@taiyousea said I should post some progress so here ya go…
I started about 945AM today. Started with からかい上手元の高木さん Vol1
It’s a reread and haven’t been keeping up with the club so started at ch3 and reread the whole thing
Going to sound like I’m super awesome, but if you know this manga, the speed only sounds amazing when it’s really nothing to brag about
114 pages in 80 min. (Very very low text density and easy and reread)
Now I will wait for Vol 2 to start in the club (which is also will be a re-read, but Vol3 will be new)
Then took a little break and went back to the shosetu I’ve been reading 僕が夫に出会うまで and then the slow slog…doesn’t feel too slow but the stats probably make it slow
Finished that little section and now going to dive into some manga for a bit. ふだつきのキョーコちゃん Vol 6
When I’m done I’ll have to aggregate and somehow put all these reading things (keeping track in a spreadsheet) in a proper report post. Time to check for any accumulated kitsun reviews and then back to reading.
me, at work: when i get home i want a nice big lunch me, the moment i get home from work: *reads unblinkingly*
I’m so excited to check 黒執事 off my list! The latter half had quite a few action panels to
break up the denser keigo-rich dialogue bubbles of the first half, so it was an easier finish than start. Except some of those furigana-explanations made me want to rip my hair out, like, look at these
Progress 1
Finally it’s begun!
I’m hermitting it up in my local manga cafe for a big chunk of today because I figured this would be a good excuse to try it out for the first time.
On the train over I read 28 pages of 妹の友達が何考えてる (3) as a bit of light relief to get into it. I’m going to try to track all of my reading time and pages read throughout pretty closely, which I don’t usually do.
Now I’m finally holed up in place, I’m going to get into 名探偵コナン (2) and try and get it finished. After that I’ll probably be switching back and forth between my novels and more manga for the rest of the day.
Progress 2
Have spent about 45 minutes getting through Conan, and am now feeling a bit manga-d out for now, so time for the first switch to novels. I was planning on mostly sticking to コーヒーが冷めないうちに, but I’m closer to finishing コンビニ人間, and it’s shorter. I’ll still probably switch between both of them, though.
I can really feel the difference in ease of reading Conan compared to when I tried to read the first volume for the first time. Getting used to the different style of manga compared to novels took a little bit but now it’s a lot faster. Plus, knowing a lot of the specific detective-related vocab helps. It’s still unsurprisingly slower than teen girl romance stuff though.
Progress 3
Another chunk done - read through 13 pages of コンビニ人間 (although those are kindle pages - it felt like more than that, and I’m not sure it matches up exactly with the print version).
After that, I got through another 50-ish pages of Conan. Now, a quick break, then back to novel, then try to finish off Conan. After that, I’m gonna head back home, get food and then try to finish off the novel.
Progress 4
Finished 名探偵コナン(2)! Also got a chunk done of コーヒーが冷めない. Now, time to leave the manga cafe behind and head back home. Will continue reading later in an hour or two, for the rest of the day. Part 1 is complete. I’ll make another post later for Part 2.
Another hour down but only made it 35% → 67% in 僕のヒーローアカデミア The number of one-time and specialty words, might as well be reading a deep fantasy novel at this point. Lots of the N2 grammar I’ve been studying this year is being used, though, so it’s feels kind of nice being able to recognize those pieces from my learning.
I definitely didn’t read the last chapter ultra intensively, but I can at least say I’ve finally finished the ヒーローアカ monstrosity Every time I felt like I was really getting my feet under me with the unique words and vocab density, I’d be hit with another bubble like this:
Anyway, with that, I’ve finished the final category on this year’s bingo card I’m finally free!! I’ve been artfully ignoring my non-bingo 三毛猫ホームズ books all night but I’m excited to be able to jump into them next
Good evening fellow readers! It is still friday for me but I am awake and ready for reading. I have slept well and prepared all my snacks and goodies for the day, and decided to start off by warming up with the aozora calendar reading for the day. Starting my 24 hours at ~7:30pm friday here.
As far as aozora reads go, kinda lucked out on this one for trying to do a lot of reading. 新美南吉 is definitely the overall easiest author on the calendar so far. Might have run into some trouble today if I’d had to start out with some edgy old kana 芥川 or something We’ve already done ごんぎつね (おはなし名作絵本 1) | L20 and 赤い蝋燭 | L19 so far this month, and this felt very in line with those: simple moralistic children’s stories with a lil bit of old kanji but not a lot of other real difficulty. I really liked the imagery in this one, very nice descriptions of a soft snowy wintery night. Any of those three would be a great entry point for anyone looking to dip their toes in and try out some older stuff
I prepped a whole bunch of charcuterie and lil mini sandwich stuff with fruits n veggies for the day! Easy to grab a plate and get right back to reading
+0:30 +3500文字 (Total: 0:30, 0 manga pages, 3500文字)
I read the second of the shorts from this collection: 月見草.
This one was a lot harder than the aozora short (and also a lot harder than the first story in this collection that I read a few weeks ago), and required a bit of external research and also a bit of historical knowledge to understand Lots of old kanji and very long dramatic sentences, was a lot slower to work through and I’m still not entirely sure I understood a lot of it.
+0:30 +1600文字 (Total: 1:00, 0 manga pages, 4100文字)
Took a lil break to make some coffee and wash dishes and think about that story a bit (I do much of my best thinking while washing dishes)
I think I kinda get it now, there were just a lot of pieces flying around and it was a story about someone listening to someone else telling a story that was a recollection her mom’s childhood memory in addition to all that very flowery old language… it was just a lot to try to keep track of especially when it was throwing around stuff like Sakura Sōgorō - Wikipedia
Started this morning but had to take frequent breaks because I live with my family, and they always decide to do 100 different things on the weekend lol.
