This comment has me intrigued.
I read ahead of the club in late august and got to somewhere in chapter 30 I think, but decided to stop and catch up with my other books and wait for the club. I’ve just started reading again from the start of volume 3 with the club, and I’m now near the end of chapter 28 again, so I should finish chapter 30 next week!
As I thought, reading went better today, despite marked lack of sleep (about 4 hours).
30/10 26 pages シャドーハウス (all this week’s reading), 2 pages Tugumi (to end chapter 11), 夜カフェ - 4 pages (to end chapter 10) then 1 page chapter 11, 22 pages 耳をすませば (finished book)
So I’ve finished the current BBC book with the club, and am up to date with シャドーハウス.
Tomorrow I’ll try to focus on Tugumi - I figured I needed more sleep with that. I skim read half of the current シャドーハウス volume a couple of months ago so it’s not too challenging, though I’m still having to look up a lot more vocab. Story is taking another interesting turn.
I have the day off tomorrow so I’ll also try to progress with Spy Family and 夜カフェ plus maybe orange. Too many books!
So I am very much a beginner in learning Japanese. I started studying last year. Sadly I ended up having health complications and it was my last year of undergrad while completing a BA and a BS. Because of that I pretty much completely stopped my studying. I have finished my degrees and found a job and now I am starting up again. I’m about halfway through the first level here on wanikani and am using Duolingo and Lingodeer to further study. I really feel like learning to read in Japanese will greatly help build my language skills, but I am aware at my level most of my reading will probably be in the language learning apps. If anyone has a suggestion for complete beginner reading books in Japanese I would be willing to attempt those to supplement what I am doing in the apps. I understand those would likely be childrens books and am fine with that.
I am really excited to find this challenge! Seeing what others are reading and enjoying will be further encouragement to study consistently so I can read things that are more fun and interesting to me. I am starting the challenge on October 30th, but I’m sure I’ll want to keep up with it for future challenges also.
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| [/quote] |
October 30th (Home Post Link)
Woke up stupidly early today and figured I’d get some reading done in the morning: よつばと！chapters 98, 99, 100. Will do more later, but I almost want to savor these last few chapters. Feels almost surreal to think I won’t have more new よつば shenanigans to read every day (but I suppose in the words of one of my friends: “one could always read it again”). Debating whether I should do the extra chapters that haven’t been released in a volume yet or whether I want to save those for a rainy day before moving on to the next series for the challenge.
挑戦「ちょうせん」ー challenge, try
誠に「まことに」ー really
健康「けんこう」ー health
はちみつ ー honey
孤独「こどく」ー solitude
お出かけ 「おでかけ」ー just about to start, just about to leave
すべすべ ー smooth
メノウ ー agate
ヒスイ ー jade
透明 「どうめい」ー clear, transparent
I think quite a few people here have used Natively to find stuff that’s level appropriate. I did a lot of the Tadoku - Free Graded Readers when I was first trying to start reading and those were really nice. Felt extremely good to try reading something and be able understand it at all. Welcome to the challenge and happy reading!
I’m thinking this 人間椅子 might be something I can attempt since it is short 
. I’m really new and was wondering if you have any suggestions where to find it. Sorry if it is in an obvious place that I overlooked!
If you look at the book club’s first post (link below), there are several links to where you can get it for free. And if you do decide to read, feel free to ask any questions you may have in that thread. Or anything else related to the story, of course! 
Edit: I see you said you’re a beginner. Bear in mind that this is an almost hundred year old story, so I don’t expect the language to be very simple, and there’s bound to be at least some uncommon kanji in there. Still, if you want to give it a try, I’m sure other readers can give you all the support you need, if you ask.
20221030 - 吾輩は狸である progress: 65.38% 
An unusual guest arrives, so Wagahai-cat does his favourite thing and listens in on them.
Japanese found under the leaves
催眠術「さいみんじゅつ」ー Hypnotism
Forms
かわいそう ＝ 可哀想 ー Poor; pitiable; pitiful
(don’t think I’ve seen the kanji for this before)
@PerilousNebula
I recommend reading it with a 朗読 (read aloud) on YouTube like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDWK2UgqCOE
and using a popup dictionary (ie Yomichan) with the Aozora text. It won’t make it easy but it will make it a lot less overwhelming. That said, having read it, I don’t recommend this particular story for beginners as it’s quite difficult, but if you like a challenge I’m not going to try to dissuade you!
