Oh I don’t disagree! I just find that there’s something very distinctive about many Japanese-original kanji that I can’t really put my finger on, that make them seem very obvious from Chinese characters.
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Thank you for your answer. 
So it is the same word after all.
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Nov 22, Tue of Week 9 of Fall 2022 
- SPY x FAMILY Vol.3 Ch.EXTRA 2 (finished volume)
Yor isn’t pain in the butt; she has one.
- かがみの孤城 (上) 75% => 78% (finished Ch.6 October)
Prelude to realization.
I am probably going to continue in audiobook.jp app, where I already have full set (下 also). There are still two chapters / months left until the end of the volume, so I might also read those to help with listening.
- うたわれるもの (Steam) 1 hour
Revived for the next match, and then one more death. I probably should read and explore how to play more thoroughly.
Interesting vocabularies
- 悶絶 (もんぜつ) what Kanji??? Faint (気絶) + in agony 悶える / 身悶え.
- After all, suffering (悶) is the question (問題) of the heart (心).
- 嘲笑 (ちょうしょう) a weird one to remember, but a verb form is 嘲笑う (あざわらう)
- 目障り (めざわり) feels just like 気に障る
- ラフな rough is casual, e.g. ラフな服装
- 同志 (どうし) like 同士, but with same intentions
- 矢先に (やさきに) moment of arrowtip = just about when to
- しこたま First half is that onomatopoeia, just imagine; then relates to a ball (たま)
- 紙一重 (かみ.ひと.え) paper-thin
- 忽然と (こつぜんと) like 突然 and 卒然
- 討つ punishing hit (打つ)
- 襟 (えり) stop (禁止) at the position (里 [り]) of collar, to fix to the expected imagery (絵 [え])
- 蹲る (うずくまる) bear (クマ) trips their legs, and cowers at your feet. Bowing (尊敬) to you.
- 金切り声 (かなきりごえ) sound that echoes through metalware
- こめかみ temple (side of the head). Kanji form is 蟀谷. Probably better to think かみ as the head (上, 神).
- 薙ぎ払う (なぎはらう) turkey hide under grass (flowers), so mow down with arrows. The first part is 薙ぐ (なぐ).
- 払う can also mean to brush out (祓う).
- もたつく making to be もたもた
- 見限る (みかぎる) don’t want to see more, so no more
- 突破口 (とっぱこう) = opening / chance. the first part is 突破 (とっぱ) that can be both breaking through obstacles, and discovery. So, 口 (～こう) version also has both meanings.
- はぐれる the Kanji form says what it really does (逸れる). Hugging (はぐ) what is not (逸).
- 番い (つがい) two (ツー) guys (がい) make turn (番) making a pair. Also used in 蝶番 (ちょう.つがい) = hinge. Has verb form = 番う (つがう).
- 丸投げ (まるなげ) throwing all works to others
- 颯爽と (さっそうと) set up a sail, and happily (爽快, 爽やか) set up (立つ) sail to the wind (風) immediately (早速 [さっそく]).
- 囮 (おとり) something to put (置く) and take (取り). Originally to lure birds (鳥).
- Tranforming (化ける) into meal-preparable form, to eat (口); or to be surrounded as in Kanji component
- ぶちかます (打ち噛ます) hit first in the head
- 歓喜 (かんき) energy (気) is happy (喜び). Also is On reading for 喜.
- 勝鬨 (かちどき) have fun (ドキドキ) winning (勝ち) together (共に). Unresistable thump, so shout.
- I think I have see door (門) of two kings (王様) in battle context.
- 温存 warm preservation
- 手立て plan that stand (dance) on my hand
Phrases
- 武装勢力 (ぶそう.せいりょく) armored and with power? guess what
- 報酬ははずむぞ another way to use 弾む (はずむ)
- 強硬手段 (きょうこう.しゅだん) = 強硬 + 手段
- 我に返る (われ.に.かえる) come back to one’s sense
- 満身創痍 (まん.しん.そう.い) the last Kanji is hard to read for me. Perhaps having wound all over body is scary (脅威).
Forgotten ones
- 無念 and related phrases, e.g. 無念を晴らす
- 騒めく I read wrong, hidden inside Kanji = zawameku. Onomatopoeia is zawazawa (ざわざわ).