I’m halfway through 葬送のフリーレン 2. Finished five chapters and read around 100 pages in 1 hour 20 minutes - not too bad I think? I’m going to take a short break to stretch before sitting down for another round. 5 more chapters to go!
I did three 15-minute blocks to work on the first 三毛猫ホームズ novel. I’ve struggled with prose and wall-of-kanji anxiety this year, but it’s a major goal of mine to overcome that hurdle and finally finish an actual novel. I made it through 21 pages! A small achievement for the seasoned novel readers out there but I’m very proud
That being said, I may switch to reading another manga for a bit Just a bit!
I finished volume 1 of とらドラ！ in January this year and was kinda excited to try out volume 2 at some point to see how much my reading had improved. I’m gonna be honest I do not know how I powered through reading this, the narrative language in this is kinda crazy for the level I was reading at a year ago Especially since I read it on the bookwalker web reader and it would take like 5 seconds to look up each word!!! How did I read this!!
It hits you with stuff like 「わがまま、根性曲がり、唯我独尊の三重苦を負った手乗りタイガー」and just a lot of very colorful language using very uncommon or outright rare descriptive words (although I really like 日常茶飯事, that’s an excellent word). It’s fun to read now with a tolerable level of challenge, but I can see why I was only managing a couple pages per day last year
Since I have stats on this on hand: volume 2 is 114,000 characters and 312 pages, so it’s about 365 characters per page. My ballpark stats tracking standard is ~350/page, so this is more or less in line with that.
+0:45 +4100文字 (Total: 1:45, 0 manga pages, 8200文字)
Depends highly on the manga. I had written a program to count the characters for the manga that I have Mokuro’d (ignoring everything that is not in the 3 Japanese alphabets), and the numbers are wildly different, can even vary a lot within the same series. Some examples:
Wanted a lil break from hard stuff and so pulled open a pixiv fan novel series I’ve been reading:
These are super short lil dialogues about fubuki and mio discussing 語呂合わせ days, there’s a lot of them in november because 11 can be いい, so like 11/25 is いい双子の日, or they can be a lil more obtuse like 11/1 being 犬の日 (because it’s ワンワンワン, of course), or 11/11 being pocky day (cuz pocky sticks look like 1s, get it). Artists use these a lot on pixiv and twitter almost as like daily prompts, and there’s a non-exhaustive list of them on pixiv dict here, there’s even a whole dedicated calendar for specific touhou character days.
Anyway, these are fun, cute, popcorn, extremely fast to read. Going to take a lil break after this and set up narcissu I think
+0:30 +3700文字 (Total: 2:15, 0 manga pages, 11900文字)
compared to others, shees I feel slow but I did read another manga in about 40 min / 35 pages (easier than the other one)
and just finished 2nd chap of ふだつきのキョーコ Vol 6 - 70 min / 36 pages (this a pretty typical speed for me)
break time and bunpro reviews
getting eeeeeppyyyyyyy
debating about continuing FF1 (Japanese of course) but heck if any clue how to count that but mayhaps easier when eepy
was thinking I’d try to stay up late but it’s already 11pm and it’s not looking good video games might help maybe
def thought I could get more done today than I was able to, mostly cuz the day is not fully dedicated to reading (though still have til 10am tomorrow). So far almost 6 hours of reading time
Progress 5
Unfortunately, on the way back home, I was sucked in by a surprise tornado which whisked me into a used bookstore. Then, I was (disastrously) taken as a hostage by a surprise vigilante, who forced me at gunpoint to buy more books and manga in exchange for my life being spared. The books are for another day, but I got the next 2 volumes up for 名探偵コナン (3 and 4), which I might dip into later.
Then, on the train back, I finished off 妹の友達 (3). It feels slightly like cheating to count 1 page of this as the same as 1 page of a novel, given it has about 10x less words. Maybe I should count characters for Novels instead? That sounds like a lot of effort though, so I’ll probably just have 2 counts, 1 for manga pages, 1 for novel pages, and just put them together for the overall results. I think that sounds reasonable.
Now, it’s time to get back into コンビニ人間 for a bit. I want to get another 10% or so done at least.
Progress 6
Got another 40 minutes of コンビニ人間 done. This book is really good. It’s kind of the first novel I’ve read in Japanese where I feel properly absorbed by what’s actually going on in the book and emotionally tied to it, rather than just appreciating the writing like other books I’ve read. I can see why it’s got a good reputation.
Progress 7
I’ve made another pilgrimage out to a good old ファミレス to get some more reading in. I’ve managed another hour or so of コンビニ人間 here. I really appreciate the way in which the author manages to make the other characters (the “normal” ones) appear to be both kind, lovely, well-intentioned people, and completely rude and clueless at the same time. Essentially every character is both very flawed but still with their obvious good points as well.
I’m now only about another 15 ish pages out from finishing the book. I think I’m going to try to push through to the end. I’ll probably head back home and get through it in bed, and fight the urge to sleep long enough to get it complete. I started reading at about 7:40AM today, so tomorrow morning I’ll round up at the 24 hour mark properly. It’s been a good day for reading though, and I’ve comfortably cleared my most pages read for manga, and will have comfortably cleared my most novel pages read by the end as well.
The number of one-time and specialty words, might as well be reading a deep fantasy novel at this point. Lots of the N2 grammar I’ve been studying this year is being used, though, so it’s feels kind of nice being able to recognize those pieces from my learning.
i had some dino nuggets!! i’m fueled!
Every time I felt like I was really getting my feet under me with the unique words and vocab density, I’d be hit with another bubble like this: 
I’m finally free!! I’ve been artfully ignoring my non-bingo 三毛猫ホームズ books all night but I’m excited to be able to jump into them next 
We’ve already done 
have fun everyone, can’t wait to join in tomorrow!