Since you like weird movies, I’ll suggest one not to watch that I did several years ago (prior to resuming my Japanese studies even) - Maid Droid. Err… R rating at least. Read the summary and you’ll see why I generally agree with that sentiment.
Also butlers. Butlers cafes freak me out in a way I can’t explain.
I started Book 12 in the Level 0 Graded Readers, the last one in this set. It is a lot of data and demographics of Japan. I read 8 pages, and this book is a little harder than the others.
New Vocabulary:
へいほう
平方キロメートル square kilometers
めんせき
面積 area, sqare miles
しんちょう
身長 height, stature
Oh, yeah, hadn’t heard of that one. Looking at the base premise on Letterboxd makes me almost expect hope it would critique this sort of thing, but as soon as I scroll down I can see how every review just says the creators seem to be reveling in it. Oof. Hadn’t come across that one yet anyway, but yeah thanks, will probably avoid that.
I actually didn’t realize Butler Cafes were a thing, but I guess I should’ve expected it. Overall my first impression is for me it’s less bothersome, relatively. There’s an extra layer of… the only word I can think of is cringe, heh, in the sorta stereotypical maid treatment that would only make me uncomfortable. The butlers don’t seem so infantilizing or something, though I’m still not into it. I already feel awkward in the sort of hierarchical relationship when someone is serving you at a business so having someone really play up the servant side is the opposite of my idea of a good time.
112-160
Just 35 pages left. My tolerance for non Dio pages is seriously low. I think I seriously am going to need to skip part 3 and read 5 first to see if I can increase my speed and tolerance… I think in between though that I might read my shark field guide or finish Ojisama to Neko. I think I have 3 vol left… maybe not then. Maybe just a volume
Back to vol 3… the art is so much nicer compared to the first two volumes. I wonder if Araki got an assistant around this time.
Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks for the clarification!
Oh man, too elaborate for my current reading level 
super interesting though.
April 23
Final Fantasy VII
Sold something very important (materia) by error and wasn’t sure if there’s a way to buy it back… doesn’t look like there is. Very smarto c: I quit without saving so will have to replay tomorrow what I did today, which is alright because it wasn’t much. Old games are fun!
(Day 22)
A very lazy update again because I’ve got a deadline looming over me.
I’ve continued reading 小さな闇 - progress is slow, but I am thoroughly enjoying it. Learnt about La Recolecta, a very cool looking cemetery in Argentina. The story spoke about how massive the graves are, and I had to google pictures to make sure I really wasn’t misinterpreting it. But indeed, that’s one damn impressive graveyard! I feel like I am learning more random facts than Japanese these days 
Reminds me of some of the older cemeteries in New Orleans, LA. I looked this up, too, and La Recolecta is impressive. Thanks for teaching me something new!
Checking in again because I finally have the time to make a post, haha! We just passed three weeks in, and I’ve successfully managed to read in both Spanish and Japanese every single day!
I’m 146 pages into Wonder (out of 412), and it’s still going very well!
With Japanese, I finished a bunch of TJPW translations and finally got caught up on those (until their next show in a couple hours ). I talked about their big Korakuen Hall show on April 9 here, their experimental Inspiration show here, and then Marika Kobashi’s graduation show from last week here. Lots of highlights for me personally; not sure how much anyone else here would care about the story intricacies.
Since I got caught up on the TJPW translations, I actually ended up finally getting the chance to read some more 大海原と大海原 volume 3, after being too busy to really spend much time with it over these past few months! The book club is ending, but I’m looking forward to eventually going back through and reading everyone’s posts when I finally manage to find the time to finish it.
I actually was a bit blown away by how much easier it was to read after the work I’d been putting in for the past few months. I feel like I’m at a point with Japanese where a lot of the groundwork I’ve laid is finally coming to fruition. Sentence structure makes way more intuitive sense to me now, even for longer sentences (which used to be the utter bane of my existence), and my grammar, kanji, and vocab knowledge are starting to really come together. Sentences just have way fewer unknowns now. I even saw some of the words I’d SRS’d for wrestling show up here!
I think even with having to extensively rely on Yomichan, ichi.moe, and often DeepL for the wrestling translations, I’ve gotten loads of reading practice from doing them. Minna no Nihongo has been helping immensely, because often I’ll learn a grammar point and then immediately see it in action. It’s just cool! Really feels like after I finish WK and my textbook, I’ll be able to just pick up a manga and read it without too much struggle.
I definitely think that I’m learning a lot more from the wrestling translations than I am from reading manga. It’s partially due to ease of looking stuff up, having more background knowledge/context of the characters and events, and investing the time/energy into SRS-ing specialized vocab, but I also think the wrestling recaps have more complete sentences and such, and I get less bogged down by slang and dialects, though wrestling also has that. It’s just balanced out by a lot of other stuff. I feel like manga will become a more usable learning tool for me as my knowledge continues to increase, and the number of unknowns I’m finding per sentence decreases. For now, it’s fun to read as a hobby, though!
