Phil's Japanese Journal Ep 2 Feb

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Philips Japanese Journal, a show tracking my journey through a year of

[00:00:13] learning Japanese with video games. This is month 2, February. I've been listening back

[00:00:19] to my last Japanese journal and noticed a few things I wanted to change. I spent a lot

[00:00:22] of time just covering my logged activities, but I'd rather spend more of that time going

[00:00:27] in deeper detail on the games that I actually played this month. I'm still going to cover

[00:00:31] my other goals, but everything will be much briefer. So let's get started with listening

[00:00:35] and my goals. They're listening a lot of podcasts. A bunch of different podcasts now. I found

[00:00:41] a bunch of different really good ones, and I don't think it might be too long to actually

[00:00:45] list them all for you all. So I'm probably going to start a Google Docker sheet and just

[00:00:49] list all the resources I've used so I can share with y'all listeners everything in one place.

[00:00:55] My target was 40 minutes a day, and I easily beat that with like 44 minutes a day. This

[00:01:00] isn't a hard goal to meet. I have a lot of time that are available to listen to stuff.

[00:01:06] So I reached the target time almost like 10 days ahead of schedule. It was that easy. So

[00:01:11] my new goal is 50 minutes above the 40 minutes of last month. So this month it's going

[00:01:18] to be a little bit harder, but I think it should be able to do it. I really need to improve

[00:01:22] my listening skills. I've noticed so I'm hoping this will help quite a bit for watching

[00:01:27] this month. I finished up little witch academia, and I really enjoyed it before this year is

[00:01:33] through I'll probably go back and rewatch it. Another show really been enjoying is to

[00:01:37] know coil. I've never heard of the show before, but it's like a kids show on Netflix where

[00:01:42] the children are uncovering mysteries and like an augmented reality system in their city.

[00:01:47] It kind of feels like a kid version of like ghosts in the shell or kind of like code

[00:01:51] leoco, I guess. I'm also enjoying a cardcaptor sochera which is just like a kiddie or version

[00:01:57] of sailor moon for watching my goal was 25 minutes a day and that was not too hard to beat.

[00:02:03] I hit you know like 25 minutes and 47 seconds. I finished this one a few days early and

[00:02:08] just kind of stopped watching so I could focus on my other goals. And I'm worried about

[00:02:12] raising my goals too high this next month as I'm going to be quite busy. I'm resuming

[00:02:16] my online college courses and currently out processing with my current job. So I'm

[00:02:21] going to kind of play it safe this month and only raise my goal from 25 minutes to 30 minutes.

[00:02:26] It's an extra five minutes a day. That means I just need to watch like one and a half

[00:02:30] episodes per day. I'll probably watch like one 22 minute show and then maybe like an

[00:02:35] 11 minute show if I can find one of those is like short bite size shows. Next up reading

[00:02:42] I read a few different things this month but Yatsuba is still like the biggest thing.

[00:02:47] I'm reading I love Yatsuba. I think everyone should read it. It's funny. It's sweet and

[00:02:51] I can understand it. My goal for reading was 17 minutes a day. And once again, it was

[00:02:56] very hard for me to hit this goal just like last month. I'm finding it hard to sit down

[00:03:00] and actually read it. The last few days of the month I had to put in like 40 minutes

[00:03:04] a day of reading sessions just to hit the average I wonder for the month. So so despite

[00:03:10] me barely making these 17 minutes, I'm only going to raise my goal from 17 to 18. I know

[00:03:16] it's only one minute but with all my other increases eating away in my time. I only

[00:03:20] have so much time available for Japanese each day and I do want to mention that my reading

[00:03:25] speed has increased quite a bit. It used to take me like over an hour to read like one

[00:03:29] chapter of priestess snow the bear does it a several old purification journey with a

[00:03:34] cute and fluffy bear. But a few days ago I finished like a whole chapter in 20 minutes. So even

[00:03:39] if I'm not increasing my overall spent time reading, I'm most likely reading more words

[00:03:45] due to my overall speed increasing. Next up studying nothing really new to report. I'm

[00:03:51] still using a Japanese database on key and Renshu. My goal was an hour and five minutes

[00:03:57] each day and I made it exactly an hour and five minutes and five seconds each day.

