I read on Friday, though didn’t post in this thread because I didn’t have anything to say about the reading session or the story beats. ^^
While I haven’t set myself the goal of reading on the weekends, I found some time to do so today.
I read about 10 pages in ゴールデンハート/ゴールデンリング.
Already snooping around for what to read next, I also read 5 sample pages of the first book in the 疫病神シリーズ.
I’ve been watching the television show version of the first book with Japanese subs and find it enjoyable. The 関西弁 usage is still a bit tricky, but watching the show already made me work out the most overt differences when compared to a Tokyo-centred dialect.
The book version still felt a bit difficult, but it takes me a bit to get used to an author’s style. Luckily BookWalker has like 40 pages available in the preview, so that should be enough to make me decide whether I want to buy it or hold off for now.
Day 5
Read 3 more pages of Kiki in about 20 minutes! At 2am though
Just got to the part where Osono suggests the name of 魔女の宅急便 to Kiki as the name of her business!
I didn’t quite reach my aim of five pages, but I’ll try to make up for it tomorrow.
I am sure I have heard the word 「かきいろ」somewhere before but I have no idea why I would already know this.
Though I don’t think I’ve seen the kanji: 柿 before, so I’m probably confusing it for something else.
The colour = 柿色
The fruit = On this specific wiki it uses 柿の果実, on Jisho it says 柿の木 and the actual wiki for persimmons uses カキノキ (but also 柿の木). On second thought I’m probably confusing かきいろ with カキノキ, because I have definitely heard カキノキ before.
I’ve talked about trying to read every day before but I’m really enjoying how this challenge is actually getting into the habit, rather than quitting studying when I’ve done all my SRS. I’m already a quarter of the way through this book, but I have another 2 volumes from the same series that I can move on to afterwards. I’d really recommend them to anyone else in between N4/N3.
The new word I learnt today was 盗み気 - eavesdropping.
日本語: I read a fair amount of パノラマ島綺譚 and a lot of ミステリと言う勿れ.
中国語
中国語: I read 大年初一. I also encountered the explanation for yesterday’s confusion in my textbook (good timing!): “有 can also be used at the beginning of the sentence, or preceded by an adverb (…).” So 也 can be used at the beginning of a sentence if it’s before 有, and I’m going to think of this usage of 有 like hay in Spanish.
I’m adding in “a fair amount” to my bit, some, and a lot, because I did read 30 minutes of パノラマ島綺譚, but I was meandering through and didn’t read a lot in terms of the book itself. So “a fair amount” will be 30+ minutes but it didn’t feel like I read that much, and “a lot” will be 30+ minutes and it felt like I read a great deal. (ミステリと言う勿れ would not let me go to sleep last night.)
Sept 5th: 糞尿譚 again. I was indeed able to increase the amount I read to about 4 pages
(And no, I will probably not read 8 pages tomorrow - although it would be nice…)
For my own record: I read up to the end of 35/158.
If I continue to read 1-3% every day, I’ll finish this book within 2 weeks. Not sure what to read next. Though, I do have some manga waiting, I could also continue reading Re:Zero 1 or Honzuki 6. Hmm hmm
It took me 20 min maybe, but I feel like I was rushing to check the translations.
Vocabs:
協力, 「きょうりょく」 cooperation
等, 「など」 et cetera, etc., and the like, and so forth; or something; the likes of
会見, 「かいけん」 press conference
再現, 「さいげん」 reproduction
４０年ぶりの, 「40-ねん-ぶり の」 for the first time since 40 years
新作発表, 「しんさく はっぴょう」 new production, new work
新曲を公開, 「しんきょく う こうかい」 new song released
本格的, 「ほんかく-てき」 authentic
再開, 「さいかい」 resumption
同時, 「どうじ」 simultaneous
デジタル技術, 「でじたるぎじゅつ」digital technology
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Longer:
I read this the other night before bed and it made me so excited! I realised that my 1 year mark would be coming up soon. Then laying in bed I kept thinking about it to the point that I got out of bed and dug through my books to try figure out the best approximation of my anniversary =D
I have stopped & started a few times before this, but this is the longest I’ve been able to keep it up consistently and by far the most progress I’ve made (I can actually stumble my way through manga ?!?!). When I started this time I had to re-learn hiragana so I don’t think my earlier attempts helped that much except for the dozen or so words.
The closest date I’ve been able to find is that in 2020-10-xx I started thinking about wanting to visit Japan again and that reignited my interest in learning the language, and then at the end of 2021-11-xx I started learning again. 2021-11-27 a friend convinced me to try WK and 2021-11-29 I restarted Genki.
I’m not sure what my goals for it are or how I should celebrate. Naively I am on track to have finished my second manga a bit before then, maybe I could squeeze in a 3rd. OTOH I have been on this level of WK for 128 days so maybe I should prioritise WK.
Day 5: September 5th
Satori Reader: Secret, episode 33.
Random words
交差 = こうさ crossing, intersection.
