December 3 
Home Post
Ended up doing a lot of other things today, so just one chapter of ブルーロック! Still making progress though, and it all continues to be very interesting 
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I did the reading for the Natively Mystery Book club today, I’ll be opening the week 6 thread of 体育館の殺人 soonish. Probably will also do some more reading of 異世界の名探偵?
Also just want to call out that I have a thread open now for a January start of a reading club for 半落ち and I’m happy to have anyone join in. 
Also @Belerith thoughts of a February start for レベル7? I’m going to be reading minimum 3 books (半落ち、ユージニア, おいしいごはん) in January. But, by February ユージニア will have ended and I can hopefully wrap おいしいごはん before then as well, and the only other thing for sure in the docket is whatever the next Mystery Book Club pick is.
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アタック!! got here, very nearly 3 months after it shipped, and I still haven’t finished the first volleyball manga I started lmao, much less gotten to the other ones I have. *sigh* I hate how slow I read, and also my difficulty prioritizing.
Anyway, today I read the last 11 or so pages of the second story from おばちゃんたちのいるところ. I understood more of it than the first, but I didn’t like it any better.
My thoughts/reactions, which I may organize better and add to the discussion thread later:
Is… Is Tsuyuko crying because she doesn’t like that Shinzaburou feels put off by her false—not to mention, touchy, when he doesn’t even know them—display of sympathy? I’d had an odd feeling about these two women from the beginning, like something was a little off about them (like they themselves are the supernatural element of the story, rather than—or along with—the titular peony-patterned lantern), but now I definitely don’t like them. I’ve been desensitized to crocodile tears by my mother, so any time I see them, my emotional center, particularly the sympathy/empathy, just completely shuts off. My emotional dysregulation usually means that I feel overmuch, but this is one of the few times where I feel absolutely nothing at all. And I hate anyone who tries to play the sympathy card with fake tears.
And now she’s acting all upset, not wanting Shinzaburou to give a present—like flowers, or a flower-patterned lantern—to any woman but her, even his wife? When he doesn’t even f*cking know her? Man, this woman is a right piece of work.
So Tsuyuko will die if he doesn’t buy the lantern? Good. Go die, then. Shinzaburou has a rotten heart for not wanting to buy something he doesn’t need from a pair of creepy, suspicious women? Uh huh, sure. With every page, I hate Tsuyuko and Yoneko more. Unfortunately, Tsuyuko doesn’t die when he continues to refuse, they just knock him out with magic and steal his money to have him buy four lanterns.
…Why is Shinzaburou happy to see them a year later? Even if he does keep out of their line of sight and doesn’t want to actually cross paths with them again. It makes zero sense.
I hope at least some of these stories have likable characters, because I haven’t liked a single one so far.
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Day 24 Progress:
お隣の天使様 三冊 - 74.53% → 86.00%
Good luck to everyone taking the JLPT exams!
Word of the Day:
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I’m having fun with my advent-style reading (finished the first story, and the trick really was tricky), but it greatly reduces my reading time for other books. I’ve been reading Eugenia on the side for two days now, yet my progress is tiny. Why oh why can’t I read faster? 
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December 2 + 3
Home Post
Christmas reading (in Swedish) 
More cat and human socializing this weekend meant I only got a bit of holiday reading in Swedish done on the 2nd, and yesterday I got nothing done. Two night sleepover at my friends’ means most of my time is taking. I only forced a bit of WK.
Now I have the rest of today, all of tomorrow and then busy busy week and change starts. So probably won’t post much then, I hope I’ll be able to read some. But no guarantee. I will already drop to only reviews on WK but there are quite a few that I’ll have to do in one batch at some point in the day. 
Reply
@Redglare It was more firmly autumn here, but not cold until mid-late October. We got a first good bit of frost in like mid-October, then temperatures rouse back into 4-5. But as November hit, temperatures started to fall and then the snow came mid-Nov somewhere.
Nice to see bird. 
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20221204 - 吾輩は狸である progress: 89.00% 
The conversation continues, one them even says this:
「話す私も飽き飽きします」
But looking at the pages ahead this conversation isn’t stopping any time soon.
Japanese found under the leaves
Meowords
稽古「けいこ」ー Practice; training; study
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December 4th!
Today I read chapter 3 of God Bless the Mistaken, and also the next chapter of Teasing Master Takagi-san.
I’m hoping to play some Pokemon Violet after dinner too.
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December 4th
Card Captor Sakura volume 2 or Aria: the masterpiece volume 2 – progress report
Yesterday: Finished chapter 12 and read up to page 93.
Today: Read up to page 121 of Aria: the masterpiece volume 2, finished chapter 13.
I feel okay today and I planned reading chapter 13 and half of chapter 14 but…well, I’ll just give a short summary of today’s session:
midnightblue: starts reading chapter 13
Aria: the masterpiece volume 2: throws lots of explanations about the square, the space station, the evangelist’s lion statues, the tower, the bridge name’s origin etc. at me → it’s super effective!
midnightblue: faints
And that’s why I was already beat after reading chapter 13 and couldn’t find the energy to start reading the next chapter – the end.
