April 3rd (Calendar Post)
私の拳をうけとめて! => 61 pages (84 minutes)
Only 3 chapters left in this manga!
Fun panel of the day:
ぐしゃぐしゃ
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Day 33 
告白 ~ 20-24%
ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 30 pages
In 告白 the switch of narrator has been a breath of fresh air so far as far as difficulty is concerned. The student does include actual dialogue once in a while, the sections are shorter, and the descriptions feel clearer. I also already know the current narrator’s name - the teacher’s name I didn’t learn until almost after she was done speaking. On the subject of names, the teacher made very specific reference to two students who she named A and B. I have no idea why she would do that, as her descriptions of them were so detailed that no classmate of theirs would be left in the dark as to their identity. The only one not knowing is the reader. Now the student does refer to A and B by name, but it’s still not clear who is A and who is B. On the other hand it seems there’s at least one character in the book who knows less than the reader, so that’s some comfort at least. 
I also read 30 pages of ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 - I don’t know how I always manage to leave chapters unfinished. They are quite long, and those with ねずみ男 tend to be wordier than others, but still. One of these days I’ll read one from start to finish. Probably.
The backgrounds continue to delight me, and the youkai are very cool, but the fact that the target audience is mainly schoolboys is painfully obvious at times. This story for example featured quite a lot of toilet humour.
Fun words and expressions from ゲゲゲの鬼太郎
口車に乗る - to fall for someone’s smooth talk, to be taken in (“get on the mouth car”?)
大船に乗る - to rest easy, to be in safe conditions (“board a big ship”)
話に乗る - to jump at the chance, to accept an offer, to show interest
美食家 - epicure, gourmet
天然記念物 - protected species, natural monument
イチャイチャ - flirting, making out
絶交 - breaking off a relationship
toilet related vocabulary (basic, but new to me)
大便 - feces, excrement (in contrast to 小便 - urine)
便器 - toilet bowl, urinal, bedpan
肛門 - anus
Nice panels
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Lately, I’m starting to view this as the big value of Wanikani because it makes it so much easier to look up words in dictionaries. That and also that I at least have a general idea of the meaning of a lot of kanji (even if it faded a lot for some of then) which so often helps to just guess the meaning of an unfamiliar word.
Welcome! And I just wanted to add that you can also get some graded readers for free on Free books – にほんごたどく and some of those include audio even as well!
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Day 33
Read another short story about chihuahua 花すけ
(I accidentally posted this is the “News reading challenge” topic, shows how tired I am nowadays )
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Continued with こんにちはウーフ today. One of the benefits of reading kids books is that the level of nonsense in them really tests your language skills. In today’s chapter, a baby bear was standing in a river, talking to a fox and a bird about whether he should be a bus driver, a cook or a mountain climber when he grows up and then play acting scenarios for each one. I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction from having understood it!
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Day 33 
Read: ジャックジャンヌー夏劇ー
Time: 6 minutes
Finished: 1 page
Started Neji’s story あらた森の蟲退治, and 1 page in my brain went nope. I think it’s a mix of starting reading too late today, and this story seeming like it’s going to be the hardest in the book. I learned the word 献木 (donating lumber to a shrine is what jisho said but it seems to be referring more to trees here) and then the story started going into detail on that in the second page and I couldn’t follow, my lumber knowledge is really lacking 
あした、リベンジしてみる。
Also may or may not have remembered that there’s a sale and coinback going on on bookwalker and added even more to my 積読 pile
New Vocab
望む （のぞむ）to see; to command (a view of) (first time seeing this meaning)
献木 （けんぼく）donating lumber to a shrine
牡丹 （ぼたん）tree peony (Paeonia suffruticosa); moutan
橘 （たちばな）tachibana orange (Citrus tachibana)
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I’d recommend checking out Satori reader as well! (It’s one of the things I most wish I’d known about from the very beginning.) And on tofugu.com they happened to just post a blog on graded readers as well.
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Tanuki Den (aka Homepost): Date 20220504 
Tanuki Scroll XXXIV: 宇摩志阿斯訶備比古遅神 
Today I read about one of the 別天津神「ことあまつかみ」who were the first five gods that came into existence according to Shinto beliefs. 宇摩志阿斯訶備比古遅神「うましあしかびひこぢのかみ」 was one of two gods who appeared slightly later than the first Three Deities of Creation ( 造化の三神「ぞうかのさんしん」).
I like it how the three creator gods appeared, made everything, and then just hid themselves away. Then these two others come along and sort of just exist and then go into hiding like the others. It’s theorised that Umashi represents coming into existence like a reed sprout, like how the ancestors of humans are believed to have come from the buds of reeds.
