📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

:tiger2: :books: Tanuki Den (aka Homepost): Date 20220426 :cherry_blossom: :raccoon:

Tanuki Scroll XXVI: ネコ岳の化けネコ :black_cat:

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.

You can never escape, the Nyaoutain


:seedling: Japanese found in the tall grass :seedling:

New Things

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

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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. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: I just have to order my copy of 雨と君 to make it official. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I finished “The Tortoise and the Hare” story. Here are my favorite pictures from when the hare sees he’s losing.

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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 :tada::birthday::balloon:

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Good luck on those exams!

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Summary post :bookmark:

April 26th :seedling:

・薬屋のひとりごと (61% → 63%)

Almost finished chapter 22. It’s already late, so sleep sleep time :zzz: Tomorrow will hopefully be not as busy.

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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.


Summary post

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.

Today's image is really obliquely a spoiler... I'm just playing it super safe. On the other hand, it's also a picture of cute cartoon cats of a sort, so I recommend it if you're not bothered by the vague implications it has towards this route's twist

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 :slightly_smiling_face: . 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.

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April 23rd-26th :cherry_blossom: :cat2: :cherry_blossom: (Days 23-26)

Home post

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 :cat2: :birthday: :cat2: 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! :cat2: :cat2: :cat2:

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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 :slight_smile:

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.

(Home Post)

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I’m looking at tomorrow’s book and it another one of the policeman stories. I love those! Ryou the officer is so funny! I might start it tonight if I have time. I’m looking forward to another good police story. I wonder what adventure he will have this time.

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Summary Post

April 26
Final Fantasy VII

Vocabulary
  • 旅費 = りょひ travelling expenses.
  • 解明 = かいめい elucidation, unravelling, understanding.
  • 旅先 = たびさき trip destination.
  • 変身 = へんしん metamorphosis, transformation.
  • 生き抜く = いきぬく to live through, to survive.
  • 女房 = にょうぼう (one’s own) wife.

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Summary Post

Day 26: April 26th
What did I read?: クマとたぬき
How much did I read?: 24 pages
How long did it take me?: 22 min

Finished this volume today~
Ignoring the stress pile that is my life in favor of tanuki + bear
Tell me this isn’t the cutest thing you’ve seen in your whole life

Dancing tanuki :sob:

Good words
  • 樹氷 (じゅひょう) - frost on trees; hoarfrost (on trees); frost-covered trees
  • 里山 (さとやま) - undeveloped woodland near populated area
  • 腰が抜ける (こしがぬける) - to be unable to stand; to be weak in the knees; to be paralyzed (e.g. with fear) (paralysed); to be dumbfounded
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April 26

Read another graded reader. I didn’t understand the key words but the gist is a girl visits Japan and has a good time thanks to round-glasses-wearing Ryoubo-san. You’re not suppose to look up definitions when doing tadoku; just keep going and using the pictures and context clues to guide you. So something I’ll probably have to revisit later. Maybe the necessary kanji will turn up in WK lessons.

Progress on Tadoku graded readers
44 / 44 level-zeros
12 / 12 level-ones
5 /10 level-twos
x / 18 level-threes

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April 26th (Calendar Post)

私の拳をうけとめて! => 64 pages

Kept getting interrupted in the middle of reading so I couldn’t properly measure my reading time >.<

More frowning-girl panels ^.^

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Some random vocabulary from today’s reading:

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April 26 :cherry_blossom: Home Post

Not a big reading day today; I was pretty busy and thus pretty tired by the time I could read, so no Zero Escape today. Instead I impulse-read the first page of ツルネ mostly just to check off the box :man_shrugging: Hopefully tomorrow will be more active!

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Home

Aaaaaughhhh I keep looking at different novels I want, but it takes me at least two months to get through a single one! Well, I could almost certainly finish 夜カフェ today but I’ve been holding back since I feel like I should keep pace with the club, but the ones that are more like N3 level or whatever, which is mostly what I’m interested in, take that long. I’ve only finished 2 novels so far and I’ve still got a bunch left, why am I looking at more, augh! Manga are fine since I can generally finish those in a week or less, but novels! I gotta increase my reading/comprehension speed first! This is torture! Not being able to read is torture! Augh, 活字中毒, indeed… 泣くなるぞ!

I read ch 6 and the 描き下ろし of 星だけが知ってる, finishing the manga! It’s so good, I love it.

