📚📚 Read every day challenge - Fall/Autumn 2021 🍁🍂🦝

thank youuuuuuuuu. More kittehs to interrupt my twitter feed.

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OH NO it’s animated?! This is the best, thanks for sharing!! :smile_cat:

There’s also plushies on the twitter!

OH NO x2

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:exclamation::exclamation: Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I need all the cute kitties in my life rn
That gif is so cute omg :pleading_face:

OH NO OH NO OH NO
So soft :pleading_face: I was literally just looking at that gif thinking about how much I wanted to pet the kitty and I…I could pet the kitty :o

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Read through the prologue and chapter 1 of the Hero Avan series. It was as expected easier to deal with than Spy x Family, vocabulary wise it leans more towards older usage of language. Funny enough I also picked up skyward sword a bit more and was reading a passage of Japanese mythology in tobira, so that bumped off each other quite well. Once again gotta give kids props for dealing with tiny furigana. Although it gets easier to deal with when there’s more space to breathe. Had to refer to a list of the DQ spells, to kinda connect it with what I already know. Avan already comes off as an established character who knows his own strengths and weaknesses, but has never been challenged as much before. I have already met some familiar looking faces here and there, which makes sense considering it is a new story that takes place before Dai begins. Similar to the Dai series, we’re off to a great start.

Will be reading some more of Avan in the coming days. I had put in an order for more manga which arrived today:

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Yes it’s easier than the other ones I play, but there are still grammar points used not covered in the tobira book. Also discovered the first n1 grammar point already. But I will play it every day until I finish it and sentence mine the whole visual novel.

Of course I will also finish everything I already started.

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home post

Okay my long overdue update, sorry for length, funnily enough this is me trying to be brief >.>

  • Oct 22nd Some Demon Slayer + Graded Reader 2 pages
  • Oct 23rd Some Demon Slayer + Graded Reader 2 pages
  • Oct 24th Demon Slayer 6 pages (started chapter 2)
  • Oct 25th Demon Slayer 18 pages (finishing chapter 2)
  • Oct 26th Graded Reader 2 pages
  • Oct 27th Demon Slayer 1 page + Graded Reader 1 page
  • Oct 28th Demon Slayer 3 pages
  • Oct 29th Demon Slayer 1 page + Graded Reader 1 page
  • Oct 30th Demon Slayer 2 pages + Graded Reader 4 pages
  • Oct 31st Demon Slayer 3 pages
  • Nov 1st Demon Slayer 1 page + Graded Reader 2 pages
  • Nov 2nd Demon Slayer 3 pages + Graded Reader 7 pages
  • Nov 3rd Demon Slayer 2 pages + Graded Reader 7 pages
  • Nov 4th Demon Slayer 7 pages
  • Nov 5th Demon Slayer 3 pages
  • Nov 6th Demon Slayer 2 pages
  • Nov 7th Demon Slayer 1 page
  • Nov 8th Demon Slayer 2 pages
  • Nov 9th Demon Slayer 27 pages
  • Nov 10th Demon Slayer 7 pages
  • Nov 11th Demon Slayer 35 pages (all chapter 7 and most of chapter 6), finished volume 1

It looks like Demon Slayer volume 1 took me from 2021-10-12 to 2021-11-11

Although I still have lots and lots to revisit, I get all the gist, but small details I’m not 100% confident on. My copy is filed with sticker highlight markers and I even overcame my discomfort of “damaging books” enough that I started keeping pencil notes in the margins.

And I now have volumes 2-10 sitting on my desk waiting =D

@NicoleIsEnough thanks again so very much, that was the best and exactly the nudge I needed.

@sycamore O. M. G. Tanjiro is the best boy!

some favourite good boy Tanjiro moments (**Spoilers** for demon slayer volume 1)
  • paying the farmers for the basket - I was initially was confused by this scene as I thought the images implied he was stealing the basket and slapping the farmers hand - which didn’t seem to fit his character. After actually working through the lines it got a chuckle out of me and I think I’ll never forget it.

  • worrying about how to mercifully kill his first demon, worrying about the rock not killing it in a single blow and that causing suffering (hope I followed that right), to the point where he waits out the whole night and it “dies of “natural causes”

  • in chapter 6 after going full power hardcore shounen boy mode and easily dispatching two demons, he prays for their souls.

demon slayer is life, or something, apparently

I’ve slowly going through the anime without subtitles, only remotely doable as I already know the plot from the manga.

I started playing the game and although it’s slow I was able to follow through the tutorial and all of its screens of messages, I thought I might have missed something so tried it in English and actually did worse (one of the phrases around button holding in Japanese was clearer I think?) but at the least gained nothing new.

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nice! you have reached true enlightenment in the ways of the best boy.

roku-vi

also - I did not know that there was a demon slayer game! ooooh! And you can switch back and forth between Japanese and English? Very tempting!

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Yes!, at least on PS4 and Steam the game included Japanese audio, subtitles, and game ui (menus and stuff).
I’m playing on PS4 and I can just switch my system language back and forth, and I can load my saves to replay scenes in the other language.
Not sure how one switches on Steam, maybe based on PC system language? But the steam games page mentions Japanese ui included.

