for about 30 minutes per day and look up words I can’t read out loud (even if I can guess the meaning from the kanji, like 気泡風呂 - 気泡 Airbubbles and 風呂 Bath, or a whirlpool). Then I send the list to my mail account, from there I import the words into Anki and (using the Migaku Dictionary Add-on) complete the flash cards with a translation, the word audio and furigana. Now I can review the words in Anki. But when re-reading old pages, my problem was, if I did not remember the word I even had a flashcard for, there was no way other than look the word up again.
And here comes the next change: This week I went one step further and finally started using Notion. Now I export my new cards from Anki to Excel to get a nice table and create a Notion page for every page in the book with all the unknown (better: unreadable) words. When re-reading, I have the list of these words lying next to me.
In the long run I hope that my Anki reps will go down as well, as I review the words I made cards for more often if I spend more time in the actual book itself when re-reading, and not “waste” time in some isolated environment.
Here is an example of how my table for page 11 (the first page with actual text) looks like:
Vocab 溶ける 生涯影 連れ去る 埋葬 | Furigana 溶[と,とける;k2]ける 生涯[しょうがい;a] 影[かげ;a] 連れ去[つれさ,つれさる;k3]る 埋葬[まいそう;h] | Translation schmelzen das ganze Leben hindurch, Lebzeiten jmdn. fortführen sich mit jmdm. davonmachen jmdn. entführen Begräbnis |
I am on page 58. The book is really difficult, even for me. The translator uses many low-frequency words that are not worth memorizing if you are a beginner. The problem is, that a beginner does not know the difference between a word worth memorizing and one which is not. So one final tip for today, if you are a beginner, just read throug the whole book, and only look up words you remember from the book. That way you get some worth out of your time. But a word that comes up only once in the whole book should not be worth the time.
Great post! You give some good advice about not stressing over all the low-frequency words. I definitely fell into that trap when I first started. Learning Kanji is a tough process, but it seems like you have a solid strategy for it! :)
Hi Sepp! It's interesting that you're reading the book in Japanese and how you're dealing with new vocabulary. Hope you can stick to the 30 minutes a day!
Good job so far! I also agree with what you said about how it's not worth memorizing all those low-frequency words when you are a beginner. Better to get the more useful ones first :)
Yes I agree, many words don't deserve to spend time to remember, just note down in the list for future look up seem good strategy.