Oooh, glad to see it picked your interest! And yes, I would absolutely recommend the book, all the more so if you like history!
I got mine in April, and I have a bit of a backlog from August bc I couldn’t keep up daily, but honestly, these books are perfect for a bit of daily reading. It’s one of my intensive reading materials, meaning I spend time looking up words, but that’s okay for me, bc the stories are short, and once you get the gist of some history-related terms (vocab like: crown prince, abdicate, exile, treaty etc), it’s smooth sailing from then on!
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Also, @rikaiwisdom I’m so sorry, I guess I must have missed it somewhere in the threads, but even belatedly, happy birthday!!! 
hope you had a lovely one!
Oh! This one comes around often in the ヨナmanga…. One of the main charas is The Great 白龍様！You got me curious, I will read today’s folktale as well!
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Day 53:
日本語: I read a bit of パノラマ島綺譚, a fair amount of 伯爵と妖精 21, this week’s reading for ヨコハマ買い出し紀行, and some of 魔王城でおやすみ.
中国語
中国語: I read 白板.
And woohoo, another full week! I’m about halfway through the beginner category on Mandarin Bean, so I’m considering trying to keep this going through the end of the year. That should be enough to read all of them if I keep up with at least one per day.
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October 24
・Honzuki 6. (80% → 81%).
I found word with reading discrepancy, a so-called jukujikun? or just an irregular reading.
生業・なりわい - occupation, calling, livelihood
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Day 54: Read another 4 pages of よつば＆！
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October 24th
Final Fantasy XIV
Random words
- 属性 = ぞくせい attribute, property.
No I totally get what you mean. It’s similar for me, I had the underlying pressure of having to keep up with the schedule almost flawlessly, otherwise if I missed a week and everyone else was ahead I’d lose a ton of motivation, and naturally I dropped out of all the ones I’ve tried. Not that book clubs are a bad thing, not at all, quite on the contrary. I just couldn’t adapt to them personally, at least yet. And yes, people are beasts, they usually read ahead of the schedule and indirectly feeds my procrastination loop 
. I just wish I could find a shared book that I’m passionate about and never miss a day, but so far no luck.
I would like to think that it is working very well for me too. Learning words in a context you care about definitely helps a lot, they’re much easier to learn. I hope that underneath all the occasional internal screaming and whining, I’m moving forward 
. If learning feels like going two steps backwards every now and again, I’m on the good track.
Thank you so much! I definitely had a nice celebration, went for some tasty lunch with a couple of friends and grabbed a coffee with a piece of good cheesecake afterwards. And as it’s commonly known, you can’t not be good when eating cheesecake!
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In the office today but it’s pretty chilly so, rather than stop off in a park on the walk to work, I tried reading on the train this morning. Pre-covid, reading on the train always made me fall asleep. Update: it still makes me fall asleep. So back to reading in the park for me.
The previous volume of these books that I read was all individual stories, so I expected this one to be the same. I’m 4 pages from the end of the first chapter and thought the story was going to have to come to a very quick conclusion, so I sneaked a peek ahead and it’s clear from the pictures that this book is actually one long story divided into chapters. It’s a very odd story about the boys being captured by a group of people living in a cave where they’re still all living like it’s the ?19th century and as a result there’s lots of good vocabulary for me to pick up like:
いろり - sunken hearth
松明 (たいまつ) bamboo torch
which are the kind of words I can imagine coming in useful for playing some computer games.
Happy birthday @rikaiwisdom !
Feeling you on this, the daily reading practice is definitely paying off for me too. God bless the book clubs but I’ve never managed to get on with them either.
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:: TANUKIDATE 20211025 :: Day LV: この音とまれ！ pg.107-117 & 大ムカデ退治 
10 pages today! Though most of the pages didn’t have much dialogue.
And read today’s 百物語 tale from Shiga prefecture, about a legendary samurai ( 藤原秀郷 / Fujiwara no Hidesato) sent on a quest to destroy the giant centipede that has infested dragon palace!
I enjoyed this one a lot and kinda forgot I was supposed to be learning from it. I mean it ticks all the boxes: dragons? check, awesome samurai? check, huge demon monster? check.
~ New Words ~
ランラン (爛々) - Glaring; flaming; blazing the full part was: 赤い目をランラン @Redglare, it you
よろしい (宜しい) - This is on WaniKani, but I don’t think I ever understood the nuance of it properly, I just thought it was just another word to mean “good” as in, “that is good”. But here it’s used to mean “All right/very well [I agree to this/will do this - sort of thing]”. Also states on Jisho that it’s honorific/respectful language.
御殿 (ごてん) - Palace, court
竜王 (りゅうおう) - Dragon King (very, very cool)
つば (唾) - Saliva, spit (demon monsters are weak to human spit apparently - good to know)
Places:
琵琶湖 (びわこ) - Lake Biwa. It’s nice to find the kanji for Biwa (the instrument) as well (don’t think I’ve seen either 琵 or 琶 before).
