Day 52: May 22nd
What did I read?: クマとたぬき Vol 2
How much did I read?: 26 pages
How long did it take me?: 18 min
Cuteness of the day: snowstorm = yeti time 
24 Likes
May 22 (Calendar Post)
隣の席の佐藤さん => 98 pages (106 min)
Finished volume 2. Looking forward to how the story ends in the next volume.
佐藤さん facial expressions gallore!
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Days 49-51
- Prefecture Stories
On Friday, I read Miyagi’s story. The rest of Friday, I was really tired so I went to bed early.
- ジョジョの奇妙な冒険
I read on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, I read 31-36. I was really tired again. On Sunday, I read 37-46. It was almost 2am, but I wanted to keep reading 
If I started at a decent time, I might finish the whole volume in one sitting lol. I’m surprised by how much I’m enjoying Part 3 so far. I can’t tell if it’s just that the level of the writing is at just the right level for me, so that makes it more exciting, or if I like Part 3/Jotaro more than I thought.
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I read the preview for 花降る町の新婚さん. I’d thought it was a manga, so imagine my surprise when I got to the first page of the story and found it was a novel lol. I’d discovered it on Bookmeter, saw it on my 相性 page and thought the cover was pretty, so I decided to check it out. I’m kinda wishing I still had my old laptop which could convert into a tablet, which would make it easier to read as then I could hold the screen closer to my face more comfortably and not need my glasses, which tend to make my eyes hurt if I wear them for extended periods of time at home and not to watch TV. I dunno, it’s weird, because it can’t just be the (lack of) distance, because I was fine at school, and I’m fine at work, but the only time I can comfortably wear my glasses at home is when I’m watching TV. Ugh, really I’d much rather be reading on paper. Anyway, it seems good, and I haven’t read any queer novels in Japanese yet, so that’ll be nice. Of course, it being a novel means it’s definitely gonna be a while before I get it lol
Apparently, even though I can read 土産, I don’t know it well enough, because when I came across 土産物 with the first character at the end of one line and the rest at the beginning of the rest, I was like, “What the hell’s that? (looking it up on imiwa) とさんぶつ? どさんぶつ? Wait, 産's さん, right, not さい? Okay cool I remembered right. (seeing the result) Ohhhh it’s みやげもの, souvenir. I’m an idiot.”
I also read ch 2 of ハイキュー!! This is not one to read when I’m tired lmao the print is way too tiny in places, and I’m not even farsighted or anything. I mean look at that! I had to look the word up to see how it was read, and I still can only just barely make out the furigana even with a zoomed-in photo. Oh god, I hope there aren’t any where you can’t make out the kanji or the furigana if you can’t already infer what it is…
I had wanted to read more, and to play Heroes, but hopefully tomorrow. I don’t have work then.
Some vocab of note:
数寄屋造り (すきやづくり) [noun] sukiya style (of a building); style of a tea-ceremony arbor
既読 (きどく) [noun] already read
前途洋々 (ぜんとようよう) [四字熟語, noun] with a rosy future; offering promising prospects
鳶に油揚げをさらわれる (とんびにあぶらあげをさらわれる) [一, expression] to be robbed of one’s due, lit. “to have one’s abura’age snatched by a black kite”
眉根を寄せる (まゆねをよせる) [一, expression] to frown; to squint
鳶色 (とびいろ) [noun] reddish brown. And thus I learned that the black kite isn’t actually black. Okay then. Why, English.
