October 10th: 魔女の宅急便 (not even a percent → still not even a percent)
Read one page today. Once again, I put off reading until bedtime, and even then I started after it should’ve been lights out. Not sure why I keep putting off reading until late. I think one of the problems is that I have a history of starting and stopping this book. I was obviously very into reading (and finishing) my volume of とつくにの少女, but I don’t have that same level of enthusiasm yet for this book. I’m still only right at the beginning, though, so maybe I just need a little more time. I’ll have to make more of an effort to read earlier tomorrow.
Been playing a lot of retro games for my reading the last few days. Guess my book boom is over. Was itching to read my Naoto spinoff novel, but I think I am just in game mode atm. xD
I got to try out something I’ve been meaning to try again today. Normally when I’m reading manga in english or doing something that doesn’t require my absolute 100% focus, I like to be doing something idle/afk in a game. When I tried this before, reading in japanese was just way too much mental effort to juggle reading, looking up words/grammar, and then also playing at the same time. But today, even with a moderately difficult よつばと！chapter, I was pretty comfortably able to play runescape and read! A step towards my normal routine, which means it should be easier for me to just pick stuff up and read without needing to get in the specific “I need to focus and study” headspace. It’s a little slower to read like this (30 minutes for a ch instead of like 20 that I have been doing), but less exertion to read = more reading in the long run. Now if only osrs had japanese language options
Read よつばと！Ch 37
Good Words
そりゃー very, extremely (それは)
サル ー monkey (since they were talking aboutトラ i think they were making a zodiac joke? but the context wasn’t super clear)
ご覧「ごらん」ー please try to (after て form)
壊れる「こわれる」ー to be broken
困る「こまる」ー to be troubled
邪魔「じゃま」ー hindrance
名刺「めいし」ー business card
Read 狼と香辛料 slightly faster than usual I think and finished the chapter (27 → 31%).
October 10
The usual 狼と香辛料 (31% → 34%).
Before bed I re-read the beginning of an アムネシア route I started before but without looking anything up. I actually got most of it, so that was nice, but I’ll probably start from the beginning with proper lookups next time.
Novels in Bookwalker app can be highlighted, while manga cannot. So, a vocabulary or a phrase can be highlighted for later learning.
Generally, I can read SHADOWS HOUSE, and I can guess the Kanji reading well for this difficulty. It gets interesting, so I would try to catch up with the book club, and see what I can talk about.
In the end, I collected and looked up vocabularies (from 16 => 13), and I picked the most from Ch.13. (2 - 8 vocabs per chapter)
I’ll definitely read some more today, as it’s still early, but this is as good a time as any for an update, since I’ve reached the end of another section. For a “horror” story, it sure talks about finance a lot. I’m getting a little tired of this family’s financial difficulties (and the accompanying vocabulary), and all their other unexciting but real concerns: good schools, aging family members’ health, etc. But these problems do serve as an essential background for the main story, wherever it may be leading. At a time of extreme financial despair, our parrot chose to speak again. His one word turns out to be prophetic once more. But can he actually predict the future, or is he somehow causing it? And is he even speaking at all, or is it the narrator who’s putting words in the parrot’s mouth while drunk and in a state of emotional turmoil?
Meanwhile, it’s starting to dawn on me that November is going to be a very busy month, as far as reading is concerned. With three book clubs starting at roughly the same time (IBC, ABC, Mystery), all three of which interest me a lot, I wonder if I’ll be able to keep up or go crazy in the process. Two of the books are going to be mysteries, so keeping up with the book club (and all the speculating) should be part of the fun. So if I have to read one book behind schedule, that would be the IBC, but that one has the lightest schedule of all, so it should be the easiest to keep up with. Well, I guess I’ll see how it goes when the time comes. Meanwhile, I should just focus on the rest of October, and hopefully not start something new that I’ll be struggling to finish once the book clubs start.
Script reading time! …and everyone pulls it apart and points out the problems with the script. Obviously it’s too ‘modern’ for them to understand it properly, it has so many deep layers somewhere
Wagahai-cat also seems to have been forgotten about again, he hasn’t been mentioned for ages.
Japanese found under the leaves
Meowords
透綾「すきや」ー Thin silk material
Forms
倦る ＝ 飽きる「あきる」(to grow tired of; to lose interest in)
Chapter 8 read and therefore volume 2 finished (except for the chapter of an unrelated story I will read after I’ve caught up with Orange and Loopers). This story is so good. Although a tearjerker. Now 4 chapters behind the club. I should probably have a chance to read 1/2-1 chapter tomorrow. Although, honestly, I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop in the middle of a chapter. This story is on a roll now.
