Yesterday: Finished chapter 15, continued up to page 61. Today: Finished chapter 16, continued up to page 131.
Quite satisfied with today’s progress.
Poor Sakura though, not being able to sleep after the spooky story about the test of courage and having to go inside the spooky cave the next day where everything starts getting out of hand with everyone disappearing must have been heart attack inducing for her.
It was nice seeing her an Shaolan bond a little bit after he had been very standoffish towards her from the start – he’s also starting to develop feelings for her, getting all flustered. Meanwhile, I’m just sitting here feeling relief because I don’t have to deal with any primary school children having (puppy) crushes and teasing each other relentlessly for having crushes anymore; I don’t envy him one bit.
Word or expression of the day:
しょうがない - it is what it is, it can’t be helped, nothing can be done
Trying to do some set-up work for the start of the next challenge. I’d like to time track my study time at least for January, just so I can get a more reasonable estimate of what my study load is like atm (for both grad school things and also for japanese). I can never manage to keep it up long term, but it would give me some peace of mind to have a more up-to-date number
ホリミヤ chapter 42 + おまけ - snuck in another volume by the end of the year! proooobably wont get another one in unless i’m feeling super motivated.
マジック・ツリーハウス1 あらすじ - just read the summary and first page to see what the level was going to be like and man. This triggered some deep memories. I read a lot of these books when I was in 1st and 2nd grade and really starting to learn to read on my own (so… somewhere in the ballpark of 20 years ago ), and reading some of these parts in japanese I can vividly remember the way I pictured the settings as a kid. Memory is a crazy powerful thing. Level seems absolutely and comfortably doable, though. When I tried to check these out of the library at my elementary school, the librarian made me count all the words I didn’t know on the first page, and wouldn’t let me check it out if it was over 5 (i never failed, she was merely a fool). And I really only had 2 to look up here, so we’re safe!
Optimistic about being able to read magic treehouse pretty quickly (and hopefully use that to adjust to the physical act of reading pure text vertically and R → L) , so will check out 夜カフェ tomorrow. That’s probably closer to my actual reading level, I’d think. If the NHK easy articles this month were any indication, I’ll adjust to the style pretty quickly and then I will be unstoppable
Good Words
NHK
うつる ー to spread (of a virus, fire)
消毒「しょうどく」ー disinfection, sterilization (extinguish the poison, nice kanji for it!)
入れ替える「いれかえる」ー to replace
抗原検査「こうげんけんさ」ー antigen test (of all the things in this article to not have a dictionary pop-up, this is one I definitely would’ve expected them to explain lmao)
ホリミヤ
別居「べっきょ」ー living apart, separate (seems to have tone of not being a good thing, not just merely not physically living together)
えげつない ー dirty, vulgar
早乙女 「さおとめ」ー young girl
派手「はて」ー showy, loud, flashy
沈黙「ちんもく」ー silence, being quiet
狩る「かる」ー to hunt (animals)
マジック・ツリーハウス
押さえる「おさえる」ー to hold in place (めがね)
ながら ー as always
翼竜「よくりゅう」ー pterosaur
After like two weeks of holidays and clearing out Kamisama and Orange, I finally got back to Bustafellows. I’m posting early evening, because while I hope I’ll get back to reading more, I won’t count on it. I finished what I’d consider the first scene of chapter one (I don’t count the quick 3-4 screens of intro for all the men). And I also learned that Sylph spent around 7.5 hours on chapter one. Meaning I am significantly behind since chapter 2 starts tomorrow.
How do I always get myself in these situations? Also 9-nine- starts tomorrow.
I haven’t joined the おいしいごはんが食べられますように thread yet because I’m seeing how far I get today but it’s not yet lunch time and I’m 1/3 finished
Truly addictive writing. I might end up finishing this before the new year
That sort of educational style irritates me so much. I had an insane vocabulary as a kid due to being a bookworm and I never would have developed it if people were holding me back to my “appropriate” level. I had a giant paper dictionary and determination - what else is needed?
まつわる = to be related to; to surround. Kanji form is 纏わる.
跨ぐ = to cross (e.g. a river). Kanji is for straddling.
催す = to feel a sensation / to hold an event
積み卸し = loading and unloading (of a cargo ship). The second Kanji (卸す) seems to be about wholesale.
物流 = distribution of goods
縦断 = running along the length. Opposite is 横断 = cross cutting. Both are On readings of 縦 and 横. I can’t recall an On reading of the first, though.
