久しぶりです・・・本当に６ヶ月になりましたか？
Still progressing with Japanese, and participated in the 多読 contest last month. (For those who don't know, 多読 is a foreign-language reading contest.) To put some things in perspective, I finished RTK1 in February 2011; I've been reading Japanese (for various values of "reading) for almost a year now. However, it wasn't until December that I finally finished reading a complete novel in Japanese. Now, after a month of 多読, I'm a few dozen pages short of finishing my sixth novel.
I set myself what I thought was an ambitious goal -- 1500 pages. But while I only just reached it, submitting my last pages with 30 minutes to spare, I *could* have done a lot more. (Blame falls squarely on Battlefield 3 being so goddamned addicting.)
So, here's what I read this month:
Novels:
俺の妹がこんなに可愛いわけがない。③ (Complete)
涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 (Complete; already started prior to 多読)
涼宮ハルヒの溜息 (241/275 read)
あの日見た花の名前を僕達はまだ知らない（上） (Complete)
隙間女（幅広） (Complete)
ギフテッド (80/347 read)
Manga:
とある科学の超電磁砲 第１巻 (Complete)
Various 同人誌 and other assorted manga.
In the end, I landed 10th place on the overall ranking. (7th for Japanese.) Near as I can tell, I was in the top 5 for novel pages read. (Which strikes me as pretty incredible for my first time.)
More importantly, I gained a much better feel for Japanese. Large blocks of text are becoming less and less intimidating; I'm able to push on through now without looking up every word, and still grasp the overall meaning. My reading speed is ridiculously faster now -- what took me a full day of reading to do before now takes a few hours. I have not reached the point that I could increase my vocabulary simply by reading, but I haven't fallen behind on vocab despite having ignored Anki all month. Simply put, I feel far more comfortable with Japanese now.
And isn't that the goal anyway?
以上。
