Honestly, judging by the level of what you usually post, I’m sure you’d do completely fine when you decide to jump on it 
. And yes, I remember the Spanish localisation being absolutely terrible. I’m not entirely sure, but it feels like it was a localisation from the English version, and if you say the English one was already bad, then twice as terrible then.
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The trick there is I’m exclusively reading things in formats where I can get instant lookups though, haha.
Nah I could possibly fumble through and understand enough – I recently dipped my toes into playing another PS1 RPG I loved in my youth, Star Ocean: The Second Story (the PSP remake cause I liked the idea of added Japanese voices). And in the first couple hours I was doing pretty decently, though I do remember it pretty well. It had a similarly awkward translation originally, though I think the PSP version fixed it up a bit. I’ve gotten started on far, far too many Japanese projects I need to follow through on some day…
I was actually reading a little on the Spanish localization just now and yeah, wow, that’s on a whole other level. The English gets clowned on for lines like “this guy are sick” but it’s mostly just very unnatural and stilted. Though there’s an instance with an early boss where there was no care for text parsing or helpful conjunction so you get two lines sequentially that tell you to do the opposite of what you should:
“Attack when it’s tail’s up”
“It’s gonna counterattack with it’s laser”
Which is meant to be, like “IF you attack when it’s tail is up…” but most people end up parsing that as a direction to attack when the tail is up, because of the counterattack.
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Naturally I was interested and googled: 「こちとら」の意味や使い方は？例文や類語を元広報紙編集者が解説！ - ページ 2 / 4 - Study-Z ドラゴン桜と学ぶWebマガジン
「こちとら」は多くは男性が使う言葉です。しかしSNSなど相手に面と向かって話すことのない場面では、女性でも時として「こちとら」を使う場面も見受けられます。どちらかというと喧嘩腰で啖呵を切る場面で多く使われますから、女性が面と向かって使うことはあまりないでしょう。
So it’s mostly dudes (unless online) and for lack of a better translation on my part, “them’s fightin’ words”.
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Home post
\huge\color{ #D2B4DE}\mathrm{🍀Day 1🍀}
\huge\color{ #D2B4DE}\mathrm{🍀Day 1🍀}
\small \color{ #EAF2F8}\mathrm{★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★}
Ah, it’s good to be back! I translated one page of よつばと！ today 
Thats about what I’ll be able to do most days, due to uni being a priority. I’ll go all in on reading for the summer challenge tho 
\small \color{ #EAF2F8}\mathrm{★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★}
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April 1st!
I read Volume 5, Chapter 8 of Teasing Master Takagi-san today. It was a really sweet chapter - possibly my favourite one so far in this volume.
There were only a handful of words I didn’t know, and most of those I could work out from the context, though I checked a dictionary just to make sure.
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home post April 1
Today I spent more time book hunting than actually reading 
This is technically mostly unrelated to Japanese but there’s a speculative fiction book bingo challenge going on that I want to take part in for fun/the heck of it (kind of a community event - the idea is that everyone reads a bunch of books that fit specific prompts picked by the bingo master and then you get to talk about all the cool books you found and if you complete a bingo card you win 
)
I want to attempt filling a few of the fields with Japanese books (just because; also 2 birds one stone and all) so I searched a bit for things that I would like to read that also fit a category.
What I’ve come up with so far:
死神の精度 by 伊坂 幸太郎
This seems to be a bunch of (loosely connected?) short stories about a Death God visiting some humans that are marked for death to then decide if they should actually die. Synopsis is a bit vague but it has good reviews & according to some I skimmed this is mostly light hearted with a lot of humor and heart. I’m pretty intrigued.
かがみの孤城
Everyone is apparently reading (and loving) this, and there’s still a book club going on…
ナミヤ雑貨店の奇蹟 by 東野 圭吾
I’ve had this one my list for a while.
