Ok, so I’ve failed at sticking around in general. Things have continued to be a little rough and I shied away from updates because of my hand/wrist problems. They still exist… but here I am for a quick update, shrug. Can’t help it. Currently awkwardly typing with a handbrace. (by the way I’ll just wrap in here that I read and appreciate your post @fallynleaf , much of that matches with what I’ve guessed and how I’ve been trying to treat it).
But hey, I finished another route yesterday, so it’s time to hang out with Shiki. The final normal route of this game until “true route” time, whatever that entails. At this rate it might not take me much more than a week to get started on that. Every day (except one that was particularly rough, and even then I read a few thousand) I’ve been hitting roughly 8000-10000 characters, so doing well for my standards. I do have to say, so far Shiki isn’t making a great impression on me because they play up her kinda crying and running away like a child too much. It’s slightly grating. Meanwhile in what must be bizarre foreshadowing for wherever the true route is going, Umi (the young girl who is nebulously related to the protagonist) has had a few small changes to her speech between some routes, but now, she has reverted to acting like a very young child and speaking in couple word utterences. So like, that’s enough anime little kids tropes crashing in at once! Give me salarymen or something to detox from this.
I think I remember hearing the true route itself is quite long, but one of these days, I’m actually going to be reading another visual novel. That’s starting to feel real by now haha.
Currently on a 7 day streak of ‘Reading 30 Pages Every Day’ self-challenge. Can’t get enough of reading 白夜行。It’s a masterpiece for learning new expressions and descriptive phrases to pick up
Recommendations are always welcome! And our tastes seem to overlap quite a bit, so doubly welcome from you!
The book you’re currently reading sounds like fun too. I had already noticed the one @basilsauce reviewed and had tentatively put it on my (ever growing) list. How prevalent is the supernatural element would you say? It’s strange with the supernatural, I sometimes love it and sometimes it puts me off, and I’m not even sure how to express what it is that makes the difference for me - which is why I generally tend to avoid it another comment from me in direct contradiction to the (heavily supernatural) book I’m currently reading
Well um… I finished ZTD? Really did not expect that to happen today With that I’ve completed my goal for this challenge of finishing the Zero Escape games so that’s pretty wild! ZTD was definitely a different experience; toward the end especially it felt less like “reading” and more like just watching a show with subtitles and pressing buttons sometimes, but I found myself keeping up with the dialogue speed just fine which felt great!
My playthrough took a bit over 33 hours which is so much shorter, wow. A lot of that is definitely just by nature of it having a more set pace what with all the cutscenes, but like… I still paused to look things up and figure them out as I needed to, so that’s a major improvement from the like 80 hours VLR took me, not to mention 999 so that’s really cool! It’s always nice to see clear progress like that
ZTD things bc what even happened today
There was just so much… シグマ and ダイアナ and ファイ and デルタ… especially デルタ, like what?? He was just there the whole time?? I was just flabbergasted when Q (or I guess ショーン huh) turned around and shot him, absolutely baffling. But シグマ and ダイアナ too, that whole set of scenes was wild, these dynamics are so complicated their daughter who’s like the same age as them and their 120-something-year-old cult son, and the different temporal experiences and awarenesses they all have and just… oof it’s a lot
And mind control?? We really just threw that one in huh, as デルタ said his motivations are numerous and complicated and wow I can’t wrap my brain around any of it, I’m sure I’m forgetting about a billion things but it was information overload!! Today was a lot Zero Escape reveals are always like this huh
Now… I’ll have to actually decide what to do next The 海辺のカフカ book club is starting up soon so I have that to look forward to, but odds are I’ll start up another game before long. I still have Story of Seasons if I want a brain break I’m probably looking at AI: The Somnium Files as my next game I’ll pick up, but who knows! I’ve been known to be impulsive with these things haha. We shall see
I read two more chapters of Shirokuma Cafe today.
I like that after some chapters there is a one page recipe. I’ve been learning a lot of cooking related vocabulary from reading 夜カフェ so its fun to be reading another book where it’s so useful at the same time
About a fox doing what a fox does best - pretending to be human. This time the fox is pretending to be a samurai, and then pretends to be a patrol guard while telling the story of the fox pretending to be a samurai for double bamboozlement.
