Ok well, this is enough of a habit that I feel bad for not doing it so eventually I summoned up what energy I could to keep reading. Wasn’t going to update any further after venting earlier, but I came across something that absolutely must be shared.
猫の額 (ねこのひたい) - an idiom meaning tiny area, literally “cat’s forehead.” I find all of the cat related terms adorable and couldn’t go without sharing it with someone. 
Day 28 / Calendar
So when I said that I probably won’t finish Takagi-san today… Well, knowing my busy schedule tomorrow, I did some night reading and I actually finished it. This is mostly thanks to the 6 or so pages at the end that were irrelevant.
This makes the first book I’ve ever completed in Japanese, feels nice. I need to update my home post with my next reading.
Day 27: April 27th
What did I read?: ダイロクセンス Vol 1
How much did I read?: 16 pages
How long did it take me?: 28 min
Decided to pick this up, literally because I saw that it had furigana and I didn’t feel like trying that hard for kanji today 
I bought this originally because something else I bought had a little flyer for it and I liked the art. Do I remember what the premise of it is? No. Do I remember literally anything about it? No. Could I figure this out by reading the back or a synopsis or something? Probably, but I’m just going to let myself be surprised So far, it’s pretty fun.
The main character, Sumire, is a detective - she broke her colleague’s extremely expensive camera during a police chase, so now she’s on the hook for replacing it. Luckily, wouldn’t you know it, the mall is having a 知恵の輪 contest that day where the prize is the exact camera she’s looking for! So she enters that, and she starts accidentally winning it because she’s just breaking the puzzles apart with her freaking man strength instead of solving them (For some reason, the competition decides that this is a valid way to win) Her mysterious kid rival (Rui) is not happy about this because he wants the pretty purple camera that matches his eyes. Who will win the extremely expensive camera? :o I’ll find out…tomorrow, because I’m tired xD
I read this a couple challenges ago and I freaking loved it, would recommend.
I actually have 星だけが知ってる sitting on my shelf as well so glad to hear it’s good 
I literally yawned while reading this sentence, what is this sorcery 
April 27
Tonight’s graded reader is a folktale from the Phillippines. A mother asks her slothful （怠け者）son to sell pots in the marketplace and buy some crabs with the profits 
The son is able to buy the crabs but on the way home, he stops to play in a nearby lake. He tells the crabs to go the rest of the way home, but of course they never arrive. His mother cries 笑
I also met with my tutor and we were able to revise the rest of my essay. It feels good to be done with that. Now if only this year’s application would come out so I can apply!
In an incredible coincidence, when I mentioned that it’s almost Golden Week as a lead-in for saying my birthday is on Friday (the start of Golden Week), my tutor says her birthday is on Friday!!! I couldn’t believe it. Out of all the teachers on iTalki, I pick the one with the same birthday as me 
何という愚然
Progress on Tadoku graded readers
44 / 44 level-zeros
12 / 12 level-ones
6 /10 level-twos
x / 18 level-threes
Mrgh, there’s no way to tell Amazon not to rec you something, is there. Because it’s been suggesting みなと商事コインランドリー pretty much since I started adding BL manga to my list, and I finally checked it out, and it’s. middle-aged man x high school student. Absolutely not. I may like age differences, but only when both parties are adults (and even then, it depends on the age of the younger party).
Also! Vol 1 of 海辺のカフカ arrived today! The second is supposed to be arriving in a couple weeks or so. So I’m prepared for when that book club starts. It’s also another one that has a built-in ribbon bookmark, which I’m happy about.
Anyway, my brain was kinda bleh today, so I only read a few pages of クールドジ男子.
恥ずい (はずい) [い-adjective] colloquial abbreviation of 恥ずかしい “embarrassing”
羞恥心 (しゅうちしん) [noun] shyness; shame
April 27 
Home Post
Decent reading day; I played some ZTD and read a few more pages of ツルネ! I saw the anime way back before I’d even started studying Japanese and I liked it well enough, but I heard the books were better 
The little prologue section was pretty poetic so hard to say how it’ll actually go, but we shall see!
Book 14 of Set 0, Volumn 3. It’s Christmas and Officer Ryou is out again looking for a gift. He sees a Santa with a HUGE bag and offers to help. But Santa runs off as Ryou tries to help carry the bag, and Ryou tears the sleeve off Santa’s jacket. He decides then that Santa is a thief and not a Santa at all.
