March has been a strange month. I have done my third trip to Japan, and of course, it motivated me a lot. It also slowed down my progression for the JLPT preparation, and it was hard to keep studying the week after my return from Japan. I have been able to find my study rhythm again at the end of the month, and I was finally able to achieve my JLPT goals.
My goals for March were:
Reading Goals
I had no reading goals this month. I was able to finish the books I wanted to read before the trip, and I have started my 2019 reading challenge last week.
I am reading 『切り裂きジャックの告白』by Shichiri NAKAYAMA (中山七里), and it is not an easy read. I thought it would be a classic police thriller with a serial killer and police officers who try to catch him. In fact, it is exactly that, but the novel also contains a lot of thoughts and debates on organ donation and transplantation in Japan. I am not usually interested in medical matters, so I never really thought or read about this topic before. I didn’t know, for example, that there has been discussions around brain death and whether or not it should be accepted as actual death (rather than heart arrest).
And because organ donation is such a heavy topic, I started another book of my list that I hope will be lighter and maybe even funny: 『メゾン・ド・ポリス』by Miyaki KATO (加藤実秋).
JLPT Goals
It has been three whole months now that I study for the JLPT. I had forgotten that it can be very discouraging on the long run. Now I think that it was a bad idea to keep reading and listening practice for the second half on the year. Doing only vocabulary, grammar and kanji ends up being to abstract. I have decided to slowly start working with reading and listening textbooks, both because I need it and to give me a sense of concreteness.
I have reached my goals concerning vocabulary, I have studied until unit 23 of the 日本語単語スピードマスター. The last lessons have been very easy to me, mainly due to the fact that I have regularly read the news on politics last year. I already knew almost all the words of the lessons on politics, media, law and international politics.
I have completed my Grammar plan too and reached week 5 lesson 2 of So-matome. I am really glad to see that I am doing well with this textbook and will be able to finish it at the end of May, which gives me ample time to study with another textbook afterwards, review and make drills.
As for kanji, I am still experimenting with my new kanji deck. I might be putting more energy in building my deck, choose the display of the cards and the colour of each information than actually learning the kanji. Anyway, I have only reached week 3 day 5 of the So-matome.
Looking for April!
I feel that April will be a productive month! It will start with my registration for the JLPT of July (I’ll take it as a practice test, my real goal is December) on April 1st (tomorrow!).
Here are my reading and JLPT goals:
About
I’m learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese to read detective novels in these languages. I post about my reading progress and language study here. Best way to get in touch is on Mastodon 🙂
It’s so funny that the book you’re reading, 『切り裂きジャックの告白』, focuses on brain death, because I just saw a movie about brain death on my way back from Japan. In fact, the credits mentioned that the film is based off a book by none other than Keigo Higashino! When I saw that, I instantly thought of you, since you really enjoy his novels. The book’s called 『人魚の眠る家』in case you’re interested.
Keep up your hard work! There’s still a decent amount of time before July, let alone December, so you should be fine for round 1 of the JLPT!
Oh thank you 😊! I’ve seen this title a lot, but I didn’t know it was about brain death. I will read it because the topic interests me now, and I have looked up many words relative to brain death for 切り裂きジャックの告白 so it should be easier to tackle this topic now. Thanks for the recommendation!