Seems to be a really heartfelt and mystical story about 
humanity and connections between people. Plot seems to be a bunch of delinquents giving other people advice through time travel shenanigans (?). Unfortunately no audiobook though (my poor listening skills)
Decisions 
… then it became too late for me to want to actually start anything new so I gave up for today and just continued my current series NO. 6 for a bit. Might still play some 999 if my brain is awake enough. Haven’t done that in a couple of days and I kinda miss it 
Oh no, I hope you feel better soon!
I feel mildly attacked by that statement 
officer, I would like to file a report
34 Likes
april 1 home post
I started on 夜カフェ today! I know I’m a bit behind the club, but I wanted to wait until the beginning of the challenge so I could start with something new. So far this book seems to be just the right level for me, which is nice b/c this is my first non-manga book and I was a little worried it would be too difficult. Although I’m not very far into it, so hopefully I’m not underestimating the difficulty too much based on just the beginning which i have done several times in the past
Also, with all the talk of Bookmeter earlier I decided to make an account (that was my reading practice for yesterday lol). I’ll probably still primarily use Natively for now but I’m giving Bookmeter a try for this challenge
34 Likes
DAY 1- APRIL 1
Completely ignoring what I was considering reading originally, I started volume one of 異世界食堂 (manga not light novels) because I really love that anime too.
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D̶o̶e̶s̶n̶’t̶ y̶o̶u̶r̶ t̶h̶r̶o̶a̶t̶ h̶u̶r̶t̶ b̶y̶ t̶h̶e̶ t̶i̶m̶e̶ y̶o̶u̶ f̶i̶n̶i̶s̶h̶ a̶ b̶o̶o̶k̶?̶ M̶y̶ t̶h̶r̶o̶a̶t̶ i̶s̶ i̶t̶c̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ j̶u̶s̶t̶ t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ o̶f̶ h̶a̶v̶i̶n̶g̶ t̶o̶ u̶s̶e̶ m̶y̶ v̶o̶i̶c̶e̶ w̶h̶i̶l̶e̶ r̶e̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶.
I was going to say that and then I googled ‘subvocalization’. I was under the impression that people were reading aloud but in an inaudible voice but Wikipedia says that it’s an internal voice that people hear when reading.
I do this too except when I watch visual media based on books before or after reading the books. Then the voice may change to that of the actors’.
I had to look up this kanji and saw that one of its forms is テキトー. Thanks to you, I’ve finally found the meaning of that word (テキトー) I kept seeing in Japanese media and couldn’t find no matter how I searched.
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Day 1: April 1st
What did I read?: ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 Vol 2
How much did I read?: 4 pages
How long did it take me?: 32 min
So, I did “graze” a bit on some different things before I started in on this, and something cool that I learned about myself from doing that is that I can…actually read? Without…looking at a dictionary every 5 seconds? Which I feel like I should have known, but it was not really something I expected for some reason xD I was pretty amazed by how much I could get. I was capable of skim reading in Japanese and that’s pretty cool man 
Anyway, I landed on a bit of Zenitendou Volume 2 for today. It’s been sitting on my shelf since whenever the book club finished the first volume of Zenitendou (…jeez, was that really almost 3 years ago? 
) Was this what I expected to want to read today? No xD Was it something I enjoyed reading, yes! Will I read it again tomorrow, maybe! lol
Good words and grammary things
- ぬいつける - to sew on
- マント - mantle; cloak; manteau
- すっぽり - entirely; completely
- それなり - in itself; as it is; in its own way; as suits the occasion
- 足どり (あしどり) - gait; walk; stride; pace; step; manner of walking
- ばさばさ - rustling; flapping; fluttering
- ちらり - fleeting (glimpse, glance, etc.)