味見 = tasting
相伴 = partaking in. ご相伴 in context, probably should be お相伴?
芳醇 = thick taste
凱旋 = triumphant return
純白 = pure white
伝承 = handling down of folklore
重鎮 = authority; leader
洗練 = refining; polishing
荘厳 = grand
整然 = orderly; systematic
御伽噺 = fairy tale (i.e. it’s not real / child-telling). Has Furigana in context. お伽 is keeping company / nursing. おとぎ話 is OK too.
光熱費 = cost of fuel and lighting
丘陵地帯 = hilly area
威風堂々 = majestic
四地相応 = ideal topography = 四神相応の地. An ideal topography for the four Taoist gods, with a river in the east, a broad avenue in the west, a basin in the south, and a hill in the north
SFX
ムキムキ = muscular
Kanji
縦 (Level 34)
ジュウ
縦断, 操縦
縦横無尽
Replies
Although I don’t really know the answer, searching the phrase directly (e.g. in DuckDuckGo), would reveal websites claiming to teach business Japanese. Perhaps I can trust those?
I was planning to read the final chapter of Orange today, but thought I’d better finish my bookclub reading first, so I read this weeks ABBC portion of Cells at Work.
It took me 2.5h to claw my way through 14 pages and I’m mentally exhausted now so Orange will have to wait until tomorrow!
Fastest Japanese book I’ve read so far! 4 days only. Admittedly it was a short one (162 pages in paperback), but I’m still proud of myself. It was surprisingly hard to put down, and easy to read for an Akutagawa prize winner.
So I unexpectedly finished one more book during 2022, and the count is now as follows:
Title
Pages
Days
1
佐賀のがばいばあちゃん
237
~11
2
夜カフェ
192
~12
3
三毛猫ホームズの推理
368
21
4
告白
320
23
5
夜市
179
10
6
穴
208
23
7
化身
275
29
8
つぐみ
245
17
9
十角館の殺人
512
15
10
秋の牢獄
223
10
11
体育館の殺人
379
12
12
叙述トリック短編集
336
24
13
おいしいごはんが食べられますように
162
4
I don’t particularly like that number but I don’t think I can hope to finish another book in the two remaining days of the year, so 13 it is!
Reading a lot went surprisingly okay! :3 Big part of it is because this book is so great, I can’t praise the author enough. Another part is that I’ve found it very effective to use a pen (or similar item) to trace the sentences as I read them. Or vice versa maybe. Trace the sentence and follow the pen with my eyes. Goes a lot faster since I’m not losing track as much while I’m reading. Just chase the pen with my eyes
Finished it in one day. Holy cow. 100% recommend. What a rollercoaster.
What page count starts to qualify as a book vs short story and how many hours do you have? Cause we could totally sneak another on in with an Aozora + 朗読.
I plug my phone into my laptop to download the『明日をくれた君』の朗読 onto it since I hadn’t done that yet and find that literally all the music and audio dramas have disappeared from off my phone, except for one of the songs that I had bought off iTunes. Lovely. So I just re-added all the audio dramas, the 2.43 soundtrack, and Re:coll and left it at that for now. So freaking annoyed. Hm, I think I’m gonna try and see about getting the mini dramas on the 2.43 official site, which are in video form, onto my phone as mp3s too. Oh, speaking of, since the videos are all linked from twitter, I should make sure I have everything downloaded in case the muskrat man-child does actually tank it…
Anyway, I read the last 34 pages of 明日をくれた君に、光のラブレターを. aaaaaaaaaa it was so sad. So good, but so sad. The epilogue cleared some things up, and some things I’d suspected it turns out were true, and it ended on a hopeful if still bittersweet note. Shame this book doesn’t get more attention, it was so good.
Today I got back to 13 sentinels and played another section! It was a bit rougher of a read than the others have been just due to the characters involved and how they talk, but I got to meet the famous yakisoba pan man so it’s all worth it I’m still definitely in the beginning stages meeting all the characters and it’s a great time, but I’m also excited to get back to BU$TAFELLOWS tomorrow
Oh, if we’re counting short stories I already have 人間椅子 which I’ve left out! And I could also add manga, or books I started last year and finished this year, or books I started this year but haven’t finished yet. It all gets a bit confusing, but ultimately, it doesn’t matter. I read a lot of good stuff this year, and I plan to read even more good stuff the next, and that’s what’s important! (I still considered starting a 赤川 次郎 just in case I could fly through it, but it’s unfair to me and the book to be so time-focused, so I let it go.)
