I found this just in time, guess that means it’s fate, right? I’ve been meaning to get back into reading more consistently so here goes nothing!
I’m gonna live up to my avatar and attempt reading 風が強く吹いている for the… who knows how many times it’s been by now honestly. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it whenever I’ve tried reading it in the past, just never gotten very far! It’s slow going for sure, but whatever motivates you yeah? I absolutely loved the anime, and the idea of being able to read the novel is just so appealing. It’s one of the things that first motivated me to start learning Japanese actually Hopefully I can make it farther than ever before!
Sept
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(and now that I’ve made this post I actually have to read some huh… off I go )
Weirdly enough, sticking by force(and frustration) to a book on a higher level than me helped me oddly enough. But that easility could have been a waste of my time.
Day 1: September 1st
Satori Reader: Secret, episode 30.
Final Fantasy XIV
始まりました！I’ve resumed the series I was reading on Satori Reader when the summer challenge ended. Only two weeks have passed since I read the previous chapter, so it’s easy to resume.
Also, some of you probably already knew from the previous challenge that I play Final Fantasy XIV and that playing it in Japanese was very daunting at first, so I never really tried to play it for longer periods of time. Well, I’ve been playing almost entirely in Japanese for a week, and it got much much easier than I was expecting. Of course, I’m still in the weird spot of knowing a lot but also not knowing another lot, but it’s great because many times I can guess what’s going on or have a quick search. So I will definitely be adding that to the challenge this time. But since I don’t want to become complacent with it (it’s easy to just put it there and call it a day, even if I didn’t do much in-game), I’ve decided that if that was all I did that day, I will only count it towards the challenge if I had actual practice and/or added words to the SRS. I will try to add those words or some of them to the posts so that it keeps me accountable for it. But if I did anything else like Satori Reader, I’ll just put it there too (which will most likely be everyday xD). But honestly it’s still pretty hard to follow in Japanese, if anything I hope it’s good practice. It helps A LOT that I’ve already played for a very long time in English.
Last challenge, I made it my goal to read something, anything, every day. Even if it was just a page. That was challenging enough for me at the time I didn’t make any goals with regard to reading a specific thing, or reading a specific number of pages/volumes. This time, I’m going to approach things a little differently - my primary goal will still be to read something (anything) every day, but I’m going to make a secondary goal too!
During the last challenge, I read a lot of manga, but I stayed away from tackling a book, because I know I’m wayyy slower with books and I wanted to be able to see lots of progress during the challenge. But this time, my secondary goal will be to start and finish a book during the challenge. And not just any book (lol), but one of the first Japanese-language books I ever bought!
That book is ハイ☆スピード!
ハイ☆スピード! is the light novel that the anime Free! was based on, and it’s kind of a special/meaningful choice for me because Free! pretty much set off/inspired my Japanese learning journey (as silly as that sounds xD). I was deeply, deeply obsessed with it back when the first 2 seasons came out, and an eventual side effect/outgrowth of that obsession was the rekindling of a long-dormant interest in Japanese language/culture as a whole. I bought this light novel years ago, vastly overestimating how quickly my Japanese would progress xD It’s been hanging out in my “someday” pile since then, but I think that it’s time to make “someday” into now
So! My goals for this challenge are, in order of importance: Read something every day Finish ハイ☆スピード!
I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish it completely - I calculate that if I read an average of 3.75 pages per day during the challenge, I’ll make it, so it’s not totally out of the realm of possibility, but it might be a stretch. We’ll see what happens! If I don’t make it to the end, I’d like to at least get close. But I’m sure there will be some manga and other things sprinkled in there, too.
Final Reflection Post
I don’t know why I decided to get so extra with the formatting today but here we are
Also, here’s my Bookmeter, in case anyone’s interested!
Day 1: September 1
What did I read?: ハイ☆スピード!
How much did I read?: 3 pages
How long did it take me?: So long (at least 1 hour 20 min, probably closer to 1 hour 40 min)
Omg how fitting, we’re starting on a Wednesday :o
Do you know what Wednesday is
It’s water day, Wednesday is water day ahhh
I just realized that this would have been a very fitting choice for the summer challenge Oh well~
Anyway, yeah, this is definitely going to be a challenge Will be interesting to see if I get any faster as I go along. But Haru is Haru and Makoto is Makoto and that makes me happy
And what is the very first sentence?
