April 25th!
I read chapter 55 of Yotsuba, which is the final chapter of Volume 8.
The page of her trying to get tabasco sauce out of the bottle was very relatable. 
I’m trying to decide whether to start the next volume straight away, or finish off one of the other non-bookclub books that I’m part way through first since I’m reading quite a lot of different things at the same time right now!
April 25
Final Fantasy VII
Day 25: April 25th
What did I read?: クマとたぬき
How much did I read?: 25 pages
How long did it take me?: 26 min
It’s winter time in the forest~
Which means:
Aha! I knew it had to have been a member of the Tanuki Cuteness Brigade xD I am enjoying it, thank you for the rec!
I started Book 13 in Level 0. It is “The Tortoise and the Hare” in Japanese. I read 11 pages where the hare is fast asleep under a big tree while the tortoise catches up and goes past him.
New Vocabulary:
びよーん boing (as in hopping)
うさぎ
兎 hare, rabbit
かめ
亀 turtle, tortoise
おそ
遅い slow
ようい
用意ドン Ready, go! (As in a race)
Day 26 / Calendar
As I’m already done with this week’s book clubs, I read some takagi-san to fill the time. Got it from 39% to 58%. This took… I’m not sure how much time, I kinda opened my stopper, stared at it for a while and then forgot to start it…
April 25 
Home Post
I played more Zero Escape this morning! Things are still absolutely wild. I tried to play more a little bit ago but my brain said no, so I tried reading something else and my brain still said no so I think we’re done for the day 
Tomorrow’s a new day!
Ahhh congrats, that’s super awesome!! 
Ah yes committment to the bit aw that sounds super cute though!
(Also I super relate on the whole VN vs books thing, every time I pick up a novel I’m just like “but video game has game2text… and voice acting” lmao, I definitely feel like having the lines basically read to me makes a big difference)
Pochettes!! AKA the things I only know from Animal Crossing and they’re the absolute cutest so obviously I wanted all of them 
It’s funny, I didn’t even think about this being an issue with twitter at all, haha, because most of the Japanese tweets on my feed are about wrestling, and context there is never an issue for me. Or at least, it’s roughly the same as English wrestling tweets. Usually wrestlers tweet about shows they just did, ongoing storylines, book/merch promotions, other wrestlers they’re friends with, etc., and the fan accounts I follow react to stuff that happens in the shows and other news.
So if you’re keyed into the same world that they are, the context is very straightforward. Even before I knew any Japanese, I could somewhat muddle through with autotranslate, haha. It’s fun because you’ll get Japanese fans tweeting about American wrestling, American fans tweeting about Japanese wrestling, people all around the world reacting at the same time to huge announcements, and Japanese-speaking, English-speaking, and Spanish-speaking wrestlers all interacting with each other with varying degrees of proficiency in the other languages.
So maybe the trick to making the most out of twitter is to pick a particular narrow field that you spend a lot of time with haha so that you’re reading and watching the same stuff that they are, and you therefore have a shared base of understanding to work from.
少年H
Read to the end of chapter 3, オトコ姉ちゃん
This book is wild stuff. It only just started and it’s already managed to be bizarre, hilarious, scary, and heartbreaking. I guess part of me assumed a book about a boy during WWII would be somewhat drab and educational, but it’s turning out to be a rollercoaster.
Along the same note, I’d recommend following fanartists of some media that you like, especially ones who draw comics. Short comics have really helped me learn a lot (especially conversational stuff and descriptions) and also improved my handwriting deciphering. 
You can also pick up typical sentence patterns that certain stereotypical characters use.
Also, because the content is so short, it’s easy to start and stop.
1-29
Started vol 4! It’s just about 200 pages. I had hoped to maybe finish this one by Thursday because Golden Week is nearly here and I’ll be busy, but I might not succeed. That’s alright. I’m on pace if I read the same number of pages every day. I’ll just be hella busy though this week, so I’ll try not to be hard on myself.
Augh, it’s difficult to catch up on sleep when your body refuses to fall asleep early yet still insists on waking early. Anyway, I read more in English than in Japanese today, but I did manage to read ch 5 of 星だけ.
We open up with Sora wondering why he hated it so much (hearing that Kengo’s dating Shiori) as he wakes up the next morning… at Kengo’s place. Apparently he didn’t make it all that far last night since he was still pretty drunk and when Kengo caught up to him, he brought him to his place and set him up on the couch again.
So Kengo and Shiori actually aren’t dating, it’s just that a year or so ago, there was a persistent customer after her so they started pretending, and people outside of the café staff don’t know. After Kengo asks him if he likes Shiori, Sora finally realizes what his feelings toward Kengo are!! Kengo realizes too and tries to kiss him, but Sora pushes him away and flees again. Yeah, he ain’t prepared to deal with that just yet. 早まった, indeed. Ah man.
No but Sora’s face!! When he realized, he tried to hide his face with the blanket, but Kengo pulled it away, and his expression!! I definitely don’t blame Kengo for trying to kiss him then, I’d wanna kiss him too.
