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.
Tanuki Den (aka Homepost): Date 20220426 
Tanuki Scroll XXVI: ネコ岳の化けネコ 
Read today’s hyakumonogatari, which is about cats again, this time a whole mountain of cat.
A travelling merchant gets lost in the mountains, he hears a ニャー！as if from nowhere and follows it. But this is no normal cat, this is Nekodake, big bad ghost cat of the mountain realm. He finds a mansion in the middle of the mountain and asks to stay the night - but neither is he safe here, for it is a mansion of Nekodake’s cat-minions. They try to trick him into having a bath were the water is magic cat water and will turn him into a cat. Luckily one of the cats (a calico again!) recognises him and tells him to flee.
Japanese found in the tall grass
本格的「ほんかくてき」ー Genuine; Authentic; Real
親玉「おやだま」ー Boss; Head
Places
阿蘇山「あそざん」ー Mt. Aso, Kumamoto prefecture
I updated my brand new study log - not sure if I should cross-post? cause I want to share with you all of course. I’ll give it a try and blur the review, it doesn’t really have spoilers or anything, but just in case.
じゃーん！
Edit to add a reply:
Aww, it warms my heart to be referred to as a member of the Tanuki Cuteness Brigade. 
I just have to order my copy of 雨と君 to make it official. 
I finished “The Tortoise and the Hare” story. Here are my favorite pictures from when the hare sees he’s losing.
Hi all, I’m just dropping by to say I’m alive but not reading Japanese every day. I’m studying for my exams 10-11 hours per day, + ~1 hour of SRS so I don’t read unless I feel that is how I want to relax, which it usually isn’t.
Anyway, happy birthday to everyone I’ve missed 
Good luck on those exams!
April 26th
・薬屋のひとりごと (61% → 63%)
Almost finished chapter 22. It’s already late, so sleep sleep time 
Tomorrow will hopefully be not as busy.
I love these summaries; you read some of the most amusing sounding things there!
Haha, that’s great too. I just love when people post pictures here.
I knew I’d be a little shorter on time today, so I tried to stay focused and work through, and I managed 7000 characters in what I’m pretty sure was less than 2 hours. 1:45 maybe? Maybe only 1:30. I should try paying attention.
But hey, today was really good! I’m not fully through Kamome’s route but the big turning point hit and I think I see what it’s doing now. I actually feel really silly for not expecting some of this, but I dunno, I’ve never been one to make big predictions about where most media is going. I’m usually just settled in for the ride and putting my attention on how it’s conveying the stuff it’s currently doing. In a sense, a lot of what I think is up now was foreshadowed well. I think I like this route a lot.
I’m starting to feel noticeably a lot better at reading again. I think I’m finally going through my next big “wait, reading is easier” thing that hits every month or two. Some lines are just coming to me right away that would’ve been unthinkable before, actually very little was particularly hard today. About the only sentence I really needed to spend a moment puzzling through was (also a moderate Kamome route spoiler) “入り江には、海賊船ではなく、海賊船のなり損ないみたいな壊れた帆船があった。” And that’s primarily just because I didn’t know about 損なう’s use as an aux verb.
Much appreciation to the read every day challenge for keeping me focused 
. If I’m as close to the end of this one as I think I am, I’m rather pleased with how I’m starting to move through this VN quicker. I started this route only 6 days ago.
Oh yeah, cool new word. 手品 (てじな), magic trick/sleight of hand/etc.
(Days 23-26)
The deadline is a thing of the past, I managed to submit a somewhat reasonable report. I’ve continued reading 小さな闇 on the 23rd and 24th. And I had read an NHK news article today. As for yesterday (the 25th) - I literally have no recolection of yesterday… That all-nighter really messed me up, man am I tired.
I’ve noticed a lot of birthday wishes as I was scrolling through the thread, catching up on what everyone’s been up to - so Happy (belated) Birthday to the peeps I missed Hope you had wonderful days~
@dunlewy & @NicoleIsEnough Had to do some googling again, and damn! I think I had found a new obsession - learning about old cemeteries. But honestly, I don’t think we have anything even remotely as cool back at home so not only have I not seen something like this before, I didn’t even know they existed. They look like some miniature, grotesque cities. I can’t stop looking at them.
Damn, that sounds tough - bestest of luck with the exams!
April 26th!
Today I read a bit of 鋼の錬金術師 with a friend. We read 5 pages, finishing off the first chapter. We decided to move on to something else for our next call and settled on the tsubasa bunko edition of 君の名は, which should be fun 
I also read a few more pages of ふしぎねこのきゅーちゃん, which is very cute and wholesome.
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