Mara's Log of Unscheduled Learning

Japanese Language Study Logs (Public)
161

April 4, Saturday

I finished the third Bonbon book and it was so good!

look at that adorable cover!
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only very vague spoilers

One thing I really like about this series is how … okay, so you know how in fantasy series there’ll be a big bad world development and then the kids often are forced to become very grown up because of it? I like how this series there are world developments, but Nako and Bonbon are still very much kids, and they act like it and get into all kinds of ridiculous mischief still.

So I’m really looking forward to seeing how things develop!

On the other hand …

Reasons to DNF 後鳥羽伝説殺人事件:

  • I somehow was under the impression that the detective in this series was a woman, but now I know that’s not the case and I find myself reading a book with 1 dead woman and everyone else who plays a significant role is a man
  • it has these random difficulty spikes where usually the prose becomes very boring and something is described in detail, but it’s boring and takes a lot of mental effort to get through
  • I could probably still find out whodunnit by continuing to read the threads, like I did when I got frustrated with the werewolf game book
  • I have too many books I still want to read to sink time into a book I’m not enjoying just so I can add it to my trophy wall

Okay, so with that out of the way, I think I’m confident in my decision and I can now announce some tsundoku updates:

  1. acquired 4 new Kiki books (and a couple book club books, for which I will charge myself 1 point each)! -6 = 5
  2. finished Bonbon 3! +2 = 7
  3. DNF’d 後鳥羽伝説殺人事件 +2 = 9!

Ooh, gotta run, dinner plans!

More soon!

:sparkles:

162

April 11, Saturday

Oh boy.

I found out they made a full-furigana “junior” edition of this, and then I found out that I could get the first six for about $10 (including the proxy fee, but not shipping), so now I’m joining. Tearmoon has been on my “someday” list since early days of learning Japanese, honestly, so it seems reasonable. Particularly since DID I MENTION I’M GETTING THE FULL FURIGANA EDITION?? I’m pretty stoked about that. As much as I love learning kanji, reading them fluently is definitely a long-term proposal.

Screenshot 2026-04-11 at 10.37.42 AM
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And making a book order means Monodama is coming!!! (I had a browser window open on my phone with a search of surugaya for Monodama, that I kept refreshing, hoping to be able to order it on its own so I wouldn’t have to wait for the next big book order, but it never became available from them.)

In an ideal world I’d like to finish 二十面相 (which I just restarted) before the shipment arrives.

怪人二十面相 🦹 (Intermediate Book Club) Goal: 10 pages per day to finish in 9 days.

day time pages m/p day total notes vocab
4/5 27.5 5 5.5 - Three of the pages were rereads, since it’s been a month since I started this chapter. 棺桶 = coffin, casket. That’s a new one!
4/5 35 7 5 12 Hey, I have improved at reading this! 笑い崩れる == とてもおもしろくて、おさえきれないほど笑う。
4/6 6.5 2 3.25 - Finished week 10 of the club! Only two pages, I barely looked anything up. (1 grammar point which I still don’t quite understand, and 1 word that I already knew but I wanted to check where the kanji was in my ladder system.)
4/6 17 3 5.6 - Gotta pace myself … This content is … very dated. So it takes effort sometimes not to get frustrated. Just gotta remember this was originally published in 1936, when going fast in a car was pretty exciting stuff. :stuck_out_tongue: Also, suddenly lots of vocab. 手を変え品を変え。正気。民間探偵。無益 (I should probably know this one already)。名誉。手ぐすね引く。武者ぶるい。申し分ない (I’ve definitely looked this one up before and forgot it)。
4/6 18.5 3 6.2 8 The whole chase scene I’m just thinking “it’s not him! You’ve already pulled this trick Edogawa!” So … now that I’ve read a number of pages that makes my average per day 10, should I call it? It’s about lunchtime so I think I’ll go with yes. 管轄 == 権限によって支配すること、また、その範囲 (this one was in my bedtime reading just last night! Very different context though. :joy:)。。黒山 == たくさんの人が集まっている様子 (um. where does this come from?)。。
4/8 26 5 5.2 - I enjoyed this chapter! I was a bit bored with the chase scene because it felt like we’d been there before, but I enjoyed finding out how Zoku pulled it off. xddd 口車に乗る == うまい話にだまされる。。空惚ける (そらとぼける) == 知っているのに、知らないふりをする。。
4/8 15 3 5 8 I think folks in the book club will be pleased that Kobayashi voiced some of their concerns with Akechi’s plan. There was a good stopping point, so I’ll call it there for today. 紙芝居！

