Remember how I said I would finish 遅刻してきた幽霊 before my trip? Clearly I didn’t. I started reading 戦前昭和の猟奇事件 (~Bizarre Crimes in the Prewar Showa Era) yesterday. It’s my first time reading nonfiction in Japanese in a long time.
I thought the note before the first case was interesting as it talked about language changed and not changed for ease of reading and for impact. Specifically they called out that they left in 差別語 (discriminatory language) and 使用禁止語 (forbidden words). I’m curious what those will be and whether or not I’ve run into them before.
So far it’s a rough read. Between old language (those newspaper quotes, oof) and just general writing style I’m definitely reading this more as a study exercise than for pleasure. Hopefully it will smooth out as I go on. Currently reading case 0 (鬼熊) which actually happened on the cusp of 昭和, at the very end of the 大正 era. 1926 for those (including myself) who don’t have those memorized.
Words!
Interesting word: 消息（しょうそく）- my dictionary gives this as being a synonym for 知らせ、様子、状態、and 便り. I would never have guessed that and frankly if presented it in isolation would have assumed it a synonym for 窒息.
Other random new words: 蔵匿 (context: 犯人蔵匿罪 (harboring a fugitive)), 幇助 (context: 自殺幇助 (criminally aiding suicide))
Also good lord, every man is <>次郎. Got 熊次郎、清次郎、and 長次郎 just in this one chapter.
Just reread page 19, and also read page 20 of かがみの孤城 today. What I’ve learned: I should read in the morning or the afternoon, because if I leave it until late night I end up procrastinating and only giving myself ten minutes to actually read. But despite not making good progress at all today, I’m glad to be back to reading narrative prose!
Tomorrow is my last day of holidays, so I’ll try to read as much as I can then.
It’s been a fairly solid week. I read about 2/3 of a volume of イクメン - which I randomly picked up when it was free on Kindle a long time ago, and has been fairly entertaining manga.
Yesterday I picked up a light novel again - パパのいうことを聞きなさい. I felt like I was reading faster than usual - managed 13 pages spread throughout the day - ended on page 100. That puts me about 1/3 of the way through this novel - it’s taken me 4 months (although really, I took February/March off, so maybe only 2 months). I need to read more if I want to actually finish this book this year. I picked up about 5 pages of the same book in last summer’s read every day challenge, and dropped it as too difficult. This time, I’d say challenging but within range for me to read without frustration. I definitely find myself looking more grammar than I do when I read manga (I think my tolerance for ambiguity is lower without pictures).
About the ghost of a woman who has been left to wander and cannot pass over, until a priest hears her story and helps her.
Japanese found in the tall grass
New Things
お勤め「おつとめ」ー One’s business; reading of scriptures before Buddha, can also be: 御勤め 本堂「ほんどう」ー Main temple building; nave 彷徨う「さまよう」ー To loiter; to wander about (I think I vaguely recognise this) 本尊「ほんぞん」ー Principal object of worship at a temple; principal image/idol
Yeah totally, that’s basically where I am. On one hand I get it, there’s nothing to be gained from getting miserable about the situation so good for her. But while I might agree with some of his premise about not needing the fanciest things to be happy… we jumped to pulling discarded food out of the river and chewing on bones. At this point all I can think is yeah grandma sounds like she’s clever, resourceful, and has a strong spirit, so imagine what she could have been capable of if she didn’t have to devote every bit of her energy to scavenging basic necessities. You would expect the takeaway to be people can do incredible things to survive hardships, yet we should do everything in our power to stop them from having to go through those. That’s sure not how he framed it though.
I feel like I sound harsh but it’s fine enough when I’m reading it and I kind of want to wait to see how it all develops before fully responding to the premise he set out, but that conflicts with weekly topics, heh. Perhaps I’m too spoiled by my life of relative luxury but even ignoring the overarching ideas it’s hard for me to not just lean to “wow that’s sad!” when he’s talking about some of this but it feels like he wants me to take it more lightly.
If we ignore the prologue of the book (and I really want to ignore it), he’s basically just describing his life experiences as far as I can see, and that’s interesting in its own right, without having to look for morals. I’ll have to admit that so far the book hasn’t captivated me as much as I’d hoped either, but that probably has to do more with the lack of plot (I prefer fiction for that reason) than the circumstances it describes. I wonder if it would be better to talk about all that in the relevant book thread though. Other people reading it may be interested in these comments but miss them here.
