A… are you from the future? 
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October 4
Steady progress on 狼と香辛料 (14% → 17%). If I can keep up this pace I could finish the book this month and be done in time for the next Advanced book. However I have about an hour a day for Japanese reading these days and this is taking me the entire hour, so it’s going to be hard fitting in any other reading if I don’t speed up or find more time. Maybe on the weekend…
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No, but I’m just a very clumsy cat 
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Just an quick update. I’m progressing well, as I just finished volume 7 of One Piece today. Getting towards the finale of the Baratie arc. Some more thoughts below.
vol 7
Already getting tired of Don Krieg. Gin is a more interesting “villain”. It’s kinda the same thing with the previous arc that I can see that they’re drawing parallels to luffy and showing that he is not that kinda pirate. That said anything else that is happening is more interesting than the main villain and this read has not really changed my mind on that.
On another note while updating my bookmeter I noticed I passed another milestone: I’ve read for over 500 days in total now. It still feels early stages to me, but reading something now is so normal that it is part of my routine. I definitely think these challenges have pushed me so far, even if most of it is self driven, seeing others stay active makes you wanna try applying yourself some more. That said still a long ways to go, notably my speed, volume and being able to read anywhere are some points I wish to improve.
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Days 4 & 5 : Read the first volume of Vagabond over the two days, not that much writing in it so not great for reading practice. Amazing art style and story though so might buy volume 2 later on.
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20221005 - 吾輩は狸である progress: 41.96% 
Chapter six, summer is here and Wagahai-cat doesn’t know what to do in all this heat.
(and this leads him into musing about how superior cats are to humans)
The worst of it is that it is even too hot for naps.
Japanese found under the leaves
Meowords
櫛「くし」ー Comb
芭蕉「ばしょう」ー Musa basjoo / Japanese banana / hardy banana
上布「じょうふ」ー High quality hemp cloth
Forms
区劃 ＝ 区画「くかく」(division; section)
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Wait! December isn’t 10月?
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Day 5, 5th of October
Today was a Tadoku graded reader day kinda day. Gonna go through the list of free books they have here.
Today I read どっち？ and まだ？. I struggle with adverbs, so these were great. Also I guess I can finally start a list of finished books. 
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This made me check whether there is also 下布「げふ」 – Low quality hemp cloth, but apparently there is no such word… I guess, only high quality hemp cloth deserves a special word 
Coincidentally, the 10 episodes of Nihongo con Teppei I listened to today were also about どっち、starting from
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October 5
Home Post
夜カフェ 
I finished the rest of this week’s chapter and all of next week’s chapter too. You’d think a teen drama wouldn’t get too tense, but it did and I wasn’t gonna stop reading until some of it let up.
I didn’t check how many pages I read but 10+ somewhere is likely. I think I read for 2 hours (at least).
The good thing is I can pick up Orange tomorrow and start reading that again. And I also feel like I seriously made up for not reading yesterday.
I will never force myself to read just to a tick a box. For me, every day / regular / consistent does mean every day. It means almost every day. Because life happens and I prefer to allow for that. 
I even do that with SRS, won’t catch me doing reviews on Christmas, but I do reduce lessons if I know I’m gonna skip a day of reviews. ^^
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05 October 2022
Home Post- “Why is October called the no-gods month in Japan?” (Podcast Transcript)
Reading and listening to a podcast in the morning before I go to class.
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Another 3,000 characters of Flowers down. I’m not really happy with the amount I’m doing and feel like my progress is only sliding backwards (probably about time I pick up anki again a bit…) but I do have pretty extenuating life circumstances as always. Can’t say I’m feeling great from the medication currently.
My speed is sorta working against me – I love visual novels and specifically want to be doing them, but since even the short ones are longer than a lot of books, it’s kind of hard to maintain interest when reading them in the tiniest chunks per day. Like if this was English I’d probably get through the amount that I do here in 5, 10 minutes most. That tiny slice per day, not even every day (when I mix in Loopers and whatnot), is not exactly the most preferable way to read something.
I do like Flowers though. Over time these characters have definitely opened up so while they have some defining consistent tendency in personality, it feels like there’s a lot of complexity that the VN gives occasional glimpses of. The events are nothing too thrilling, but it’s all about navigating the complicated mess of relationships and watching them constantly improve and sour as people’s quirks bounce off each other. It’s particularly strong multilayered writing for every single one of the people, especially for the medium.
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I know you said you weren’t worrying about what the difference was, but I got curious myself, so I looked it up!
Searching “土手とは,” it seems that 土手 and 岸辺 aren’t something that Japanese people mix up, but 土手 and 堤防. Those two are synonyms and gloss more closely to the English word “embankment” - pictures for 土手 show raised ground a small ways out from a river, and the first definition on kotobank is “川などがあふれて田地や家屋に流入するのを防ぐために、土を小高く積み上げて築いた長い堤。堤。堤防.” So it’s dirt built up (purposely) along the banks of rivers to prevent them from overflowing and flooding farmland and houses and the like.
岸辺 is defined as “岸のほとり。陸が水に接するあたり,” or more generally just the shore or edge of a body of water; where water meets land. A bank rather than an embankment. They’re not specifically built up like 土手 are and can definitely be flat. (Though 岸辺 is a name and also seems to be in the name of a drama, so searching “岸辺とは” mostly just brings up people…)
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October 5th!
Today I read chapter 39 of Mitsuboshi Colors. It was a really fun chapter, though there were several confusing bits that I’m glad had been discussed in the book club so I didn’t need to try to work them out myself!
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Home post 
Oct 5
・ 狼と香辛料 (40% → 50%)
I finished week 5, so just week 6 left and I’ll be on track. Also happy with getting some studying done today 
Showing up on campus seems to be very effective. On the other hand, listening to a random playlist of cool music is too distracting, will restrict to something chill next time. (Yes, cool and chill are completely different xD )
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No reading for me yesterday but today I finally finished the Mystery Book Club pick (Natively forums), 十角館の殺人 and I sincerely enjoyed it. I’m quite happy the club picked a classic of Japanese mystery literature to kick things off, and I’m looking forward to whatever the next pick happens to be. I’ll put a last call for nominations in a few days and then run the poll. I’ll post here when the voting opens up in case anyone would like to join! 
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Today I read some more lines of the Monobeno visual novel. I’m sure I will finish it this year. What visual novel will I read next? Maybe Island.
Furthermore I read 6 pages of the Shin Kanzen Master Reading N1 book. Just a little more and I will have finished it. But unfortunately my reading didn’t improve much. I thought by finishing it I would become awesome at reading japanese but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
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October 5 
(actually 
)
化身, 65-70%
Our parrot has started to speak, and the women of the household are getting more and more obsessed with him. The narrator has some misgivings about all that.
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Yesterday my brain was FRIED like chicken. I am hoping to make a bigger dent in today’s reading. I didn’t bring my Switch today and brought my handheld to play non-thinking games. I have been kind of overdoing it recently reading wise and need to give my brain and chance to not be in study mode.
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Thank you! I was guessing the 手 meant it had something to do with being made intentionally by hand, but I didn’t have enough time to really look deeply and didn’t want to assume incorrectly. That’s super helpful info though!
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