Well past time for an update (we're nearly halfway through the year already!). Thankfully, unlike in previous years' TACs, my lack of having updated this is not a sign of having slacked off on my goals, but rather simply my not having written about my progress here.
The goal was to finish RTK right up to 2200 kanji. When I hit around 1600 kanji, the amount of reviews I was doing plus the speed I was trying to go at started to unravel the whole process a bit. However, by that point, I already knew so many kanji that reading Japanese literature had become a reasonable ask, with only a relatively small portion of the kanji unknown to me. So I decided that instead of continuing further with RTK and instead of reviewing the kanji using flashcards, I would start reading and just make sure I read enough every day that that itself acts as sufficient revision of the kanji.
I started by reading some Japanese mangas I had at home, I read
Nihonjin no Shiranai Nihongo and
Dārin wa Gaikokujin. I then moved on to a book of short stories with glossary and notes called Read Real Japanese. The stories are all short contemporary fiction. I finished that and am now about halfway through another edition of Read Real Japanese which contains short essays. Once I’m done with that, I’ll move on to another book of short stories with no gloss but a bilingual text, and then after that on to full, Japanese-only modern literature. My intention is to continue to maintain a daily regime of reading something in Japanese for at least an hour or so every day.
I’ve also been reading through a book on Japanese linguistics. It’s not really a book for learning Japanese per se, but it gives me a better background knowledge of the intricacies of the grammar and usage, which is enjoyable in and of itself.
Nothing really so far. I started reading Modern Irish, I’m reading it slowly as I’m mostly focusing on my Japanese reading and on reading other books in English and Portuguese. I’m going at it 10 pages a day, so it should take about a month to complete.
I haven’t kept up with my objective of reading an article a day in Folha de São Paulo, I really need to get back to that! On the other hand, I’ve been enjoying a podcast called Naruhodo (yes, it’s in Portuguese despite the name being in Japanese). I have a huge pile of books in English I really want to read, but once a space opens up in my reading list I’ll fill it with some books in Portuguese.
For fun, I’ve started Duolingo Russian. I’ve heard it’s not one of the better Duolingo courses, but I’m only interested in passive reading comprehension anyway, and how well or how quickly I develop Russian skills is waaaaay down at the bottom of my list of priorities, so I don’t particularly mind. Despite myself, I’m finding the Duolingo course quite fun.