December 5 & 6
また、同じ夢を見ていた progress is at 94% now. So not much left 
Read volume 7 and 8 of Ponkotsu Ponko.
To jump ahead, I did skip reading the novel today because of the Dwarf Fortress Steam release, so I’m a bit occupied by that and probably will sink some more time into the game but I try not to go too crazy, haha.
I was writing that I haven’t yet decided on what novel I’ll read next but while going through my candidates and the past book clubs, I’ve decided to read 夜市 next 
Day 27 Progress:
お隣の天使様 四冊 - 0.33% → 3.33%
Another absolutely insane day of starting at 2 AM and missing my 5% reading quota. It’s honestly getting me down a bit but hopefully I can catch up and/or sleep a little earlier tomorrow…
This LN was originally a WN and I wonder if that source is a contributing factor to some funky writing, like the same word being written two different ways within a few sentences. Like I get kanji/kana usage is often deliberate to create a certain effect and as a non-native reader I certainly can’t sense those things very well, but when I see something like 花びら and then a few sentences later 花弁 and can’t actively discern any kind of intent behind it, I can’t help but feel it’s simply that the author was writing the draft all in one breath and later editing didn’t really iron out those inconsistencies…
Word of the Day:
Gonna stick to my original schedule of a chapter of 青ブタ and finish tomorrow. Today was a rough one, and only have one more section of chapter 3 to go. I lucked out because yeah, today was rough.
20221207 - 吾輩は狸である progress: 90.28% 
It’s amusing that written noises are perfectly fine in Japanese literature
Pretty sure putting “えへへへへ” and “ハハハハハ” in someone’s speech in English writing would get you told off by many an English teacher.
Japanese found under the leaves
慰藉「いしゃ」ー Consolation
December 7th
Card Captor Sakura volume 2 or Aria: the masterpiece volume 2 – progress report
Yesterday: Read up to page 166 of Aria: the masterpiece volume 2.
Today: Read up to page 196, finished chapter 15.
Didn’t have too much time on my hands today either but at least enough to finish the chapter I began reading yesterday. It was nice to see the postman after so many chapters again and most of the panels showing the festivities were simply beautifully drawn. 
Word or expression of the day:
兼ねる - (かねる) - to serve two or more functions simultaneously
Honourable mention(s):
さりげない - nonchalant, unconcerned, in a casual manner
抜き打ち - (ぬきうち) - doing something suddenly, without warning
Dec 7, Wed of Week 11 of Fall 2022 
Cancer have a heart too.
Saving the baka. Of course, gone well and useful in the end.
I read the book and listened along with audiobook, speed 1.2x. I consider this one primarily listening activity; but I update here, just for the sake of ending the volume.
Listening along with transcript allows me to highlight vocabularies (rather than Google Translate immediately, and not saved); and Bookwalker makes page flipping very nice to do, and easy to read fast.
SFX
Phrases
Forgotten ones
Plodding along since I started my trip, jet lag not helping.
6/12 8 pages かみさまがまちがえる
7/12 8 pages かみさまがまちがえる (to end chapter), 2 pages おばちゃんたちのいるところ
December 7 
叙述トリック短編集 , 25-31%
おばちゃんたちのいるところ, 37-43%
I finished my advent reading early, so then I was sure I’d try and read ahead with the audiobook, but then surprised myself by reading this week’s おばちゃんたちのいるところ story instead. It was a good one, too.
Still very much undecided on what to do with that audiobook. Thanks for the link, @pocketcat. It showed just fine for me, and the selection was quite wide. My local version of Audible doesn’t seem to have the same variety though. I also noticed that you get to pay for the audiobooks on top of the subscription (like Apple TV, apparently). I don’t get this model at all. But more importantly, I don’t expect to be listening to audiobooks all the time, and definitely not enough of them to warrant a subscription. I also have that かがみの孤城 already downloaded for whenever I feel up to it, and it’s many, many hours of listening.
So, what will I read tomorrow? Try and finish the audiobook on time? Start with the new compulsive readers club pick? Continue my mountain ghost stories? Take the day off? Tune in to find out. 
December 7th
Today I read this weeks ABBC reading of Cells at Work.
Man that is an incredibly hard book. Lots of dense text explanation panels, really specialised vocabulary, and a fair amount of slangy speech too 
I got it done, but I’m not sure I’m going to make it to the end of this book!