Japanese found in the tall grass
Learnthings
見回り「みまらり」ー Patrolling; one’s rounds; watchman.
Here it was paired with 役人「やくにん」so a patrolman or guard officer person. 番所「ばんしょ」ー Guard house 顔色「かおいろ」ー Complexion
It’s been so long again, I thought an update was in order. I haven’t read today (yet?) but if I don’t update I’ll forget completely the little I did.
I’ve been sick this last week with fever and very little drive to do anything at all . The fever is gone but my throat has been killing me at times and I’m also sleepy and tired most of the time. I was wondering if it was finally covid but nope, two antigen tests came out negative on different days. Just plain seasonal fun.
So anyways, I’ve barely read anything, only those two days. However I’ve actually been doing Japanese every day, almost binging the anime 古見さんは、コミュ障です。on Netflix with Japanese subs and I’ve been having so much fun with it because it feels very comfortable to understand. The anime itself is also quite entertaining with fun characters (and a lot of puns to their names pointing to their personalities) and has a lot of cute moments (though it also had a couple things I didn’t vibe with, but whatever, am I getting old?). I’ve been having so much fun with it precisely because I watched it completely in Japanese and that’s been a nice boost to my confidence. It’s not particularly hard to understand or anything but it still has fast speech here and there and I haven’t needed to rewind that much. I did pause frequently to read Komi’s notebook handwriting though, there’s a ton of that and it’s important to the plot.
My relationship with anime is so weird. I can go without watching any for the longest time, months or years, and then I get hooked on something again and binge a lot. Then it either makes me want to watch more series right after and I do, or I go back to not watching anything for another long period, and then repeat. Now that I’m confident about watching them in Japanese I really want to continue watching anything else that has Japanese subs on Netflix. Unfortunately not everything does even with the language set to Japanese, and that’s meh, but it is what it is. At this point I will watch anything that has subs and seems interesting enough. I feel like watching something is much easier for me to do than reading something right now energy wise, so maybe I should consider that as a strategy to boost immersion exposure going forward. I installed an extension called Subadub that converts Netflix subs so that you can use Yomichan on them and it’s really convenient.
Also I like podcasts. I find listening quite entertaining overall in whatever form. I might consider tracking some other data like that in the next challenge in a summary box or something just as a small log other than reading.
Also FF7 already reaching spicy parts . Going great. Ahhhh biting my tongue.
お稲荷さん - Inari (god of wealth, harvest, fertility, tea, and more importantly, foxes)
On Inari from Wikipedia
The god has been depicted both as male and as female. The most popular representations are a young female food goddess, an old man carrying rice, and an androgynous bodhisattva.No one view is correct; the preferred gender of depiction varies according to regional traditions and individual beliefs. Because of their close association with kitsune, Inari is often believed to be a fox; though this belief is widespread, both Shinto and Buddhist priests discourage it. Inari also appears in the form of a snake or dragon, and one folktale has Inari appear to a wicked man in the shape of a monstrous spider as a way of teaching him a lesson.
きんぴらゴボウ - braised burdock root, chopped burdock root (and sometimes carrot) cooked in sugar and soy sauce.
Any recommendations? I’m still trying to find some nice podcasts.
I’m glad I know the Japanese word for that now
Yes, we have lots of burdocks growing on the road sides here in the Netherlands, but they don’t stand out much (because they look just like a lot of other weeds most of the time) but in the autumn I often see the burry seed heads.
I finished NO. 6 volume #3 Feels nice to finish a novel again, it’s been a while It would really help combat my ‘start 50 books at once’ tendency if these books didn’t constantly end on almost-cliffhangers. Next volume seems like it’ll be fun - prison break
I also started 親愛なるあなたへ by カンザキ イオリ. I tried this completely on a whim because I liked the cover (very deep reason, yes) and then kept reading because the vocab level is super comfy and the writing is really readable too.
I’m 15% in right now and have no clue where the plot is going yet - apart from some romance, probably? It’s a high school story - middle grade or YA book I’d assume. The prologue had a bit of a suspense kind of vibe, but everything since then has been more slice of life/drama-ish. So Will have to see!
