Well I posted the first post before I was ready so I guess I’m doing this!
Week 1
Before jumping straight in I did a lot of planning and set up and unnecessary math. I decided to exclude things like the table of contents and character sheets. It gives me 36 pages of reading material. The “first” page (page 4) has 16ish paragraphs made up 36 sentences. 4 of the paragraphs are made up of only one sentence so I plan to bundle those up with other short paragraphs. Hopefully I will only take 2 weeks to read the first page OTL
Assuming the other 35 pages are the same length I’ll finish reading this sometime in March 2022 at a paragraph a day or September 2024 at a sentence a day. If I do 2 weeks per page I’ll finish in December 2021. It should go faster as I go along, but either way I’m gonna spend a long time on this book.
8/9
Today’s Paragraph
“新クトゥルフ神話TRPG”は、ごく普通の人々がクトゥルフ神話の恐るべき異界の力に立ち向かう、神秘と恐怖のロールプレイングゲームである。揺るぎない心を持つ探索者となり、チームとなって協力して、奇妙で危険な場所へと旅し、汚らわしい陰謀を見つけ出し、夜中に徘徊する怪物に立ち向かう。
Vocabulary
Total New Words: 23
Favorite Word: 異界 Spiritworld
(Probably not very useful but I liked it)
Most Troublesome Word: 夜中
I could figure out it probably meant middle of the night because I knew the kanji, but when I looked up the reading 
よなか or やちゅう or よじゅう and all had slightly different definitions (I should look this up in a Japanese dictionary some day). In the end it didn’t matter for the comprehension of the sentence, but it was definitely a speed bump.
Notes
This was a pretty tough start! There was a lot of new words and I wasted a lot of time because I didn’t realize と＋なる was a thing. I learned some new grammar so that’s nice at least! I also spent a lot of time procrastinating making the spreadsheet for this “fancy”. Things are nice and organized and it’ll be easy to import into Anki later, but I didn’t need to make a stats page.
It looks like 探索者 is how they decided to translate investigator. I imagine by the end of this I’ll know that word really well.
Other Stuff
Wanikani and Anki as planned. Bunpro was invaluable today. I forgot to do Koohi. I read this week’s part of レンタルおにいちゃん last week but I’ve been following along with the conversation and plan to read it again closer sometime this week.
8/10
Today’s Paragraph
途中、探索者は正気を打ち砕く時空を超えた存在、ぞっとするような怪物、そして狂気に陥ったカルティストと遭遇するだろう。また、伝承を収めた奇妙で知られざる魔道書の中に、探索者は人類が知るべきでなかった秘密を見いだすだろう。これらごく普通の人間は、多くの手ごわい課題に直面することになる。しかしそんな人々が英雄的に立ち向かって、世界の運命を決めてしまう可能性すらあるのだ。
Vocabulary
Total New Words: 28
Favorite Word: 時空 Spacetime
Another not useful word but for some reason it made me laugh.
Most Troublesome Word: 英雄的 heroic
The trouble is partly human error and partly forgetting stuff. When I looked it up it said na-adjective but I glossed over that. When I tried to put all the pieces together I thought the に in “英雄的に立ち向かって” was marking it as what you’d fight against. Being heroic gets you killed in CoC so it made sense to me, but it didn’t match the tone of the rest of the sentence. I ended up throwing it into DeepL and when it said fight heroically against I remembered oh yeah heroic isn’t a noun and that a na adjective + に is how you make adverbs. I felt like a big dummy. Lesson learned to be more careful in the future.
Notes
Interesting that this paragraph has twice as many sentences but I ended up looking up only a few more words than yesterday. I learned a lot more grammar though.
I spent waaaaay too long trying to figure out カルティスト = cultist.
Other Stuff
Wanikani as planned. Bunpro was useful again. My laptop died and I forgot my charger so I didn’t do Koohi or new Anki cards. I had enough energy to do my Anki reviews though.
8/11
Today’s Paragraphs
あなたが今手にしているこのルールブックには“新クトゥルフ神話TRPG”のキャラクターを創造するために必要な情報と初歩的な冒険を楽しむのに十分な基本のルールが書かれている。
このルールブックに親しんで、完全なルールに興味を持った 人 は、“新 ク ト ゥ ル フ 神 話TRPG ル ー ル ブ ッ ク（KADOKAWA刊）”を読むことを勧める。これは、書店やゲームショップ、インターネットで購入できる。
ゲームのプレイヤーは、探索者またはキーパーの2つの役割のうちどちらか1つを引き受ける。
1人のプレイヤーはゲームを調整する役割を果たし、隠された知識を守る者、簡単に「キーパー」と呼ばれる。
ほかのプレイヤーはそれぞれ1人のキャラクターの役割を引き受ける。キャラクターは勇敢にも未知のものを探索する者である「探索者」と呼ばれ、物語のヒーローでもある。
Vocabulary
Total New Words: 26
Favorite Word: 十分 enough; sufficient; plenty; adequate; satisfactory
Huh! Ten parts is enough.
Most Troublesome Word: キ ー パ ー・オ ブ・ア ー ケ イ ン・ロ ア Keeper of Arcane Lore
In the text it’s written as 隠された知識を守る者 and it confused the hell out of me until I learned that sometimes furigana isn’t actually the reading.
Notes
Most of these paragraphs were only one sentence long so I had planned to bundle them up, but I definitely went a lot further than I expected. Today was a lot easier than I thought it would be and was a nice boost to my confidence. I’ll have to remember this day as I get further along.
Other Stuff
Wanikani and Anki as planned. Did a bit of bunpro and Koohi.