百戦錬磨 (ひゃくせんれんま) [四字熟語, noun] veteran; battle-worn; schooled by adversity in many battles; rich in experience
切磋琢磨 (せっさたくま) [四字熟語, noun, する verb] mutual encouragement (to improve); working hard together; friendly rivalry
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May 22 
Home Post
I played more ZTD! A lot happened and I really don’t know what to make of it, but it’s definitely feeling like I’m getting to the end of things. I’ll have to figure out how exactly to proceed but progress has been good! I’m curious to see what’s going on 
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May 22nd 
Read: マグメル深海水族館 (5)
Finished: Chapter 22 & 23
Less time than I expected today so read some more マグメル. I’m always conflicted on whether I should binge the volumes I have or space it out since a volume came out recently and it’ll probably be a while until there’s a new one. But there are some things I’m so curious about that are slowly building up like what was that ominous line at the end of chapter 22? and what is the deal with Kotaro’s dad? I’m really not good at pacing myself with things I like lol
Some Kotaro
I really like the way this panel is drawn
Hard relate to these both with finals (and kind of just generally lol)
24 Likes
May 23, Mon calendar post
Week 9 of Spring 2022’s planning
- Committed, and paced - for the sake of discussion
-
Death Note
Vol.3 Ch.15
-
Death Note
- Committed, with マイペース
- JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Part 2 - finish リサリサ’s training arc (2.5 chaps left)
-
Read ahead of Night Cafe
Ch.8
- Otherwise, 1 chapter of novel, somehow - probably Dragon Ball or some other series in My Library list
- 1+ sentence structure’s grammar
- 1+ verb’s grammar, compounds, comparison and usage
- Watch 1+ episode of anime (probably JoJo S01-E01)
-
Half of WaniKani Context Sentences - Level 2’s Breakdown
- Will probably add several vocabularies to my Anki; as well as read WaniKani team’s vocabulary explanation
- I might made it sounds cool in that thread, but in the end, it’s about my learning…
- Considered
- WANTED! Story 3 (一鬼夜行) - I just want to finish this book, and perhaps, 1 chapter per week.
- Read それでも歩は寄せてくる to 50% (Ch.7) (currently read up to Ch.5), and probably re-reading for Ch.1
-
Re-read 1 chapter (chapter 1) of Yuru Camp
- And read up on 山梨
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Tanuki Den (aka Homepost): Date 20220523 
Tanuki Scroll LIII: お月さまに行ったウサギ 
Read today’s folktale, from Aomori prefecture!
About a rabbit that goes to live on the moon, aka, the moon rabbit origin story.
Japanese found in the tall grass
New Things from the Moon
がっかり ー to be disappointed; to be downhearted
ずるい「狡い」ー Sly; cunning; sneaky; unfair
積み上げる「つみあげる」ー To pile up; to make a heap (of something)
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Read chapter 4 of Yotsuba& today. ジャンボさん He almost overshadows the first part of the chapter (with just dad, Yotsuba and eventually Fuuka) although that was a lot of fun too.
Also 綾瀬(Ayase) family are all the same, aren’t they? でか！No wonder ジャンボさん pretended to be Godzilla at the end.
I also decided to time myself so I could learn how long it takes for each chapter. This one took 1h 15ish mins. But the sudden shounen tropes and some other things early in the chapter tripped me up for a bit.
Honestly, so much funny in this chapter and Yotsuba barely supplied any of it.
24 Likes
Not too much Shinymas reading for me recently, I’ve been trying to finish やがて君になる. I’m up to chapter 40 now so I’m near the end, I think there’s only 45 chapters? The ending of volume 7 was so sad though.
やがて君になる spoilers
Sayaka was my favorite throughout most of the manga but I pretty much knew from the beginning she wasn’t going to win. It was still so painful to see her get rejected even if Touko did it in a kind manner
There’s a spinoff LN that’s kind of a prequel that focuses on Sayaka that I might try out after. I’ve never read a LN before but she is my favorite so I will see how that goes.
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Among a list of recyclables, the word 紙皿 made me think “hair plate???”
大失敗
Anyway, besides that total curveball, 夜カフェ really threw me a bone today with 4 and half pages easily understood. 
Can’t keep reading right now, though, gotta walk my dog 
.
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Day 53 
夜市 ~ 33-44%
I finished the titular story. It was not quite what I expected. The book is described as horror, but if felt more like a fairy tale to me, and not even a particularly dark one. There were some dark elements, but nothing worse than (or even as dark as) what I’ve seen in many non-horror books. The protagonists’ relationship and fate had a hint of Greek tragedy even, but it just didn’t touch me as much as I had hoped. The market as a concept was really cool, though. I think I’d like to have explored it some more. In general, I don’t do as well with short stories as I do with novels, I feel there’s not enough space for me to really engage with the characters in a short story. So maybe that’s why I feel this way, but it seemed to me that the author also had a detached way of describing everything, never inserting much emotion into any given situation.
Two interesting expressions:
弱肉強食 - survival of the fittest (weak=meat, strong=eat)
藪の中 - inability to discern the truth due to conflicting testimony. Literally: inside the grove. It was used literally in the book, actually, but it came up in the dictionary as a phrase and it surprised me. It’s derived from the Akutagawa Ryuunosuke story of that name, later turned into a movie by Kurosawa, titled Rashomon. 
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夜市
Yes, I thought so too.
That bit felt a bit rushed, didn’t it?