- すりぬける - to slip through (a crowd); to weave through (e.g. traffic); to pass through; to make one’s way through
- しわがれる - to become hoarse
- より - learned a new usage of this: “from” (as in, something being delivered from another shop)
- ほんの気持ち - small token of one’s sentiments (this is a cute word :3)
- 怪盗 (かいとう) - mysterious thief; phantom thief
- こそどろ - sneak thief; petty thief; cat burglar
- せせこましい - fussy; narrow-minded
- ののしる - to abuse (verbally); to curse at; to shout abuse at; to speak ill of
- 空き巣 (あきす) - burglary (of an empty house); burglar (who targets empty houses); sneak thief; prowler
- 万引き (まんびき) - shoplifting; shoplifter
- ならでは - distinctive of; characteristic of; uniquely applying to; special to
- 私服警官 (しふくけいかん) - plainclothes police officer
Nooo, sorry to hear that, hope you feel better soon! 
Aha! So you’re the cat 
34 Likes
April 1 Home Post
So it begins!! Today I played some more VLR, surprising absolutely no one. It really is wild comparing my reading experiences now with the beginning of the winter challenge, I’m in such a different place Growth!
Obligatory VLR things
So I kind of finished another route today? It was one of the “to be continued” ones that I unlocked the continuation of, at least until it ended in another “to be continued”
But yeah things are getting wild! I’m starting to get a little bit of a sense of the underlying mechanics of the situation, but definitely only a little bit lmao. Mysteries still abound for sure. But for sure time is wacky, the whole “different routes” thing is actually just happening which is really interesting. And maybe I’m the center of it? Very intriguing
I’m starting on the last of the three main branches to get some info in that direction, so we’re making real progress! I still have multiple endings left within all of the branches obviously, but we’re getting there. I will find out what happens
All in all a pretty good first day! I’m glad to read everyone’s update posts again, it’s always tons of fun
Oooooh sold, I’ll have to check it out sometime
Oh no that’s so rough, I hope you feel better 
stay safe!
Definitely seconded, I think it just varies from person to person! I know I could never really motivate myself to stick with “easy” things, but stuff way above my level that I thought was cool? Hell yeah it totally works!
Yayyyy, that’s super exciting!! The best feeling I’m sure 
32 Likes
I read act 12-13 of 舞台に咲け! today, finishing vol 2! Now I gotta wait for the summer for vol 3 to be released… Man, I can’t wait to learn more about Tsumugi and his past with Imari! But until then, I gotta figure out if I wanna read バッテリー, クールドジ男子, or GREEN first. Decisions, decisions…
Yesterday I finished the prologue of 2.43 清陰高校男子バレー部 代表決定戦編 (a.k.a second season, renamed and split into two volumes), so I started fresh with ch 1 笑うキングと泣き虫ジャック today. My goal is to read the whole of this first volume during this challenge, so I’ve got 257 pages to read in 61 days! That’s only 4 pages a day—totally doable. Today I got off to a good start right on track with just over 4 pages, the entirety of ch 1-1. Just 253 pages to go!
And now I ramble about 2.43 like the obsessed fanboy I am. Will this happen every day? We shall see. But probably.
Speaking of “fanboy”… Is there even a gender-neutral term that’s on the same level as “fanboy” and “fangirl”? Yeah, there’s “fan,” but it just doesn’t have the same feeling. It ain’t strong enough. Maybe I could just go with 大ファン, at least on here… But I digress.
It did not start where I expected it to, but it kinda fits with the first season and the prologue lol. Right off the bat, we get that ch 1 is from Ochi’s POV, which I’m pleasantly surprised about! I was expecting Subaru. Subaru’s more the main character of Fukuhou (well, he’s their captain, king, and ace, so that’s not surprising lol), but also Subaru’s the 笑うキング and Ochi the 泣き虫ジャック in the title. He’s the second listed, and you’d kinda think the POV character would be the first? Anyway, I love Ochi, so I’m happy this is his POV. (I love all the characters, but, well. Also Ochi is very gender. He’s my new icon.) (I have a feeling we’ll get another Fukuhou-POV chapter later and it’ll be from Subaru’s.) Then, part 1 is called VICTORY CEREMONY, and their introductory ep in the anime does open on them losing a match, so I figured this was that. It’s got Ochi watching the awards ceremony after his team has lost, but then there are cheers of “Subaru!” and “Thank you, Subaru!” and “Our president!” (a pun on his name, 統, 大統領, just like with the title of ep 7, コートを統べるヒーロー) and I’m like, “What,” and then, “…Oh, this is middle school, ain’t it.” And then, sure enough: 進英中の三年主将、三村統.