きつい = tough, hard, severe (implies severity and suffering).
引き返す = ひきかえす to go back (to where you came from).
基地 = きち base (military).
Today’s episode was a nice one. Blurring this for potential spoilers for someone reading or planning to read Secret on Satori Reader:
One of the protagonists 日本語お上手ですね 'ed an american in their climbing group when he talked to them in completely perfect Japanese . Then he went on to explain that he had been 4 years on duty in an american military base in Okinawa. But the reaction, priceless. Never fails.
@sycamore and @chrisosaurus Aahh! Your first year anniversary, and already reading manga/books… You two are really awesome. I hope you each get to meet your goals! Congratulations in advance for a full year of blood, sweat and kanji (why does that sound gross instead of cute?)!!
Day 5: September 5
What did I read?: ハイ☆スピード! and ふらいんぐうぃっち Vol. 10 (finished the volume)
How much did I read?: 6 pages and 17 pages
How long did it take me?: 1 hour 21 min and 22 min
Makoto being late because he needed to clean his goldfish bowl is too precious Sweet baby angel. And Nagisa’s here! Being an annoying child, why is that not a surprise xD
Gushing about the writing of Haru + water/swimming (not really spoilery, I just felt like putting it under a cut because I put an image to explain my feelings and it felt large just sitting out there lmao)
I love the way that Haru thinks about and relates to the water/swimming. Like…I just love the way it’s written. It’s not stated in so many words, but it feels like he’s got a better “relationship” with water/swimming than he does with most humans. Like they understand each other, and respect/accept each other as they are. There’s something I find so bittersweet about that, in the context of his not being that good with human relationships. I don’t know if I’m conveying what I mean very well right now lmao but this window into Haru’s thoughts about swimming just got me like
I feel like I haven’t really noticed writing styles that much in Japanese before, but there’s something about this novel’s writing style that I really really like. It feels so pretty sometimes. :3 It’s really helping me enjoy the story even more, I think, especially now that I’ve had a chance to settle into it.
Finally finished off the last volume of Flying Witch today also - I was reading it with the book club during the summer challenge and just…sort of…didn’t finish it after the last challenge ended. Whoopsss
Good words/phrases from today (mostly from High Speed, but one from Flying Witch too):
認め合う (みとめあう) - to mutually recognize; to accept
かすめる - to appear and quickly disappear (a thought, a smile, etc.); to flit (through one’s mind, across one’s face)
手を抜く(てをぬく) - to cut corners; to be shoddy
御免だ - might be more of a grammar point than a word per se, but apparently means “do not want/want to avoid,” which I did not know (and the author of High Speed clearly likes to use this construction, it’s shown up at least 3 times already)
齧る (かじる) - to dabble in; to have a smattering of (but also means to gnaw; to nibble; to bite; to munch; to crunch - this was written in hiragana in Flying Witch but I love this kanji, it just looks so appropriate for that meaning. Like, doesn’t it just look like crunching? It does to me anyway xD)
I feel like what I do is much better described as stumbling than reading, it feels like I have to look up pretty much everything >.>
Sometimes I feel like I’m not making enough progress as my speaking and listening are so rubbish, but when my anxious brain isn’t running the show, I try to reflect on how even being in remotely the ballpark of ‘reading’ is such a huge deal to me - and was previously a dream of mine.
I think I turned to Japanese as something to kind of pour myself into to help cope with everything going on around us at the moment, something that I could better within myself so that when this is all over I can look back and not feel like it was a write off, I just really really hope it won’t slip away once things return closer to normal.
First week of September done though not first full week of the challenge, but any excuse for a summary as I’m too lazy for daily updates and avoiding starting work. I’d been searching for a while to try to find a reading/time tracker app that made it as easy as possible to time reading sessions and update progress and a few weeks ago I found the [Read more] (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shunan.readmore) app (I’m on android, not sure whether it’s on iOS too). I’ve mainly just been using it to track reading novels because that’s where I’m most interested to see if over time my reading speed improves so it doesn’t cover a few manga chapters I read this week (1 chapter each of ハイキュー & よつばと, 2 chapters 鬼滅の刃) but still gives some fun charts and stuff of the month so far
(the time by the pages shows 0 because the pages is just a conversion from percentages based on the page number of the physical book given that I read everything on Kindle)
So far this month I have read another 18% of ハリーポッター賢者の石 (plus the manga mentioned above)- not too bad for me! mainly that was through reading for about 20 mins at lunch and then meaning to read for another half an hour before bed and then not stopping for more like an hour/an hour and a half depending on tiredness my partner is through this week and then the following week I’m on holiday so will probably make slower progress but I think if I can find even just half an hour to read a day I should hopefully be able to reach my goal of finishing HP by mid October, given I’m 49% of the way through now (I really wanted to stop at 50% last night but too…tired…)
yay! It’s nice to kind of take stock at these kinds of anniversaries I think! I’m a person that quite often tends to get really into something and then drop it after a few months so sticking with something for a full year feels big enough in itself hahha. I also relate to speaking and listening (mainly speaking, oh I’m so bad at speaking) lagging waaaay behind but that’s okay! I’m sure it will come in time/if we chose to prioritise it in the future
aw thanks I’m 100% only reading manga and books at this point because of the WK forums, cos the first ハイキュー!! bookclub started up a few months into me starting Japanese and I went through a path of “oh wow, I love haikyuu, I really want to read the manga with the club but it will be way too hard” to deciding to take part anyway and being like “yep, this is way way too hard but it’s also so much fun!”. Looking back, it was way past my ability at the time but struggling through that first volume gave me the motivation I needed to haphazardly blitz through the rest of N5 & N4 grammar & so I could join back in for 3rd volume of ハイキュー on (actually vaguely able to understand it this time lol) and then branching out to read more through the previous one of these challenges which was what made me think that I could maybe try a novel! So yeah, always a combo of folks on the WK forums (and my own stubbornness) pushing me out of my comfort zone haha.