Home 
December 7
人間椅子 -
ジョジョの奇妙な冒険54
116 - 145
I tried to do as much work as I could last night to avoid working overtime on Friday T-T we’ll see how it goes
December 7 
Home Post
Also really sleepy today for some reason? It’s not even that late but I could feel my brain struggling to compute things that shouldn’t have taken that much work, so just finished the chapter of ブルーロック I was on. Hopefully I can get more reading time in tomorrow 
I read 14 pages of 夜カフェ.
I also reread stories 01-03 from Lingo Mastery’s Japanese Short Stories for Beginners, in order to start translating them myself for practice (and also because I don’t like their translations). These were the first stories that I read, aside from 途中下車の海, and I’m pleased to note that I had zero trouble reading them this time around. Ohhh, but I am absolutely remembering how much I hated this book, and exactly why, which is also why I will never be buying anything from Lingo Mastery again. I do not trust them. I mean, the stories themselves are fine, if a little overly simple grammar-wise for me now (but then, I’m no longer an absolute beginner, so I’m not the target audience anymore), but the rest…
Although these days, I’m used to the sentence that serves basically as the dialogue tag using a past-tense verb only when it comes after the dialogue. These stories use past tense even when it comes before.
Got to part 4, I think there are 2 more remaining parts plus the epilogue. I might be able to finish before I get home. 
If not, that’s cool… I’ll just finish at home. xD
December 7th (Home Post Link)
Had a lot of trouble getting started doing stuff today, but was fine once I managed to actually get going.
Read:
(finished volume 3 finally)I also watched the 6th 堀さんと宮村君 ova today, didn’t have subs so that counts for something. Definitely understood a lot more than when I watched the 5th one a few months ago! Also found some good words on twitter today
NHK
国「くに」ー the national government (new usage to me)
保育士「ほいくし」ー nursery school teacher
逮捕「たいほ」ー arrest
逆さ「さかさ」ー inverted, upside-down
疑い「うたがい」ー doubt, suspicion
脅し「おどし」ー threat
世話「せわ」ー care, looking after
ホリミヤ
限り「かぎり」ー as long as
涙腺「るいせん」ー tear gland
緩む「ゆるむ」ー to become less tense, to let one’s guard down
摂る「とる」ー form of 取る, to take (here, medicine)
結構まえから 「けっこうまえから」ー for quite some time, for quite a while
Twitter
雪だるま「ゆきだるま」ー snow man (snow daruma gaa that’s so cute 
)
Day 28 Progress:
お隣の天使様 四冊 - 3.33% → 11.24%
Not a great reading day, but mostly because of the story itself… We’re already at volume four but so far our boy
Word of the Day:
Dec 8
かがみの孤城 78% → 83% (page 390)
A lot has happened in the last two chapters 
. I’m not free the rest of the evening, but if I’m not too tired once I get back home I may see how much more I can read. At this rate I’m definitely going to finish within the week!
20221208 - 吾輩は狸である progress: 90.89% 
Poor Wagahai-cat, I don’t even know if this is his book anymore. He just has to listen to Master and his friends talk talk talk with no mention of him at all. The last time he even interacted with his own kind was way back in chapter two, does he miss interacting with other cats? Does he remember his cat friends? Does he feel alone in this world?
Japanese found under the leaves
拵える「こしらえる」ー To make; to manufacture
Dec 8, Thu of Week 11 of Fall 2022
Somehow I find this one interesting enough, also medical. Otherwise, I am considering continuing to はたらく細胞 Vol.3.
?Phrases
Forgotten ones
This is one of the things that makes me think Soseki was figuring out what he wanted to write about as he went along – he pretty clearly drops the idea of writing about interactions between cats relatively early, and settles into “outsider viewpoint of human folly with occasional cat slapstick”. If it had been written to be published as a single book rather than serialized in a magazine, I wonder if some of the chapter one stuff with other cats would have been edited out when he revised it…
8/12 3 pages おばちゃんたちのいるところ, 3 pages Cells at Work (finished week’s reading)
Now only behind on the novels - all manga up to date.
Tomorrow I’ll try to push on with おばちゃんたち but might also try to read a bit of 夜カフェ.