[00:04:03] It really isn't that hard to study but it does take a lot of time. It's hard to sit

[00:04:07] down and just start grinding but you can do it till you hit the time you want. With

[00:04:10] how crunched up my schedule already is, I don't think massively increasing my study

[00:04:14] time will really help me. I could use more time for input and gaming and reading but

[00:04:20] for the sake of just pushing myself a little harder. I'll just add like two minutes and

[00:04:24] make it an hour and seven minutes. I know it seems silly but I'm trying to avoid burnout

[00:04:29] and that's like an extra half hour over the whole month or something like that. All

[00:04:35] the time for the meat, gaming and Japanese. This is what I'm here for. So, Drankquest Treasures.

[00:04:41] This was the second game I've completed so far this year. My overall goal for this

[00:04:45] journal is to complete 12 games in Japanese and it's not looking so difficult so far.

[00:04:50] I've had a few complaints about this game last month that was complaining about this but

[00:04:54] overall the game is really good. In fact would recommend this game as somebody's first

[00:04:59] game unlike my first game Rise of the Tomb Raider. Drankquest Treasures actually require

[00:05:04] some use of the language. You have to navigate menus, interface with RPG elements, talk

[00:05:09] to multiple NPCs. You're not going to get too lost since each mission has a waypoints

[00:05:15] to guide you every step of the way pretty much. There are a few missions that are kind

[00:05:20] of like generic collect 34 wolf peltes and bring them back and they don't have quest markers

[00:05:26] but you can figure out by just reading the quest log. What I'm here to do is actually

[00:05:30] read the language. It has full furigana and the vocab is in difficult. Most of the game is not voiced

[00:05:37] but the major cutscenes are. They're about three or four of these cutscenes and they auto-advance

[00:05:42] so you can't kind of pause them and read the dialogue, you just gotta try to keep up.

[00:05:46] This isn't much of a big deal as you can understand a lot from the animations. The howling

[00:05:50] to beat lists this game at 21 hours to beat and I've finished it at 20 hours and 56 minutes

[00:05:55] so even with my slower reading this game is not hard to finish. And this makes Drankquest

[00:06:00] treasures not the longest game I've completed in Japanese. My cat is attacking me again.

[00:06:06] Next up, Bayonetta Origins, Raze and Lost Demon. This is my third game to complete so far.

[00:06:12] I know I finished two games a one month. I'm already head of schedule. I know that I just

[00:06:16] want to set a one I could recommend Drankquest treasures as a good first game for Japanese learn

[00:06:22] but have a choice between Drankquest treasures and Bayonetta Origins. I would recommend Bayonetta.

[00:06:28] This game is perfect for learners. The whole game is framed as like a children's storybook

[00:06:33] outlining Bayonetta's past. The game doesn't really have cutscenes except for a few scenes.

[00:06:37] Most of the stories in a visual novel still frames with small animations that are fully voiced

[00:06:43] and it has Furegana. I didn't think Furegana was that important to me but the more games I play,

[00:06:50] the more I realize I actually really like it. The game is fun and charming so we'll have to play it.

[00:06:56] If I'm already ranking the 12 games this year, Bayonetta is already number one.

[00:07:00] The hell long to be was that 15 hours and I finished in 12? I'm not sure why it would take

[00:07:05] that long to beat the game but I didn't really bother with getting all the collectibles or

[00:07:10] optional dungeons. The comment really wasn't that great but I enjoyed the story part and just

[00:07:16] exploring the world. Next up, Trials of Mana. I have put about 10-ish hours in this so far

[00:07:23] and I'm really enjoying it. A whole lot of my cats attacking me.

[00:07:29] This is not refreshing about Pet Lane and older RPG like this. The game is apparently like a remake

[00:07:34] of the original. The Psychin didn't set Sue 3 Trials of Mana released back on the Famicom

[00:07:39] way back in the day or maybe a Super Famicom, I'm not sure but this one was never translated

[00:07:45] for the West besides like fan translations and never played a mana game so I wasn't sure what to

[00:07:51] expect. The game puts off big Trianquist vibes but even with that it's different enough

[00:07:58] for it to be a different experience in Trianquist with the action mechanics. I think this game would

[00:08:02] be good for beginners or not good for all beginners because like I am struggling on some parts

[00:08:09] but I'm still advancing my cat is going wild. It's trying to kill me while I'm recording this.

[00:08:15] There's a lot of full cutscenes that auto-avance. The characters talk really fast so I do miss

[00:08:21] some of the dialogue in these scenes. Usually there's like a recap from a normal NPC after the scene

[00:08:27] so it's like it'll be a scene something will happen and then you'll be able to talk to

[00:08:30] like an old man afterwards and I'm like I can't believe that the dragon Emperor is back.

[00:08:35] Did you know that? Now I'll be like oh I didn't understand that from the cutscene but now I do.

