As part of my Japanese learning, I read. I love Toradora—I’ve watched the anime several times and read the light novel, as well—so I decided that something in that same vein (drama, romance) would be a good bet for a light novel that I would enjoy, in Japanese, and that I could use to learn.

I picked “How to Keep a Distance from a Beautiful Girl,” by Maromi Maroyaka. It’s a webnovel, which makes it very accessible and the browser-based side of it does also help with looking stuff up and actually learning new words and grammar. Overall, I’d say it’s just OK. I don’t love it so far (I’m on Chapter 2…), but I see the appeal and I’ll keep at it, at least for a little while longer.

The main character is a guy that lives a very detached life. I mean that he doesn’t really have friends, he doesn’t go out with people, he’s not interested in getting a girlfriend… It’s not that he’s a bad person, or even unfriendly—as a matter of fact, he’s very friendly and does have one (1) good friend, so he’s relatively well-adjusted—, he simply doesn’t care to live a life plugged into the social sphere. Hence, detached. The novel does strongly indicate that he doesn’t actually feel this way, my guess is that there was some sort of trauma that we’re gonna learn about eventually, and, as the title might suggest, he’ll almost certainly start engaging with more and more people as the story progresses until he has a large social circle. Hopefully I’m wrong about the cliché progression of the narrative, but I suppose I’ll have to read to find out.

I watched a video that brought up what I thought was a very poignant point: if you want a good accent in a second language, you need to focus on listening first, and then reading. The idea is that, if you’re already familiar with the language (structure, vocabulary), your brain will simply skip over the spoken word. You know what’s being said, because you know the language, so you’ll fail to pick up on the sound of the language, and therefore never develop a truly native accent. Is this based in any science at all? No clue. Might be total rubbish. However, it does sound weirdly reasonable.

Truth be told, I don’t care if it’s true, but I shall use it as an excuse to introduce variety into my study sessions. I’m big on reading, so if I don’t have a reason to listen, I’ll probably neglect it.

Whenever I listen to Japanese, I find myself shocked at how much I understand. I miss a lot, mind you, but I can honestly keep up with basic conversation. If people are talking about “normal” or “everyday” things, I can most definitely understand them. Reading too, though often I don’t actually know how to read something, I usually know what it means. Kanji are tough, but very cool.

And with that, I’m out.