This ch made me emotional (but then it doesn't really take much lol)

It starts out with a flashback to Kengo’s childhood. Ah, or rather, a dream. I thought this chapter would be from Kengo’s POV, then, like some stories do, but it seems it’ll switch off.

We meet one of Sora’s professors and learn that he’s red-green colorblind, and Sora says that someone he knows might be the same. I wonder if it’s Kengo. 1) It would make more sense plot-wise than if it’s one of his college friends or something, especially as this is the last chapter, and 2) you can’t become an astronaut if you have a vision impairment of any sort, can you? It would explain why he started acting weird when the announcement of a new Japanese astronaut joining the ISS crew was made: it’s not him but he wishes it was, but it’s impossible. (How would Sora know though? It’s not like there was any indication, unless I just missed it.)

Ahhh yeah the professor is talking about occupations you can’t have if you’re colorblind: aviation-related, driver, Japan Self-Defense Force, etc… Aaaaa and that night, Sora’s channel-surfing and happens upon part of an interview on the news with Astronaut Toono and thinks back to his conversation with the professor and some of the things Kengo has told him (about how when he sees kids trying their best he can’t help but root for them) and looks up the application requirements for being an astronaut, and you have to have normal color vision. Ah, my heart hurts.

So I finally looked up what 色検 is despite this not being the first chapter it’s shown up since Sora wants to take or get it, and as I thought, it’s an abbreviation. It’s short for 色彩検定. I tried looking it up but I still don’t understand what it is. But it’s apparently the reason why, when we switch back to Kengo’s POV, Shiori asks whether Sora knows about his colorblindness or not. Kengo isn’t particularly hiding it or anything, but he also hasn’t told him.

One night—it’s February now—Sora searches for the place where he first met Kengo, wanting to meet him, and he does. Even though there’s no meteor shower or anything today, they both felt like they wanted to come here. Apparently when Sora was little, he wanted to become an airplane. Not a pilot, but a plane lol. He sounds like he was a cute kid.

omg, they’re paralleling their first meeting. When they first met, Kengo asked why Sora was here, and he said that even if he asks, it’s not interesting, but then told him anyway. Here, Sora asks Kengo what he’d wanted to be when he was a kid, and Kengo says that, even if he asks, it’s not interesting, but he tells him anyway. For as long as he can remember, he’s always loved outer space. He was more interested in picture books about space than other toys, and he spent so much time out on the balcony with a telescope in winter that he’d catch cold (and then just stay inside and read his space books lol). When he was 8, a Japanese astronaut went up into space on a space shuttle, and ever since then, he’s wanted to be an astronaut himself, and he started checking out more books at the library and working hard learning math and science and English, all so that he could become an astronaut too when he was older. But then, when he was 10, he learned that he had congenital red-green colorblindness, and his dreams came crashing down. After he finishes his story, Sora leans in and kisses him, “because the 10-year-old Kengo-san was crying.” And it was his first time telling anyone about his childhood dream, too. Aaaaa my heart ♡♡♡

Not entirely sure what happens after that, something about asking if Sora kissing him means it’s all right if he doesn’t hold back from now on and admitting he’s probably liked him from the beginning. Then he says that he’s always at the shop, so Sora’s free to come or not come. Sora thinks that Kengo is really unfair, always leaving him an escape route. Even so… He goes back to the café (the next day, I’m assuming?) and sits at the counter again and confesses that he likes Kengo’s coffee the best. Kengo’s like, “Thank you. By the way, is it just my coffee? What about me?” / “Eh—” “…I don’t dislike you.” / “I like you, Sora-kun.” / “Eh— Wai— Kengo-san?!” lol they’re cute

There was zero smut in this one, not even in the 描き下ろし like there sometimes is (heck, they don’t even properly start dating until the 描き下ろし), and no gross tropes either, so there was zero mistake in my hasty purchase of this one! Anyway I’ll definitely be getting Furuya-sensei’s other books; the English version of ふたりのライオン had been on my wish list for years, and searching for the original on Amazon JP is how I found 星だけ, so I think I’ll get that one next time. It’s so hard to prioritize though lol, there are so many I wanna get, but I can’t get them all at once. (My problem with figuring out which one I wanna read next, too…)

Also, I’m putting off reading the rest of 極主夫道 because I only kept 2 & 3 out of the box (which of course is on the bottom of a stack of four…) because I hadn’t expected redoing my shelves to take so long. A lot of the binders on the bottom shelf have bits of old story ideas and planning, some of which never made it into my Google Docs, and going through that takes a different kind of energy than laying around reading or doing Duolingo lessons or playing solitaire on my phone or whatever, so I’ve barely made any progress and the book club’s started vol 4 already. I still have クールドジ男子 and バッテリー out, which is 12 vol total, so I’ve still got stuff to read outside of 2.43 and Satori Reader even with me holding back on buying new books for now. (Which isn’t exactly working, clearly, but especially with the urge being stronger now that I’m making more money, I’m still considering it a success. I coulda bought like 20 books by now but I’ve only gotten 10 recently!)