Actual decent reading today, maybe the fastest if I’ve ever been. My current goal is to be able to read about 10% of the book (around ~4500 words) in a reasonable time, like 2-3 hours. Then I can try to play a VN or something I actually want to read, lol.
Word of the Day: 拵える - to make or manufacture. The kanji is making something exist with your fingers. Simple enough!
Hope you enjoy!! I’m not exaggerating when I say 13 Sentinels is probably my favorite piece of science fiction and maybe media in general from the last 2-3 years. When it kicks into high gear, it’s just one crazy nonstop ride to the finish.
ホリミヤ chapter 43 - harder chapter just because 堀さん gets 宮村君 to switch speaking styles and personalities to be more aggressive as a sorta kink thing? This part has never made a ton of sense to me, but it seems that they don’t really understand the “why” of it either. something something “gap” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ they are both in on it so you do you, lil weirdos
夜カフェ page 7-8 - definitely quite a bit harder than magic treehouse, but once I got past about the first sentence I got into a pretty good flow. Comprehension bumpy, and still slow, but definitely felt short term do-able though!
I was just talking about the ず negative form with someone earlier, and then it came up in two of the things I was reading today, so that was some good timing
Good Words
NHK
検査「けんさ」ー inspection
ホリミヤ
妙「みょう」ー strange, weird
怒鳴る「どなる」ー to shout, to yell
盛り上がる「もりあがる」ー to get excited, to rouse
迷う「まよう」ー to hesitate (here 迷わず)
馴れ馴れしい「なれなれしい」ー overly familiar
痴話ゲンカ 「ちわげんか」ー lovers quarrel
夜カフェ
深呼吸「しんこきゅう」ー deep breath
思わず「おもわず」ー unconsciously, involuntarily (“without thinking”)
半紙「はんし」ー japanese calligraphy paper
replies
Right? Like, the books are in that library for a reason. They should be relatively readable for kids, it’s not like some first grader is picking up Paradise Lost. Some people get some weird ego trip from having the power to stop kids from doing something that they want to do (and something that’s good too! kids reading is a good thing why are you stopping this!) and it’s the worst.
Last update 19d ago . I ended up disappearing again, whoops.
Wanted to leave just a brief update before the new thread starts. I’ve been in a nice routine with うたわれるもの, reading pretty much every day and adding a lot of vocabulary from it. The only downside is that they like to use less common kanji spellings for quite a few words, and luckily the monolingual dictionaries can usually tell which are more widely used but still, it’s kind of a waste to add something with different kanji instead of the more common ones so it’s been tricky in that sense. I guess in the end I don’t really mind adding the same word with different kanji in different situations with different context sentences, because at some point in the future I’ll eventually run out of things to add and going for those 20 words a day will be hard anyways, but if I come across a new word I would rather it be with the most common kanji first and then at some point later the variation, instead of learning the obscure version first.
But anyways the game is so far pretty nice, I have almost 50 hours clocked already. I’ll be honest, even if I’m understanding the vast majority with little issues, the overall story is a tiny tiny bit hard to follow sometimes. I know what is happening overall, but at the same time there are a couple things going on that make unifying the plot a bit challenging for me, like I know what happened so far but at the same time… it’s hard to link everything neatly and tell where it’s going . I should probably sit one day and write and think about all that has happened so far. Perhaps I’m still missing context, and I’m sure there are many things that I haven’t seen yet, or perhaps it’s also my brain which can’t keep track of things very well sometimes. The characters are so far really nice, I’m really enjoying the interactions between them and the slice-of-lifey scenes in between the story. I guess a good summary of my experience with this VN is that I started it with some curiosity for being a new VN after Loopers, then I thought I wasn’t really into it after a few hours, and then it started being pretty interesting and I started liking the characters more and more, and now I really enjoy reading it everyday, it’s become like a little ritual at this point → VN, Anki and chill. My HTML sheet says I’ve read almost 150k characters, but Textractor tracks things a bit weirdly sometimes in this VN so that’s probably not accurate at all by a few thousand characters. Still I’m pretty happy that I’ve read this much in a little less than a month, it’s more than the entirety of Loopers and that was a four-month schedule . It’s also the first game of a long trilogy so I have a lot of entertainment covered for a good portion of the coming year.
New VN club pick starts today which is also awesome, I’ll have a bit more variety with an already established routine. Hopefully this one brings me much more common vocabulary compared to the fantasy and war type of うたわれるもの.