[00:08:40] So there's that along with there are objective markers on every quest telling you where you need

[00:08:46] to go so you can just like skyarm your way through this or just following the markers

[00:08:52] which while I'm on it this game has a great map marker system that guy just step by step.

[00:08:57] I really appreciate it. Sometimes kind of redundant whenever the

[00:09:02] the quest will say like search for the dwarven city in the forest but then you have a massive quest

[00:09:07] marker showing you exactly where to go to it but I don't hate it. This game feels like a fantasy

[00:09:13] version of fantasy series as strange as that sounds you spend a lot of time walking in hallway

[00:09:19] levels with small branching paths or hidden treasure if you you know want to. Mostly you can just

[00:09:24] be lying straight to the boss there are a lot of times where your team will talk to you while you're

[00:09:29] traveling to discuss the current mission or just have like character moments. I don't understand a

[00:09:34] lot of these and they go by really quick without any warning so far I would not recommend this to

[00:09:40] another beginner unless you have like really good listening skills. Miscellaneous games I'm also

[00:09:46] just you know playing on the side tears of the kingdom resident will two honkai star rail

[00:09:51] been playing a mix of other titles but I keep bouncing back to these three. I bounce off Zelda

[00:09:58] because it's just not engaging as like 90% of the game is just walking and I bounce off

[00:10:03] resident evil because I'm like to engage in a stressful it has like I it's quite hard on the B

[00:10:09] playthrough and the Japanese makes harder. I do want to play some more mobile games and honkai

[00:10:14] star rail. I keep trying to play but it's just hard to find time to sit down and play it and

[00:10:20] the tutorial takes a long time to get through to me like 40 minutes just to get through it.

[00:10:24] So I haven't even gotten to like the full game yet they haven't taken off the training wheels.

[00:10:29] So my goal for this month in gaming was an hour and 15 minutes a day and much like reading I

[00:10:35] barely made it. I really had to push myself at the end I only made it to like an hour or 15 minutes

[00:10:40] like 12 seconds it was really close so I'm gonna push myself on this one and raise it to an hour

[00:10:45] and 20 minutes as this next month's goal. So just in like a confidence check for the last month

[00:10:52] I'm feeling really good looking back and comparing the goals for my this coming month

[00:10:58] and the month I just finished. I'm gonna need like an extra 23 minutes in my schedule

[00:11:03] for Japanese every day and that's going to be very difficult. I wanted to take a moment and explain

[00:11:09] in more detail how I log my data. I've actually set up like a Google sheet to calculate

[00:11:14] how much of an activity I actually need to do. It may sound surprising that I don't actually spend

[00:11:20] three hours with Japanese every single day. Some days I do do a full of three hours some days I do

[00:11:26] four on hard days when I'm busy. I might only do like one hour like for this month. I got so ahead

[00:11:33] on listening and watching that the last few days in the month. I didn't need to do that anymore.

[00:11:38] I could just focus on reading and gaming to get a cop back up. So I don't always hit my daily goals

[00:11:44] but through the whole month I try to average it out. My Google sheet tells me exactly how much

[00:11:49] I need to do each day to just be slightly ahead of my average by like a seventh or something like that.

[00:11:55] I think that's how I've set at does result in kind of a strange curve where at the beginning of the

[00:11:59] month it has me wanting to do almost like five hours a day just to get ahead so that by end of

[00:12:05] the month I'm kind of relaxing a little bit. This may be counterproductive to my overall goal of

[00:12:11] like practicing every day but I think this will be like the only way I can meet my overall average

[00:12:17] goal each month. It helps me not feel so bad because I quote like failed to meet my goal for that

[00:12:24] the sheet kind of reevaluates the time I miss. The next day instead of having to do a full hour

[00:12:29] I have to do an hour and three minutes just to make a lost time which kind of sucks but it also

[00:12:34] kind of makes me feel better if I don't get it all done. Most days I try to go over even more than

[00:12:40] they recommend so next day will be actually reduced so instead of having to do an hour I only have to

[00:12:46] do 58 minutes. Then it's even easier to be that time and do the full hour anyways and then the next

[00:12:53] eight says you only need to do 56 minutes. Now this isn't really like Japanese related and it's just

[00:12:58] a stats thing that I enjoy. I think it's probably important to find a way to do what you enjoy when

[00:13:03] you're learning Japanese and focus on that I enjoy locking my time tracking my progress on vocab

[00:13:08] words told number chapters that type of stuff. Anyways I think this has gone long enough for this

[00:13:13] episode. I have another four months of Japanese learning to get to and thanks for joining me this week.

[00:13:19] See ya!