I read ch 4 of 夜カフェ, which was about 9.5 pages.

Short but under a cut since it's this week's reading:

God, I can just imagine how pleased Hanabi’s father looks after her mother tells her that she can quit her job if Hanabi doesn’t like it. That bastard, I wanna throttle him. I’m glad Hanabi told them straight off that that wasn’t why she was upset, and I’m glad they’re letting her stay with Aiko-san for the time being.

Some vocab of note:

肝に銘じる (きもにめいじる) [expression, 一] to be deeply impressed; to take to heart; to keep in mind
雑用 (ざつよう) [noun] chores; odd jobs; miscellaneous affairs
色覚異常 (しきかくいじょう) [noun] colorblindness; color-vision deficiency
本腰を入れる (ほんごしをいれる) [expression, 一] to set about in earnest; to put one’s back into something. This one’s marked as “sensitive,” for some reason.
波風を立てる (なみかぜをたてる) [expression, 一] to make trouble; to make waves; to cause discord

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Home post

I haven’t been reading much lately, but I’ve managed to read at least a little bit in Japanese (and Mandarin) every day. For novels I’m focusing on 冷たい密室と博士たち. I’ve kept up with my regular read-aloud sessions of 7SEEDS, ハイキュー, and ダンジョン飯 / 蟲師.

This reduced slate will probably be ongoing for a while, so I’ll cut out my manga volume a week goal. Death Note is first on the list when I bring that back.

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Day 25 :heavy_check_mark: :milk_glass::candy:

告白 ~2%
Candy and Cigarettes last 23 pages of vol.1

Day 26 :heavy_check_mark: :japanese_goblin:

ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 26 pages
佐賀のがばいばあちゃん (IBC), chapter 5 and 6

I had watched a movie called 告白 many years ago, and I remember enjoying it a lot - it was a twisted tale of revenge set in a school (as many Japanese stories tend to be). Recently I found out that the movie was actually based on a book, and that said book has won the Japan Booksellers’ Award, so this is what I’ll be reading next. I only managed a tiny 2% for now, but I’m hoping to pick up speed in the coming days. The format is rather intimidating, with pages chock-full of text, as all of it is indirect speech (I think by various of the story’s protagonists?). But if you disregard that, the writing itself isn’t more difficult that what I’ve encountered so far. The text density is definitely higher though.

Yesterday I read this week’s IBC section and then I was running short of time and energy, so I went for something easier and started ゲゲゲの鬼太郎. I had proposed it for the ABBC but it was judged to be too difficult. I still believe it’s way easier than, say, Takagi-san, even though the text density looks intimidating at first glance. It’s not though, there’s just increased hiragana that takes up more space, and the writing is generally as straightforward as they come.

There's even sometimes simple definitions of more "obscure" words in the margins:

I just love the attention to detail in the backgrounds


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And of course, this being a story about yokai and ghosts and monsters, there are also images like these (cartoon gore):

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It’s interesting that the “monsters” are portrayed as having lived a blissful, peaceful existence for thousands of years before humans appeared and drove them into hiding and danger of extinction, just like any other animal. The monsters have a gentle, polite speech, while the humans seem rougher in their speech and behaviour, sometimes even scarier in their intent. I only read the first chapter which features 鬼太郎’s birth, so I’m looking forward to the adventures he’ll have next. :smiley:

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I’m new to WaniKani (not to japanese) so I discovered this amazing challenge just now. Sadly I’m a little bit to late but I’ll try to do all remaining days .

I use mostly Satori Reader and try to read and translate some japanese Mangas I have here.

