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Nov 17 
・本好きの下剋上 13 (21% → 30%)
Was too tired to laptop last night, so I’m posting this now.
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November 16 
秋の牢獄, 45-54%
November 17 
秋の牢獄, 54-64%
准教授・高槻彰良の推察, vol2 page 70-128
I just realized I hadn’t updated for two days. So yesterday and the day before I continued reading and finished the second story in 秋の牢獄. It started well, bored me a little in the middle, then picked up quite a lot towards the end. And it was finally (and unexpectedly) dark. Quite satisfying. I’m told the third story is the darkest one yet, so I’m looking forward to it.
And, as I had quite some reading time left, I resumed reading 准教授・高槻彰良の推察 vol.2, the manga that I had left unfinished for ages due to several concurrent book clubs vying for my attention. My aim is to finish this today, hopefully with time to spare to start reading this week’s Eugenia. Let’s see how that goes.
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Day 8 Progress:
お隣の天使様 二冊 - 53.63% → 60.21%
Slow Loop - Chapter 1
My sleep schedule is getting worse and worse but hey, I’m still reading!
Tried doing some reading today at work on four hours of sleep, no lunch, and a caffeine low. Was stuck on a sentence interpretation for about five minutes until I gave up and got some chicken kebab from the local gyro place and BOOM, it hit me like an epiphany. It’s kind of hilarious but also annoying how severely basic reading comprehension i tied to my energy levels…
Also I started reading some manga on the side! If I’m going to be honest, お隣の天使様 has been pretty boring for me so far (but not so much I want to drop it) and I’ve been looking for a bit of a breather recently, so I went ham and bought all the volumes of Slow Loop, Bocchi the Rock, and Deaimon on BookWalker and I’ll just slowly read them whenever I’m feeling like I need some refreshing. Might also start a visual novel just because I want to hear some actual voices for once lmao…
The first chapter of Slow Loop was nice and also surprisingly smooth sailing, had a little trouble with the conversational Japanese diction because I haven’t been exposed to much yet but honestly it feels very nice not being intimidated by a massive all of text all the time with the occasional illustration.
Word of the Day: 咀嚼 - chewing and mastication in a literal sense, or digestion of knowledge. I had a fun time making a mnemonic for this word because it uses the WK top hat radical (且) and the kanji for baron (爵) so it’s like you’re eating the rich!
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Day 47:
Priority: 
Free choice: 
ミニスカ宇宙海賊 1. Thankfully I read during my work break because I ended up not having energy for anything else. 
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18/11 5 pages おばちゃんたちのいるところ
I realised today I made a typo when I first wrote the book title and I’ve copy and pasted it multiple times. Fixed now.
I’ve got 7 pages to read then I’m caught up. But new chapter starts tomorrow 
On the plus side - even though tomorrow may be a long work day, there may be some down time to read. Will only know tomorrow.
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Home
November 18
人間椅子 -
ジョジョの奇妙な冒険50
67 - 130
Just keep reading just keep reading
Ngl this part was a bit boring. The rest of Mista’s fight goes predictably. Then we get new characters introduced. In a first interesting then very boring way. I kept reading until a scene change. This arc marks the beginning of Narancia’s feature. I don’t care about him 
hopefully I can still keep this 3 day pace up.
Then it’ll be Pompeii times! And hopefully I can go to the exhibit 
Also how th do I manage to go to bed early on weekends? What is this? Sleeping before midnight?!? Why can’t I do this on weekdays…
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November 18
准教授・高槻彰良の推察, vol2 page 128-204, finished.
Well, I did finish the manga volume, but I sincerely doubt I’ll have the time or energy to touch Eugenia today like I had been planning. The manga was good, on par with the first volume. We solve some more not-so-supernatural cases, and learn some more about the characters’ background.
Today I learned about コックリさん, which seems to be some kind of Ouija board? The dictionary says it’s a form of divination based on table-tilting, but the way it was done in the manga was there were kana, plus はい, いいえ and a 鳥居 drawn on a piece of paper. The participants all place one finger on a 10-yen coin starting from the 鳥居, call コックリさん, then ask questions and “watch” the coin move to the letters for answers. When you’re done it’s important to ask コックリさん to go, and let it return to the 鳥居. 
It’s a good thing コックリさん played a major role in the story, because when it was first mentioned I almost dismissed it as a character’s name. 
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20221118 - 吾輩は狸である progress: 77.57% 
Wagahai-cat continues to watch his family and starts to talk about some of the furniture
(it seems he has still yet to be fed, poor cat)
Japanese found under the leaves
Meowords
フケ ー Dandruff (also: 頭垢 & 雲脂)
刎「はね」ー Counter for helmets
欅「けやき」ー Japanese Zelkova (Zelkova Serrata) (Tree)
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Nov 18, Fri of Week 8 of Fall 2022
- BUSTAFELLOW (Android)
Yesterday, I tried BUSTAFELLOW, since is free to try from the first chapter on Android. Installed first on tablet, then I figured that it is probably better to have fun, than being in full learning mode. I reinstalled on smartphone While I don’t want to look, I am glad that I looked up some Kanji compounds, like 眼窩 or 窪み. Other than gameplay, I also looked at collections and cinematics.
Now, I uninstalled both from smartphone and tablet. Not only that it is not time for this material yet; I don’t want to get addicted to it.