Harta has been going at a slow pace lately. I normally read one chapter in the morning with coffee each day after I finish my kanji reviews, but I’ve been having a lot of fatigue recently and sometimes don’t even make it all the way through my kanji reviews.

Speaking of fatigue though, I still managed to bike to work twice last week and twice the week before that!

Okay, I’m off to read the decision point scene for survival safari club!

More soon.

:sparkles:

163

I changed my mind! I want to try to finish 霧のむこうのふしぎな町 | L26 before the new books arrive. Apparently I have owned it since November 2021 so … it’s worth 4 tsundoku points! But also, I’m just really enjoying it, really enjoying moving through it quickly, and would like to finish it before I start another chill elementary/middle grade book (ie Monodama).

Should I calculate what this incoming order is going to cost me now? Cause it’s not 100% clear to me yet.

舞妓さんちのまかないさん = continuing series, -1
Monodama = new book, -10
Tearmoon = book club, 0
怪人二十面相 = new book? -10

I guess my main question is what does 二十面相 count as? Cause it’s not exactly a new book, as I have a version already. But it sort of is a new book, because it’s a totally different version. I think I’ll bill it as a new book. :thinking: Give myself a nice hole to climb out of in the coming months. :joy:

Okay, that is all, just some silly little マラ積読 reflections. :blush:

Tsundoku points holding steady at 11!

:sparkles:

164

Breaking tsundoku points news!

I finished 霧のむこうのふしぎな町! (And Neokyo hasn’t even started packing my parcel, oh no!)

my comments from Natively bingo post

I had read most of this book before, but never got past chapter 7 (out of 8). The parts that I had already read were mostly my favorite but I’m glad to have finished it now and there were a few more really special moments to join my favorites.

I was also reading the recent translation alongside it (for the sake of the illustrations by Miho Satake mostly) and it was interesting to see a few places where the translation diverged from the original. For one thing, all the instances where Rina is called fat are simply skipped over. But in particular, the story around the toy shop ends up being explained in a completely different, newly-invented-by-the-translator way. Whereas in the original it seemed like the family had a fight and everyone was too stubborn to make up until the boys got toothaches and Rina fixed the broken doll, in the translation they say that the witch doll got offended and cast a spell on Kinu-san to make her stay away until the broken doll was fixed!

While it’s easy to see the removal of the body-shaming as a necessary localization/modernization, the change to the nature of the story at the toy shop feels sort of intrusive. I get why it doesn’t feel palatable to share an unchanged story of domestic disturbance, but sometimes the unpalatable things have a reason for existing and I think this one did. There’s a reason it’s called めちゃくちゃ通り!

Anyway! I can definitely see myself revisiting めちゃくちゃ通り someday. And the afterword by the author was really sweet as well.

+4 = 15!

So I guess now I go back to working my way towards the end of 二十面相! I’m also trying to read one (and only one) page of Silent Witch every day. Or one page after every session of reading 二十面相. :thinking: We shall see.

165

Totally sequel territory in spirit btw :innocent:

I’m so excited for when you get to Monodama :face_savoring_food::partying_face:

166

April 25, Saturday

There is so much to report!

I agonized over 二十面相
day time pages m/p day total notes vocab
4/11 17 2 8.5 2 Just not feeling it today. I gave it a shot, but oh well. Can’t win 'em all. There were just so many lookups in these two pages! ルンペン。メリヤス。ござ meaning rush mat。つぎ meaning patch。もたげる == (首など) 起こす。。不精 == 身だしなみなどに頓着しないこと。。一挙一動 == 一つ一つの行動。。やもや == まさか。。
4/17 8 1 8 1 What on earth was going on during that freak accident when I read 7 pages straight in 35 minutes?