Studying Japanese has been hugely beneficial for my mental health over the last year, so it doesn’t just feel like wasted time. I think it’s easy to get caught up on what you can’t do than what you can. You’re litereally reading in another language with a different character set, that’s awesome!
Read in the garden before work this morning, curled up in a blanket which was pretty cosy but I’m not sure realistically how long that’s going to be viable for!
Really noticing how weak I am on onomatopoeia at the moment. With the exception of the odd word that’s actually sound related, most of them don’t seem to bear any relation to the meaning to me, so I am constantly looking them up. I’ve learnt around 80 so far that have come up in other books, but this author seems to like using ones I’ve never come across before.
Read 12 pages today, and I’m now on chapter 5 of 8. As you can tell, it’s a short book. The only reason why it has 220 pages is because the book itself is diminutive. Not as small as the other LN, though! That one’s just ちっちゃい.
I’ve been quite tired today, and, as always, reading Japanese that’s anything other than very easy while I’m tired makes me go
Tired enough that I had to edit 701 obvious errors out of this short post. D:<
Finished メタモルフォーゼの縁側! It was a nice series, even if I got a little disappointed later on.
I summarized the premise already, but it was back in the summer thread, so.
It’s about the 75-years-old lady, who gets into yaoi manga during her retirement.
But that is set up really quickly, and then manga changes into typical slice of life, and I guess I’m really not compatible with typical slice of life. There are manga-cons and such, which make for a nice background, but I guess I wanted more about the process of the development of her new hobby?
And she makes friends with a highschool girl, who has a character design I really liked, but that results in yet another series about high school life, even if said high school life isn’t 100% of the plot.
And at the start it looked like it would be very easy & quick read, but even if there are many pages with nearly 0 text, there is also a lot of moments where we are thrown into some random conversation. And there a lot of things that are handwritten and I admit I sometimes just gave up trying to decipher small handwritten characters.
Still, it was nice to see some representation of the older people and the relationship between the old lady and the highschooler was really sweet and supportive. It would be great to have such person in my life when I was younger, eh.
Japanese vs mental health (ranting, a little heavy)
In my case achievements are of course good for my self-esteem, but I have a really hard time accepting daily struggle. As in when I don’t understand a sentence, or it takes long time before I understand it, or I have to check up a lot of words, or I make a mistake in textbooks tests, or I make a mistake in SRS… During childhood, perfection was always expected of me, and even perfection could be not enough, because I could always do two things perfectly, not just one. It quickly backfired and I started to struggle in school instead, which resulted in more pressure, and so on.
I love Japanese and for me it is my most precious, most cherished activity, but learning Japanese can easily activate these unpleasant memories, and managing them is really exhausting on top of retaining new info. So eh.
- although it would be nice…)
. Then he went on to explain that he had been 4 years on duty in an american military base in Okinawa. But the reaction, priceless. Never fails.
Sweet baby angel. And Nagisa’s here! Being an annoying child, why is that not a surprise xD
5日目 9月6日
though not first full week of the challenge, but any excuse for a summary as I’m too lazy for daily updates and avoiding starting work. I’d been searching for a while to try to find a reading/time tracker app that made it as easy as possible to time reading sessions and update progress and a few weeks ago I found the [Read more] (
I’m 100% only reading manga and books at this point because of the WK forums, cos the first ハイキュー!! bookclub started up a few months into me starting Japanese and I went through a path of “oh wow, I love haikyuu, I really want to read the manga with the club but it will be way too hard” to deciding to take part anyway and being like “yep, this is way way too hard but it’s also so much fun!”. Looking back, it was way past my ability at the time but struggling through that first volume gave me the motivation I needed to haphazardly blitz through the rest of N5 & N4 grammar & so I could join back in for 3rd volume of ハイキュー on (actually vaguely able to understand it this time lol) and then branching out to read more through the previous one of these challenges which was what made me think that I could maybe try a novel! So yeah, always a combo of folks on the WK forums (and my own stubbornness) pushing me out of my comfort zone haha.
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