[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

Great conclusion.

I hope things will calm down for you soon anyway!! I’m trying to create the same routine of cozying up and reading a bit before sleeping, hopefully I can find the time and peace haha

Btw, we talked about terrace house and hiikibiiki before right? I said I couldn’t get through terrace house and you said (if I remember correctly) that the drama would pick up at some point. Well that was definitely true and I finished two seasons in one month lol. It helped me loads before taking the n2! I’m also listening to hiikibiiki daily! Listening to the mcdonalds themed podcast as we speak/type.

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For those in the U.S.:

During the promotion period, make a purchase that meets the minimum purchase requirement (3 books or more in a single order with the shipping address in the United States), apply the coupon code “US3BOOKS”, and receive a 1,000-yen coupon to your account automatically after one day of your order has been delivered. The coupon will show in the Qualifying offers section of the checkout page, next time you purchase books from Amazon.co.jp.

I wasn’t planning to buy anything until December, but 1,000 yen is more than the per order shipping of 600 yen, so it’s basically like getting free order shipping + 400 yen. どうしよう?

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Get all the things.

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But wouldn’t you need to place two orders to get the coupon? (The first order to trigger the coupon, and the second order to actually redeem it? - And how long would the coupon be valid?)

Not that I want to keep you from ordering stuff, though :smile:

Well I’d still order in December and use the coupon then. It doesn’t mention an expiration date, but that is the risk.

My wife is going to visit her family in the States in December… If I ship stuff to her parents’ house… :thinking:

greediness for books rising

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Obviously, buy more books.

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random stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQMJ0Ieghwk

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About that promotion:

You can participate in this promotion as many times as you would like, if you meet the minimum purchase requirement for each order. Please note the coupon can be only used once per checkout.

They are just asking for this to be abused! Literally just order all your books in 3 book batches, and you get +400 yen each time…

It does say the coupons must be used by end of this year by the way.

Details: Amazon.co.jp: 和書(アダルト除く): 本

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Can you use that coupon to buy the next batch of 3 books?

Yes, but you only get the coupon after the order has shipped. So you’d have to wait a few days between orders.

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Decided to give up on my reading goal this year. I overestimated my reading skills and now I’m planning to begin serious preparation for JLPT, so I won’t have as much time to read books (and honestly I want to take a break from books).

I think it’s a good opportunity to do some other stuff in Japanese: read One Punch Man, Aria, play some VNs (specifically Higurashi, maybe STAINS;GATE if I have time), so looking forward to that.

Also hope to get back to reading with Intermediate book club since the book I voted for got picked, and book club tends to read rather slowly, so I think I’ll be able to keep up with the pace.

Before leaving you guys until next year, I wanted to share an interesting experience.

I’ve taken JLPT 3 times (N4, N3, N2) and I always sucked at reading, I often always didn’t even have time to read all the questions. This time I’m preparing for N1 and I thought it would be great to be able to go to the test and actually be confident in my abilities. So I bought 新完全マスター books for reading and grammar. Let’s not talk about grammar for now, but I did try going trough reading one sometime around January. It was hard, I could understand texts, but only after I go through them slowly with a dictionary and this is obviously not how it’s going to be on the test. After around two weeks I was only 20 pages in and going through the whole book looked quite daunting. I decided that I wasn’t really ready for it yet and put the book off for the time being.

Fast forward to the middle of August. I’ve read 10 books, some manga, played some games, so I decided to give 新完全マスター another shot. I open up the book and wow, I can read this, without a dictionary, and relatively fast too. Sure, I don’t understand 100%, but I understand enough to answer the questions. This was a great feeling.

I finished the book in two week’s time, tried going through the mock test at the end of the book as fast as I could, got 21/26 in 90 minutes. Well, there is still room for improvement, but I’m quite pleased with the result.

Reading more is definitely the way to go.

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I think it’s perfectly fine (And useful) to take a break from certain methods of study.

