Minimalist language learning

I would like to share my current study routine in case it's useful to someone. It's not a strict plan, I change things depending on how I feel that day and how busy I am. Plus, it's tailored to my main goal: reaching a high comprehension level. I try to practice writing more but it's not my priority. On workdays (around 1h 50min a day): Anki - max. 20 minutes (often less) Listening (podcasts, anime, audiobooks, YouTube, etc.) - around 45 minutes Extensive Reading with occasional look-ups (not too difficult light novels, manga, video games, etc.) - around 45 minutes  I usually do Anki in the morning and listening and reading in the evening. When it comes to listening or reading material, I often stick with a particular novel or series, but sometimes I just choose whatever I feel like that day. When I’m listening to podcasts or audiobooks, I often do some housework. Additional activities on weekends: Writing (practice with sentence pattern book) Intensive Reading with mor...

This volume was tough. I had a lot of trouble understanding all these explanations. I think I got the most important parts, but I probably still missed some details. Because of the complexity of this series, I decided to take notes about characters and important information. Sometimes I don’t clearly understand who did what and why, so I write down what I do understand and move on. If I later come across additional information that brings more clarity, I go back and correct my earlier notes. At times I felt a bit down because some scenes were hard to follow, but my notes showed me that I actually understood a good part of it. This volume was challenging but I'm so glad that I kept reading! Chapter 7 and the following chapters felt especially rewarding. The final action scenes were really cool and the foreshadowing made me very curious about the next volume. I also loved the emotional scenes.    

I wanted to read the novel version of this Detective Conan movie for a long time, because it's one of my absolute favorites! Some things may not be very realistic, but I loved this movie (and the novel) for the action and excitement until the very end. Oh, and because Kaito Kid is also involved, of course. :D As always, the book has full furigana and is written in a easy to understand writing style. The aviation related vocab was a bit difficult at first, but I was able to understand these scenes quite well.  This is one of the strengths of this book series, in my opinion: Even if there are rather rare words, the sentences themselves are usually not very complicated. (Not like in other books, where I look up several words and still don't really understand the sentence) Plus, the same words come up more often than in other books I know, because the author uses a rather limited vocabulary to tell the story. For example, instead of using 5 different words to express similar things...

I always track the books I've read in Japanese with bookmeter. This is the summary of 2025:   I've read some cool novels and manga last year, like 遊☆戯☆王GX, 変な家２ or 心霊探偵八雲 for example. I also experimented with different reading approaches. For the most part, I looked up every unknown word because I wanted to expand my vocabulary so badly. I just was so unsatisfied because even after all these efforts I still come across so many unknown words. XD In the end, I'm still not satisfied with my vocabulary but I realized that I need to relax and just keep going.

(I finished this novel in 2025) I already read 変な家 (1) so I wanted to read 変な家２, too.  First, the author presents a number of "short stories" about strange houses. Each case was quite interesting by itself. However, one story was very hard to stomach for me ( trigger warning : this one story contains very disturbing experiences of a child). I had to pause reading for a while because of this. After sharing lots of information about these houses and their inhabitants, the author connects the dots. It was fascinating to see how all these houses and people were connected to each other. This revelation phase felt a bit forced, but it was interesting nevertheless. Often things were different than they seemed at first. The end was sad and tragic.  変な家２ is easier to read than most novels. In some scenes you will come across difficult vocabulary, but overall the author uses an rather uncomplicated writing style.    

(I finished this manga series in 2025) I loved the Yu-Gi-Oh GX anime as a teenager. That's why I wanted to read the manga version in Japanese. Interestingly, the manga has many similarities but also big differences. To put it simply: they took familiar characters from the anime, added some new ones and told a complete new story. The manga version feels like a parallel universe. I really liked the anime so I was a bit sceptical at first. It's a very different story, yes, but overall a good one in my opinion. For example: I liked how the manga gave the protagonist (Judai) more depth. Quite early in the story, his backstory explains how he became a duelist and why he uses this particular deck. In the manga, Judai has a strong "why". This is something I missed in the beginning of the anime version.  Difficulty Most chapters contain two types of scenes: story scenes and duel scenes.  Language wise, the story scenes are much more interesting and beneficial for Japanese lear...