Apr
01 02 03
04 05 06 07 08 09 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 :white_check_mark: 28 :white_check_mark: 29 :white_check_mark: 30 :white_check_mark:
May
01 :white_check_mark:
02 :white_check_mark: 03 :white_check_mark: 04 :white_check_mark: 05 :white_check_mark: 06 :white_check_mark: 07 :white_check_mark: 08 :white_check_mark:
09 :white_check_mark: 10 :white_check_mark: 11 :white_check_mark: 12 13 :white_check_mark: 14 :white_check_mark: 15 :white_check_mark:
16 :white_check_mark: 17 :white_check_mark: 18 :white_check_mark: 19 :white_check_mark: 20 :white_check_mark: 21 22 :white_check_mark:
23 :white_check_mark: 24 :white_check_mark: 25 :white_check_mark: 26 :white_check_mark: 27 :white_check_mark: 28 :white_check_mark: 29 :white_check_mark:
30 :white_check_mark: 31 :white_check_mark:
[/quote]
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:tulip: Day 26 :tulip: :house:
Read: 終遠のヴィルシュ -Error:salvation-
Time: about 3 hours
Finished: 1 ending


Fully finished 終ヴィル!!! This is by far the hardest thing I’ve read thus far. A lot of setting specific vocab, scientific vocab, really complex kanji that are hard to look up, and some difficult grammar. There’s probably some parts that I wasn’t able to completely understand. I originally wasn’t planning to buy this one because I thought it would definitely be too hard for me but I saw a review where someone recommended it and listed their main points as 絶望、絶望、絶望、which made me so curious I had to pick it up. Apparently this game normally has a play time of around 55 hours. It was worth the long time though I enjoyed this game a lot, and I think I learned quite a bit through playing it, including a bunch of different ways to say dead bodies.

Final game thoughts (spoiler free)

If I had to describe this game I’d call it a dark sci-fi fantasy. More specifically it’s described as 「バッドエンド、悲愛エンドがメイン、運命と絶望のダークファンタジー。」Which after playing it is definitely accurate. The setting is the island of アルペシェール, where everyone dies by the time they reach the age of 23. Due to this it came to be called the country possessed by the god of death. The full story description is here if anyone’s interested. I really enjoyed this game. I’d say it’s my second favorite game that was released last year, and pretty high up there in my general list of favorites, but it’s definitely on the dark side, and as expected from the description there’s a lot of death. I really liked the art, the mysteries, and just the general 雰囲気. This game is split into four routes, and then the 三幕. Out of these the 三幕 was my favorite, I guessed part of the mystery early on but that just made me more interested in finding the rest out. This route also made me cry for like an hour straight (which to be fair I cry relatively easily at stories, but usually only like slightly tearing up.) A part I didn’t like as much was sometimes the more sci-fi parts made me think “I really don’t think that’s how that works,” but I don’t really place that much value on scientific accuracy when I play otome games. This game has a really interesting required play order (not really a spoiler but blurred in case someone wants to figure it out themself). In this game you have to play the bad ends (絶望エンド)of the first four routes to unlock the 三幕. When you finish the 三幕, it unlocks the 救済 ends for the first four routes. So you have to play through each character’s bad endings in a row to progress the game, which did get kind of depressing. Overall I’d recommend this game to people who like dark settings, mysteries, and don’t mind bad ends or otome games that don’t focus as much on romance.

New Vocab

喪う ​(うしなう)to lose (a loved one); to be bereaved of​ (didn’t know this could be written with this kanji)
退く ​(ひく)to move back; to draw back; to recede​ (this is the third reading of this I’ve seen recently)
皆無 ​(かいむ)nonexistent; nil; none; nothing (at all); bugger-all​
大半 ​(たいはん)majority; more than half; most (of) ​
謹んで ​(つつしんで)respectfully; humbly; reverently​
停滞 ​(ていたい)stagnation; tie-up; standstill; congestion; delay; accumulation; falling into arrears​
尽く ​ ​(ことごとく)altogether; entirely​​
生贄 ​(いけにえ)(living) sacrifice​
そぐう ​to be suitable; to be appropriate; to match​
授ける ​(さずける)to grant; to give; to confer; to award​
蠢く ​(うごめく)to wriggle; to squirm; to crawl like a worm​​
変異 ​(へんい)variation; rogue (something) ​
紅蓮 ​(ぐれん)bright red​
亡骸 ​(なきがら)remains; corpse; (dead) body​
因果関係 ​(いんがかんけい)consequence; causal relationship; nexus​​
死活問題 ​(しかつもんだい)matter of life or death; life-and-death problem​

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