Should I be trying to finish this book? I just don’t even know anymore. There’s no part of me that feels a need to. … Particularly now that the kiddie version is coming.

I kind of want to DNF it, but I also kind of don’t want to award myself the points for it? Like, that makes it feel too tempting. But I guess that’s sort of the point of receiving DNF points. If you want to get the points more than you want to read the book, then you should probably stop reading the book. The DNF points are there to get you to finish reading the things you want to finish reading, and not sink energy into the things that you don’t really care about.

Conclusion: I will stop reading the edition of 二十面相 that I have been reading for now. If reading the “adapted for kids” version inspires me to finish it later then I will, and if it doesn’t then I won’t.

Tsundoku update

Taking Mitrac’s advice, I will count the alternate edition as a sequel for tsundoku point purposes. :slight_smile:

舞妓さんちのまかないさん = continuing series, -1
Monodama = new book, -10
Tearmoon 1 & 2 = book club, 0
Tearmoon 3-6 = sequel, -4
怪人二十面相 = “sequel” -1

15 - 16 = -1 tsundoku point!

Does this mean my tsundoku system is actually kind of working perfectly? I think I’m still increasing my tsundoku. I would have to charge for book clubs in order to not, but I don’t think my language skills have reached a point where that will work for me yet. BUT I do think that my tsundoku is increasing a lot less than it would be without the tsundoku point system. And I don’t feel stressed about whether or not I “should” order books.

Anyway, since I deducted the points for them, you know what that means … my new books arrived!!!
:tada:

I started reading Monodama pretty much immediately, and omg it is so engaging and readable and enjoyable! @shitsurei I think you mentioned that you have a copy and want to start reading, do you want to do a buddy read?

Actually, I kind of can’t believe I’m not outside, shade-bathing and reading Monodama right now!

But part of that is because I just came in from shade-bathing and playing my flute outside.

Playing publicly on Tonic has been great. For one thing, I can earn points for the Earth Day challenge, and it is actually silly how well the gamification of this app motivates me. But mostly because I think more about what will be a chill and listen-able experience for others, and it turns out that that is also a chill experience for me.

Still need to be careful of my hands though. :sob:

Looking forward

The Tearmoon bookclub is starting next week, and if I’m not mistaken the Decagon House Murders club is starting the week after that. So that’ll be a pretty heavy book club load, particularly the second one. I plan to start each book a week early, to give myself some flexibility in the schedule.

I started this post this morning and something keeps stopping me from posting it. I think maybe partly because I don’t feel caught up on responding to things I wanted to respond to elsewhere in the forums (see @mitrac’s study log). But I’m trying to not hold myself to unachievable standards. I had a flare-up this week and although I was still able to go to work I did have to cancel a couple other things. So, yeah. There’s just kind of a lot going on at the moment … But I want to get this out there so that everyone knows that I am reading Monodama! :heart: :heart: :heart:

GASP I almost forgot to share that I now have 1750 kanji in my study routine!

:sparkles:
More soon.

167

Ohhhh tempting! I’m supposed to be keeping my impulse reading down, but it should be a breezy read for me and I’m not sure when I’ll get around to reading it… so .. maybe… yes … (uhoh I think it’s a yes :sweat_smile:).

168

I think that’s fair. Also, imo you’ve already read the best of it if you got close to 75% of the way through

yes!!! the system works :gem_stone:

:smiling_face_with_tear: this is so exciting, can’t wait to hear impressions :funeral_urn: gaaaaa

how fun!! I’m so glad you’re on there, I hope I can hear you sometime :star_struck:

I hope it goes well with your hands, and that you recover soon from the last flare-up. Speaking of hands, once in my practice session you heard me doing my ‘light touch’ practice, where I played all those repeat notes where I played a harmonic and then pressed down on the same note - the focus was on pressing as light as possible. I was skeptical at first, but I think having a ‘light touch’ practice has really helped! For the first time ever I’m practicing almost every day and if my thumb starts to twinge more, it actually gets better despite me still playing. So I really do seem to be able to play the majority of the time with much less squeezing and tension. So perhaps you can find a way to make up your own ‘light touch’ practice, in a way that makes sense for flute? :thinking:

169

FWIW I think based on the other things you are reading right now that it will be extremely breezy for you. I mean, it’s breezy for me and I couldn’t handle the light novel series that you’re three (four?) books into now. :slight_smile:

I’ve just reached the part where she’s learning about monodama! This book is SO cozy to read I love it.