三上山 (みかみやま) - Mt. Mikami
I know that feeling 
When you spend a week or more trying to learn a specific grammar point or such and you just can’t, and you flail on the floor thinking that your Japanese learning journey is over… then you wake up one day and the Knowining has happened in your sleep and you suddenly just know. Only to repeat the whole process again with the next thing… progress!
Looks like the games are working well for you though! I tried playing one awhile back in Japanese but pretty much everything was in katakana and it scared me away. I should probably try again sometime.
Also, cheesecake on your birthday? That’s the best birthday right there.
Whoo! Glad to hear! 
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October 25 Nothing interesting to report. Though it feels a bit weird that this will be my last week this challenge. "Already 0: ", kinda.
・Honzuki 6. (81% → 82%).
oho, it me 
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Day 54:
日本語: I read a bit of 伯爵と妖精 21 right before bed, just to have read something. (Thanks, read every day challenge!)
中国語
中国語: I read 忘了带书.
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I am reading every day it’s just that I didn’t have time to even post the last few days. Right now I am reading the second volume of エデンの檻. It’s not that interesting but I still want to know what happens next.
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Day 55: Today I read 5 pages of よつば＆！(Some of which didn’t have tons of dialogue in them, but that was probably good because I have about 3 working braincells today)
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What did I read:
Day 46 (10月 24日)
10分でよめるこわい話、第3話ー「空をまう首」
wow that was an interesting read 
~36min.
弘法大師, day’s folktale, 6min.
Day 47 (10月 25日)
10分でよめるこわい話、第4話ー「魔界鏡」, 24min
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I need to know … what happened??
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October 25th
Final Fantasy XIV
Random words
- 立ち話 = たちばなし talking while standing.
- 念のため = ねんのため just to be sure, just in case, for caution’s sake.
- 屋根 = やね roof.
- フン = feces (especially animal), excrement.
<333
I’m having flashbacks of myself learning the different grammar points that use よう . I couldn’t for the love of me internalize it like at all. I still can’t occasionally in difficult sentences, it still gives me trouble from time to time, but nowhere as much as it used to. sigh. But yes, I’ve had that with several grammar points, still do, and still will. It’s like I forget basic stuff all the time. Honestly, the thing I’m lacking the most is putting everything into use, because recognizing structures is one thing, but I think actually generating it yourself makes it stick much better than just recognizing every will. And not only should I write, but listen too; it’s been a while since I started focusing mainly on reading and I’ve neglected other important stuff these last few months. It’s about time!
I think they are! But they are work for sure. I have days when I think I should drop FFXIV from being one of my current resources due to its difficulty, but then other days I’m fine with it. It matters A LOT who is talking and the nature of what I’m doing. But other than that they still use very common vocabulary constantly, so it’s easy in that regard to fish for new terms that I don’t know and that appear frequently in other resources.
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Thank you so much everyone for all your kind replies! I’ve decided to go on a vocabulary quest … learn 1000 new words! Having a quest is always good, and I’m imagining going back to reading after I know 1000 more words and it’ll be like 
Something like that.
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Day 51: October 25
What did I read?: ハイ☆スピード!
How much did I read?: 3 pages
How long did it take me?: 1 hr 18 min
Casually pretending like those last 4 days didn’t happen I didn’t end up reading anything because I was with my family like 90% of my waking hours lol - how did I know that would happen xD Not complaining though, we had fun. Feeling a bit better though one stupid thing is kind of effing me up emotionally for a weird reason - but we don’t need to get into that, it’s just my dumb emotions being dumb again (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ✲ﾟ｡⋆
Feeling slow today 
Slow and tired.
But I did manage to finish the scene xD
Haru moves into the “shoving down emotions and proceeding as if everything’s fine” stage fairly quickly xD Definitely not relating to that right now, whoops I really very much liked the way that was written. The temptation, to just acknowledge those feelings - the warm spring wind wrapping around him as if to say, it’s ok. You can let go, you can confess your feelings to your friends the way Makoto admitted his fear of the water to you. But Haru is stubborn, and he’s not going to give in to that. He’s going to grit his teeth, stand on his own, and refuse to let himself give in to that impulse toward escape, toward admitting weakness. He decided that he’d swim the relay, so that’s what he’s gonna do. In fact, he finally commits to focusing only on the relay from now on. He won’t let himself run away anymore - not from the relay, not from Rin, not from himself.
And in response to Haru’s commitment, we get Rin’s iconic line:
見たことのない景色、見せてやるよ
Good words:
さらけ出す (さらけだす) - to expose; to disclose; to lay bare; to confess
食いしばる (くいしばる) - to set one’s teeth; to clench one’s teeth; to grit one’s teeth
あと戻り (あともどり) - going backward; turning back; backtracking; doubling back
とびっきり - best; extra-fine; superfine; unequalled
張り巡らす (はりめぐらす) - to lay out (e.g. a wiring system, network, etc.)