水は生きてる。
Iconic
Honestly I really liked the way the opening is written, it felt very poetic to me despite my poor language skills xD My favorite words of today are まとわり付く (まとわりつく - to coil about; to surround; to cling to) and 飛沫 (しぶき - splash!) make us free na splash
Day one done I only had time for one page of reading, but it gave me another example of んだ which I found pretty helpful. Tomorrow, hopefully I can figure out how to format the nice calendars I’ve seen people posting.
Read 4 pages (1 chapter - I told you they were short!) of それいけズッコケ三人組 this morning on the train. Vocabulary-wise it’s fairly easy reading for me - enough kanji to be able to differentiate the words but furigana on everything over elementary grade 1. Where I do need to look things up it’s often expressions, where I understand the individual words but not the meaning. For example, this morning I had to look up 息を殺す (it means to hold your breath). The chapter ended with our hero sat on the toilet listening to burglars walking around the house!
As my books are still in packing boxes, I’ll be reading on the web for a few days. Today’s reading was the NHK News Easy web article 約60%の子ども「ウイルスで学校が休みになって勉強が心配」
Once again the magic of this challenge happened, I had an extremely long and tiring day at work and wanted to just call it a night, but I decided I couldn’t give up on this challenge on only day 2 so I had to read a bit, even just a panel, but may as well do one page.
But then the next page didn’t look too bad, and the next likewise. I was considering going more, but at some point I should listen to my body and call it a night, 3 pages is awesome progress given how today otherwise went.
Admittedly, I’m not actually planning on reading 7 days a week - only on week days. Sssh, don’t let @windupbird find out. If I read on those days, I’ll count it as a continuation of my streak.
Streak count: 1
Read maybe 8 pages of the LN I’m going through. It has felt slow-going (90 pages in 10-12 days), but I’ve been doing a lot of other studying as well, so I don’t have that much time.
random musings on the ジョジョ LN ゴールデンハート/ゴールデンリング
So far I don’t find it nearly as enjoyable a read as 恥知らずのパープルヘイズ. I don’t like the author’s style as much. At the beginning especially, the author had rambling descriptions that I found annoying to read. That has toned down in later chapters, but at page 91/220, it feels like the story hasn’t gotten started in any meaningful way.
The lengthy descriptions of the effects of パープルヘイズ being used certainly were… very colourful.
Wanting a break from grammar, I decided to just stay on the reading train so I booted up 逆転裁判３. I keep forgetting it exists when I get busy. But I wanted to read for fun, and it’s a game I can just relax with because the text-box format precludes long sentences and keeps things simple.
Played through the last dregs of case 2, and to the end of investigation day 1 on case 3, when the actual trial starts.
Pretty short, but still took me awhile with the place names, one thing with this wiki-ing is I’m learning all the places in Japan. New place learnt: 千代田区.
It’s tiny and squashed between buildings, it looks quite sad really, hidden away from everything.
“咳の治癒” - that’s the newly added kanji (咳) !!
(Now I have no excuse for keep failing it in my reviews )
Much like @chrisosaurus said, the magic of the challenge appeared for me too. Today there was no time to read at all, but in the end I thought just to read something, anything to check the box. Yaay!
New Things!
(ます-form)そうにない = Showing no signs of (verb), extremely unlikely to (verb).
ちょっぴり = a wee bit, a smidgen
鼻であしらう = to spurn, turn one’s nose up, to put someone out
Actually started reading to distract myself from overwhelming myself from studying earlier this year. Either using it as a natural break or transition to start my study session. Of course whether that’s for you is a different matter.
Hopefully I can make it farther than ever before!
)
windupbird’s summary post 
Challenge Progress and Links to Daily Posts 
Read something every day
Finish ハイ☆スピード!
Oh well~
make us free na splash 
I only had time for one page of reading, but it gave me another example of んだ which I found pretty helpful. Tomorrow, hopefully I can figure out how to format the nice calendars I’ve seen people posting. 
post
一日目 9月2日
Day 2
with tiny updates? 