I am going to share my reading goals this time. Also, this is my first time joining the every day challenge. I don’t totally plan to read every day, although I do plan to “read for the sake of learning the way of Japanese language” 2-3 days per week, and write the progress weekly.
An ultimate goal is to be able to read Japanese Wikipedia (which is also pretty much the way I developed English reading skills in school).
Although and works, the color is not strongly noticeable. Also, it pretty much limits to only two icons. (It’s pretty cool that I can click on without editing, though.)
For some reasons, I can’t find anyone putting up a June calendar. It’s not too hard to be commited for 3 months, I think.
This is different from other choices, that it is in full text (light novel) format (with some illustrations).
This one actually requires some effort on my part, although I somewhat adapted to it. I think I can finish Vol. 1, at least; but maybe with bad comprehension - and could be hard to continue on to the next volumes by myself.
(2/4) JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Part 2 - Battle Tendency
I bought the Monochrome Version, and there are 4 volumes. (I think there are exactly the same number of chapters in Colored Version, but more volumes.)
I don’t have that much problem understanding colloquial written Japanese, so I really want to finish the series.
Whether I will continue part 1, 3-6 is, I haven’t decided yet; but I seriously consider it.
Although I started on (and bought) Vol. 13, and it isn’t really a stressful read; it is a reading without Furigana, as well as I will always try to read signs and place names, that aren’t really in the dialogue.
I will also take time to research about real places in Japan. This much is pretty normal when remembered the time I’ve been in Japan - there were both solo travels (exchange student’s free time) and travels with friends.
I am considering reading ahead, but it may also be counterproductive; as it can be both time-consuming, and I don’t really understand enough.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Part 2 (2.1/4)
I am on the beginning of Vol. 2/4 where JoJo met Caesar (descendant of Zeppelli), and he has introduced himself.
It is pretty much on hold now, but probably no longer. It was on hold, because I focused more on other things that can have discussions. But then, actually I don’t care - I can take note by myself (by blogging that I haven’t revealed to the public yet).
… Yuru Camp Vol. 13 (2/7)
Will reread for more clarity, and for discussion.
I am also considering listening to easy YouTube channels, for better grammar understanding and activating my listening skills; but I pretty much haven’t started.
Whoaaaaa the cover of this looks beautiful! This sounds awesome anyone from the last challenge knows my love for sea creatures LOL, I’m 100% adding this to my list.
Yesterday was so busy I didn’t have time to make a post, so I will summarize both day 1 and day 2 of my reading practice here :3 It took me a long time and I understood very little, however I feel like progress has been made. Going from nearly no reading to reading for around 1h daily is rather exhausting, but it feels good to know that if only I keep going it will get easier.
Day 1
I panicked, because I realized I didn’t have a reading list ready. So I scoured some sites and came across this 吾輩は猫である by 夏目漱石. It caught my interest because (surprise surprise) it is cat themed. Issue is, that once I opened the book I realized this is way way way above my current ability. But I decided to give it a go anyways, since I (for some reason) kind of enjoy painstaikingly reading something sentence by sentence until it clicks one day. Also, after the very wise and poetic words of @pocketcat about perusing reading materials, I won’t feel guilty about dropping this.
It was also very helpful to have an English version of it opened up while trying to read reading.
I’ve only managed to get through the first few sentences (writing this stuff out is incredibly time consuming ), however I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the process. So far I have learnt that Cat, whose name we don’t know yet, has no idea where it was born and it had heard rumours that humans eat and boil cats.
Here’s a lil bit of what I’ve managed to do (there’s another half a page):
I decided to stick with the cat theme but do something a little (seemingly) easier: this article 「西炯子と大ちゃん」 - ネコメンタリー 猫も、杓子(しゃくし)も。 - NHK about mangaka 西炯子 and her cat 大ちゃん. I struggled a lot with the lack of kanji in some places - while I am getting better at recognizing words, a long row of just hiragana can get confusing. Nevertheless, I managed to get the gist of it - will probably return to it again to re-read it. Also, this is really helping me improve my ability to read katakana, which I suck at.
Yeah, you can get them in the standard supermarkets (Edeka, Rewe and stuff) and they are indeed very sweet and delicious. You can eat them with the skin.
Very minor reading yesterday - I was watching a movie and was so engrossed I almost went too late for reading. I got 14 pages of the third story in 遅刻してきた幽霊. It’s also seeming a bit predictable, but I will see where it takes me. Then I read 14 pages of ミステリと言う勿れ volume 3 in bed. The dialect some of the characters is using is rough. I’m getting the gist but I’m sure I’m missing details here and there.
I’m headed to the library today, so hopefully they have 三毛猫ホームズ and I can read the spoilers others have posted shortly!
Edit: re persimmons - I love them but have a very mild allergy to them delicious but painful
Thanks everyone for the kind words. Very strongly recommend not catching if you can! I’ve had three vaccines and I’m pretty fit but it’s completely wiped me out.