All the in game dialogue and anime clips so far are voiced and subtitles (if you turn that setting on).

It is a fighting game, they’re not usually my thing but I’ve been trying to find ways to game more in Japanese and this just lined up.

The graphics are super pretty for the breathing moves, but I’m not sure it’s good at telling the story as it’s a bit constrained by the fighting game medium, so it uses lots of optional clips from the anime to fill in the pieces which aren’t sword swinging.

Please don’t buy based on me without watching some reviews, it just came out so is also at an all time price high.

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Been reading 無職転生, I’m at the end of volume 6 now. It’s been quite entertaining in general, and not as hard to read as I initially thought.

要約

Words cannot properly convey how mad I am at what happens near the end of the volume though. I (think I) get what the author is trying to do, but the way it was handled made no sense to me. I’m still salty.

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Read bit more of 雲の向こう、約束の場所.
Also started reading some of the reading practice thingies on Bunpro. Overall kinda neat, would’ve been nice reading practice back when I first started studying grammar but whatevs.

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Woooow, that sounds like a great achievement! One month precisely :wink:

Awww you’re so very welcome :hugs:

Speaking of which, here is your vocab deck for Volume 2 :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
[EDIT: Just realized that the export was incomplete; now it’s fixed]

And if you like, could you ping me once you’re around halfway through Vol. 2 so that I can continue reading a bit ahead of you? I’m currently indulging in some other books (and also JLPT stuff, urgh) but I’d like to continue reading the Demon Slayer at some point.

Tanjiro

And his teacher being all like “OMG he’s hopeless” :rofl: Loved that!

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Please don’t feel obliged to keep reading ahead of me or anything, but the company is welcome if you’re enjoying it :slight_smile:

Please don’t let me distract you from JLPT! I don’t expect to hear much from you until after December 6th IIRC.
I’m willing to offer my best efforts not engaging and/or ignoring you until then if need be :grin:

\o/

So far I haven’t been using the vocab sheets much because my RSI flaring up has forced me to convert manga time to being away from a computer (using a physical electronic jisho and grammar books) - I’ve been finding it very relaxing letting myself skip over things a bit more too (although the more I read the less I feel I’m skipping).

On my jisho I’m keeping a list of things ive looked up for demon slayer which might be worth learning (turned out my jisho has list keeping functions), my plan is to cross reference this with your vocab sheets to build a Demon Slayer Anki deck with hopefully much less typing than it normally takes me - but I don’t want to be pushing any of that burden into you - so only if you’re otherwise doing it and it’s no fuss.

Tanjiro & co

Hahaha exactly, the teacher wondering what he’s gotten himself into.

The whole volume 1 arc with the teacher was lovely to see, particularly with respect to males showing affection and emotion.

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No worries, I don’t feel obliged or anything, I genuinely like it :slight_smile:

Unfortunately I’m old enough to distract me on my own already :joy:
No, but seriously. I found that I need some downtime in between or else I won’t last until the end. Reading Demon Slayer and cleaning up its vocab has been quite a good downtime so far, so nothing to worry about. And then, you know, it’s only 3 weeks until the test, so I figured you would maybe not be able to repeat some stuff from Vol. 1 and read Vol. 2 halfway through in those three weeks anyway :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Isn’t it?

No way! Do you think you are learning? :scream:

Ah, I see! I thought maybe you’d be interested in learning ahead a little bit (which my list would allow you to do). But I don’t know how helpful my lists would be anyways as I already know the more common vocab, which would be the most beneficial for you to learn, probably?
In any case, I’m doing those vocab lists for myself anyway so if you can benefit from them, that’s great, and if not, then there is no need for you to feel bad about that.

Tanjiro

So much that! I really like their gentleness.

Meanwhile the sister be like

:joy_cat:

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Main Post

Just finished reading volume 1 of hero Avan. There were only 4 chapters, though they’re pretty sizeable. I wouldn’t say I got all of it, as there’s plenty of words and kanji I hadn’t seen before, but as the set up is pretty simple it isn’t that hard to follow along. That makes it pretty fun to read and not as overwhelming.

I think the parallels with Dai are pretty interesting and it’s definitely intended as a way to pull people in. You don’t end the volume on that last page otherwise. Although I think it is good just on its own as well. Below I posted some pictures I took.

spoilers


Here Leila wrecked all the villagers in a bid to accompany Avan.

References DQ, which has a traditional turnbased battle system.

Avan showcases the first of his signature moves, the Earth Slash. Which he learned not that long ago, characterizing his growth and establishing him as a Hero in true DQ fashion. Also an amazing moment to end the volume on.

