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

Japanese Language Reading
#161

Summary Post

Day 6: September 6th
Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale

Random words
  • 仕入れる = しいれる to replenish stock, to procure.
  • 順調 = じゅんちょう favourable, doing well, all right.
  • 組合 = くみあい association, union, guild.
  • 目当て = めあて purpose, aim, goal.
  • 酒場 = さかば bar, tavern.
  • 合成 = ごうせい synthesis, combining.
  • 店主 = てんしゅ shopkeeper.
  • たどり着く = たどりつく to arrive at (after a struggle), to finally reach.

Okay, today was the most random turn of events type of day. I thought I was going to continue reading the next chapter of Secret on Satori Reader, but nope. This is what happened instead:

My PC’s graphics card is currently RIP, and normally when I game I use my brother’s PC instead until I’m able to get a new one. For a couple of reasons his PC hasn’t been available these last couple of days and I was browsing my Steam library today, looking for 2d games that could run on my motherboard’s integrated graphics card. I installed a few of them, but this game “Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale” caught my eye. It’s a game that I bought on sale a very loooong time ago, played it for some minutes, and then proceeded to ignore for the last several years. Well, today I learned that the game is actually Japanese, and that I could actually play it in Japanese, so I thought sure why not.

Long story short, I wasn’t expecting to be hooked at all, but that was close to 3 hours of gaming. The level is just perfect, perhaps even a bit on the easy side, but I like it so much because it allows me to mine so much vocabulary effortlessly. I’ve encountered many sentences where I only didn’t understand one word, and the vocabulary is not obscure at all.

For the curious, the setting of the game is this:

You’re a young lady whose father decides “whew, this life be damned, I’m going on an adventure!” and leaves you. But the thing is, he had debt; debt that of course falls onto you. And then there’s a fairy, a debt collector, who naturally comes for the money. But since you don’t have the money, you basically have to work to repay your father’s lovely gift. So you set a shop with the fairy in order to raise the money and fix it. But the fairy is pretty chill and cool, so you’re buddies. So basically it’s a simple fantasy RPG where you buy things to sell to customers if they agree with the price you set, and make your moneys go brrrr. And there’s also a dungeon, where you can fight and explore for rare items that you can craft with afterwards, etc. And all of this, I suppose, while the story unfolds.

So yeah that’s today’s log :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: . I think I will definitely continue playing, it was a nice surprise to rediscover.

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#162

Main post

Day 5 :heavy_check_mark:
I read 3 pages of 僕らの天使ゲーム just to read something, and learned the word 抜群 ばつぐん (outstanding; excellent). I’m at page 110/354 so I don’t know how the story will end but I’m surprised it talks about a heavy topic despite being a book meant for primary school students (though it’s a good thing!).

Day 6 :heavy_check_mark:
I read the first volume of ばらかもん :star2: I started reading it in my native language years ago and I had forgotten how young Handa looks in the first volume haha.

New words

飛行機雲 ひこうきぐも vapor trail (vapour) - when I read the kanjis I thought they were talking about a cloud that looked like a plane
平凡 へいぼん ordinary; common; mediocre; unremarkable - poor Handa :’(
肥える こえる to be discerning (eye)​
荒んだ心 すさんだこころ dissolute mind; hardened heart​
没頭 ぼっとう immersing oneself in
雅号 がごう alias
忠実 ちゅうじつ faithful
醜態 しゅうたい disgraceful behavior
倦怠感 けんたいかん physical weariness - I actually learned this word last week but I don’t remember in which situation :thinking:
瀕死 ひんし (on the) verge of death
自炊 じすい cooking for oneself
傑作 けっさく masterpiece

Interesting setting :laughing: It really seems like a nice game, I added it to my wishlist!

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#163

Can someone Please suggest some resources for reading Japanese online. Free.

ありがとございます

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#164

Been consistent with simply enacting the behaviour of reading thus far (using a habit tracking app). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get through Crystal Hunters yet. This week is about keeping up the habit and making a point of reading crystal hunters.

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#165

Resources for Starting to Read Japanese Content

You can find plenty in this thread.

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#166

Thank You!!

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#167

This site of free graded readers is among all the info that Aralakh linked to, but where I would recommend you start as the grading gives you an understanding of where you are at to help you find more substantial material at the same level (I am perhaps falsely assuming your aim is to read books/manga - if not, please ignore :grin:).

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#168

I’m with @windupbird with the “mind games” perspective. I was contemplating why I joined this instead of the Tadoku one, even though I’ve seen that one lots of times. I think that there was an element of intimidation (“Oh, extensive/a lot of reading… I don’t think I can commit to that…”). Also, it felt like I would be joining in just too late, like joining an MMO and being wayyyy behind everyone who has been playing for years. This helps me because it just started, doesn’t go on for too long at a time, and is more focused on the number of days rather than a (self-set) quantity. I still get to set the quantity here, but is doesn’t feel like it is about the quantity.