Yeah first season starts a year and a half before the main events with Yuni and Chika in the last term of their second year of middle school. The second season’s prologue I thought would be another flashback to when Chika was at Meisei MS like that of the first season (although I’m not sure that one actually counts as a flashback…?), but it was another nightmare :( I’d say it’s a tragedy that we don’t exist in the same universe so I can’t give him a hug, but there are very few people Chika would let hug him and I would definitely not fall on that list. I still gotta write a fic where Yuni gives him a hug… as his best friend and one of the few people Chika would actually allow to hug him, it’s, like, his job. I’m really glad he got a hug from Minami-sensei in ch 5, but Yuni still needs to give him one too. At least.
And, okay, ouch, that hurt. The last line before Chika wakes up from his nightmare in the prologue is:
自分の足はたしかに〝コートの真ん中〟に立っていた。ただ、その場所は〝みんなの真ん中〟ではなかった。
and then one of the last lines of the MS section of ch 1-1 is:
大柄ではない三村だが、長身の選手の頭を軽く跳び越えるくらいの伸びやかなジャンプをして、〝みんなの真ん中〟へと身体全部で飛び込んだ。
You’re really out here to hurt me, huh, Kabei-sensei. (Well, not that I didn’t already know that.) The comparisons between them start even before the story’s properly started. And then ch 1-2 is called SETBACK. This is gonna be Ochi’s injury, isn’t it.
Ochi took notice of Subaru in middle school—everyone did: he’s a show-off with the talent to back it up, one of the best spikers in his division, the idol of many a middle-school girl the prefecture over, the darling of Fukui’s MS sports league—but does he know that Subaru took notice of him, too? He’s not a genius by any stretch of the word and he doesn’t stand out at all, Fukuhou’s coach didn’t even pay him a second glance when he was looking for players to recruit to build a team around Subaru, but he is a stable, consistent player (he’s rather like Suga from ハイキュー!! in that respect), and Subaru did take notice of him and recommended him to the coach. He might still have ended up at Fukuhou anyway (he certainly would have applied; he does wonder, watching Subaru celebrate with his team from the second-floor spectator’s seating, what it would be like being part of that, and he considers him going to the same HS as Subaru inevitable), but like… does he know??? That he was never just another player to the player in his year he looks up to most??? That even before they joined the same team, Subaru has wanted to take him to that orange center court at HaruKou??? I hope I get to find out. I don’t even know yet where that flashback scene with Hata-kantoku talking to Subaru about the team he’s planning to build would fall in this book. It might even be in vol 2! Man, I’m going crazy thinking about it.
While reading, I came across 結果, a word I’ve known and easily been able to recognize for ages, and I realized that the first kanji is 結; I did the lesson for it yesterday, and when it came up in reviews today, I’d completely forgotten the reading. Hopefully now I won’t forget that it’s けつ! (Yes, this morning was my first review of it, yes I am behind on reviews, it happens periodically. It’s the ADHD, I’m pretty sure.)
I came across another word, which I’m not sure of, 中体連. I’m sure the 中 is short for 中学 and that 体連 must be some other abbreviation, but I don’t know of what. So for now I’m just thinking of it as “the middle school sports world,” even though I’m 100% certain that would be written differently.
