Day 11: September 11th
Satori Reader: Secret, episode 37.
Random words
救助 = きゅうじょ rescue, aid.
目眩 = めまい dizziness, vertigo.
しゃがみ込む = しゃがみこむ to squat completely (apparently the difference with regular しゃがむ is that しゃがみ込む is squatting and remaining in one position, often related to a negative cause like illness and so on, while しゃがむ is just regular squatting consciously).
抱える = かかえる to hold in one’s arms (or under).
姿勢 = しせい posture, pose.
寒気 = さむけ chills, shiver (due to illness, fear, etc).
炎天下 = えんてんか under the blazing sun (lovely word, 炎天 burning skies).
乗り込む = のりこむ to board, to embark on, to get into.
Funny how already three of us have gotten the word しゃがみ込む in recent days . Today’s episode was another nice one, and although I’m back to reading late, it was nice to finally get some nice sleep today .
I’ve been noticing these last two or three days that I am getting better at this Japanese thing. I don’t even know how, or why or how much, but I definitely feel an improvement in ability. Magic! I had been feeling stuck for a while, so it’s a nice reassuring feeling. I’m completely sure that it will go back to “oh wow, I know nothing!” at some point, but I’m glad that at least the bar has risen just a little bit.
I don’t know, but the challenge is working flawlessly. I’m so happy really ;-; . I know this has been the compound work of a longer time and other resources, but these two challenges have been pivotal in my relationship with daily immersion, commitment and overall learning. I’ve read similar things from you so this thing must really be doing something very positive after all.
Day 11: September 11
What did I read?: 雨と君と Vol 1
How much did I read?: 33 pages (8 chapters)
How long did it take me?: 47 min
Took it easy again today…this manga is so cute though :3
My favorite chapter was the girl’s dad coming over and fangirling over the cuteness of the tanuki xD Oh, and also when the tanuki took off its little leaf to take a bath and put a towel on its head instead
Please enjoy a relaxed and happy tanuki taking a bath
Some good words:
いても立ってもいられない - unable to contain oneself; itching to do something; cannot sit still (as in, unable to contain oneself from rushing over to see the tanuki - who can blame him)
取り直す (とりなおす) - to regroup (after some adverse event) (the adverse event in question was a spider being…there )
I may try and get back to High Speed tomorrow, I’m just wary of pushing it when I know I have Stuff I need to accomplish at work this week I feel stupid saying that, since it’s not like I don’t have the physical time to read, it’s just my stupid mental energy balancing act that I can’t really afford to get wrong -_- I also feel like I’m disappointing people somehow even though I’m sure that’s not really true…wouldn’t it be cool if feelings were rational
Thanks for the encouragement <3 I’m trying not to get down on myself, it’s just…hard.
Let’s not think of that, let’s think of happy tanukis instead
I fully support this idea I may have added some tanuki flair to the participant list post
Day 3 (9月 11日)
posting now bc I went to bed early last night, oops
What did I read:
暁のヨナ , bookclub read aloud session! was super fun, as always… but we were only four members this time around, and we didn’t distribute the lines all that well… read chapters 33-34, took us almost 2h but we do translation as well, and… we deviate a looot
I also read the tanuki story@Zakarius shared! That was super fun! And the whole website actually is such a find!! Thank you for that
What i learnt:
修羅 = fighting; carnage; conflict; strife
引けを取らない = not losing out (to); holding one’s own (against)
門前払い = turning another away at the gate or front door
Uh, seems like I did not post for quite a few days… this week was super busy so I lost a bit of steam, both wrt reading and also wrt posting. Let’s see how it went:
Sep 8th: Read a bit more than a page of 糞尿譚 (until 47/158) Sep 9th: Read about a page of 糞尿譚 (until 49/158) Sep 10th: Started the 3rd week of BBC 小川未明 stories Sep 11th: Finished the 3rd week of 小川未明 stories (and wrote a post about various grammar points)
Huh, that doesn’t look too good Will try to read a bit more today…
Read chapters 6 and 7 in 手紙!
On one hand: woo! I doubled my pace and still understand the story!!
On the other: but… I didn’t look up any of the words I didn’t know, or check my pronounciation
Last update has been a week already… I finished reading through Polar Bear Café Today’s Special volume 1. It was good, as there’s a variety of stories and difficulty in it. A lot more focus on sidecharacters you hardly noticed in the first series. I did feel it was slightly more difficult than the first series. Not entirely sure where that lies, maybe the vocabulary use. As Today’s Special does have longer words/kanji compounds in my experience. I did feel I learned quite a bit from it. There’s a yojijukugo that I found pretty neat in it: 適者生存 which comes close to the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’. The little character notes are also fun to read as they have summary of the characters on them and for the animals this typically means they also list what type of animal they are.
Help. To my own surprise, I was able to get most of the grammar. It’s just the prologue, so nothing really interesting happening yet, but it sets a good ground for future events still. Also much more interesting to read than watered down text in beelinguapp :")
Words I didn’t know: 変わらぬ, 過ぎ去る, 幾度, 照らす, 想い, 揺らぐ, 祈り, 続ける, 今宵, 緊張, 城, 記憶, 取り戻す, 使い魔, お呼び. Basically solid half of the vocabulary for said pages. I knew some of kanji, though, so I was more or less able to guess the meaning in some cases.
I listed to the story first without reading and was surprised with how much I understood, since I feel my listening is super poor. The slow and clear narration really helps.
Also, I love the narrator’s samurai voice: – わはははははは。ついに正体を現しおったな–
I read the story without listening after, I think I managed to fill in most of the gaps in understanding that I’d missed with listening (my head’s voice made sure to make the Samurai’s voice very epic). But I’m not so sure if I got all the readings correct, so I read and listened together to check on the kanji readings.
And, as always with Japanese, I’m surprised with what they decide to have in kanji and what to have in kana. Suppose I’ll get used to what to use eventually.
What did I read: 日本の歴史366This is the book most fitting for this challenge tbh haha, it’s one of those one-page-a-day books, and it’s truly so nice. I got the book around May and started it, and I actually kept a strike till August… right now I have a month’s worth of pages to catch up to, so if I just do my daily page, +1 from August backlog I should catch up by the end of month…
2 stories today, ~15min
What I learnt:
公衆電話 = pay phone, public phone
設置 =establisment, installation
通話料 = charge for a phonecall
命 を 絶つ = to end one’s life; to commit suicide (命を絶つとは - コトバンク )
出 家 entering priesthood; to forsake one’s life so far and practice asceticism (Buddhism)