Japanese found in the tall grass
New Things
箇所「かしょ」ー Place; point; spot
文献「ぶんけん」ー Literature; document
国土「こくど」ー Territory; domain; realm
独神「ひとりがみ」ー Gods that came into being alone (as opposed to appearing in pairs like the next gods), came into existence without procreation, also the gods who go into hiding themselves away.
諸説「しょせつ」ー Various opinions/theories
神名「しんめい」ー Name of a god
出現「しゅつげん」ー Appearance; arrival
訓注「くんよみ ／ くんちゅう」ー An older way of writing 訓読み
名義「ぬいぎ」ー Name
神格化「しんかくか」ー Deification; apotheosis
ミクロネシアー (Federated States of) Micronesia
世界樹「せかいじゅ」ー The world tree; Yggdrasil
一方「いっぽう」ー On the other hand; the other way; one (of two); the other
New Kanji
舅「しゅうと」ー Father in law
騰「あが」ー Rising up; leaping up
@natarin, thanks again for the が-trick, it really is like magic!
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I’ve been reading the Graded Readers for this Challenge. You can see some of the pages in my posts.
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The Intermediate Book Club is looking for people who want to participate in reading the club’s next pick! And the best thing is, you can still have a say in what the next book (or manga, fwiw) will be 
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Played a few hours of Triangle Strategy today. That still means I only just finished the first mission, but I think it went quite well despite all the vocabulary that I still have to get familiar with. It’s also a lot of fun to listen to the voice acting (especially when I do manage to understand it on the first pass).
Some interesting words:
じゃじゃ馬 - in this case used in the tomboy sense
天下一品 and similarly 無二
火の粉
I also thought this expression was interesting:
泣く子も黙る - basically meaning “so strong and imposing that it will silence a crying child” (I would normally expect the opposite 
). The bandit leader used this expression to describe himself. 
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May 4th 
・薬屋のひとりごと (84% → 86%)
Finished chapter 28. It was short. Also had one sentence I can’t make sense of, I suspect it is a “my mom’s younger sister’s niece’s brother’s uncle” type of sentence.
現帝の東宮時代に生まれた子は一人。母親は東宮の乳姉弟であり、のちの淑妃である。
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Hahaha, funny sentence! That would be my father, for example, right? 
About your sentence, what confuses you in there? The であり does the same here as て-form usually does, that is it connects two sentence parts. (I have zero context but I read that as my mother was raised together with the crown prince and later became queen maybe?)
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Even with context I’m confused. Feels like there’s five different people in those two sentences, but maybe it is just three? I think it means something like “At the time when the current emperor was a crown prince, only one child was born. That child’s mother is the crown prince’s(?) foster sister, which is the 淑妃 (one of the wives).” I guess the confusing part is, who is the crown prince in that second sentence? And might be hard to know without having read the book, but also, since when did the 淑妃 have a child? Why is she a wife when she’s sibling with royal people??? Much bamboozle.
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Ah okay, I see. So it might actually help me to be context-free here 
Here is my deduction (which may still be totally off ^^)
現帝の東宮時代に生まれた子は一人。- At the time when the current emperor was a crown prince, only one child was born. I take this to mean: The current emperor was a single child.
母親は - for logistical reasons, this can’t be the foster sister and the mother at the same time, so it must be somebody else’s mother. My initial reflex was that it is the narrator’s mother because of the rather informal 母親. Also there doesn’t seem to be anybody else around whose mother she might be?
東宮 - I think this is the same dude as in the first sentence, the current emperor.
の乳姉弟であり、- this still refers to 母親, so she was the foster sister of the crown prince (so that he would have some company because he was an only child, see sentence 1 ^^)
のちの淑妃である - and this still refers to 母親 so she became one of the wives (sorry I guessed that wrong initially).
So it boils down to two people actually, maybe? (if we leave the narrator out of the equation)
EDIT: Nope, haha 
Nevermind.
