また会う、everyone. It has been a nice whille since I last sat down and looked at where my Japanese studies are. Registration for the JLPT opens up near the end of August and I have to decided whether I take level four again (80% chance of passing) or jump into level three ( 100% of tears). Last time I was relived to confirm that I really was more invested in having a set goal to look forward to than I was in passing said goal, and though this truth brings me mixed feelings it does fire me up to try something new and challenging instead of something, well, old and challenging. Why attack the opponent you’ve already lost to if you  can lose to a brand new opponent instead?

Funnily enough, I just beat Ni no Kuni yesterday. I was thrilled, (despite realizing that I now owe the world a review for it) but the happiest part of the whole thing, besides the beautiful animation and ending credit song, was that I now get to re-start on DQIX. I have startled myself by actually missing this game, and today I happily dived into it for the first time in months. Yes, this is a game I’ve already “beaten,” but there’s still so much more to do. Baddies to best, caves to conquer, jobs to juggle, and, dearest to my heart, recipes to be realized. Compared to Ni no Kuni it has less text, especially now that the plot is over, so I’m going to have to be extra diligent in looking up words in order to count it as studying.

The other cool thing that I did this summer? Discover some great Japanese songs. I’ve collected a small, small number in iTunes over the years, but even among these I have a hard time thinking of them as songs I like rather than songs that are Japanese. But somehow I stumbled across ToHo’s channel and so found Japanese versions of the gorgeous Les Miserables songs. Youtube then suggested I listen to 小さな恋の歌, which I offically love to peices. I even went so far as to translate the first two verses and the chorus. Song translation is one of my many good ideas that I have yet to fully intialize, so this was a major step forward. As if this wasn’t enough, I found some awesome music on Spotify too. Of course, I really, really dislike Spotify becasue it insists on playing the most explicit commercials possible, and, uh, no. I like feeling all self-righteous about getting things for free legally while supporting the artist, but I will totally quit you each and everytime you play that ad. All that to say, I don’t listen to Spotify much becasue, despite its increasingly delicious variety of songs, I can’t relax whille it’s on. However, like I said there are a lot of good songs on it. Some artist I enjoy are Miyako Hasegawa, All That Jazz, and Mint Julep (who is actually already a staple on my iPod).

Reading-wise I haven’t made any new progress. Of course I’ve been picking up Natsume and reading a few panels here and there, but I know the stories a little too well for me to sit down with it and read them for real, and I’m not sure how useful it is as a study aide. I’d like to get a different manga series, like maybe Youtsuba!, but honestly, I have so many other sources of Japanese fiction avaiable I feel kind of bad about purchasing one more.

As for listening, Summer was a dry month for me as far as anime went. I did watch a procedural cop show on Viki without any subs at all – and discovered the ubiquity of the police procedural trumps even culture – but the only anime I watched consistently was Chihayafuru, and yes, I was naughty and left the subs on. The new wave of shows has just started in Japan and I’m hopping to find at least two enjoyable enough to watch. Of course, if it’s too enjoyable I’ll end up watching it with subs anyway – maybe I should be hoping for something bland with good animation?

All-in-all I’m passivly-giddy about my Japanese progression. I’m not really studying it at them moment by even the loosest definition of the word, but I’m still constantly being exposed to it and it’s exciting to see myself become more and more comfortable with it in general. My main goals are, as always, to increase my vocabulary becasue I have a terrible memory and a bad habit of just nodding and moving on if I don’t understand something (this spils over into all areas of my life. It’s a habit I got into when I was quite a new reader and it has morphed into a kind of patient-apathy towards ignorance). My goals have shifted slightly in that I suddenly find myself wanting to know more about grammar, and of course as my vocab increases my need to study kanji increases too. I plan on using imabi for all three of these goals, and I have started as any good procrastinator would by making an Anki deck out of the first few posts and then forgetting about it completely. Yes, I expect great things for autumn.