28 Likes
Indeed, it is short for 中学校体育連盟 which I will loosely translate as middle school sports/PE league. As a Japanese learner LPT, typing the word followed by とは (ex: 中体連とは) will usually get you definitions and filter out Chinese results when the word is all kanji.
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Ah, thanks!!
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I just got two new sets of Graded Readers, so I will start with those. I’m working on Level 0, Sets 2-3. I am really surprised that all I have to do is look up a few vocabulary words in most cases. I can’t wait to get to Level 1!
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| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| May | ||||||
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| 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
| 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 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 31 | |||||
| [/quote] |
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Happy day one of spring challenge!
Appropriately, I waited until the biweekly Tadoku Free Online Reading Group meeting to start. It’s the same group that puts out free graded reader material that I’ve linked to in my Home post.
My goal is to read through as much of the free material as I can. And lucky for me, they just put out 4 new ones.
Progress
11 / 44 level-zeros
x / 12 level-ones
x /10 level-twos
x / 18 level-threes
I also started translating this page on Japanese grammar as taught to Japanese people that I found a few weeks ago. I’m interested in understanding Japanese from the Japanese perspective. I’m looking forward to the tofugu article about Japanese YouTubers who teach grammar in Japanese that was teased in the latest tofugu podcast episode.
29 Likes
April 1st (Home Post)
First day of the challenge has happened to be on a Friday, which for me is bookclub day 1. Since I am usually tired from working all week, I usually go for the easier manga bookclubs.
- からかい上手の高木さん (16 pages)
- それでも歩は寄せてくる (18 pages)
- ハピネス (42 pages)
- 大海原と大海原 死の海編 (20 pages)
I guess I should also count Flying Witch, which I am re-reading with a read-aloud bookclub on Friday nights
- Flying Witch (32 pages)
Total manga pages read: 128
It’s my first time trying to actually build stats around my reading, which is something I’ve been wanting to try for a while.
Some non-spoilery panels from today’s reading:
それでも歩は寄せてくる is as always, a treasure-trove of endearing facial expressions.
大海原と大海原 art style never disappoints. I am really sad the Pixiv version doesn’t have better resolution images.
A crow enjoying a slide ^.^
35 Likes
Day 2 - April 2
- 美少年探偵団 1 - 3,19% → 5,59%
We finally got to meet the first three characters! So far 袋井満 is my favorite character ^^ He’s the number 1 delinquent of the school. I’m really looking forward to the introduction of the other two characters. So far it’s a hard read, but I manage to understand the gist of it, so that’s enough I can always read it again when my Japanese is much better!
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I’ll be in this!
Reading in Japanese is a struggle for me right now, but I enjoy it.
Currently reading:
Happiness (with the ABBC)
Bleach Vol. 2
Harry Potter 1 (occasionally)
NHK news easy (occasionally)
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| 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 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| May | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
| 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 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 31 |
Update 7th April:
Lots of reading!
I’ve gotten excited about reading Harry Potter again and and spending most of my time on that (usually with lots of word/phrase lookups). I’m still in the first half of the first chapter… I think I’ll be on the first chapter for quite a while!
And bleach is my before bed book, so I don’t usually look anything up - I just spot the bits I already know (which isn’t much! )
32 Likes
This is my first time joining the every day challenge. My goal is to read 5-30 mins per day in Japanese. I want to avoid falling behind SRS (basically Anki) because of reading too much, so I’m setting the minimum reading time to 5 mins. I am always bad at writing down reactions, but I’ll try to force my self to write something down (Maybe twice per week).
Goals 
- Intermedia Reading Club 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん
- Finish the rest of the stories in 本陣殺人事件
- 12歳までに読みたい名作１００
- 宮沢賢治 一気に読める
Progress 
- 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん (29%. ~Chapter 4)
- 本陣殺人事件 (90%)
- 12歳までに読みたい名作１００(p32)
- 宮沢賢治 一気に読める (0%)
| Apr | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
| 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 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| May | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
| 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 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 31 |
35 Likes