Managed to read another of DrDru’s stories, this time it was abouta person getting chased by all sorts of things! I wanted to be brave and read more, but once again the switch from the stark black background to the stark yellow background hurt my eyes and I fled, not unlike the person in the story.
I learned the Kanji for fish! On jpdb there is the “old bell” radical that kinda looks like it, so now I have the ridiculous mnemonic of “fish are old bells with more legs” and I instantly know which Kanji I mean! I guess there really is something about ridiculous stories that sticks better.
In terms of comprehension, I feel on and off when it comes to actually understanding. Sometimes I can parse the sentences perfectly and if I cross-reference the EN version it matches my own impression, but other times it’s like I’m just sounding out the kanji & hiragana without drawing any meaning at all. But hey, just gonna keep smashing it into my brain and leave it to him to find patterns.
Priority: ミニスカ宇宙海賊 1. ケイン and 百眼 discussing what オデットⅡ世 did when 茉莉香 and チアキ turned on the electronic warfare thing. Free choice: 狼と香辛料 1. ホロ eats potatoes. Extra: 聖女の魔力は万能です. Overcharged potions unleashed to help hurt soldiers. Kitchen and bath achieved. ( magic > cooking) Read-aloud: ハイキュー 5. 日向 gets his first official volleyball win.
I’m trying to get back into learning Japanese, and I LOVE this idea! I’ll be using graded readers because my skills have fallen into complete nothingness. Starting this on October 11th, 2022.
For the sake of having more pointless data, I decided to try to get an average page character count for よつばと！today: seems to be somewhere around 55/page from what felt like an average density chapter. So an average chapter is probably somewhere around 1300 characters – More than I expected!
Read chapters 38, 39, 40, and 41, finishing volume 6! Like I said yesterday, being able to read while playing runescape is a huge buff for me lmao. Some of the afk grinds in this game are easily 150-200 hours long, having something to do alongside them is very nice, and that something might as well be reading in japanese.
May also come back and do another reading session later, I still feel like I could read more today, even.
Good Words
いつも通り「いつもどおり」 ー as always, as usual
部長「ぶちょう」ー head, director, chief
歯磨き「はがみき」ー teeth brushing
貼る = 張る「はる」ー to stick, to paste
冷蔵庫「れいぞうこ」ー fridge
どうせ ー anyhow, in any case
低脂肪乳「ていしぼうにゅう」ー low fat milk
出発「しゅっぱつ」ー departure, leaving (this is one of my wk leeches, seeing it in context might finally help it stick lmao)
赤とんぼ「あかとんぼ」ー small red dragonfly
よいしょ ー “heave ho”
はらへった ー I’m hungry (colloquial)
靴「くつ」ー shoes
鑢「やすり」ー file (tool)
本棚「ほんだな」ー bookshelf
端材「はざい」ー waste wood
謹慎「きんしん」ー home confinement (appears to be used similar to ‘being grounded’ here)
逮捕「たいほ」ー arrest
やって見る ー to have a go at, to try something
印「しるし」ー mark, sign
奥行き「おくゆき」ー depth (here, bookshelf depth)
I got some physical books from my wonderful dear irl friend! Today, I read the first page of ごんぎつね. It took me a while to get through it lol with how much I had to look up words to understand what was going on. So far, all I’ve got is that this is a story about ごん, who is a mischievous little fox that lives near a mountain. I might have to focus more on just reading rather than translating every single thing that I don’t know, and fill in the blanks with context clues. I’m enjoying the pretty drawings in the book though! And it’s been a ton of fun to read, even though it’s only been one page.
softlyraining’s spooky book stack 
魔女の宅急便 (not even a percent → still not even a percent)
Not sure why I keep putting off reading until late. I think one of the problems is that I have a history of starting and stopping this book. I was obviously very into reading (and finishing) my volume of とつくにの少女, but I don’t have that same level of enthusiasm yet for this book. I’m still only right at the beginning, though, so maybe I just need a little more time. I’ll have to make more of an effort to read earlier tomorrow.
October 9
(actually 
)
October 11 
Home Post
Oct 11 
ミニスカ宇宙海賊 1. 
狼と香辛料 1. 
聖女の魔力は万能です. 
magic > cooking)
ハイキュー 5. 