Aria: the masterpiece: 2 - me: 0 
Word or expression of the day:
気分転換 - (きぶんてんかん) - change of pace, change of mood, (mental) break
Honourable mention(s):
暇潰し - (ひまつぶし) - waste of time, killing time
格好つける - (かっこうつける) - to try to look good, to show off
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December 3 & 4
また、同じ夢を見ていた progress at 84%. Read volume 6 of Ponkotsu Ponko and that was basically it.
Going through the novel a bit faster now. Want to read another novel one yet though I’m unsure which one. I have a few I’m considering but not sure yet.
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Dec 4 
・本好きの下剋上 14 (51% → 53%)
Just a tiny read! Busy busy… Found an interesting phrase tho.
青筋を立てる
aosuji = vein (esp. in the head), so basically meaning this: 
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Meant to update this thread literally weeks ago, sorry! I got a bit distracted with family visiting as I was trying to finish up National Novel Writing Month .
I’ve been busy! I finished two Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling show translations (November 13, November 20) and one contract signing translation (which might be my favorite thing I’ve translated yet), and am currently almost done with another long show, which was on November 27.
For a photo, I’m going to share this one from the November 13 show, which was at KBS Hall in Kyoto (the prettiest pro wrestling venue in the world, probably):
This show was in Saki Akai and Yuki Arai’s hometown, so both members of 令和のAA砲 (Reiwa AA Cannon) spoke on the mic to the crowd after winning in the main event. Saki Akai is actually signed to DDT Pro Wrestling (where she is the sole woman on the roster), not TJPW, but she has been appearing in TJPW a lot this year after winning the tag titles.
Yuki Arai is also an active idol in addition to a young wrestler. She’s with the group SKE48. I know basically nothing about the idol world outside of wrestling, haha, but my understanding is that Arai is actually sort of a big deal as an idol. She’s actually taken extremely well to wrestling, so I have a lot of respect for her really putting in the work there.
I actually managed to get a tiny bit of 大海原と大海原 volume 3 read, but I couldn’t finish chapter 7 because I had to pivot very suddenly to translating TJPW again haha because they sprung that contract signing on us, and I really wanted to get it done before the show with the title match.
Reading in Spanish:
I finished Antes de Ser Libres and then I read a Spanish translation of the comic Redbone, which is written by Christian Staebler and Sonia Paoloni and illustrated by Thibault Balahy. The comic is about the band of the same name, which I admittedly know very little about! I don’t know a lot of music history, so I learned a fair amount as I read it. I picked up the comic because it seemed well within my skill level and is short enough for me to be able to easily finish it within the month, and sure enough, it was a great choice!
I’ll post a full challenge wrap-up post soon!
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December 4th (Home Post Link)
My new linguistics book arrived today (The Grabe & Stoller Extensive Reading one)! I’d been running into some dead ends on research papers to read, so this should give me some nice stuff to work on for a bit.
Extremely tired today though, spent a bunch of time outside yesterday and think I overdid it a bit
Read:
- ホリミヤ ch 17
-
NHK News Web Easy: 調布市の神社に「ゲゲゲの鬼太郎」の砂の像ができた - since NHK easy includes jp → jp dictionary pop ups on words that kids might not know, I’ve been trying to use those first before looking stuff up on a jp → eng dictionary and actually totally understood one of those for the first time today. Maybe it’s time to set up yomichan in jp again soon…
also might check out ゲゲゲの鬼太郎, sounds kinda cute and probably on the easier side to read/watch.
Also picked up a good new word from this week’s ぼっち・ざ・ろっく！
Good Words
ホリミヤ
加工「かこう」ー processing, manufacturing
ガラケー ー dumb phone
否定「ひてい」ー denial, negation
避妊「ひにん」ー birth control
NHK
妖怪「ようかい」ー お化け・化け物・ かっぱなど
ぼっち
片言「かたこと」ー prattle, broken speech, child’s speech (subs had it as “robot speech”)
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Home 
December 2
人間椅子 -
ジョジョの奇妙な冒険54
start - 30
Freaking Melone
December 3
No reading accomplished. I accidently stayed up too late replying to messages and then needed to sleep in order to do some morning stuff.
December 4
Doujin 122
- I bought a crapton of doujinshi totally forgetting that the main reason I don’t buy more is that I don’t have space…
- I’m mostly happy with what I got but I bought a few from one of my favorite artists and they’re kind of meh? Like one looks good and the kind of quality that I’ve come to expect from them, but the other 3 look boring. Also half of one has handwritten text and it’s not bad handwriting, but it’s just obnoxious since I hate reading handwriting.
- That 122 pages is all from 1 doujinshi, it’s a chonker about Jotaro and it was a fun read, but the end referenced Part 6’s end and I am still not emotionally ready. Thinking about the end of Part 6 brings tears to my eyes
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Dec 4, Sun of Week 10 of Fall 2022
- はたらく細胞 Vol.2 Ch.6
The big body continues to survive. So scary for the insides.