Managed to finish the second story in ぼくは王さま today and start the third one.
Good words today:
草むしり weeding
ゼンマイ clockwork
I mentioned that I wanted to start practicing my German again so I’ve been used my enforced bed rest to bingewatch Queer Eye Germany on Netflix. It’s funny but my German feels like it’s got better after 5 years of not studying it!?! I mean, obviously it hasn’t but it’s just that I now have Japanese to compare it to I think that when I was studying German I focused on the 10% I couldn’t understand whereas now I’m happy with a bit more ambiguity.
I’ve just finished watching the March Comes In Like A Lion anime which I absolutely adored and I’ve seen that manga continues beyond the anime so that’s very much on my reading list. Seriously considering buying one of the shogi games for my switch to help with learning some of the vocab.
Reading Japanese every day is basically an excuse to see everyone else’s cute pics, this did not disappoint, thank you.
My First Challenge! So excited to participate!
Currently reading: 君の膵臓をたべたい side by side with the English version for the first read
Genki 2 読み書き編 --the part at the back of the book because I actually made it through the book with my fabulous italki teacher Elly. I completed this section thanks to the reading challenge.
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Finished the 感動的な話 “I Want to Eat Your Pancreas” (I was already on the 2nd book when I started the challenge). Working on saving the vocabulary now on a quick second read. （Haha, that didn’t happen. Worked on saving the vocab list but it’s just another list I’m supposed to learn…)
My Tech discovery yesterday: Gboard keyboard app for iphone. So much easier to toggle back and forth from English to hiragana/kanji–I set the Japanese keyboard to the QWRTY layout–it also has a quick access to Gtranslation right there and Japanese emojis and GIFS.
Continuing Satori 壁の穴 Hole in the Wall on Satori Reader. (Follow up:Didn’t do much reading of this during the challenge. )
Reading the 小説： 名前は Only read first few chapters during the challenge. This is pretty labor intensive–lots of descriptive vocabulary and internal dialog so too much to look up for now.
Listened to, translated, and read lots of podcasts during this challenge.
Stayed stuck on the same level of WK during this challenge because I was devoting my study time to reading.
Signed up for and enjoyed a month of Kindle Unlimited on Amazon Japan. Not going to keep it yet because the manga words can’t be transcribed easily on Kindle. Easier to work with short stories.
Most of my reading was focused on the 読み書き編section of Genki 2 which I was almost able to finish in the 2 months of this challenge with 2 days a week of iTalki time with my teacher. It was extremely helpful and got me to demonstrate my comprehension more with questions about the text.
Just found the Tofugu article about Graded Readers here: so I will be focusing on trying to level up my reading this way after the challenge.
I just discovered this lovely challenge! Too bad I missed the first day but I did read in the “Happiness” book club on that day, soo… I’m just gonna say that was for this challenge.
So I wanted to read “Three Days of Happiness” but it was too hard for me so I’m gonna read a few sentences of the manga version “I sold my life for 10 thousand yen every year” every day.
I’ll probably try to read an easy Japanese news article everyday too. I found this really nice app “TODAI” which has easy Japanese news articles everyday with translation integrated. It’s really useful!
I hope I don’t forget. Wish me luck! Good luck to you all too, I hope you finish this challenge!
Currently Reading: “I sold my life for 10 thousand yen every year”
The flowers above the “Day #” links to my post for the previous day, and the flowers below link to the next day, except for the latest day ofc, they link somewhere special
三毛猫ホームズの推理 ~7% to 10%, from the middle of chapter 1, part 2 to the end of part 2
I read to the end of part 2, the first portion of the book that was new to me. (the spoiler that follows isn’t especially spoilery, but I decided it to hide it just in case, what with several people reading the book at the same time) We’re introduced to some more new characters, and there are hints of the mystery being more compex than it seems (it still feels very much like an introduction though).
Interesting words and expressions
ウマが合う - to get on well with someone
物思いにふける - to be lost in thought
素知らぬ顔 - feigning ignorance
かまきり - praying mantis
切れ長の目 - almond eyes/slit eyes
知れ渡る - to be well known
気を利かす - to use tact, to exercise discretion
If I find the time to do some manga reading I will update this post later.
Regarding new vocab: at the beginning I listed all new vocab, and then input what seemed the most important ones into SRS. I ended up with a lot of vocab so far, so I’m going to try a new strategy: I’m noting all new vocab and the number of times it appears. Then, after having finished the book, I’ll input the most frequent words (that I didn’t manage to learn naturally) into SRS.
And how did you handle new vocab as a beginner reader?
(Next: Q3 of 2022 
)
This sounds awesome anyone from the last challenge knows my love for sea creatures LOL, I’m 100% adding this to my list.
), however I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the process. So far I have learnt that Cat, whose name we don’t know yet, has no idea where it was born and it had heard rumours that humans eat and boil cats.
delicious but painful
I think that when I was studying German I focused on the 10% I couldn’t understand whereas now I’m happy with a bit more ambiguity.
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