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Once again, a little over 6000 characters, so that’s a definite victory. Today I’m just frustrated at things tangential to Japanese. Had a full blown migraine that messed up my not-Japanese plans yesterday evening, which is aggravating, and now today I’m still particularly having to not stare at the screen without a lot of breaks and stuff. I’ve taken a lot of measures to try to stop them, but I can tell they basically come at the same times when all the other symptoms of inflammation are flaring up elsewhere in my body, so I don’t think they’re just standard standalone migraines, in that sense. My other (post-covid…) problems are exacerbating them. Blahhh
But yeah, I read. The timing was good for me to tap out right after a sudden difficulty spike. See, you know how I said yesterday I mined 20 words in like barely over 1000 characters? Today it took me well over 4000 for the same thing. It truly does vary. Right at the end though, the character started telling some story about tanuki, and while I can follow it with enough effort, it just wears me out when I encounter these sentences packed with unknown words these days. Here’s a little sample:
それは世にもずる賢く、陰惨な狸の話だった。
夜の山の中でひっそりと登山隊に紛れ、メンバーに扮してはお尻を触ったり、物を盗んだり。
そうかと思えば、偽りの愛をささやいたり。
Each line has a few words I don’t know, and it was just getting dense feeling. I’ll tackle it tomorrow, refreshed. In fact, I’ll probably look at this later and go “oh I just need to remember a couple things; it’s fine.” That usually happens, cause I have the fatigue of reading up to this point on me right now. Also, the tanukis make a habit of touching butts, apparently.
No need to comment on that.
Culturally, today I learned about 肝試し (きもだめし), a sort of “test of courage” game, because there’s one being put on for the island’s children. I guess it’s sort of a common game to get kids to go somewhere scary, here it was a nighttime forest. I would’ve liked it a lot as a kid, I think.
That’s kind of a new word already, but I’ll also share 素知らぬ顔 (そしらぬかお), “pretending not to recognize.”
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May 4th!
Chapter 57 today. Lots of adorable panels of Yotsuba at the mall choosing her favourite teddy bear
I was hoping to read a second chapter, or at least something shorter, but actually I’m super tired so I’m going to go to bed early instead 
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Still obsessed with 13 sentinels and ignoring all of the books I should be reading, woops. I thought I might actually finish up the game today as I was very close to the end of all but one character path…but it turns out that one character is locked until endgame at least partly because he is major exposition boy. Lots of sci-fi explanations which are tougher than the other routes, so slower going. Today also contained a lot of fun gang interactions though, they are all so adorable I love them. Favourite non spoiler bit from today was my fave himbo Takatoshi continually calling the character who first gave him yakisoba pan ‘焼きそばパンの君’ with great reverence and that character being like ‘ummm…can you stop with that please’
I need to think what I’m going to do once I finish! I should get back to the other things I’m reading but I’ve been really enjoying playing games for a bit so tempted to try another. Might see how ridiculous fire emblem 3 houses is…
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The current emperor had one kid while he was still crown prince (that was mentioned way back at the beginning of the book, by the way). The mother was the 乳姉弟 (kids raised by the same 乳母, I don’t know how to say that in English; edit: seeing @NicoleIsEnough ’s answer, foster sister, also the kanji says she’s older) of the then crown prince (i.e. the current emperor), and later became the 淑妃.
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Day 34: May 4th
What did I read?: ダイロクセンス Vol 1
How much did I read?: 31 pages
How long did it take me?: 48 min
Omg this chapter was so cute I think the cat illustration was foreshadowing? lol
Today’s chapter was much less…murdery xD Much more mundane. Rui, Sumire, and her colleague Kido find a little girl crying over the death of her cat - she’s upset because she thinks did something to make it mad and want to leave her 
Rui kind of makes it worse at first xD But after being sort-of baited into it by Kido, he uses his power to see what the cat saw before it died. Then he basically “tricks” the girl into thinking he has ESP and can hear her cat from beyond the grave - the whole thing was very sweet, and he’s able to convince her that the cat did love her. In the end, she’s like, I wish I could hear the cat’s voice again, and Rui FREAKING MEOWS SO SHE’LL THINK IT’S THE CAT So adorable~ He acts like a brat sometimes but he’s not a bad kid
Good words
- 意味深 (いみしん) - with profound (often hidden) meaning; pregnant with significance; meaningful; suggestive; interesting (isn’t this delightfully logical)
- 人助け (ひとだすけ) - act of mercy; helping another person
- 社会科見学 (しゃかいかけんがく) - educational visit (e.g. by a class); educational field trip
- インチキ - fake; bogus; quack; sham; counterfeit
- 毛嫌い (けぎらい) - antipathy; prejudice
- どころか - far from; anything but; not at all
- エスパー - ESPer; one who has ESP (extrasensory perception)
- 超能力 (ちょうのうりょく) - extra-sensory perception; ESP; psi; psychic ability
- 渾身 (こんしん) - (using) one’s whole body; (putting in) all one’s efforts; (exerting) all one’s energies
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