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Day 53, 22nd of November
Another re-read of the parts of Kiki I’ve already deciphered and trying to remember to subvocalize this time. So tired! I want to read something new but I have no energy…
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Home post 
Nov 22
・本好きの下剋上 13 (42% → 55%)
So many new characters in this book, I’m forgetting who is who 
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November 22 
おばちゃんたちのいるところ , 23-30%
I read this week’s story from おばちゃんたちのいるところ today. I left my reading till late and was quite sleepy towards the end, but I managed to finish it and remember what it was about (I often have no idea what I just read when I’m half asleep 
).
Tomorrow I’m starting the last story from Autumn Prison. Or at least, that’s the plan.
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November 22nd.
I think I’m coming down with a cold or something. I’m super tired and I have a really nasty headache.
I still managed to do a bit of reading though - Chapter 33 of Shadows House. I usually read them in 2s since thats the book club allocation for the week, but tonight one will do because I really just need to go to sleep!
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November 22
Home Post
Orange 
Read two chapters of Orange today, to catch up with the club. Only behind by like 4 days for one chapter, so no big deal.
And now my reading plate is clean until Saturday! Whatever will I do? 
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20 November 2022
Home Post- Chainsaw Man (Chapter 57)
21 November 2022
- Minimal Reading.
22 November 2022
Looks like she came to a turning point in her life and decided to quit making the podcast. Good for her!
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read 5 more chapters. Only 2 more to go (plus epilogue and side stories). Volume 2 doesn’t arrive until Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. So I may take a break today and continue tomorrow and Friday.
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November 22 Home Post
Had a lot going on today so not much reading, just a little ブルーロック, and now I am very sleepy 
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I finished the 体育館の殺人 reading but no time for anything else today. Will have to catch up more tomorrow.
On a neat personal note, I hit my goal of conversation hours for the year ahead of schedule. 104 hours, or basically 2 hours a week was my goal. I’ll beat it out by a smidge.
My writing goal on the other hand…
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Day 13 Progress:
お隣の天使様 二冊 - 88.41% → 95.05%
スローループ - Chapter 5 (Volume 1 done!)
The most frustrating thing about learning Japanese with OCD is the amount of self-doubt you start casting on your own breadth of knowledge. It’s impossible to be certain that you actually ‘know’ something in the first place, and my mind does plenty to undermine what confidence I had before. For instance, today I had a bit of trouble remembering how to read 決 (despite it being one of the most common characters I see, probably because I read it so often I stopped caring about its shape) and my mind is immediately there to ask myself if I really knew the character or not. There’s no real way to get actual confirmation that I truly ‘know’ something and I end up falling into a cycle of frustration and doubt more often than I’d like.
On the bright side, I finished a volume of スローループ today and I’ll be finishing volume 2 of お隣の天使様 tomorrow! I haven’t really talked about スローループ but it’s been a pleasant time so far (and might be the only Kirara manga to ever use the word 肛門). Being able to read SOL manga now with a bit of Japanese under my belt has definitely been a great boon. It’s also amusing to see how SOL manga like スローループ is definitely geared towards adults because there’s basically zero furigana and plenty of tough vocab, and I end up having to hit the dictionary quite a bit each chapter.
Word of the Day:
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Long overdue update. After the break I needed last month I ended up needing another one after, especially from posting. I’ve kept in touch with the VN club and that’s about it, but I’ve come back everyday to see everyone’s progress and slap you all with likes 
.
I’ve been doing Japanese pretty much all this time since my last update, both reading and listening, but not as “intensively”. I finished Loopers, played some FFXIV and I got a few new titles that I want to start soon (especially うたわれるもの, which I’ve seen polv posting about recently, coincidentally). Still no new Anki cards for the most part, which initially I felt a bit disappointed about, but I quickly learnt that even if I’m not actively learning new words right now it won’t take away the words I’ve already added and studied, they’re there for as long as I keep the deck, so it’s a non-issue now. I recently started a couple shared decks to learn the prefectures of Japan, their location and their flags, which I wanted to do for a while already, and it’s been pretty fun. They’re also pretty short decks so I’ve been doing them leisurely at like 2 new prefectures a day.