Above is my favorite picture so far.
April 27th (Calendar Post)
私の拳をうけとめて! => 58 pages (84 minutes)
A couple fun panels from today:
なななナイナイ!
Didn’t run into any particularly interesting vocabulary this time.
Day 26:
日本語: I read some of 冷たい密室と博士たち.
中国語: I read an intermediate entry on Mandarin Bean, one page of 骑士幻想夜, and a bit of 孩子最爱读的中国民间故事.
Day 27 
告白 ~ 2% to 5%
ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 27 pages
I’m feeling 告白 is harder than, for example, 三毛猫ホームズの推理 I just read, although Natively suggests otherwise (31 for the former, 33 for the latter). The difficulty is not so much in the language. It’s in the continuous wall of text, but more importantly, in that the text seems to be a continuous stream of consciousness, jumping from one thing to another, from milk and its effect on growing bodies to how the narrator came to be a teacher, to her decision to quit, to a famous teacher at another school and his life before that, to the sacredness of a teacher’s job, to malicious pranks played by some students, etc etc. This constant change of subject means I have to be constantly alert because she may be referring to something else than I what I thought she was, and the fact that I haven’t still figured out whether she is speaking to someone in particular (to her students maybe?) or just thinking in her head doesn’t help either. Sentences in quotes are interjected here and there, as if someone is answering or asking her something in relation to what she’s saying, but this may still be in her head, or it may not. It’s not clear to me yet.
All that said, I’m liking how there’s already a slightly uncomfortable feeling as this stream of consciousness progresses. It starts innocently enough, then you are gradually starting to get the sense that there’s more to this story than just a teacher thinking aloud on the joys and grievances of the job.
Also read 27 pages of ゲゲゲの鬼太郎. This is easy enough that I can casually read before bed when I’m already tired, but because of that, I tend to get sleepy before I can finish a chapter. This one started with a market seller selling a cactus to someone who subsequently disappears. Of course, youkai are involved, and 鬼太郎 with his eyeball-for-a-father are called by a bug to investigate. Fun, and @MissDagger might be relieved to know that the gore is virtually non-existent in this chapter (at least if you ignore the -honestly rather cute- ever present eyeball/father figure).
(I just hope it’s not a cockroach. It is, isn’t it?)
Edit: Forgot to add interesting vocab from 告白:
呼び捨てにする - to address someone without using a title suffix (like -san)
ため口 - casual speech, peer language, informal language
性同一性障害 - gender dysphoria
情緒不安定 - emotional instability
Spoilered because it may be sensitive: おかま - male homosexual (among other meanings) - I don’t know how sensitive/derogatory this word may be, from (minimal) context it’s probably derogatory but not too bad?
Edit 2: I keep forgetting stuff… I’m not sure what I’m looking at here. Any ideas? For context, 鬼太郎 enters a house, sees this, and comments there’s no one there.
Who what where when
Day 27 
Read: ジャックジャンヌー夏劇ー
Time: 50 minutes
Finished:18 pages
Finished Mitsuki’s short story 巣立ち。I struggled a lot with the beginning of this story but reading the rest felt really smooth today, I’m not sure if it was just more vocab I know or if I just got more sucked into the story. I liked this one a lot, but it was pretty sad for a lot of it. This is the first story that actually had a scene that was in the game as well, but from Mitsuki’s perspective and it gave a lot of background into his home situation. Poor Mitsuki 
緻密 （ちみつ）minute; fine; delicate; accurate; precise; elaborate
億劫 （おっくう）troublesome; bothersome; tiresome; annoying
追い抜く （おいぬく）to surpass; to outstrip; to outdistance; to outsail
否応なく （いやおうなく）whether one wants to or not; without choice
躍起 （やっき）desperate; frantic; excited; worked up; heated; eager
報復 （ほうふく）retaliation; revenge; reprisal; retribution
貶す （けなす）to speak ill of; to disparage
尊厳 （そんげん）dignity; majesty; sanctity
粉々 （こなごな）in very small pieces
たりとも (not) even; (not) any
薄紅 （うすべに）light pink; light crimson
How in-depth are these historical explanations, out of curiosity?
I usually post in the 多読 thread instead of here, but since we talked about LGBT related seinen manga here, I think it’s more relevant 
So, today I read おかえりアリス 1. It was free to keep recently (something I noticed thanks to the freebie thread while looking for the “LGBT themes” tag), and when I checked it out, the blurb said it was by the same author as ハピネス. I don’t know anything about ハピネス either, but it has a book club here, so I thought why not.