Interesting vocabularies
- あばよ Goodbye. JJ dict (on Yomichan) says – (「さあらばよ」からか)
- 誇示 ostentatious display. Proudness is individualized. Same Kanji as 誇る, but I don’t remember seeing On readings before.
- こまめ attention to details. Probably like 小豆 (small fine beans). (JJ dict suggests 小忠実.)
- 土壌 breeding ground (metaphorically). Also means soil. And I completely don’t recognize the Kanji.
- 芽胞 spore. Drawing (画) something new from scratch (for 芽 readings). Yomichan suggests 胞子に同じ.
- 冷却 cooling down. I guess heat escapes (退却), and becoming of cooling.
- 霧状 mist form, probably like aerosol.
- 浸透 feels like deep (深) permeation (透き通る, 透明). First Kanji can be thought of 侵入, but with water (氵).
Phrases
- 知る由もない no way to know. (Also, 由 as a vocabulary.)
Forgotten ones
- うろたえる to be irresistibly (耐えない) flustered (うろうろ). Kanji form is 狼狽える with another vocabulary 狼狽.
- 総称 a generic term
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Here is my complete calendar for the challenge! Perfect score! 
| Oct | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 39 | |||||||
| Week 40 | |||||||
| Week 41 | |||||||
| Week 42 | |||||||
| Week 43 | |||||||
| Week 44 |
| Nov | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 44 | |||||||
| Week 45 | |||||||
| Week 46 | |||||||
| Week 47 | |||||||
| Week 48 |
= Japanese
= Japanese and Spanish
I made it! Both October and November were really hard months for me, between balancing depressing work stuff, keeping up with this daily reading challenge while also doing a month-long drawing and then writing challenge, trying to keep up with my regular language studies and also doing a conversational Spanish class, and keeping up with the Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling translations. But I made it!
I finished two books in Spanish: Antes de Ser Libres by Julia Alvarez, and Redbone, which I just talked about in my last post!
With Japanese, I think I read… two and a half chapters of 大海原と大海原 volume 3 ? I also translated 9 TJPW shows/events (almost 10) in total. Here they are:
2022.09.24 TJPW AUTUMN TOUR ’22 (part 2)
2022.10.09 TJPW WRESTLE PRINCESS Ⅲ (part two) (part three)
2022.10.14 TJPW 夢プロレス－dream on the ring－
2022.10.21 TJPW CITY CIRCUIT AUTUMN～遠藤有栖地元凱旋興行～
2022.10.29 TJPW The Mountain top 2022
2022.11.06 TJPW AUTUMN TOUR ’22
2022.11.13 TJPW CITY CIRCUIT AUTUMN～荒井優希地元凱旋興行～
2022.11.20 TJPW AUTUMN TOUR ’22
2022.11.24 TJPW contract signing
2022.11.27 TJPW ALL RISE '22 (part two tbd!)
We’re actually coming up on my one year anniversary of becoming a fan translator! I found out at the end of last November that my predecessor Mr. Haku was leaving DDT/TJPW, and then I took my first foray into translating shows myself in December 2021.
I’ve grown a lot over the course of doing these challenge threads this year! This was my fourth read every day challenge. I don’t really need the challenge to motivate me (at least, not with Japanese), because I’d be doing the translations regardless, but it has been fun popping in and out and showing you all bits and pieces of the weird and wonderful world of Japanese pro wrestling.
Thank you all for your support and encouragement!
I’m switching gears and am currently doing the listen every day challenge for the off month in December, but I’m hoping to be back for the read every day challenge in January!
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That weird moment you realize the challenge is over but you’re still in the Read every day challenge grindset…
I guess I had a lot of success this time, but it was mostly done in the month of November. October was a bit of slog but I am happy to have made the progress I have. I could read 10 pages in about 20 minutes, so while not the progress I was hoping for, I am getting a little quicker. I am not trying to be a speed reader, I just want to enjoy the story. Audiobooks helped me out a lot this time around, but I think my speed independent of those is fine as is. Yes it adds about an hour+ to the expected reading time, I am enjoying the ride.
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Today I read SPY×FAMILY mission 18 and 君に届け episode 5. Today’s 君に届け chapter had more handwritten stuff than usual, and I, uh, skipped over it. Some I could read, but the rest I didn’t have the energy to sit there trying to decipher it.
Some vocab of note:
誰彼かまわず (だれかれかまわず) [expression, noun] anyone and everyone; anybody at all
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I need to read ~40 pages a day (not including the Advent challenge) to finish all by books by EOY but 29 is all I could manage today. My head hurts and focusing is rough. New Year’s eve 2020 I did spend like ~7 hours reading, though, so hey, maybe that’s forecast for me again this year 
I’m finishing up 異世界の名探偵 - I know who did it, now it’s just a matter of the detective giving out all the hows.
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December 4 Home Post
I think I’ve made it out of the mental fog era, had a much more normal reading day today! 
I finished volume 19 of ブルーロック and started on volume 20, I’m really getting to the end of it now it continues to be a wild time, it’s more soccer danganronpa than ever, broadcast and all 
. I’ll have to start figuring out what to read next, like I have any shortage of things I’m already in the middle of 
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