Three weeks into the new year, Sora still hasn’t gone to the café because he’s been busy with tests and assignments, but he wants to drink Kengo’s coffee… but he knows that all of those are just excuses. He doesn’t want to see him because he still doesn’t know how to deal with his feelings (or, more probably, has been avoiding dealing with them), but he wants to see him because he likes him and likes spending time with him. Then that evening, Kengo’s waiting for him at the station entrance to give him a collection of past exam questions, but it’s half just pretext to see him. He asks him to come by the shop again and promises he won’t ambush him or anything again. (Ah ha, I’m pretty sure at least some part of him wants you to, though.)
敵わない (かなわない) [い-adjective] no match for. I’m pretty sure this was my first time seeing it in kanji. I kinda really feel like I shoulda guessed the reading since I do know the word, but I guess I’m just not at that level yet. Also, I never realized it was an adjective, although now that I think of it, it makes sense.
April 25th (Calendar Post)
私の拳をうけとめて! => 68 pages (96 minutes)
Some fun manga panels:
I like this eternally-frowning character
誰ー⁉
Interesting vocabulary I ran into today:
I didn’t read for…2 days? 3 days? I was traveling via train and scenery took precedence over reading on day 1 and utter exhaustion (from not being able to sleep on the train) on days 2 + 3. I did read a handful of pages (10ish?) of 遅刻してきた幽霊 today.
I’ve tried to catch up on the posts here, but as I have less time at the moment sorry for no individual replies!
April 25
ギリギリセーフ。Managed to read a level-two reader before clock struck midnight. That’s how Cinderella goes, right?
The story I read was about a Brazilian folk tale. A woman wants to meet the goddess of the moon so bad, she eventually mistakes the moon’s reflection in a lake for the goddess and drowns. The goddess then turns her into a type of water lily called “Victoria regia” or VIctoria amazonica. I imagine the plant had a different name pre-colonization, but that’s the name that was given in the story.
I also managed to finish my essay and schedule a lesson with my tutor to review it! Excited to check that off my list of MEXT application prep finally.
Progress on Tadoku graded readers
44 / 44 level-zeros
12 / 12 level-ones
4 /10 level-twos
x / 18 level-threes
Day 24 
Read: マグメル深海水族館 (4)
Time: 11 minutes
Finished: Chapter 15
Read: 夜カフェ
Time: 14 minutes
Finished: Chapter 4
Day 25
Read: マグメル深海水族館 (4)
Time: 21 minutes, 11 minutes, 14 minutes, 10 minutes, 3 minutes
Finished: Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20
Read: ジャックジャンヌー夏劇ー
Time: 27 minutes
Finished: 7 pages
Started the next Jack Jeanne short story 巣立ち, so far this one feels a lot more difficult there were a lot of words I didn’t know. Also finished volume 4 of マグメル, this volume had more background on some of the other workers at Mag Mell, and Koutarou helping a young boy who found some oarfish washed up on shore. Found out oarfish are called 竜宮の使い in Japanese which is much cooler than oarfish lol. Then a little at the end about the overarching story that really makes me wonder what that character is doing and where he could possibly be.
This volume had some really pretty chapter cover pages.
I really liked how the paneling was used to portray emotion here
Just a few this time because I have way too many.
ハダカイワシ lantern fish (any fish of family Myctophidae, esp. Watase’s lanternfish, Diaphus watasei) (naked sardine?)
竜宮の使い （リュウグウノツカイ）king of herrings (Regalecus glesne); oarfish; ribbonfish
テズルモズル basket star (any brittlestar of family Euryalina); basket fish
ミツマタヤリウオ Pacific blackdragon (Idiacanthus antrostomus) (this one looks pretty freaky)
コウモリダコ Vampire squid
塩分濃度 （えんぶんのうど）Salinity
既成概念 （きせいがいねん）stereotype; preconceived idea; preconceived notion
もれなく without omission; in full
仇 （あだ）resentment; enmity; grudge
やたら indiscriminately; blindly; at random; recklessly; thoughtlessly; excessively; profusely
Big same! Most of the Japanese accounts I follow on Twitter are making tokimeki memorial girls side 4 fancomics or talking about it and they are usually very accessible and fun cos I know the characters etc.
26th of April
Day 26
Read pages 30-34 of かがみの孤城, which took me an hour. Don’t really have much to say but I’m finally making some good progress again.
Days 16-21, 23-26 
Woah time goes fast!!
I did miss one day. There were two days were I barely read anything–just a paragraph–but I’m gonna give myself those because this isn’t a “read a lot everyday” challenge.
In this time, I have read
• Chapters 4 and 5 of 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん
• Only a couple more pages in 透明カメレオン
• took an easy day to read a little children’s picture book
Looks like I’ll be doing make-up day(s) at the end of this challenge! That is, unless I build the habit of reading everyday permanently like some people seem to have 
I need to constantly keep reminding myself of that 
Hey all! I have…not been reading every day. I went back to work post-covid and I almost miss the halcyon days of fever and coughing because I got a ton of reading done in that time! As opposed to now where I just feel tired and crappy all day and then go to sleep for 10 hours. I’m just about keeping on top of my SRS by doing no new lessons but that’s pretty much it. I had my first Japanese class in a month and made some very odd sentences because I kept forgetting simple words like house and year.
I was going to come in and here and say I’m bowing out and I’ll see you all in the summer challennge…but I think I’m going to give it one more go and start afresh from 1 May. Going to spend the next few days looking through the books I have and figuring out what would be a fun, easy, sustainable book to read over the next month.
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