Weeeeeeelllll, if I had to describe おかえりアリス in a few words, I guess I’d go for grimdark 不可解なぼくのすべてを.
We get a fem presenting non-binary character (Kei) and the MC (Youhei) is your average cis-het high school boy. (Well, the equivalent isn’t quite average in 不可解なぼくのすべてを, but anyway).
Kei, Youhei, and the girl Youhei likes are all childhood friends, but Kei had to move away for a few years, and came back after transition. The thing is that Kei acts super creepy, all the time, sexually harassing both MC and the girl MC is in love with, and uses their old friendship to get away with it.
I think the worst part was when Kei invited Youhei to their place to help unpacking, as they had just moved back in. I had a horrible feeling about and sure enough Kei “jokingly” makes a sexual assault attempt on Youhei. Then they go
The hand position is because (you probably don’t want to know) they tried to grab his groin.
Now, Youhei is also creepy in his own way. I don’t know if that’s supposed to make it better? Or maybe it’s the fact that his body reacts positively to Kei’s “advances” (that’s absolutely not equivalent to enthusiastic consent in my book and, in fact, Youhei definitely doesn’t look enthusiastic).
I’m not sure how I feel about this series. It does have the (negatively) fascinating aspect of watching a train wreck in slow motion. Also, maybe everyone somehow ends up happy in the end? At the same time, I feel like I am probably better off not reading any further.
If there’s anyone reading ハピネス (or even better おかえりアリス), what do you think of the author’s style? Is there any chance things do get better?
I’ve only read the first volume of ハピネス and things develop very slowly indeed, so I don’t think I can have a rounded opinion on the author’s style yet, but I don’t think he goes for wholesome, and I wouldn’t expect things to get better (although I couldn’t guess how much worse they’d get either.) So far we have had (ハピネス volume 1 spoilers and possible triggers?) a masturbation scene triggered by a panty shot, unrelated to anything in the plot so far, an assault that looked very much sexual (although it was actually triggered by thirst for blood) which was waved off by the almost-victim as something normal and maybe even welcome, and vampiric instincts being awakened by period blood. Also bullying, and some physical violence. And friendships that seem about to go sour. All in all, anything but “happiness”.
Well, I guess I am starting to see a pattern here
I guess it’s wiser for me to drop it for now.
It looks like an old, disheveled kamado… Is my only guess!
28th of April
Day 28
Read pages 38 and 39 of かがみの孤城. Again, fairly straightforward and easy to follow. I guess it was all the flashing back and forth between past and present that messed me up so much.
Seems like page 40 is where things get interesting/sad. I’m very tired and want to wake up early tomorrow to try flying my new camera drone!! so I’ll end it here for today and hopefully read a few more pages tomorrow.
Thank you, yes, I can (sort of) see it now!
Tanuki Den (aka Homepost): Date 20220428 
Tanuki Scroll XXVIII: 橿原神宮について 
I had planned to read some of the origin story about Emperor Jimmu「神武天皇」 today, but ended up reading about the shrine where he was said to have ascended the throne: Kashihara Shrine「橿原神宮」.
Which leads into two problems I’ve been having with reading (well, not really problems, just inconveniences).
Anyway, Emperor Jimmu is Japan’s legendary first emperor, while his existence is historically debateable (I mean it’s claimed he lived to 126/127), I always like these origin stories and find them interesting. I suppose it’s a bit like the King Arthur legends, he probably existed as a person at some point and in some form, but his exploits got exaggerated and altered over the years.
Kashihara shrine, located in Kashihara, Nara Prefecture, is the place where Emperor Jimmu supposedly ascended the throne in 660BCE.
Japanese found in the tall grass
絶する「ぜっする」ー To exceed by a lot; to surpass greatly
苦難「くなん」ー Hardship; suffering
天孫「てんそん」ー Descendant of a god
聖徳「せいとく」ー Holy virtue; heavenly virtue
Places
橿原「かしはら」ー Kashihara, Nara prefecture
畝傍山「うねびやま」ー Mt. Unebi
People
瓊瓊杵尊「ににぎのもこと」ー Grandson of Amaterasu and great grandfather of Emperor Jimmu
(there were a lot more historical names in this article, but I got pretty lost with them all)