I’m also totally like that, with both anime and TV shows in general. I’m really not a 1-2 episodes a day kind of person (unless the thing is airing weekly and I have no choice) - binge watching or no TV at all, there is (…almost…) no in between
If memory serves it’s a bit earthy but I enjoyed it. Burdock kind of reminds me of parsnip.
Also short story reccs - might need to double check when I’m less busy but both 人間椅子 and 幽霊 by 江戸川乱歩 were a lot of fun, but obviously old grammar and vocab. I recall 人間椅子 in particular being a bit tricky to parse, but I read it awhile ago and am not sure I’d still feel that way.
Finished chapter 10. Notes: There was dumping of a huge pile of thrash, encounter with tall girl, and mysterious stable potato. Will Maomao request for bigger private room? Will we get to know tall girl? Will we get to know what Jinshi does during his business trips? One can only continue reading and hopefully find out.
Likewise! You said you put reminder to one month later, so that was unexpected
Seems like this series might be going in the direction I think it might be going
btw, I totally didn’t see red when you said “in a month”… It’s not like I’m aiming to finish this book before this challenge is over or anything like that dakara ne! Hmph! :P
Ooooh that’s one of my favorite Japanese words! It appears in 鹿の王 like 20 times or so
Burdock
It’s not common to eat it in Europe (I think I once heard that people eat it in the UK but I’ve never heard about people eating it in Germany at least). But in Japan it’s very popular, or at least in Fukuoka where I came across it first, in the shape of ごぼう天うどん. (I think I also had it in Shikoku). If you’d like a detailed description, maybe this post will entertain you: https://twinspeakeatgo.com/noodles-in-fukuoka-burdock-tempura-udon-and-champon-ramen/ (pro tip: don’t read when hungry )
I like it a lot!
Oh and I totally forgot to reply:
Yes, exactly. If you’d like a more in-depth review, @Myria wrote a nice one in the Akutagawa Challenge thread not too long ago.
I thought the reveal was at the end of the book and I might miss when you get there. “In a month” was guaranteed to be past that point, while the previous option was “next week” (so maybe not?) I didn’t mean to say you would finish in that amount of time
I watched the first episode on Netflix barely a week ago. However, my listening comprehension is so low and I didn’t find it that easy, so I shelved it for now. I’ve been watching Card-captor Sakura for a while. For which I can follow almost everything (with subs). It being a kids’ show does make it a bit less interesting. But I’m able to mostly enjoy it for what it is, plus I actually understand most of it so that makes it more enjoyable too.
I wasn’t sure I’d get to reading today because I spent about 3,5 hours doing lawn stuff. (My lawn was really tall because I didn’t mow it one last time last year, so my lawnmower grass collection bag gets full every five meters (it feels like). So it is taking a very long time. I’m about 2/3 or 3/4 done. Will finish tomorrow just in time before the first real rain of the year.
Did read chapter 5 of Yotsuba&. I was very grateful this one was so much easier than chapter four. I did miss the Ayase family, but Yotsuba and her dad were hilarious alone too.
I was also gonna say things about how weird birthdays feels like as an adult. (Mine was yesterday.) Especially when you live alone. Trying to make your own day special is hard when staying at home all day. Ah well, still had an enjoyable day (even with mostly doing as-usual-day-off activities). Too tired to really digress about birthdays as an adult though. Perhaps another day. xD
With that I’ve completed my goal for this challenge of finishing the Zero Escape games so that’s pretty wild! ZTD was definitely a different experience; toward the end especially it felt less like “reading” and more like just watching a show with subtitles and pressing buttons sometimes, but I found myself keeping up with the dialogue speed just fine which felt great!
so that’s really cool! It’s always nice to see clear progress like that 
The 海辺のカフカ book club is starting up soon so I have that to look forward to, but odds are I’ll start up another game before long. I still have Story of Seasons if I want a brain break 
Japanese found in the tall grass 
. The fever is gone but my throat has been killing me at times and I’m also sleepy and tired most of the time. I was wondering if it was finally covid but nope, two antigen tests came out negative on different days. Just plain seasonal fun.
Feels nice to finish a novel again, it’s been a while 
Will have to see!
:P
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