Hey so you know how yesterday I was talking about how hard it was for me to get into 夜カフェ? Well today something just clicked and I finally got through the rest of chapter 1 and started on chapter 2 (I’m at the part now on page 22 or so where Hanabi’s parents are fighting and she quietly goes to her room and covers her ears). Reading vertically is getting easier, I haven’t been losing my place as much
Day 16
I’m so sorry this post came out as just me nagging, disregard please.
Remember when I promised to read a lot this weekend, yeah no lmao. Spend my weekend dissociating my butt off into the couch. Good thing I had bite-sized chapters from all the abbc I follow so the input is not completely nil but just shy of.
As for today while reading fukaboku I’ve encountered the first furigana in this book that is not just for a name. And honestly I find this specimen borderline insulting. You haven’t furigana’ed the 拍子抜け or anything similarly obscure previously yet a trivial sleeve now is something special, I mean it is General use, come on suffer with me, you silly natives.
Wohoo. The first big hurdle in this reading sprint is down: 18/61 down Homepost
I was really weary if I could keep the streak going over easter but this time around I managed just fine. The whole seeing family and having responsibilities shtick can be so detremental to private reading time .
I did read less then the last week but overall I’m happy:
read the last weeks assignment on 佐賀 (IBC)
read this weeks assignment on 夜カフェー (BC)
read a few chapters of Slam Dunk
A few articles on Web easy (6?7?)
and some miniscule forward momentum in Tobira
The writing in 佐賀 is my favorite so far but neither it’s story nor the story in 夜 are especially gripping for me at the moment. When it comes to story Slam Dunk is still the most hype and hard to put down when I’m in the grove.
But the books are just better for learning new vocabulary and putting them into sentence cards in Anki. So I’ll stick them out for now. In the future I’ll probably continue reading only with the IBC and start reading more along my own interest for the other free time I’ll have.
Since I’ve “ended” this week on monday because of the holiday, I’ll have to go a bit faster with 佐賀 for the next week to not fall behind. Lets hope everything works out as I imagine and I’ll find enough time for it.
The next hurdle is a big wedding of a good friend at the end of the month. Not sure I’ll be in any shape to read anything on the day or after the day -.-.
Until then it should be smooth saling.
I’ll update my progress in one week again. See you there.
Finished chapter 13. What happened? Very chapter, much boob. Maomao taking care of Li Hua after almost dying from poison. Also Maomao telling about this cool party trick Li Hua should try with the Emperor to spice up their fun times
Things happened in this section (and some things didn’t ), and I really wanted to keep reading, but it’s getting late.
I also started this week’s 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん, but did not get very far at all (why are days so short?). I’ll need to continue this tomorrow too.
words etc
家宅侵入罪 - (crime of) trespassing, housebreaking
洋服ダンス - wardrobe, esp. for Western clothes. (nothing to do with dancing, huh)
たくし上げる - to roll or pull up (sleeves, skirt, etc)
息を弾ませる - to be excited, to be short of breath, to pant
血祭りにあげる - to kill viciously, but also “to kill an enemy soldier before the start of a battle to raise spirits”. Oddly (and hair-raisingly) specific…
へたり込む - to sink down to the floor, to sit down hard
The flowers above the “Day #” links to my post for the previous day, and the flowers below link to the next day, except for the latest day ofc, they link somewhere special
Feels great to be reading Summer Pockets again. I capped out a little after 5000 characters again, but that’s decent. Feels like I’m really slow these days… perhaps eventually it would be beneficial to think a little more consciously about working on speed. Despite that, the content wasn’t too hard today. It seems I might be close to the end of Umi’s route, sometime in the next few days maybe? That’d put me at a super rough halfway, barring however long the final “true route” is. 2022 really will, in a large way, be the year of Summer Pockets in my life.
I remember hearing about this phrase before! バカは風邪ひかない . Guess that’s one reason to feel good about my propensity to get sick. Those of you in this thread with covid certainly don’t have a cold but I’m going to count it for you too.
It’s not often that I find a stray N3 grammar point anymore, so it was interesting to stumble across とは限らない (“not necessarily so”) today. I’ve seen various permutations on 限り (かぎり) of course by now, but somehow never this one. Also found さすが in its kanji form (流石) for the first time. Could do without that one!
The most interesting new word for me is just テロップ, Japan’s name for images or text superimposed on TV, because it’s another little rabbithole of knowledge for word origins. Had never heard of that previously.
But despite not making good progress at all today, I’m glad to be back to reading narrative prose!
Japanese found in the tall grass 
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), and I really wanted to keep reading, but it’s getting late.
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