So in reference to my previous post on SRS woes - over the past two weeks since I started my new review habit of non-punishment on first encounter, I’ve seen my average review count double. I’m taking a vacation next week so it’s bound to spike during that time, but ideally I can keep that rate increase steady.

One side-affect I didn’t think through was the answer button metrics - it will gravitate toward correctly answering on the first try quite frequently. This is a sorta useless metric in my opinion, and if that’s not the one I choose to evaluate myself on, it doesn’t matter.

The thing about SRS is that the magic won’t work if you’re not doing lots and lots of reps on a frequent basis. The point is to expose yourself to certain cards at certain intervals, and to do that consistently. If the first few exposures hinder subsequent exposures, then the algorithm is not working in your favor.

So there are some Japanese video streaming sites that have the user comments superimposed on top of the video at the time of comments. So the video, in a sense, changes anytime a viewer posts a comment, and it happens at that place in the video timeline. NicoNico is one such site. This is sort of what it looks like.

EDIT(2020/12/29): I lost the images here at some point in the last 3 years. Unsure where I got them from but they’re gone now. Sad! I’ve added a short clip from this video which is better than a screencap.

A little strange compared to what I’m accustomed to, and it sounds weird/distracting, but it actually offers a distinct advantage. It keeps you engaged with both audiovisual content, and contextual native-speaker-written text. This is incredibly valuable for someone learning via immersion.

This streaming site is also ostensibly reserved for native Japanese people. You need to sign up and even indicate which prefecture you’re from. I’ll be honest, I just chose at random. Signing up for another site all in Japanese is, as always, an adventure.

Anyway, I’ve had let’s-play videos running in the background for a couple hours. As I write this, some guy is playing Pokemon Pinball (oh the memories) and the chat is, as far as I can tell, mildly amused. At least compared to when he was playing Pokemon Snap. All the same, it’s a good time.

I was reading Khatz’s post on overcoming burnout and it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually spent time finding stuff to read that I really wanted to read. Honestly, manga has never been my thing. It’s always been anime, but there have been times I wanted to read a manga to continue a series that ended a bit too soon. Well I remembered what I wanted to read in Japanese. 氷菓 is one of my favourite shows. I say favourite because it’s in the special list of shows I actually re-watch. It’s pretty unusual for me to do that. Some other shows on that list that come to mind are are Cowboy Bebop and Overlord. No matter how many times I watch them, there always seems to be something appealing in re-watching them.

I recall a grad student from my undergrad days mentioning that there’s a final volume of 冰果 that never quite made it to anime land, and it’s available (or perhaps was at the time) only in Japanese. He mused about someday learning the language just to read it. I felt his pain, back then before I realized that learning a language is stupid-easy if you take your time and focus on building fun learning habits. Oh, if only I’d started at that very moment, I would be fluent right now. But I didn’t. So I’m not. And here I am on memory lane.

Anyway, I don’t have a whole lot of textual stimulation in my immersion environment right now. More than half a year in and still very little in the way of reading material. Well, better late than never. Time to start.

Since I’m pirate scum, I started by tracking down an uploaded version of the first volume. Haven’t managed to find the rest, so I’m biting the bullet and importing all 10 volumes. First time importing anything for myself. Ever. Thanks アマゾン!

In the process of tracking these down, I’ve learned that imports can be very expensive. Like really expensive if you don’t know what you’re doing. I tried a lot of sites dedicated to imports, but all of them paled in comparison to going to a native version of Amazon and doing international shipping. The US version of Amazon didn’t quite have all of it, and most of what it did have was at an outrageous price. Some of it was priced well but had obnoxious delivery schedules since they were all 3rd party sellers. Alibaba didn’t have the manga (just body pillows… ew). JBox did not have it. YesAsia had almost all of it, but again too pricey; each issue was priced separately.

In the end アマゾン ended up being the most cost effective and expedient. They are delivering it the same week I ordered it. Man, shipping within my own country tends to take longer than that!

It really goes to show just how much these dedicated import sites can rip us off. Most people are happy paying a little extra for the convenience of not having to deal with being literate in Japanese, but if you’re learning through immersion like I am, that’s sorta missing the point. You don’t get better at reading websites in Japanese by not looking at websites in Japanese. Even if you need a little Google translate magic here and there, it’s a valuable learning experience.

I’m not going to get too much into what SRSing is in this post since I just want to unload some issues I’ve had with it recently. In short it stands for Spaced Repetition System. It’s a method that has existed for a while, and has been popularized by services like Duolingo. Look it up. I’m doing the more DIY approach, which has worked very well for the most part, but over several months has declined.

It started out very game-like. Fun, easy, and potent. Recently it has become a little like pulling teeth. Okay not that bad, but certainly not “fun” as consistently as it used to. I often find myself doing only a few reps a day. I never outright stop. I haven’t stopped for more than half a year now. That’s what is truly important, but I’m not where I want to be at this point. I need a way to get my pace back up, which means I need to get myself to have fun with it again. This primarily involves analyzing where I’m making it un-fun.

I’ve recently been trying a new approach: Be less punishing on initial failure. The most punishing aspect of my RTK deck reps is the fallout of initial encounters with kanji. I have a tendency not to review/choose stories before my first encounter while SRSing, which invariably results in a poor grade at first. This is far too punishing.

The fun-ness of SRSing for me is blowing through reps like a BAMF. It only can happen on days where I’m on a roll with kanji that have strong stories behind them and a good frequency of mature cards. The algorithm doesn’t work if that’s all I’m encountering, so my new strategy is bolstering the positive reinforcement aspect. Add more reward to strengthen the initial association and keep forward momentum from the get-go. I’ve tried it for a week now and it has yielded mixed results. Certainly some improvement, but I need a bit more. I’ll post more as I continue experimenting.

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