I’ve mostly been addressing this by trying to be very mindful of tension whenever I play. But maybe a specific practice where I play a note and see how gently I can touch the flute and still get the note would be helpful …

170

May 9, Saturday

The life overwhelm continues. Although I think it’s largely “good” overwhelm, in the sense that I am starting to spend time with/making friends again, and facing the things that need to be faced, and biking to work usually twice a week.

I sat down to read 十角館の殺人 | L33 for the club this morning and was suddenly struck with the strong sensation of not wanting to do any difficult reading. So that club might be over before it’s even begun for me … I mean, I’ll stay open to it if I get inspired during this week, but if I don’t then I’ll be ~35 pages behind, which will be difficult to make up for a level 33 book.

Kanji reviews have been feeling really overwhelming lately so I’m going to switch my go-to first-coffee activity to Harta reading. (It’s been over a month and I’m still only halfway through issue 94!)

Oh, also, I realized I never counted my tsundoku points for dropping that mystery novel a few weeks back. Based on the comments, I probably dropped it at exactly the right moment too. (Exactly the right moment to avoid reading too much old sexist bullshit.) So I think that brings me to 1 tsundoku point.

(Lol, I totally did give myself those points and made a big deal about it a few posts ago. Correction: current tsundoku points = -1)

Furthermore. I discovered the JFF Movie Club. The only unfortunate thing is that the free movies don’t have Japanese subtitles, but I’m still excited to try to participate.

Re: hands and music playing, I ordered an expensive academic and esoteric-sounding book called Hands, Wrists, Fingers: Creative Health for Musicians by Pedro de Alcantara. Not sure what to expect, but I prefer to go straight to books for information that I need, rather than trying to find things out on the internet (an exercise in frustration, usually). And I think one of the reviews said it was “weird but good” or something and I was like “I love weird but good things”.

Also, going on a trip to Ireland like a week from now. Have been procrastinating SO HARD on trying to set up a private lesson with a flute teacher there that I know. But who knows, as a professional musician she might have suggestions how to keep your hands healthy, and that would be great, so I should really stop procrastinating and just do it.

Okay, wow. Somehow I managed it, even though writing emails is excruciating.

So now, aside from still needing to change the air filters in the house (it’s been far too long), I can kind of relax this weekend? We’ll see how that goes, lol.

More soon.

:sparkles:

171

Interesting.. if you find anything exceptionally weird please share it. I love books on super niche topics that maybe only 1000 people ever have read :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

omg how exciting!!! Safe travels! I hope you’ll have some pictures to share. :blush:

172

The prologue is harder than pretty much any other part of the book. I recommend skipping over it and reading a bit of the first chapter before deciding for sure.

173

sending good vibes for getting through irl stuff!

ooh, that looks interesting, I’ll add it to my list. I’ll be so interested what you think about it. I had never thought about getting a book for this thing and the exercises I told you about that are helping me (in my CelloMind book my teacher recommended) were a bit of a side show to the reason he recommended it. I wish I had come up with the idea to search for ideas on this earlier!! I really hope the book helps give you lots of ideas to give you a feeling of ease while playing :sun_with_face: I enjoyed the tunes you played for me so much!!

:woman_raising_hand: yes I procrastinate these things, too. Have great trip :star_struck::dizzy: and I hope gettting the lesson works out :crossed_fingers::crossed_fingers:

174

So instead of read any of the other ~10 books I’m in the middle of, instead I read the rest of chapter one yesterday (I had read until the first paragraph break on about page 3 when you first said that you had started).

I’m enjoying it so far! I like the parents with so many books they have to run out in the night to get more moving boxes :rofl: if I had kids I fear they might have had to suffer the same fate.