…Also I haven’t read in a couple days because my personal and work life have been chaos with deadlines and social events. I plan to do book club reading today if I can squeeze it in!
October 30th!
Today I read a chapter of Teasing Master Takagi-san.
It was a cute, fun one 
I might end up doing a bit more reading later this evening, but I’m not sure yet. Going to watch House of the Dragon with my husband now, so It’ll depend on who gets tired first 
Day 30, 30th of October 
Some more Kiki. Not much to say, though I think I will occasionally go back to some easier reading whenever I get overwhelmed. Jpdb helps a lot because it provides the words in chronoligical order.
October 30 
おばちゃんたちのいるところ , 7-14%
Finished the first story, which takes care of next week’s IBC too. I liked it, although the character development felt a little, I don’t know, too abrupt?
There’s still some reading time left in the day. I might use it to get a head start on 人間椅子, not sure.
Got busy with Halloween stuff, so reading totally slipped my mind. I ended up not being able to fall asleep, and just listened to about an hour of podcasts instead.
Getting some transcript practice in.
I’m glad you like it! I’ve been really loving her material, and I can feel it helping my comprehension a lot.
That’s a good call! It’s already Halloween in some parts of the world right now 
, so it’s not even jumping the gun! not too much, at least 
I didn’t get too far yet, but had a good chuckle at the omnipresence of kanji 
like 了う、程、様、若し and such. The story so far is promising as well
Anyways, here is my report for the week:
This week, I mainly read (and finished!) Flesh & Blood Vol. 6. It took me exactly a week (the sheer reading time was 16.5 hours) to read it. Today, my reading got more diverse as I started the new IBC pick おばちゃんのいるところ and the Halloween club pick 人間椅子, plus I continued 大聖堂 (will chat with my friend tomorrow and have not managed to finish the assigned part yet ) and also started to chase the 海辺のカフカ book club.
For the next week, I will focus on Kafka, I think, although I don’t expect to be able to catch up until the club finishes for good on Friday. But I hope I can finish it in the next few days after the club’s end. Which in the grand scheme of things (we’re talking ~1000 pages of Murakami here 
) shouldn’t matter too much after all.
Home post 
Oct 30
・本好きの下剋上 12 (0% → 4%)
Started Honzuki 12, now halfway through the prologue.
…Today has been a weird day.
A tiny birb is telling me local cat has run out of likes again 
October 30
Home Post
Orange 
Second half of this week’s chapter. I feel like the story is picking up enough that it is gonna be hard to stop myself from reading ahead. But I won’t, also I’m behind on 夜カフェ. And I have other things in the pipe line too.
So no more Orange until new week, next Saturday. 
10月30日
I haven’t updated in a week. After my last update my mental energy and mood dropped heavily and I’ve needed some days of recovery until it got a bit better, didn’t feel like updating any of the challenges… But I’m gaining a bit more strength by the day and I’m back to a certain degree of the usual normalcy. These days I’ve been playing a bit more of FFXIV but nothing too crazy, and I stopped new Anki words completely until today that I could come back to Loopers again. I kept doing reviews though so that’s a win.
Gotta treat the body and mind right when needed, study be damned. I’m glad I can at least function and resume the study once more. Just sucks when out of the blue you get a week or more of awful energy levels, though I guess it’s nothing unusual in the wonderful world of anxiety and other fun stuff 
.
Back on the tanuki 
.
I had these pending for the next time I posted I’m so sorry for the late reply! But thanks again for the kind wishes 
.
Home
October 30
人間椅子
Start - 4%
I didn’t get far because my clothes fell down in my closet and I had to fix them and go to bed late, but I liked reading the description of the main character and how she starts her mornings. I often get psyched out by walls of text, so I was pretty happy that I could understand most of it with no problem at all and that I already knew almost all of the kanji. Maybe this’ll be what gets me into reading non manga text…
I’m staring super late.
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| 28 | 29 | 30 |
I read a graded reader 夜の空で, and the article ちょっとお茶しませんか from watanoc.com.
new vocabulary
流れ星 ~~~ ながれぼし~~~ shooting star
飛行機~~~ ひこうき~~~ aeroplane
ゆっくり ~~~ slowly; unhurriedly
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