- うたわれるもの (Steam)
Yesterday, I also tried うたわれるもの on my laptop. Playing a little over 1 hour, reading the story, and I still don’t get to play any game yet… (at least making some choices). The dialogue is rewindable and can replay the audio, but there is no backlog list.
Perhaps the most common and difficult vocabulary is 判る. It’s actually 分かる. There is also 躰, which is actually 体, or 身体 without a leader. This one is quite easy to guess, but not as far as the original form 體. Otherwise, Kanji are full of triangles, and horns becoming fins. Another one is weird 工, being thundered in the middle (e.g. 工夫).
Today, I tried. About 15 minutes later, the real gameplay starts – turn-based RPG. It helps because it’s not fast paced. (At least not turn-based with timer.)
I looked at play time (just like Pokemon of olden days), so as not to overdone myself, and give to study vocabularies and such. It’s now 2 hours.
For read-aloud. The trick is to discipline the ghost.
- かがみの孤城 (上) 71% => 75% (Ch.6 October)
Polling on who wants to end the castle.
Read on smartphone, which would be convenient when I don’t have laptop nor tablet. I usually take my phone everywhere. It also syncs with tablet. I practically never read on laptop.
To-be-remembered vocabularies
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介抱 nursing back to health
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殲滅 looking up is difficult, but I knew some words with the second Kanji. Probably remember as 宝籤’s 抽籤 or 懴悔. Anyway, Aedict helps a lot today. (殲 => (parts) 韭 => (junctures) related Kanji’s)
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慈しむ kindness that reaches living place / settles (居着く). Technically looked up from 慈悲.
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昏睡 coma = just remember the whole vocabulary as sound? Kanji has some vocabularies as 昏迷, and of course 黄昏.
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モドキ -lookalike, like そんなこともドキドキ
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垢抜ける
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勘定 calculate with feelings (感情)
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濁す rub (擦る) twice (二)
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嗜む touch 足し my heart now. The Kanji is also used in 嗜好.
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女将 …mentioned by plantron-さん in advance, where I looked up from, but I only see this now. Yeah, woman head (of a household) is just like a wolf 狼.
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傾げる borrowing 貸し the slope
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競う fighting alongside (沿い) Ki 気
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矜持 holding on to strong self. The vocabulary has Furigana in context.
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憚られる have-あ-couples of hesitations
Forgotten ones
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不意打ち disregarding Furigana, just Kanji shapes, so divide at 不意 and 打ち
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剥製 dismantling (剥ぐ) skin, and removing innards and muscles, thus preserving the animal; i.e. stuffed animal. The verb form is 剥ぐ, but probably also makes the animal whitened 白. Perhaps that the novel prefer a different Kanji form (剝), making it not understood by Google Translate.
Phrases
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恩を仇で返す
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肩身が狭い
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Day 49, 18th of November
Read a transcript of a Nihongo con Teppei episode. I think I will do that for every episode I listen to, it made following along with what was said so much easier.
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November 18th
Home post
Aria: the masterpiece volume 1 – progress report
Yesterday: read up to page 252
Today: read up to page 257
Let’s just say that today’s reading was cut short: I’m too tired to read and concentrate properly and the moment I looked at page 257 which has a lot of explanations going on I was simply like ‘nope, not today!’
Aria 1st volume: 1 - me: 0 
I shall settle the score tomorrow, though! 
Some words of note
屋台 (やたい) stall, stand, cart
残る (のこる) to remain, to be left
一目惚れ (ひとめぼれ) love at first sight
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November 18th!
Today I started volume 7 of Happiness, and read the first chapter. Looks like this volume is going to be a lot more action packed than the last one!
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Home Post
11月18日火曜日
ぼっち怪物と盲目少女
pp.６-７上 新しい単語
| 単語 | 英語 |
|---|---|
| まったく | good grief |
| どこまで | where to |
| 転 | revolve |
| 転がれば | to roll (provisional conditional) |
| 気が | feel like ? |
| にっ…人間 | a p-person |
| 何故 | why, how |
| こんな | this sort of, like this |
| 所 | place |
| 近寄らない | don’t approach |
| はず | should |
Can anyone explain provisional conditional like I’m five? 
今日のノート
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Well, if you like listening to Cure Dolly: Episode 31 seems to be about this conditional.
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It means something like „if, hypothetically“ or „in case“ - does that make sense to you?
(If not, maybe an example sentence would be helpful)
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My suggestion is, don’t try to think of it as “provisional conditional”, which is a label that in my opinion is more confusing than helpful. Instead, think of it as ~ば, and then go look that up in your favourite grammar reference. I like the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar; there are some good online references too.
The one-word gloss is “if”. Japanese has several different grammar structures that can express similar kinds of “if” or “when” meanings: for the detail on when you can or can’t use a particular one and when they have slightly different meanings, a good grammar reference should help.
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Hmm… maybe makes sense…
The full sentence is:
どこまで転がれば気が…
I’m thinking it is something like
How far | will you roll | (you) think
“How far are you planning to roll” or something like it.
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The obvious conclusion to the half-finished sentence (I assume the character’s getting interrupted) is 気がすむ, giving “how far are you going to roll before you’re satisfied?”.
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I came across a “took an arrow to the knee” joke while reading オトメ＊ドメイン earlier today. Definitely not something I expected to find in a visual novel
Very cute game overall though, I’ve been reading it every day and enjoying it so far.
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Aha, yep, that’s it. The cut-off words are gonna be tricky.
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