Tuesday, May 16, 2006

what you really want to know.

I've been "running sprints" for a good part of the day today (sprints in the sense of timing my reading speed over a stretch of 2 minutes). The time I'm gauging is probably far far to short to give an accurate picture of how I can read over a 40 minute stretch, and the material will almost certainly be harder and take more consideration than the semi-popular fiction that I've been working on, but I'm proud to have a just put a pretty big milestone behind me.

I read 500 characters in 2 minutes... 250 characters a minute. 1/2 the pace of an average Japanese reader.... for two whole minutes!

If we wanted to be really fair, I've only really been exposed to the Japanese language for about 4 years, so I can only legitimately be compared with a 4 year old japanese child... a child whose ass I would soundly kick.

I'll be finishing the second of the three books of the Wind Up Bird Chronicles in just a few minutes as well, opening the door to the last 509 pages worth of ねじまき鳥goodness. If I can get my average reading pace up to around 300 characters per minute, that's only about 1018 minutes worth of reading time!

(I look forward to a day when I don't have to crunch meaningless numbers to give myself a sense of progress toward an important goal)

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