Not sure anyone remembers but at this point I'm doing this more for accountability than anything else. I should have done this post two weeks ago but yeahhh here it is now :p link for the first post if anyone's interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/Japaneselanguage/s/PlquSWZNlB

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44 days have passed since I made my first post, leaving now 331 days to achieve my goal of a C1 level in Japanese, and progress has been....ok? I don't think a lot changes in a month but there are some things that changed my perspective a bit.

IMMERSION SUMMER PROJECT

From the the time I started studying Japanese up until 3 months ago (~2 years) I barely did any immersion. I sometimes did something but it was extremely inconsistent, which resulted in my listening and speaking being very behind my reading and writing.

I have been doing speaking lessons once a week for almost a year and realized that if I wanted my speaking to improve more I would need to improve my listening first. As a result, when my classes ended, I started this little project to improve my comprehension in the language.

In the other post, I had accumulated 93 hours and as of now I've reached 194.5 hours **. However, it was supposed to be much more if I did 3-4 hours everyday. Truth be told, due to being on vacation and constantly moving it's hard to do that much time. Recently the most I've been able to do is 2 hours. When classes come back I'm not sure how I'll handle it but we'll see.

LISTENING PROGRESS

I haven't been able to notice much compared with last month, however, I've recently done some comparisons with my habilities from a couple of months ago.

From the gaming channel I watch, I rewatched the first video I ever saw of it, a single player Mario Party gameplay. I remember that, when I heard it for the first time it was absolute NOISE. I literally couldn't understand a single thing that was being said and even with subtitles on it was basically completely incomprehensible and I soon gave up.

When I came back a week ago, I noticed that I could understand a lot more. Don't get me wrong, it's still very hard and very fast and even with subtitles it's still difficult. However, I could understand so much more than a couple of months ago. I can now understand common reactions in gaming (i.e: あぶねー、よし、ちょっと待って、etc) without much thought and rarely accompany short sentences with simple vocab. It may not seem much, but for me it's huge.

In addition, I went back on some N4 and N3 videos I used to watch, and struggle with, and realized I could basically understand what they said. I still mentally translate but that's something I'm working on. Instead of mentalizing the words I try to imagine the scene playing. Again, not much, but it's amazing for me.

READING PROGRESS

As reading is my most advanced skill, I haven't been focusing too heavily on it. What I do is use the 読解 book of the 新完全マスター N1 and use Reddit to read posts in Japanese. I probably should do more if my goal is C1 tho...

But as of recently, I could understand my first post fully in Japanese without translating anything. Although it wasn't anything particularly difficult — The grammar and vocabulary were simple and it was written in informal Japanese without many contractions — it felt so good and I really felt proud of myself. Of course the majority of posts and comments are still hard to fully read and understand, but it's the first step towards something greater.

PITCH ACCENT AND ANKI

Less than two weeks ago, I've also downloaded an Anki deck to train my pitch accent. It's something that I want to improve since it also helps with my Japanese speaking.

It's been good so far, however I've reduced new cards from 10 to 5 since reviews are starting to pile up and on top of my others Japanese decks I easily study 80-90 cards a day. It usually takes 20-30 minutes a day to complete everything, which may not seem like much, but I don't want to spend more than that just reviewing.

I also have been averaging around 30-40 new cards in Anki per week, with the majority of them coming from studying through the 新完全マスター N1 series (文法 + 読解) and it's mostly formal vocabulary. However, I will soon start the 語彙 book.

SPEAKING PROGRESS(?)

I think this is the hardest skill to measure because it really depends on how I am during a lesson.

On good days, I can talk about complex levels (Like politics, house prices etc, although in very simple ways and expressing very watered down opinions and not always in the most fluent manner) but on bad ones I can barely talk about where I went on vacation without suturing and forgetting words.

Because of this, I can't say much regarding my speaking habilities but maybe they're slowing catching up as my listening is progressing (at least I hope so).

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CONCLUSION

Compared with July, I don't think much has changed. I think these changes are more noticeable if compared with 3+ months ago. Just these small changes I've described and 100 hours I've accumulated.

To avoid repeating myself in the following parts, I'll start doing these updates every 100 hours of my immersion project, so Part 3 will probably come at the 300 hour mark or something.

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**This summer project is not the first time I've done immersion. As I've previously stated, it was extremely inconsistent and it was bit registered in any way shape or form.

Although not registered, my true total time immersed in Japanese is probably around 300-350 hours (194.5 registered hours + Unregistered hours) but for reliability purposes I'll keep the 194.5 hours as the official time stamp.