But, ultimately, as long as either get people reading, I don’t think it matters too much, right?

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#169

From the perspective of someone who likes seeing what people are reading and doesn’t really have the motivation/mind games problem, its just more convenient to have all of it in one thread.

If it helps people out though having it structured like this, I don’t particularly have strong opinions against it though. I can’t imagine a small bit of organization is more important than people getting some reading done.

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#170

Main Post

I haven’t been doing a daily post, but I have kept up with reading a little bit every day. I’ve read a couple pages from the same manga and started reading 大海原と大海原. I think I like that one of the things I’m reading doesn’t have furigana since I feel like I focus on the kanji more, but it for sure does add time to how long a page takes me. :joy: I’m also being exposed to a lot of casual and colloquial language. Today I encountered the ~なきゃ ending on a verb.

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#171

Summary post

Day 6: September 6
What did I read?: ハイ☆スピード!
How much did I read?: 6.5 pages
How long did it take me?: 1 hour 45 min (ish)

Oh man, ok, favorite word of the day - バッタ (grasshopper)

Why, you may ask, is this my favorite word of today?

So first, Nagisa basically puppy-dog-eyes Rin into helping him with his butterfly stroke, which - I already can’t, that’s quite cute.
And then - this part made me laugh for like five minutes :joy:
Turns out, his butterfly stroke is apparently terrible. Rin, in his mind, is like…he looks like a grasshopper trying to swim. He seems to have invented a new swimming style - not バタフライ, but バッタ. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: Bye Rin I’m so done with you

My other favorite moment from today was Haru’s absolutely savage move of snatching the stopwatch out of Makoto’s hand and deleting his swim time so that Rin won’t know what it was. And then he just walks away :skull:

Oh man, but the pictures just came up :pleading_face: I mean, the part I read is basically just like hey, there are these pictures that exist, but I already know and I :sob: And completely apart from The Thing I Know, the way Haru’s appearance in these pictures is described kinda makes me sad too. Why are the pictures making me emotional already, like it’s not time for that yet

Other good words from today:
学び直す (まなびなおす) - to relearn; to brush up
向きになる (むきになる) - to become serious; to take something seriously (joke, teasing); to become irritated or angry (usu. at something trivial); to get worked up
不完全燃焼 (ふかんぜんねんしょう) - I think the literal meaning (incomplete combustion) was the meaning intended in this case, but I found the idiomatic meaning (being off one’s game; not doing one’s best; being unable to use all of one’s strength; failing to obtain the desired result​) interesting in the context of this novel as well

:blush: :purple_heart: :purple_heart: :purple_heart:
Honestly I rarely have this much to say about anything I read :joy: I keep thinking, oh, maybe today will be the day when I won’t have very much to say about this, but…I guess today is still not that day :joy: I think a big part of it is because I already love these characters so much, reading this book feels like seeing old friends again <3

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#172

It is kind of weird cos I guess yeah, when you get down to it both threads are people sharing what they are reading. But at least to me, I feel like there’s a fundamental difference in the approach (habit building/daily reading vs amount read goals) - and some people will prefer one, some people the other. They are two different ways to go about the same goal which is (presumably) wanting to read more in Japanese. So yeah, can see why it would be a bit annoying to have two places but also I do think the approaches are different enough to merit it/would be difficult to combine.

More thinking on the difference in approaches

The tadoku thread is very much focused around (from my outside perspective at least) setting those yearly goals of manga/books read. For that reason I’m guessing it works really well for people who like to have those kinds of yearly goals and then to work to achieve those over the year.

This thread being focused on just reading something everyday means that there’s slightly less of a barrier to entry - you don’t need to come up with a sensible goal for the year or think of how you will make time to reach it, you just need to decide whether you can/want to try to read something(whatever it is) in Japanese every day. My sense is that this approach might be somewhat less intimidating for new readers who might not yet be reading manga/novels etc or might not yet have an idea of what goals are acheivable on a yearly basis, or for people who have a lot of other commitments or are prone to burn out when aiming for bigger goals. However I don’t think that means that people that prefer to aim to read every day rather than set a yearly goal have a motivation problem that people that set a yearly goal don’t, it’s just two different approaches that are both valid and will work for people according to their preferences, and potentially what approach works for someone might even change over time.

But anyway, the end result is hopefully more people reading more things in Japanese which is all good! :slight_smile:

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#173

We’re talking about 多読 again :0 I’ve had a bit more time to think about it, and actually formed an opinion!