Day 23: April 23rd
What did I read?: クマとたぬき
How much did I read?: 32 pages
How long did it take me?: 27 min
Ah, today…where did the day go I probably should have done more, but I’m tired.
Today’s クマとたぬき was very enjoyable, they went on a tiny quest.
Happy birthday @daikirai! 
Happy birthday and many returns of the day! @daikirai
Is April the month with the most birthdays in this challenge? It seems that every two days or so, somebody has a birthday. I’m feeling slightly envious now. My birthday’s not for months yet.
Isn’t this the truth?! I do the same thing all the time, and seeing or hearing it in real life sure makes it stick.
I started a new book: 少年H（青い鳥文庫 version)
It’s by 妹尾河童 and is based on his experiences as a boy living in Kobe during WWII. The first few pages felt really hard but by the end of the first chapter it was getting easier. The style is different than other books I’ve read, and there’s a lot of new vocabulary. Also everyone speaks Osaka dialect. I only know some of the characteristics, so I’m using kansaiben.com for grammar reference.
(There’s an English translation “A Boy Called H” which I have not read)
Chapter 1 was only 16 pages and the war with the US hasn’t even started yet, but the neighborhood udon delivery guy with the great record collection has already been taken away by the special police for thought crimes. 
I’m starting to try to write a review of 三毛猫ホームズ for Natively, and it’s hard now that I’ve finished the book. Usually I start writing reviews when I’m in the 1/3 to 1/2 section. That way the beginning setting is still familiar, I can’t give away major spoilers, and I’ve read enough to have an idea about the author’s style. If there’s some aspect of the language that’s giving me difficulty, I’ll usually make some notes right then in my review draft before I forget. So when I finally finish I just have to review and edit. But this time I read the book too quickly, and was reading and commenting here, and so no review got written…
I’ve been thinking about how Katayama doesn’t seem nearly as bad at dealing with girls, drinking, and blood as we imagined from the description. Maybe this description isn’t supposed to be so much about what he is, as about what he isn’t? Like, he’s not a cool James Bond type, or a hardboiled type. Just a nice Everyman, who’s not even able to keep up with the expected amount of drinking. Also it’s the 1970s and there are some hints that he’s probably more handsome than he realizes, so if he’s not getting lots of action under these circumstances he’s got to be doing something wrong.
The ending was definitely by a Japanese writer and I guess now I know why there isn’t an English edition. Taking responsibility by committing suicide might seem weird in translation, especially with both of the 片山s seeming understanding rather than appalled. I had a little bit of a spoiler when reading 晴美’s letter in the sense that I read some short stories from later in the series, so I already knew she would survive no matter what. By the time of the short stories it’s part of 晴美’s character description that she’s strong-willed and tough, but I didn’t feel like that side of her was shown in this book until the very end. And then it felt like it came out of the blue, in a way.
So before I left on my trip I started watching the 2012 TV adaptation of what I presume is the whole series of books. Only one episode in so far, but they massively play up his fear of women and blood and etc but also cast him with a guy that’s clearly 2012 Hot 
I don’t know how much it will hold for later in the show, but it did make me wonder if this is some repeated trope when it’s convenient and ‘forgotten’ when not.
Trying to type 今日 on my phone earlier today, I found out it’s already 令和４年?? How. It feels like it was only, like, 2 years ago or something.
I read ch 2-3 of 星だけ. I really like it so far.
lol apparently it was just the stranger’s instinct to kiss Sora when he was crying? He says he surprised himself too. But hey, Sora gets a free slice of cake with his coffee as apology! Also, 店長さん is bisexual; rather, gender doesn’t really matter to him. (I’d thought he was a barista, but it turns out he owns the café!)
We also meet another of Sora’s friends, 淳ちゃん. There’s no furigana even on names, so I’m assuming his name’s Jun, as “Atsushi-chan” is too hard to say and would just get shortened to あっちゃん. (That’s actually how I read it at first before going, “Wait, that would just get spelled out,” and remembering that 淳 is also read じゅん lol) The first friend, whom we met in ch 1, we learn is named Kane-yan. lol I keep thinking about one of his lines from ch 1: “That’s brutal, it’s the full course! No job, no girl, no money… Ah, if you failed your classes, wouldn’t it be perfect??” (Sora: “Hah?? No way, I’d cry.”) I kinda really like him.
Wow, just when I said there was zero furigana, a few pages later, 店長さん addresses his employee and we get furigana over her name (詩織), then he properly introduces himself to Sora as 遠野健吾, then Sora introduces himself as 悠木そら. Kengo calls him “Sora-kun,” and internally, Sora’s like, “‘Sora-kun’? Eh, whatever, it’s fine.”