Will be starting volume 2 tomorrow. They added a sneak peek after the last chapter :eyes:

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Drats, well sadly I can’t offer any help with keeping @NicoleIsEnough away from you.
I don’t think I’ll make a lot of progress in 3 weeks, if anything I have been kind of neglecting other things I should be reading.

other things I should be / want to be reading
  • finish this damn grader reader pack, so close to freedom
  • finish Wadanohara vol 1. as the vol 2. offshoot starts soon
  • ABBC has just started a book I wanted to check out

I’m tossing up slowing down Demon Slayer a bit to try burn through these, as they should all be quite a bit easier, although DS is peak interest right now =D

Hahahah okay fair, so hear me out.
Normally I do a lot of work alongside reading like writing/typing out sentences, doing breakdowns, making Anki cards of key material.
But this time I’m mostly not, for a while I was at the start and it helped, but the last 2/3 of Vol 1 I 99% just read it looking things up as needed. I did type up (by voice) a few key sentences, but for the most part just pushed through.
I’m mostly surprised at how much I feel I’ve been able to learn despite not doing all that extra effort I normally put in :thinking:

Normally I would 100% be up for Anki-ing words ahead of time, it is my normal strategy, and I even started doing this initially for Demon Slayer. But RSI now means I am trying to minimise non-work computer time, so even my Anki reviews are a bit bare-boned.

I think your vocab sheets would have worked (and will eventually work) for exactly my needs =D

how I plan to use these sheets in Anki

For this kind of reading I normally put all the super common words into my main vocab deck, and then I have a secondary “context deck” for each thing I read which contains words I only want to be able to recognize in the context of that work. So far I think most of the unknown words I’ve encountered are words you have in your vocab sheet, so it all works out give or take.

Out of interest, are your Anki decks primarily isolated words?

reflections on how the way I have used Anki appears to be giving diminishing returns

I am starting to feel like I’m getting diminishing returns from my main Anki vocab deck, I think my grammar sentence deck is much more bang for time spent and I’m very slowly working on a sentence deck which I hope will be similar.

My main vocab deck tends to make 3 cards for each note (1) En front (production), (2) Kanji front (kanji recog.), (3) Kana front (kana recog.)
I’m finding the en front to be very hit and miss, and the kana front is becoming less and less useful as I tend to have more and more homophone clashes or near clashes.

Oops, I’m meant to be not distracting you. Feel free to reply after JLPT, none of this is urgent.

Tanjiro

I freakin loved that scene so much, I was a bit worried they were making Nezuko into a passive character, so that scene made me feel a lot better about how she’s being written =D

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Started Volume 7 of the 無職転生 light novel and it has an overall depressing feel to it. Not surprising. Not sure how I feel about the new characters yet.

Tried to read a book called 葬送, by 平野 啓一郎. Someone recommend it to me after I mentioned how much I like Chopin’s music. It’s stupid hard for me, there’s stuff in there that I swear I have never seen in any JLPT1 grammar book, and the natives I asked about it all told me it was hard to read. I get the gist of a lot of it, but this book makes me feel the same way I felt when I tried to read videogames or visual novels during my N4/3 days. I really want to read it, but it’s such a drag at the moment so I’ll read some other stuff before I try it again.

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Today I managed to read 120 manga pages and a whole page from 5分で読める恐怖のラストの物語. It seems books I had a hard time reading in the past are much easier now.

Of course books are usually easier than visual novels and I won’t be happy until I can read all visual novels I’m interested in and understand most of it. There is still a very steep hill to climb.

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Almost done with volume 7 of 無職転生. I feel like my reading speed has been increasing.

I didn’t expect the guy to be traumatized enough to get ED. This is funny, silly, and depressing at the same time.

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Finished reading volume 2 of hero Avan yesterday. Will be diving into volume 3 today. I thought it was interesting as the focus turned to Roca more this volume and him being the key to have Matoriv join the party. It was quite fun and I think it will be a great source for returning to it later on. One of the differences with the Dai series, is that they seem to be forming more or less like a hero party in DQ and eventhough they’re constantly on the run the little moments together as a party really add to the experience.

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So, if anyone’s interested how my diagnosis went, I scored just within the norm for hearing in background noise after all, although I had to really struggle to figure out the words and I think that if I didn’t 頑張る so much or was feeling a little bit worse I might as well get the score just below the norm. Still, it isn’t that hopeless, at least, even if the problem is there.

There are other things, thought, that are outside of the norms:
^ increased sensitivity to sound (as in, I was bothered by sounds most people consider normal - it was an interesting find, because I always thought my main problem was hypersensitivity to touch and that my sensitivity to sound is more or less normal. Just now I’m discovering that nope, the sound that toilet makes while flushing shouldn’t be perceived as annoying.)
^ problems with judging the sound pitch - well, I suspected that considering how people hate when I’m singing (and I like singing…) and how the pitch accent in Japanese is an alien concept to me
^ problems when I was hearing two sounds at the same time and I was to say what just my right/left ear was hearing. I consider this exercise impossible to be done :no_mouth:

All in all, not great not terrible, I guess. I had my suspicions confirmed that I struggle more than most, but it also wasn’t a complete disaster, so maybe with some extra work I will be able to conquer Japanese (and other languages) listening after all. :triumph:

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