Additionally–I just discovered Magic: the Gathering rules text in Japanese. I’ve been playing the game on and off since 1995, so I’m very familiar with the rules, but seeing it in a different language has been incredible for reinforcing my grammar discrimination ability.

For anyone unfamiliar, Magic is extremely precise with its rules language, almost like legal documents. When you’ve got thousands and thousands of cards and they all have to interact together in an agreed upon way, all sorts of edge cases and specificity of basics have to be covered. Because I know almost all the details of the rules in English, it’s been a little like reading a book I know well or seeing a movie dubbed in Japanese, just with more specific language.

Yeah, I’m with you on this, and wish I had done so in hindsight. The gameplay was interesting for about a couple of hours, but ultimately I think the game’s more about the graphics in the quieter moments–although as a raytracing showcase, it’s less impressive now than it was in 2019–and the wacky stuff it comes up with than anything.

Wasn’t planning on taking another mock exam a second week in a row but I’d heard from someone that Migii’s exams were difficult and I decided I was up for the challenge.

I got my butt kicked 😅

Good practice, I guess. I’m just hoping exam day isn’t as tough.

Going to start an in-sentence verb conjugation drill and see if that helps me pick up my reading speed. Speed is still the target!

They don’t care. That kind of thing would be censored locally but as long as it makes them money, it doesn’t matter.

Got any good reading?

Took my second JLPT mock exam yesterday. 10 point improvement from the first one. Comfortable margins above the minimums in all three sections, which is huge.

It’s kinda wild that I still need to improve my reading/answering speed by 30 minutes or so to not run out of time but I’m still somehow well into passing territory. I guess that’s just how it works when 90/180 is a passing score, lol. Also speaks to my strength in reading comp–it’s by far my strongest section…other than the speed issue. Test-taking strategy alone is doing a lot for me. I know exactly what passages to skip and return to if I have time.

Going to do three more full weeks of reading practice and then a gradual taper before exam day. It’s kinda crazy to think about actually having time to do things 😅 Between studying for the JLPT and job search, I’ve put in an insane amount of hours for more than half a year now.