I was thinking of getting Shin Kanzen for reading as well… Would you recommend it at all? reading and listening are always my most difficult parts for me as well

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Yes, it’s good, I don’t think it alone is sufficient to be well-prepared for the test, but it gives you a good grasp of what the questions on the actual test look like and gives you some advice on how to tackle them more efficiently (and I guess you’ll learn yourself as you go through the exercises).

The grammar one is good too, don’t know about the others yet (ideally I want to go through all of them).

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I’ve got both the grammar one and the vocab one.
I quite like the grammar one too. And I suppose I’ll get the reading one then. :wink: I do read quite a bit on The side and I’m in a couple of the book clubs, so I’d use it more as specific exam prep.

The vocabulary one as a bit 50/50. Arguably you could just grab an anki/kitsun/proper cards/anything else deck or list and blast through them. I find I’m incredibly lazy and will literally only do that. By having a book and a couple exercises (there’s unfortunately not that many) it forces me to look up nuances a bit more often.
If you’re quite good with looking stuff up yourself and somehow remembering it, the book probably won’t do much for you I wouldn’t think.

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Hello! While I was avoiding the wanikani forum while I was busy because it was impossible for me to keep up with all the discussions, I finished 3 manga.

Cardcaptor Sakura 4 and 5
少女終末旅行 3

I’m back from my sudden trip back to America and have lots of stuff to get caught up on. orz

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A colleague of my wife has Japanese friends coming over in the next few months, and they’ve offered to bring one or two books for me. O: I don’t even know these people. That’s so nice of them! So now we might just buy them on Amazon JP and ship them to their house, to bring in their luggage.

I admit I’m a little worried that they’ll want to hand the books over personally. :eyes: I’m sure their expectations will far, far surpass my abilities.

But I’ll do it for books! :muscle: And to be polite, naturally, since they’re going out of their way to do something very nice for the random spouse of a random colleague of their friend.

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I had exactly the same feeling when I took the JLPT - the dreaded reading section where I always ran out of time was actually fun :slight_smile:

And I think - given that this was only N4, but I’m already fighting my way through the Intermediate book club books and the like - that for me the “lift” I received through this reading practice was probably even larger.

But why do you say you are giving up on your reading goal? From watching bookmeter out of the corner of my eye I had the impression you were crunching through a 350-page-book per week or so? Was your goal even higher than that?

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I wish I could read that fast :sweat_smile: Nah, my current speed is 100-150 pages per week and I have to sacrifice all other activities in Japanese, so that started to feel like a chore. My original goal was a book per two weeks, but then I started reading 400+ page books…
Anyway, yesterday I played 1.5 hours of Higurashi, something I couldn’t afford before and I enjoy it more than reading books at the moment.:wink:

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That’s a really hard question! I would say 獣の奏者その4, but that’s not even among these books (had it before). かがみの孤城 maybe? It changes all the time.

@topic: I’ve not read much since my last update as expected, but I’ve at least listened to audio versions of some Kenji Miyazawa stories: セロ弾きのゴーシュ (Gauche the Cellist), 種山ヶ原 (Taneyamagahara), 風の又三郎 (Matasaburou of the Wind) and どんぐりと山猫 (The Judge Wildcat and the Acorns) as part of my “Kenji Miyazawa Week”. I also visited his hometown, Hanamaki, the Kenji Miyazawa Memorial Museum, Fairy Tale Village and revisited some of the anime adaptions of his work. Yesterday I read 双子の星. The places in Hanamaki are truly among my favorite places in Japan, designed with so much love. The scenery in the town and prefecture is beautiful, too, so it’s easy to see where Miyazawa’s inspiration came from. (He also called the Iwate prefecture “Ihatov”, an Esperanto word that apparently means “ideal place”. They have modeled a train in 19th century style and after his famous story 銀河鉄道の夜 and all the stations on the way have Esperanto names in addition to their Japanese names, e.g. 新花巻 (Japanese name) = 星座 (Esperanto meaning) = Stellaro (Esperanto word)). Just beautiful!

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