December 12
Kanji writing
Origami
Song
Mystery book reading
December 12
Winter song
Kanji writing
Origami
Today I read 鶴の笛 by 林芙美子 with this 朗読. A basic children’s story with a happy ending. Not much else to say about it. It’s probably pretty accessible, but I didn’t find it as interesting as some other children’s stories I’ve come across.
Japanese Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 12
December 12th
Today’s Kanji:
過
Kun’yomi: す.ぎる, す.ごす, あやま.ち, あやま.つ, よぎ.る,
よ.ぎる
On’yomi: カ
Meaning: overdo, exceed, go beyond; error
Kanji writing
i’ve now gotten through all of the book samples i picked at random (almost, there’s like two left) and it’s been a real mixed bag, but i’ve definitely tried some things i would have completely dismissed out of hand before.
details below:
yes i should have done this as i was going along shhhhhh
陰の実力者になりたくて a shounen isekai about a guy who wants to be the villain to end all villains. this has probably been done better elsewhere, but this is fun enough, though not super interested in reading more. will probably turn into a harem in a couple of volumes.
くまクマ熊ベア - there’s a book club for this knocking about which is why it caught my eye. again, fun enough, but i’m more likely to come back to this one in the future cos i felt more attached to the characters than the previous one.
逃がした魚は大きかったが釣りあげた魚大きすぎた件 - shoujo, i think i managed a couple of pages of this before abandoning it. i like the concept and want to go back to it though, i think.
JLPT day so nothing here
オネエ女王と白雪姫 more shoujo, this time what if we threw gender norms out of the window of snow white. i’m open to reading more of this! it’s probably not gonna do anything ground-breaking in its run but it seems like fun
この恋に未来はない - follows a closeted trans woman discovering herself in 80s japan. again, very open to reading more of this. it seems to have been written by a cis man tho, which is a potential caveat.
性別「モナリザ」の君へ - the last of the three gender-y works that ended up together, this one follows a non-binary protagonist in a low sci-fi world where people are genderless until the age of twelve (fourteen?) and then develop into either man or woman with no other options. i think of all the ones i’ve read (including after this), this is the one i want to continue reading the most, i really really really want to know where this goes and how these characters develop
乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった… - my first light novel, didn’t grab me at all tho it was easier than i was expecting. maybe i just don’t like isekai asdfghjkl
竜の姫ブリュンヒルド - light novel number two, this one straight fantasy and not isekai. this one intrigued me! open to reading more of this, thought it was harder than the previous one.
衛くんと愛が重たい少女たち - honestly didn’t read enough of this to get a full grasp on what was going on (so can’t really summarise), i probably found this one (or below) the most difficult out of all the ones i’ve read so far. might come back to this in a year or so.
女王殿下はお怒りのようです - final light novel, follows a princess in a kingdom at war as she fights for it or smth, there were a ton of words i didn’t know in this one and reading it became more of a chore than anything else, especially cos it didn’t grab me much. didn’t help that a good chunk of the sample was world-building and nothing else.
推し燃ゆ - this gets recommended by people a lot, so thought i’d give it a try. there were only two pages of actual text (the shortest sample of all of these), but it caught my interest! again, maybe try in a year or so when i’ve studied some more.
i might try posting every day like everyone else from now on, this got way longer than i thought it would
i’m glad i tried doing this though, reading every day is doing a ton for my reading speed
Advent of Ascending Kanji - Day 12 
Twelve stroke kanji: 紫
Purple; violet
Kun: むらさき
On: シ
This is a hard kanji to try and get right, the stroke order is okay, but all those lines never seem to go in the right places. The squiggle that makes the bottom portion feels really awkward to write for me.
Day 12
This morning’s reading with my daughter.
I suppose because I am familiar with the story and have read it to her more than once I can get the narrative even if some words are unfamiliar or unknown to me.
Kanji in Ascending Stroke Order
Strokes:13
Kun: とし、 とせ、 よわい
On: サイ、 セイ
Words of the day: 万歳 (banzai, hurray, something worthy of celebration), お歳暮 (year-end gift, end of the year), 歳旦 (New Year’s day)
歳 is one of the first words language learners (and I guess native children) learn how to say, yet the kanji often comes later as it’s quite complicated . It means age, but also year-end, occasion, opportunity. It’s a Jōyō kanji, taught in junior high. It’s JLPT level N3 and WK level 46.
A video on how to write it:
Here’s the stroke order:
And variations:
December 13
Kanji writing
Origami
Song
Mystery book reading
December 13
Winter song
Kanji writing
Origami
I really got invested in the story of the music video for today’s winter song. I wonder what happened… Very had to decipher the japanese though. I could barely pick up words cause of what the way they sang.
On a different note, I really liked the 万歳 song linked by @nazan today. Thanks for sharing!
The interesting vocab were already mentioned so no additional ones for today but i do like this expression:
歳月人を待たず「さいげつひとをまたず」time waits for no one, time and tide stay for no man
I don’t think i’ll ever open this envelope. It’s too hard to fold back
At the first part, ばあばさん kept making us flip over the paper with what I heard as ふらがえします. I looked it up and this was the closest thing I could link it to: ひるがえします which means to turn over. It makes sense but i’m not sure that’s actually what she was saying… if anyone else doing origami could confirm please!
The word she’s using is this one:裏返す
Cute envelope! I tried opening and reclosing mine and it wasn’t as hard as I feared. 
Aha! I had a strong feeling it wasn’t 翻します. Some reason 裏返す did not turn up in my dictionary when i searched for to flip over or to turn over! Thank you so much!
Maybe I’ll try unfolding mine too then!
変な家 - this is a horror novelisation of a youtube series, and i was caught by the sample so i actually went and watched/listened to the thing it was adapted from. the wikipedia page described it as a real estate mystery and well, they weren’t wrong asdfghjkl
i enjoyed them piecing together clues from the floor plans, even if i pulled an えっ？？？ face when the reveal finally came.
still, enjoyable half an hour, can’t complain 
Today I read 辛夷の花 by 堀辰雄 with this 朗読.
I liked this one. It was a little bit hard for me to follow at first, but once I made sense of the setting it all fell into place. No real plot so not much to say, but broadly about a man on a train journey enjoying the view while also observing (and judging a bit) his fellow passengers.
I think this was kind of the main line:
自分と一しよになつて、そこいらの山の端にまつしろな花を簇がらせてゐる辛夷の木を一二本見つけて、旅のあはれを味つてみたかつたのである。
So happy to see an ウルフルズ song, especially this one as it is one of the songs my daughter likes to sing almost everyday.
Day 13
Japanese Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 13
December 13th
Today’s Kanji:
携
Kun’yomi: たずさ.える、 たずさ.わる
On’yomi: ケイ
Meaning: portable, carry (in hand); armed with; bring along
Kanji writing
The Kanji itself looks nice and… lively(?), I just suck at getting it right.
It didn’t help that my hand started hurting and feeling rather shaky after the first row already. I had meticulously added paint to a somewhat heavy object a few hours ago which is probably what caused the fatigue in my hand in the first place.
Advent of Ascending Kanji - Day 13
Thirteen stroke kanji: 園
Park; garden; yard; farm
Kun: その
On: エン
I like these box kanji, I like that the final stroke safely contains the inner radicals. Though saying that, trying to keep the contents safely contained is a different matter, one did manage to escape from the safety box. Judging how big to make the box isn’t so easy.