I also have a hard time getting into short stories, but it seems that in Japanese literature they are simply everywhere!
Admittedly, I recently read a short story that actually felt very wholesome to me in a strange way; it felt more like a full book than a short story. But that’s pretty rare for me - maybe I only read two or three other short stories where I had that same feeling.
Riiight? To be honest, I really enjoyed that style.
Also, I liked the second story much better than the first one, so I can highly encourage you to read that one as well at some point!
Actually, the Kurosawa movie mixes two Akutagawa short stories, one is called 藪の中 and the other is called 羅生門 - らしょうもん 
(The first story is about the events in the grove and the second one is about the events at the gate.)
9 Likes
Oh, I didn’t know that actually, thanks! I wonder how hard it would be to read the original…
(L30 according to Natively. So, not that bad at all)
Edit: Just noticed there was much more to your post than what I saw initially! Yes, I do intend to read the next story right away, I can’t easily leave a book once I’ve started it (please disregard that in this challenge alone I’ve restarted two books that I had started before and then paused 
).
Out of interest, which was the story that felt like a full book? They are a rare breed indeed!
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I own them already, for that exact reason but I dared not look at them yet…
Plus, they are of course available on Aozora as well.
If you want to read the original-original, brace yourself: 芥川龍之介 藪の中
And this is the modernized (in terms of kanji and kana) version: 芥川龍之介 藪の中
Noice! Please keep me / us posted how you like it 
The story that made me fully aware of the existence of such short stories is the middle story from 沖で待つ (I found that book to be very interesting, with three totally different short stories actually) but now that I think about it, I’d say that the second one from 夜市 also felt pretty much like this, and maybe also the second story from キッチン? (I read it some time ago so not really sure about the last one…)
Recently I got some recommendations for short story collections, so I was thinking I might want to mix them one-by-one into my usual reading, so that they are more like nice snacks in between books instead of a full book of just short stories. Let’s see how that will work out…
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Yeah, I think I’ll wait a little before tackling that
Oh I will, there’s no stopping me
That’s the book with the full-hiragana story, right? Hmm. Putting it on my list for later.
I read キッチン ages ago in translation. I don’t think there was a second story in the translated version, but I’m not sure. Might be worth rereading in Japanese at some point. 
This sounds like an interesting experiment. I’m normally a one-book-at-a-time person - as long as I like the book I’m reading I can’t turn my attention elsewhere until I’ve finished it. But now with the book clubs and this challenge I’m in the strange situation of juggling several (5 if you include the manga) books at the same time. It’s weirdly distracting. Thankfully not all of them are equally engaging or I would have gone crazy.
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I’m sure this fully depends on the edition at hand. In the book I own, there is a second story called “Moonlight Shadow” which is what I was referring to.
Can totally relate! Sometimes I’m okay with reading several books in parallel, and sometimes it feels so draining that I need to finish one early or let it trail behind. (Like, at the moment I let がばいばあちゃん trail behind but I hope I will manage to catch up again before the club finishes.)
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May 23rd
・薬屋のひとりごと 2 (41% → 44%)
Finished chapter 9.
Plot development: Maomao’s father has been identified Turns out slimy military dude who has been bothering Jinshi lately is her dad. I call him slimy because he is annoying and seems to have ulterior motives. Jinshi informed Maomao that this person wanted to meet her and her reaction was priceless. Just a ton of facial expressions of disgust, not necessarily pointed towards Jinshi but her reaction was so extreme that he couldn’t take it and just told her “I’ll decline the request for you”. Thing is, she officially belongs to Jinshi since he literally bought her from the brothel head mistress. And that made her dad kinda pissed because seems like he’s been trying to convince head mistress to let him have Maomao since more than 10 years ago and finally succeeded in convincing her. (Maomao is currently 16 years old or so). What kind of childhood has this girl been living… I need to know
Expression of the day: 鳶に油揚げをさらわれる
“To have one’s fried tofu snatched by a black kite (a birb)”.
It’s kinda funny how the whole expression wasn’t mentioned, only referred to by the words とんび and 油揚げ. Was fun to realize what was going on. One smol victory :3
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So I can finally make my comment! That came faster than expected!
Technically, that’s every day 
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May 23rd!
I read two chapters of Shirokuma Cafe today. I especially enjoyed the second one, which had information about how to tell the difference between a King Penguin and an Emperor Penguin. I didn’t know the differences before, so it was fun to be able to understand it in Japanese
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