8/12
Today’s Paragraphs
もちろん、これは一例にすぎない。プレイヤーの数も、プレイの時間もグループによって異なるだろう。理解すべき大切なことは、このゲームはグループで共有した想像の中で行なわれるということである。キーパーは物語とプロットを監督し、プレイヤーはキーパーの描くシーンに反応することでゲームの物語を形作っていくのにも貢献している。
Vocabulary
Total New Words: 9
Favorite Word: 駆り立てる to urge; to spur on; to push on; to impel
I like this one because it also apparently means to flush out (game, etc.); to drive (animals)
Most Troublesome Word: None of the words today were particularly troublesome and the grammar was all stuff I recognized.
Notes
Today’s paragraph was pretty simple. Mostly just looking up words. I decided not to push myself to do more though since I seemed to have a hard to starting in the first place. I don’t wanna burn out already!
Other Stuff
Today I decided to reread the first ten pages of レンタルおにいちゃん It was really hard not to read ahead again. The only thing that stopped me was how late in the day it was and that I hadn’t gotten to Call of Cthulhu today. …But instead I went and read 桜 from the ask todaku level 0 series. It had a read along bit that was way too slow for me. It was annoying but also nice? I kept getting ahead of it but it was cool to see that my reading speed was faster than suuuuuuper slow. I ended up reading a bit more of the level 0 set
I’ve done wanikani and Anki today. No new koohi but I did my reviews
8/13
Today’s Paragraphs
ダイスは遭遇や状況を解決するのに役立つし、誰にでも平等だ。そればかりかドラマやサスペンスも生み出してくれる。1回のロールの結果が、予期せぬ驚きやみじめな敗北、あるいは間一髪で死をまぬがれるといった意味を持ちうるのだ！ いったん結果が出れば、キーパーは何が起こるかを話し、プレイヤーにどう対応するかを尋ねる。
Vocabulary
Total New Words: 17
Favorite Word: 間一髪 hair’s breadth
Notes
Today’s paragraph should have been simple but I started rushing stuff because I’m busy this evening and wanted to get it done. There was some interesting new grammar that I look forward to studying later.
Other Stuff
I didn’t think Thursdays would be tricky since they’re my day off, but I forgot that dnd takes up a lot more of my time than a normal workday. Getting the paragraph, new wanikani, and new anki all done before the session was a little bit of a struggle. I did some bunpro and koohi reviews.
8/14
Today’s sentence:
探索者は怪物、謎、そしてクトゥルフ神話の秘密を探し求め、理解し、最後にはそれらに立ち向かおうとする。
Vocabulary
Total New Words: 3
Favorite Word: 謎 riddle; puzzle; enigma; mystery | enigmatic; mysterious
Notes
There was something planned this evening that was super up in the air and I didn’t think would actually happen but I turned out to be wrong! I only had time for one sentence to get done OTL This paragraph is 5 sentences so it might make things tough to catch up tomorrow. We’ll see!
Other Stuff
I did Wanikani and Anki reviews but nothing else today 
8/15
Today’s Sentences
探索者が遭遇する物語は、彼らに試練を与えるように書かれている。 探索者はけがをしたり、正気度を打ち砕かれるような体験をしたり、あるいは怪物に食われることすらあるだろう。 ゲームが進むにつれて、探索者は奇妙な魔術や恐るべき異界の怪物について知り、忘れ去られた伝承が記された秘密の本から特別な知識を得ていく。 そして経験と習熟を積み重ねることで、探索者の技能を伸ばしていく。
Vocabulary
Total New Words: 16
Favorite Word: 魔術 black magic; sorcery
I feel like I’ve heard Megumin say this a lot in Konosuba - I’ve just never seen the kanji before. It’ll make it easier to remember whether or not I’m right lol 
Most Problematic Word: 得る
Whether it’s う or え almost tripped me up pretty bad, but the other day I was looking it up as a grammar point. It was written in hiragana so it took me a bit to figure out this is the same thing, but I did eventually.
Notes
Today I was able to finish up the paragraph I started yesterday. I thought about “catching up” but tomorrow is my busy day and the paragraph after the next one is 4 sentences long. They look short, but I’d rather stick with the 2 sentence paragraph.
Other stuff
Wanikani, Anki done. Taking a break on bunpro today and I only did koohi reviews. I woke up way too late to get everything done 
The first week is done!
Somehow I was able to do a paragraph a day every day except one! I was really surprised. We’ll see how long it lasts! 
It’s a bit tough starting out because a lot of this vocab isn’t stuff that seems “useful.” Being able to play Japanese tabletops is a very recent goal of mine and and it’s surprisingly difficult for me to change study directions. I keep not wanting to write the words down to study with Anki because it seems like a waste of time when I could be working on more “normal” things. I just gotta remember that common words will pop up in here too - it’s not like I’m skipping them entirely. It’s also gotten easier to change mindsets now that some of these new “useless” words have started popping up more. At the very least that’s less time I’ll spend looking things up later.
Now for stats!
I went through 25 sentences (~3.57 a day)
I looked up 122 words (~17.43 a day and ~4.88 per sentence)
What other systems do you like? 
The rest of the sentences made up for it though…
And it feels a lot longer to me because I’m taking days to read the first page. Whatever! You gotta take your joy where you can to get through slogs like this.
That page gave me 168 new words to study and took two weeks to do The next page has the same number of sentences but half as many paragraphs. I’m not sure if I’ll finish it at the same pace or if I’ll end up going a lot faster because of my desire to do a paragraph a day. I guess we’ll see!
- at least the explanations are in Japanese)