I think that this thread could fit into the 多読 thread, and help people achieve their goals! (i.e. Reading everyday until one reaches 100 pages) But I don’t think the opposite is true (to read 100 pages, I don’t need to read everyday).

I like not having a specific amount, and that I can read absolutely anything and it counts :kissing_smiling_eyes::sparkles: It makes me happy to tick the days my calendar. And I love having little seasonal sprints :fallen_leaf::maple_leaf:

多読 looks cool, but I don’t think it’s the right method for me at the moment. I am mulling over the News Reading Challenge a bit lately tho!

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#174

Home post

September 7th and another day of this challenge being ~magical~.

It was getting close to midnight and I was quite tired, but I needed to get my reading done.
I sat down to read 大海原と大海原 and finished a page, and still wanted to keep going, finished another page, same deal, finished a 3rd page. Now I only have 2 pages left in this chapter… I started trying to do the math to see if I could fit them in by just sleeping a bit less. I decided that I should probably stop myself now as I do have work in the morning.

Today I was able to read 3 pages (including adding 21 vocab sheet entries) in 40 minutes which is much faster than I thought I was =O

I’m really enjoying the character interactions, the mildly mystery/spooky plot hints, and the magic/fantasy vocab. All while being surprisingly approachable, I’m still having to look a lot up, but I’m often able to get pretty close just from guessing the grammar.

There are so many sentences from this book so far that I am just in love with.

Since this reading club hasn’t actually started yet I think I worked out that I’m 16 days ahead or something… much better than my usual weeks-months behind :sweat_smile:

Apologies for excited gushing/blabbering.

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#175

:ballot_box_with_check: Day 7

:maple_leaf::fallen_leaf: One week down! :fallen_leaf::maple_leaf:

Today I read a few pages of many things! First, in 手紙, but then I realized that the IBC is looking for people to rate the nominations in terms of difficulty so I took an hour or so to read through each of the nominations sample pages!

This may be the most Japanese I’ve ever read in one day, it just being spread between 17 different books/manga :flushed: I may keep reading 手紙 before I sleep just because I desperately wanna know what happens next.

Main Post

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#176

se-se-se-seventteeeennnnn

:flushed: indeed!

Congrats on what sounds like an amazing end to the first week of this challenge!

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#177

Right?!?! I felt like my brain was scrabbled by the end though :rofl:
The last time I looked into the IBC, it was all so overwhelming. I can’t believe that now some of the books actually seem approachable now! Thanks so much for your encouragement both now and in the past :sparkles:

Ah, that’s so exciting!! And the fact that you’re ahead in the bookclub!?! No apologies for excitement and sharing needed, it’s so good to see :laughing::notes:

Congrats on a fantastic end of week 1 for you too!

can’t wait to see everyone else complete their first week today too <3
congratulations in advance to those about to post!

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#178

Wow, you deserve a prize :sparkles: :muscle: Thank you so much for your help!

Just curious: Did you also form an opinion which books / manga you like most? Or are the first few pages just not enough to figure that out?

It was amazing to see that you voted for “Minimal effort” on some of them :+1:
But then again, I am not surprised as you are reading full-blown novels here as well. Looking forward to reading with you in the next Intermediate Club :blush:

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#179

Home post
7 days completed! thank you so much to @windupbird for starting this thread. Like others, I’ve looked at the Tadoku thread and felt a bit intimidated but committing for two months, and for any amount of content feels so much more achievable.

Todays’ delight was coming across one of my WK leeches in the wild, and reading it correctly first time! Almost certainly will fail it again when it comes up for review next time but I’ll get there eventually.

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#180
Further Discussions in Comparative Dokuing

One maybe counter-intuitive aspect of how personally I use the tadoku thread, is I don’t really think about the specific goals very much at all, especially not as day-to-day motivation.
I think of it kind of as like… picking some arbitrary numbers “oh, this seems about how much of X I could read in the rest of the year” and then just as background tracking so at the end of the year I can hopefully surprise myself with how high the number is. I think if one’s goal were 1 page for the whole year the thread would be just as fun and accepting about it.

With that thread I can just read for fun what I want when I want and as long as a I track it a little I’m participating, whereas this thread’s approach is a goal I would at least need to be conscious of every day.

To be clear though I 100% agree the slight differences in approaches makes a surprisingly big psychological difference that totally justifies having both, since either’s gonna suit some people more!

I suppose at the end of the day both threads can be anything you want to make of it on the scale of “casual wotcha reading thread” to “intense goal tracking motivation generator” and the only real reason I’ll end up sticking with tadoku is just because I prefer to talk about what I’m reading once I’m done and formed my thoughts about it. :slight_smile:

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