Most importantly I’ve decided to fix my sleep for the 800th time. I was still getting 8 hours of sleep a day but I was going to bed so late feeling pretty tired and it was ultimately unsustainable. I love doing things at night, always have. I love the peace, the silence, the solitude. But in order to get that I was sacrificing a proper sleep schedule and mental energy, which sucks even more, so I’ve decided to try and change that. So far it basically translated to being wide awake in bed for a couple hours until I hopefully fall asleep at some point, then waking up at the same hour no matter what. Even if I’m tired my brain can’t seem to relax yet. Eventually I’d like to still get that peace and silence I want, but in the early morning instead of the late night. I also really want to start exercising again, I used to be super physically active for years but then we got everyone’s friendly neighbour, coronavirus, and my habits plummeted. Haven’t done any exercise pretty much since, so pair that with poor sleep habits and you got yourself a lovely cocktail. No wonder my memory is quite bad, which is in large part because of anxiety, but there are a couple factors I can influence to make it a bit better.
So there’s that. Hoping that all these changes lead to a more balanced lifestyle again and it all translates to more effective learning. I’m so tired already of being a little shit 
.
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Home Post
11.22.2022
Pokemon Violet 21:18→22:30
This section was a bit frustrating but it was good reading practice. I had to collect hints to figure out what was the secret menu item, but a couple of the words I wasn’t able to look up in the dictionary. I ended up looking up the last couple answers in english and worked backwards from there. Also lost the gym battle so I probably need to catch some higher level pokemon.
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Reply
Oh, I’ve always wanted to do this too! Could you share the links to them? (I’ve never tried Anki before, but I intend to get it figured out eventually.)
This is so relatable! It occurred to me somewhat recently that going to bed only when I’ve reached the point of such tiredness that brushing my teeth feels like an ordeal was probably not the way things are supposed to be, eheheheh… But changing habits is so hard! It feels kind of lame to be going to bed earlier than I feel tired and than I know I’m “capable” of, but at the same time, I have to wake up at a certain hour and going to bed that late always leaves me tired, so… 頑張りましょう！
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November 23rd
Home post
Card Captor Sakura volume 1 or Aria: the masterpiece volume 2 – progress report
Yesterday: Read up to page 30 of Card Captor Sakura.
Today: Read up to page 53, finished Chapter 1 of Card Captor Sakura.
I think the introductory explanations are mostly over now (until new characters show up, I presume), so the next few pages will probably involve more daily life situations and action-y scenes which may be a bit easier to handle.
I’m still kind of taken aback but also pleased that I keep encountering several WK vocabulary words while making my way through the pages. Some of the words this time around were: 行動, 宿, 勝手, 金持ち and even 協力 which I just learned yesterday.
Reply
I hope that it won’t turn out to be a cold. 
Get well soon, @lucylavelle!
Word or expression of the day:
小規模 (しょうきぼ) - small scale (な-adj.)
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Reply
Of course! c:
I searched for “prefectures” in the Anki shared decks site and many came up. I’m specifically using these two, starting number 2 once I’m done with 1:
- https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/619574407 (reorder of a popular one with added audio).
- https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/517841818 (edit of another popular one but with cards that give you the name and you have to point in the map where it is).
The are many so you can pick the one you prefer.
It really is… but one cool thing about habits is that once they become habits you no longer think about them or need a lot of strength to perform them. It’s the initial period that is rough but when it’s over it’s mostly just autopilot. Once we’re used to it the weird thing will be going bed so late 
.
頑張りましょうね 
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November 23rd (Home Post Link)
Read:
- 耳をすませば pg 134 → 179 Done! – I can’t stop smiling. What a lovely little story. I think I actually prefer some parts of this to the film. The way they are forced to commit to each other at the end never quite sat well with me (allegedly a choice miyazaki put onto the film, even though he wasn’t directly in charge of it
). The film focuses a lot more on the struggle of becoming an artist, and I love it for that, but the romance part gets kind of shunted to the side. Here, the romance is more of the focal point, and it’s also excellent. It felt a lot more grounded and less overtly melodramatic for the sake of being melodramatic. The way music gets used in the film will always give it another extra level for me, though. Few movies have changed my perception of a song as much as Whisper of the Heart changed my perception of Country Roads. Anyway, I love them both in different ways. I think I’ll save the extra story for another time and get back to からかい上手の高木さん. Or maybe something else, not sure. I’m in a real 少女 mood now. I have ホリミヤ sitting over on my shelf, and i’ve been feeling like it’s about time to try reading that again. I did a bit in the spring, but it was still pretty hard for me then. Should go much more smoothly now, one would think.
Good Words
磁石「じしゃく」ー magnet, compass
かしら ー i wonder (feminine expression)
弾丸「だんがん」ー bullet (here, 弾丸のよう)
ケチ ー stingy
遅刻「ちこく」ー lateness
趣味「しゅみ」ー hobby, pastime
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