Just discovered obsolete kana!

I was in the middle of finding the translation for the word いた when the Microsoft IME offered an alternative kana translation that looks like this： ゐ. This was my face (O_o) What is that!? So I hurriedly typed it into google to find out more and Wikipedia tells me this is one of a few obsolete kana and it is pronounced "wi". Then I discovered 'we' : ゑ. I especially like this one, it looks kind of like an Egyptian hieroglyph. I had always wondered why there were only 2 kana beginning with the 'w' sound. It makes me wonder where 'wu' is now...I need to do more investigating.

Quick update

Spent 83 minutes on Anki today learning 60 new vocabulary words and about 10 kanji. I'm not sure I am going to remember them all but I'm all set for a review day tomorrow. I definitely made up for the day where I did no studying.

Animal Crossing > Studying

Still not finished Chapter 4...*shakes head in shame* I have 2 days left before the end of the month and I plan to start Chapter 5 on February 1st. The Genki textbook was a little evil to me; I got to the end of the grammar section, finished off writing the cultural note and then noticed that right at the end of the practice section there is a huge long list of vocabulary that the workbook also requires you to study D: So I need to learn a whole bunch of vocabulary now on dates and time. I shall try and do that today and then review everything again tomorrow. I missed one day of studying yesterday because of illness so my streak has been broken, and I have been playing a lot of animal crossing. These photos of my village really remind me of My Neighbour Totoro and other Studio Ghibli films \(^_^)/

Chapter 4! finally (¬ ¬)

Finished Chapter 3! *pops open the champagne bottle* I thought I wasn't going to finish :/ Lately I've been particularly tired and achy; this could be down to several factors including: being on a diet, having an awful sleeping routine, not getting enough exercise, having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or pushing myself too hard mentally. It has been a real struggle to make sure that I study everyday. My studying time has severely dropped and I am doing less than an hour a day. I think I need to sort out my sleeping routine and start going for walks! As for worrying about Kanji and verb conjugation, it seems there was nothing to worry about, Genki explained each topic fairly well. Maybe more examples of how to use each grammar point and a built in answer key would have been great too *shakes fist at Genki*. I've just created the Anki deck for Chapter 4 vocabulary and I already know 75% of the words already! hehe yay!

My daily routine - In Japanese

Just finished going over approximately 8 new particles, I'm confused to say the least. So many particles!!! Going over Chapter 3, I have realised that book is going at a pace that is a little too fast for my liking and some of the lesson points lack examples and description but that could also be because the books are supposed to be used in conjunction with a teacher, so that is a downside to being self taught. Perhaps I should consider doing a short Japanese course with a teacher...

Anyway, today I learned how to create some proper sentences, and so now I have short passage about my daily routine. (Not entirely sure it is all correct!)

私は毎日午后一時に起きます。たいてい朝ご飯を食べます。私はあまり喫茶店に行きません。毎晩九時頃に日本語を勉強します。私は午前四時に寝ます。

UPDATE: I have just been informed by my great friend Taishi that I was using the old form of ごご and that I should use 午後 instead. I must write this down to remember.

If this is correct, it should say:
I wake up at 1pm everyday. I usually eat breakfast. I don't often go to the coffee shop. Every evening, around 9pm, I study Japanese. I go to sleep at 4am.

This sentences look so simple, and are so simple to write in other languages, but this was difficult! I do not know all the Kanji I have included here yet. Thank you Japanese IME for doing the conversion for me!

Benefit to being a self taught learner

My learning over the past few days has been very slow; I think that the reason was fear of starting verb conjugation. Today I finally put my foot down and forced myself to open the textbook and make notes on verb conjugation and, to my happy surprise, it is not as hard as it looks. Admittedly, I did have to refer back to the book on several occasions while doing a worksheet, but now I think that I'm fairly confident at forming Dictionary, Present Affirmative and Present Negative verbs. The most difficult thing with verbs is learning which ones are ~u verbs, ~ru verbs, or irregular verbs (darn you irregular verbs with your awkwardness!!!). I am a slow learner but once I understand something completely I tend to pick it up well and remember the information, this is one of the benefits to being a self taught learner of Japanese. At school everyone is expected to follow the same pace, but since I am teaching myself, I can take as long as I need to fully understand what the book is trying to convey to me. Today, in total, I did around 1 hour and 30 minutes of active study and around 4-5 hours passive by having a bit of Japanese horror movie + Ghibli marathon (The Grudge, The Grudge 2 and Spirited Away). I am going to try and increase my active studying now, perhaps do an extra hour tomorrow learning Kanji and 5 new particles.

I'm so impatient!

So I have finally made it to the end of Chapter 2 in the Genki textbook, which means that tomorrow I will be starting the dreaded Chapter 3. I have already covered most of the vocabulary for Chapter 3 so I guess that is one weight off the load.

Yesterday night I decided to watch My Neighbour Totoro in Japanese. It is one of my favourite films and I usually watch it with English dubs. I began to panic as soon as the film had started because I found that often, I did not recognise a lot of what was being said. After that, I began watching a short segment of a Japanese TV show about foreigners on their life in Japan and I was amazed and jealous of how good they were speaking Japanese. I began to feel pretty depressed about these things and I had to take a step back to put my feelings into perspective.

Then it hit me! It has been a week exactly since I picked up my Genki Textbook and began studying seriously! 7 days and I was already feeling insufficient (>_<). I have realised now, that not only am I a perfectionist, I am also extremely impatient. My biggest hurdle that I need to overcome is my impatience, because if I feel like I am not succeeding fast enough, I am likely to give up studying all together.