Okay, so I think I am back on track with my flashcard studies.

As long as I stick to my current schedule, I should be able to pass both the JLPT N3 and TOPIK 4 next year.

Ideally, I would like to get a TOPIK 5 the first time around, but I think I’ll have to aim for that after I pass the JLPT N3.

So the plan is something like:

1. Pass TOPIK 4 in April
2. Pass JLPT N3 in July
3. Pass TOPIK 5 in October
4. Pass JLPT N2 in December

And this is just the plan for taking tests.

I still have to do my stuff related to my own personal research.

That is also something that I had originally planned to do alongside my language studies, but I’ve been putting them off.

Maybe I should just work on a tiny bit a day, just to keep the ball roling.

I’m currently behind schedule with my vocabulary flashcards.

It’s really more of an issue with deep focus than anything.

I keep getting distracted when I’m in front of the computer.

I keep getting sucked into distracting YouTube videos and the black hole of the internet.

Where I have been the most successful is when I’m just taking slow walks outside in the backyard while studying my flashcards.

It’s very meditative and I think the walking really helps to make me feel like I’m “doing something,” because sitting and studying to me makes me feel lazy and lethargic.

Anyways, I think I need to maintain at least a 100 word a day pace for the next couple weeks to catch up.

So the app that I’m using to study flashcards is called Anki.

One of the great features that it has is that it actually tells you how much time you spent studying using the app.

So for today, it calculated that I spent around 2 hours studying with the app.

That’s a lot better than just a few days ago, when I was barely getting even 30 minutes.

However, I have so much free time these days that I should really be getting 4 hours or more of study time with the app.

I’ve been spending a lot of time watching YouTube videos and these really just suck your time away.

I think I’m going to have to go somewhere away from my laptop, since I notice that I watch most of these YouTube videos on y laptop, instead of my phone.

So I think I can just go outside and study.

For this blog post, I’m just going to take some time to pause and think about my research and my studies.

For most of 2020, I had been working on research and creating new information to further Japanese linguistics.

However, since about a few months ago, I decided to put my research on hold to focus more on studying.

I’m not sure how I feel about it, but I think it’s necessary for me to do things in this order in order for me to achieve the goal of getting the MEXT scholarship.

I do think I need to spend time on rewriting Japanese words and Okinawan words into Pahanngana, though, since that is what is important for my research portfolio.

Also, I think aiming for a solid JLPT N3, and NOT an N2 is a good idea, since while getting an N2 would be great, it would require a lot more time and energy, and I would rather use that energy to focus on my own research.

I still do plan on aiming for the N2, just not yet.

Today was a very productive day and I blasted through tons of reviews today.

However, I didn’t get that much sleep last night.

Health truly is wealth.

Even though I got a lot of reviews done, my lack of sleep affected my focus and I haven’t been eating very healthily the past few days.

I’m going to have to cut out sugars and carbs as much as I can.

And more importantly, I need to eat really healthy food such as eggs, fish, salad, and nuts.

I’ve been eating a lot of chocolate, bread, and candy because of leftover Halloween candy and just the sheer abundance and availability of carbs in the house, but I’m going to have to make sure to focus on good food as much as possible.

So I ended up catching up on reviews of my flashcards.

I think I need to just spend every free amount of time I have here and there to chip away at the mountain of flashcard reviews I have.

So for example, here are some times where I’m just waiting around:

• Waiting for food to cook
• Waiting for laundry
• While I’m in the car with friends and family
• While I’m out sunbathing and getting vitamin D
• Before and after eating a meal
  • This one is especially important, because I have a tendency to just hang around after eating a meal and watch TV or play with my phone

I think I’ve been holding myself back.

Basically, I’ve been spending too much time on flashcard reviews and not enough time on new material.

I think I’m going to try something new tomorrow.

I’m going to study as much new stuff as possible and then finally do the reviews afterwards.

I need to get past this roadblock since the important thing is to make as much progress as possible.

Basically what I’ve been doing up to now is get 100% perfect score on just 50% of the material I should know.

What I should try now is to get a 75% score on 100% of the material I should know.

We’ll test it out.

I’ll ignore reviews for 5 days and only study new stuff, then the final 2 days will be dedicated to just reviews.

Okay, I need to get my webtoon reading back under control.

I think I need to use reading webtoons as a reward.

So I can study a lot of my video lessons and flashcards, and then read one chapter of webtoons.

I’ve fallen behind a bit with my studies and need to get things in order.

Starting my day off right plus not eating junk food and eating healthy food will definitely help me get back on track.

Reading webtoons and watching videos on YouTube are like fast-forwarding time machines – time just seems to fly by and doing these things are effortless.

However, studying flashcards is the opposite – a time machine that slows down time.

I think I need to establish a reward (reading webtoons) for studying flashcards so my brain will associate the pleasure of reading webtoons with the hard work of studying.

I haven’t really been looking at native Japanese content much.

Unlike many people who learn Japanese to watch anime without subtitles, read manga in Japanese, or understand what the lyrics are in Jpop or Jrock songs, my main drive is mainly linguistics-based.

However, I do have to admit that I love reading gripping stories and listening to good music as well.

Now that I’ve found a few webtoon series that have been translated into Korean, Japanese, and English, I think I can take advantage of my love of reading manga to get me acquainted with natural and native Japanese content, not just stuff from textbooks.

So today I had a plan.

That plan was to find some Korean webtoons (online comics) that were translated in three languages – English, Korean, and Japanese.

Then I would read all three at the same time, concurrently, and be able to fill in the gaps of words I don’t know by comparing the three translations.

That didn’t go exactly as planned.

While searching for a webtoon that was translated into all three languages, I ended up getting sucked into one particular webtoon… in English.

So I spent several hours getting caught up in the English version of this one webtoon, even though I should have been reading one that has all three languages.

So many hours passed…m