Summary post
Here we go! My slightly late wrap-up!
I did a month long drawing challenge for October, and then National Novel Writing Month in November, so reading in Spanish and Japanese took a tiny bit of a backseat, though I did surprisingly well not compromising on my practice too much (other things took more of a hit, like textbook study and the ADoBJG book club…).
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= Japanese
= Japanese and Spanish
I managed to still finish with a perfect score! I also finished my drawing challenge, and finished NaNoWriMo with a 50k+ word novel manuscript at the end.
I read… a lot of things! My big achievement in October was translating an entire 36 minute press conference in a single day. It was 6.5k+ characters long, and it took me I think quite literally 8 hours of work to finish it. It was the press conference before Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling’s big show Wrestle Princess on October 9, and had to get it done that night if I wanted to have the full translation up before the show.
I actually had a similar experience just a few days ago, haha, when TJPW dropped a sudden press conference on the evening of November 30 for their 10th anniversary show, which was on December 1 the very next day. This presser was only 4.3k+ characters, so it was substantially shorter, but I was also trying to finish up my novel for NaNoWriMo at the same time, so I had to work on that after already writing like 1.5k words of fiction that day. I did manage to get it done!
I think in total, I finished 12 translations over the past two months? They vary pretty heavily in length, with the longest being 9k+ characters, and the shortest being under 1k characters. Adding it up, I think it’s around 49k characters? So it’s maybe 4k characters per translation.
There’s been a lot of good stuff, but a lot of really emotional stuff, too, because one of my favorite wrestlers, Saki Akai (the woman in my profile picture) retired on November 12 
, and another one of my favorite wrestlers, Yuka Sakazaki, is leaving TJPW this month . So it’s been a little rough on me emotionally to translate so many goodbyes… But at the same time, I want English-speaking fans to be able to know what the wrestlers are saying, so that helps motivate me.
Here’s a photo from the October 27 Korakuen Hall show, which had Saki Akai vs her former tag partner Yuki Arai. This was Akai’s last singles match in TJPW, and her last match in Korakuen Hall.
And here’s a photo from the November 3 show, which had Akai’s last TJPW match. After the match, they did a 1 vs 23 match, with Akai facing the entire TJPW roster. It was very cute and fun, but also on some level unbearably sad, because this was the end .
While pro wrestling was putting me through the emotional meat grinder, I surprisingly actually got some other reading done, somehow?? It wasn’t either of the goals I set out to do at the beginning of the month, though 
.
I finished volume 1 of しまなみ誰そ彼! I really, really liked it! One of my favorite themes in media is LGBTQ solidarity across the various groups that make up the community, and I really appreciated how this manga sort of turned that into a physical setting and built itself around that. I am planning on reading the rest (and now own them), but have put the series aside until next year probably.
I also read ひとりみです(第1話）, which I had been wanting to read for a while (I stole the front cover image from it for my Notion page). It was good! A very quick read, but a nice story. I’d love to see the author write a follow-up.
I also bought はなものがたり, intending to read the first volume along with the LGBT+GSRM book club, but the large amount of Kansai-ben ended up being more of an obstacle than I anticipated, so I sort of stalled out part of the way through the first chapter. Generally, I like my non-wrestling reading to be easier than or on par with the wrestling reading, because I usually have limited energy to read stuff outside of whatever I’m translating, and this manga does not currently qualify…
I do want to finish it someday, though! I think it’ll be great practice for familiarizing myself a little better with Kansai-ben. But I don’t think October-November are great months for me to be taking on higher energy projects, haha, so I shelved that one for now.
I also started reading よつばと！! That one actually was one of the reading goals I set for 2023 at the beginning of the year. I deliberately avoided reading Yotsuba as one of my first manga because I’ve read the first few books in English as a teen and have loved it for years, so I wanted to read it in Japanese when my understanding was better.
So far, it’s been a blast reading it in Japanese! It certainly is pretty easy for me, at this point, so it’s not too much effort to read, which is perfect to pair with the higher energy intensive reading I’m doing with the translations. I read the first 20 chapters in the last week or so of November (almost all of the first three volumes).
Still not on track to meet my 2023 reading goals, besides the read/listen every day goal. Oh well! Whatever I don’t finish, I’ll carry over to next year.
Reading in Spanish
I didn’t quite finish Las malas! According to my kindle, I am 93% of the way through it. It says I have 43 minutes of reading time left. I’d like to try to finish it by the end of the year, but we’ll see if that actually happens, haha.
Overall, the challenge went about as well as could be expected, I think! I’ve switched to focusing on listening again for the off-month, so I’ll be over in that thread, maybe! Still need to set up the home post…
Since I successfully completed one full calendar year of read every day challenges (technically more than one, since I don’t think I missed a single day for most of last year, either), I’m leaning toward not signing up for the next one. I think they’ve more or less served their purpose for me, which is getting me into a regular habit of reading/listening. I’m already pretty bad at actually updating my progress in here, anyway, haha!
I’ll probably still lurk future threads, though, and might post bits of stuff I’ve been reading/listening to on occasion!
12月2日 
Home post
)
who knows!
(especially as it sped up due to me (!) asking for it 
). My apologies!
)
１２月２ー４日 
I thought about buying a physical copy of コンビニ人間, but decided since I already own it digitally it probably wasn’t worth it. Friends were also very impressed watching me navigate the japanese manga section to find the stuff on my list
Today was an intense (but fun) day of practice with a bunch of classmates. There’s a practical exam coming up 
Ended up reading quite a lot today :3