頼りない (たよりない) - unreliable; undependable; indefinite; vague; helpless; forlorn; forsaken; worried; uneasy
I also learned (aka finally bothered to look up) a new grammar point today - あるいは (means “or; either; maybe; perhaps; possibly” - a fact I will probably forget very quickly because these types of words never stick the first, third, or even thirtieth time I see them lol)
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some days I feel like this about japanese, and some days I have to remind myself that 4 years ago I didn’t know hiragana. I generally do this by showing instagram posts to my husband and having him say ‘I can’t read japanese’ so I can feel superior.
1000 word challenge sounds good! That’s how many unknown words I encountered from reading one novel this summer (800 of which are still in the backlog on my flashcards…), so it will make a massive difference.
I read at a cafe this morning while my husband was having physio (don’t wear muji slippers all day every day for 18 months, or your achilles tendon will hate you) and finished a chapter - and then started the next one because I wanted to know what was going to happen! This is the first time I’ve read from a series and it’s definitely got easier as I’ve got used to the author’s style and word choices. There was also a long passage this morning about a character putting on his glasses first thing in the morning that spoke to me in a big way.
And the barista said the illustrations in the book looked like Ponyo.
I’ve had this several times when I’ve been reading lately, WK definitely gets you off the starting line but there’s nothing like seeing it in context to really distinguish between the different meanings.
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All right…!! So this story was about these wandering medicine merchants back in Edo era, where they would go around from village to village to sell medicine. This story tells how this one 薬売りguy had a late start from one village and while crossing the mountains, it got late and he was gonna camp out, he takes his 手ぬぐい and puts it around his neck and then there’s this guy around the corner, who tells him oh no, no there’s wild beasts around here, you shouldn’t sleep out, come over my place for the night! So they go, and the other guy’s family is all there, wife, grandparents and two kiddos. Surprisingly, they all have 手ぬぐいs around their necks, and when the merchant asks he gets the reply that they’ve all got sore throats/sick, that’s why. Out guy even offers to give them throat medicine as thanks for letting him stay.
cont.
Fast forward thru the night, our guy wakes up and hears everyone talk- complaining about how bitter the medicine was. He looks through the thin opening of the sliding door and what does he see??? Heads, severed at the neck, flying around!!! He realises he’s in a pinch. There is a big chase to catch him, but thankfully our 薬売りgets away, dawn breaks, and he is safe. Story closes with him nearing a tea house at the foot of the mountain, enters, sees the store lady… and just bolts! Because she also has a 手ぬぐい around her neck!! The lady is taken aback and offended actually… she was just sick and was looking forward to his visit in order to buy some medicine….
A 手ぬぐい is a Japanese cotton towel btw！they come in many shapes and sizes nowadays, and are actually a great choice for a souvenir! So many nice designs! And they have a multitude of uses too! From wrapping your 弁当、to wrapping them around your head, and to using them for actual cleaning etc
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Day LVI: この音とまれ！ pg.117-123 & 滋賀県 
6 pages today! Again, not much dialogue this time, I think I may be getting used to some of the casual language though… at least, a bit.
Thought I’d read about the prefecture from yesterday’s story: Shiga Prefecture.
The prefectorial tree is モミジ(紅葉), maple, I remembered this word from one of my earlier reads, yes! Learning!
Though in saying that, the prefectorial flower is シャクナゲ (石南花), Rhododendron, and I can’t remember if I have seen this before or not.
~ New Words ~
盆地 (ぼんち) - Basin (the geography one, not a sink)
シャクナゲ (石南花) - Rhododendron
カイツブリ (鸊鷉) - Little Grebe (Bird) - I don’t think there’s much chance I’m gonna remember these kanji.
水鳥 (すいちょう) - Waterfowl / Water bird
カモ (鴨) - Duck
アビ (阿比) - Red-Throated Loon (Bird)
類縁関係 (るいえんかんけい) - Having a close relationship with. The usage here is that grebes are similar to ducks.
水かき (みずかき) - Webbing (between toes/fingers)
鰭 (ひれ) - Fin or flipper
羽毛 (うもう) - Feathers / Plumage
斑紋 (はんもん) - Speckles; Mottled Pattern
Places:
近畿地方 (きんきちほう) - Kinki Region
近江盆地 (おうみぼんち) - Omi Basin
四川省 (しせんしょう) - Sichuan (China)
チベット - Tibet
Replies!
This happens to me all the time, weird how some days you just get it and others everything is alien. But yeh, I feel that I’m really lacking in the recreation department, I can usually understand the context and language patterns from reading but that’s mostly just recognising words and working out the rest from that. Putting sentences together myself is just… very messy.
Listening and reading have a lot of ways to practice, but writing and talking are really difficult, I haven’t even moved on to trying to speak it yet (well, unless you don’t count the shouting along to movies and whatnot).
It’s hard to try and balance all your learning.
頑張って！！
Welcome back!! 
[Basically, your entire post]
That was one wild story!
I’ve seen those towels quite a few times and always wondered what they were, so thanks! I now know that they’re 手ぬぐい.
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