At the beginning of ch 3, we finally get a proper introduction of Sora. Yuuki Sora, age 20, a second-year law student in university. He’s good at running and waking up easily (??) (得意なことは 走ること 寝起きがいいこと). His hobby is watching sports. He likes eating delicious foods.
They run into each other one night—it’s later than when Sora would usually go to the café, and it’s long closed by now—heading home, and Sora tries to call Kengo “店長さん,” but Kengo gets him to call him “Kengo-san” instead. It’s the middle of winter and the wind is super strong, and it’s caused the train line to be out of service—something about airborne objects carried by the strong winds and a fire breaking out—so Kengo, living close by, invites Sora to stay at his place. And he hasn’t thought about it much before, but Sora’s thinking about that kiss again, but he accepts anyway.
After showering and changing, they get to talking about stars, about the exceptionally bright shooting star Sora saw the other day which Kengo thinks must have been a bolide, which he’s only seen once before. And how Kengo’s favorite star is the black hole (which Sora didn’t realize was a type of star) and how lately he’s been really into dark matter, too. It seems he likes them because when he learns one thing, he finds he has more questions and it quickly becomes a big mystery. Because he doesn’t understand it, it’s scary, but at the same time, that just makes him want to learn more.
Now Kengo learns Sora’s age and major, and we and Sora learn that Kengo is 27. The age difference is a bit iffy, but eh. Apparently owning his own café is less his dream, and more because of his cousin.
On the news, they announce that, next spring, a new Japanese astronaut will begin a long-term stay on the International Space Station: Toono Kengo. Sora thinks it must be someone with the same name, and it’s amazing that it’s even spelled the same way, but Kengo acts a little closed-off and is like, “Wellp, time for bed, you still watching?” so, hm. I don’t know anything about being an astronaut so I dunno if it actually could be him or if it really is someone else who just so happens to have the exact same name as him, but something’s got him sensitive.
Oh ho ho. Oh ho HO.
After they turn in, Kengo in his bed and Sora on the couch, and Sora’s already drifted off, Kengo comes back in looking for his phone which he thinks he left on the couch. And of course Sora’s laying with his head on the side that Kengo had been sitting on, so when he wakes up, Kengo’s hovering right over him (“misleading,” he calls it, later), and of course they’re real close while Kengo searches and finally finds it. And after he leaves, Sora’s lying there with his heart pounding like crazy, thinking how he can’t sleep. Sounds like someone’s developing a crush～
I wanna read moooore, but I was tired after work and didn’t start reading until kinda late, and now it’s already time for shower and bed. I probably won’t finish it tomorrow either, but maybe Monday?
本日 (ほんじつ) [adverbial noun] today; this day. I think I already knew you might sometimes see this instead of 今日, but it was still kinda weird actually coming across it. Feels very formal. Which makes sense considering it was used in an intercom announcement of the train being out of use, which of course uses polite/formal language.
火球 (かきゅう) [noun] bolide. This also falls under the broader term 流星, but it’s a larger, brighter one that generally doesn’t completely burn up in the atmosphere.
同姓同名 (どうせいどうめい) [四字熟語] (having) the same family and given name
April 23 Home Post
I played some more ZTD! I’m definitely enjoying it so far; it’s been really doable which is nice. I’ve mostly been able to follow along at normal speed so yay! I’m still pretty early on so no real idea what’s going on yet but I’m curious to see 
April 23th (Calendar Post)
Was a busy day but I managed to get some reading done.
ゆるキャン△ => 26 pages (82 minutes)
夜カフェ => 10 pages (41 minutes)
Nice panel from today:
猫だ
I am not sure if this is a word I want to add to my SRS…
That indeed looks very impressive, thanks for sharing! Reminds me of some parts of Père Lachaise in Paris, one of my favorite cemeteries 
Oooh, nice! A Japanese person once recommended that book to me, and I have it on my 積読 pile ever since
If you like it, I will see about reading it as well in the near future.
April 24, Sun home post
Following up from yesterday, and as the last day of the week, I read Yuru Camp Ch.70-71 (which is actually a re-reading). Focusing on the vocabularies, and getting pronunciations without Furigana, I have too look up, at least a lot for place names. (And, one of which is unresolved - 清水、淸水（しみず、きよみず、せいすい、しょうず）) I need to look up a surname as well (各務原なでしこ).
I really want to go to the current chapter in Yuru Camp Discussion (Ch. 74). But while I can with enough stamina in a reasonable time (if I focus on vocabularies, as talked yesterday); I don’t really have time this evening, at least not much laptop access, or full learning setup.
I read through Happiness Ch.4 whole chapter really fast. Not really zero vocabularies’ lookup, but very few. (Like 6 or something.) It’s good, so that I can focus on comprehension.
I have taken a small Kanji test (and got a valuation number, but I feel it doesn’t matter much). I feel I should take Kanji separately and seriously; probably in WaniKani style on Anki, which I have done before plus level 1-60; but with my vocabulary list instead (from Yomichan / Akebi / Takoboto).
