📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

After a couple 1 to 2 page days (due to lack of time/energy/focus), managed 6 pages of
霧島くんは普通じゃない today. (Although still mostly lacking energy and focus.) I was entertained when Miu got 霧島くん back for licking her finger by sniffing him while he was sleeping on his desk. :joy: I love that they are both unintentianally creepy, not just one of them.

New segment! Mara tries to recall words from the day’s reading.

  • まゆ毛 and まつ毛 One means eyebrows and the other is eyelashes. Can I remember which is which? … Nope.
  • さける to avoid. I have definitely read this one before multiple times.
  • 居心地 (いごこち) comfort, generally followed by が悪い in this book
  • 視界 (しかい) 視線 is line of sight, 視界 is field of vision. pleasingly logical.
  • 瞬間移動 teleportation! also pleasingly logical.
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The Wanikani mnemonic for it is pretty good: avoid people who have had too much sake (as opposed to よける which is to dodge a projectile such as a yo-yo).

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Thank you for the challenge! I enjoyed reading everybody’s posts, about meanings, grammar points, cultural stuff, personal challenges and generally spreading joy. I also got a ton of book ideas for future reading. Thank you all for sharing.

I only missed three days in May. I thought « I have covid, I can spend my day reading Japanese ». Duh, I was so tired.

Other than that, we had quite a beautiful weather overall as you can see below. Also, 2 election days.

April
:cloud_with_snow: :sunny: :sunny:
:sunny: :cloud: :cloud_with_rain: :wind_face: :umbrella: :sunny: :fr:
:sunny: :cloud_with_rain: :sunny: :sunny: :sunny: :sunny: :sunny:
:sunny: :sunny: :sunny: :sunny: :sunny: :cloud_with_lightning_and_rain: :fr:
:partly_sunny: :sunny: :sunny: :sunny: :sunny: :sunny:
May
:sunny:
:sunny: :mask: :mask: :partly_sunny: :mask: :sunny: :sunny:
:sunny: :sunny: :sunny: :sunny: :sunny: :sunny: :cloud_with_lightning_and_rain:
:partly_sunny: :sunny: :sunny: :cloud_with_lightning_and_rain: :sun_behind_rain_cloud: :sunny: :sunny:
:sun_behind_rain_cloud: :sun_behind_rain_cloud: :sunny: :sunny: :sunny: :sunny: :sunny:
:sunny: :sunny:

Immediate goal: finish 夜カフェ. I am currently reading chapter 8 with the Beginner Book Club

Next goal: brush up on my grammar, I forgot so much.

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Replies to old stuff, sorry

I am also realizing that that is something I want to do. I plan to take a step back from SRS after the JLPT in July, maybe forever, maybe just for a while. I’m not sure I’ll finish the flashcards I have created already, and I’m going to try not to stress about it. :slight_smile:

I’ve only watched the first stream so far, but I enjoyed it a lot. He’s hilarious!

:raised_hand: :eyes:
Did you end up creating a thread for it? I gave up on reading the rest of the replies I’d missed in over 20 days around where you mentioned possibly doing that.

Note to self: I stopped at 1738. :sweat_smile:

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Sorry, this had me laughing so hard.

I found it fairly easy to keep up after maybe 2-3 weeks into April. The only reason I managed to keep up for the first 2 weeks was because I had an unusual amount of small periods of time where I couldn’t do anything more substantial. But I can imagine that being away for almost three weeks would leave A LOT of posts to read. :rofl:

Love this challenge and everyone’s replies and I wouldn’t wish it to be less active, but I do dedicate time both to reading it and to writing my longer posts (which typically take an hour to compose due to flip-flopping around the whole thread finding quotes :joy:).

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As usually happens for me, I stopped posting updates at some point. :upside_down_face: I wonder why it’s so hard to get back to posting after a break? I’m only posting today because the deadline is looming. :sweat_smile:

25.4.-31.05
I did actually manage to read some French everday, even if it sometimes wasn’t more than a page or so. On May 5 and 14 I read my ‘no energy graded reader’, and on the 15th I believe I counted duolingo stories as my ‘read’ for the day. :upside_down_face: On the 19th I counted my re-read along with the audiobook as my reading for the day. Other than that, I read some of La quête d’ewilan every single day. I am now at 80% read. While I didn’t manage to finish the book, I am more than satisfied with the progress I made. Reading got much easier over these 2 months, and I recognize more than a few words while reading just from looking them up so much.

Today I have re-read a chapter along with the audiobook, but I’ll read a bit more new content now, too. (So my total will probably be closer to 81/82%, but that’s okay.) Having come this far, I’m confident I’ll be able to finish the book in June! Le petit Nicolas took me 3 whole months, and it was maybe half the length of this book. (To be fair, I am able to use kindle look ups for La quête d’ewilan, while I read Le petit Nicolas on paper. Still:) Progress!

I’m super thankful to this challenge. For all that I didn’t post updates this last months, the thought of this thread and my challenge pushed me to read ‘something’ on days I might have let just slide. And my inactivity here after falling off the posting wagon is a fine example of what letting it slide once twice does to my habits. :upside_down_face:

My progress since last time

La quête d’ewilan: d’un monde à l’autre :headphones: (108→252/334m) :open_book: (32→80%)
A1 5 Minuten-Lektüren Où est le thym (3→50/20 stories)

Over the course of these two months, I read: 100 pages of Le petit Nicolas. 80% =~251 pages of La quête d’ewilan. 37 pages of very short A1 Graded Stories. I also listened to 4hr 12min of the audiobook for La quête d’ewilan while re-reading the corresponding parts (75% of the book).

:pray:
Now I just need to get started speaking.:dizzy_face:

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I agree, it’s great that there’s so much activity! It’s fine as long as I stop by every other day, but as it is…
There were 600+ new posts, and if I’m going to read them I want to actually read them and not just skim over them. So I read as much as I could handle for now. :joy: I prioritized writing up my end of challenge post/recap thingie!

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I read だれがが. Five sons are sitting around drinking sake. The first son says, “Ii heard the warbler this morning.” The 2nd son said, “No, you are not hte earliest to hear him. I heard it yesterday.” The 3rd son said, “No, you are not the earliest. I heard him sing last week.” The 4th son said, “No, none of you are the earliest. I heard him last month.” But the 5th son said, “All of you are too late. I heard the warbler sing in the Spring of last year!” The End

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Day 61 :heavy_check_mark: :derelict_house:

妖怪アパートの幽雅な日常 volume 1, ~200 pages, completed :tada: :sparkles:

Yesterday I finished the last book that I had started during this challenge (excluding book clubs), and it somehow felt wrong to start reading something on the last day and leave it unfinished. I thought of reading a short story maybe, but then I tried my old trusted method of reading the first page of a bunch of books to see which one catches my interest, and I ended up starting 妖怪アパートの幽雅な日常. I had tried starting it before, but a few kanji-heavy school names at the start had intimidated me and I hadn’t gotten very far. Today though, I managed something I didn’t think was possible for me yet. I finished a manga volume in a single day! This challenge has definitely increased my reading stamina if nothing else :grin:

It’s a generally lighthearted manga so far (based on a light novel), a coming of age story with added yokai. A high school student rents a suspiciously cheap room in what turns out to be a house full of yokai and ghosts. It’s funny and sweet and emotional (the last story spanning two chapters had some heartwrenching moments) and a little crazy. A fun read overall. I have the two next volumes from when it was free, and I’m sure to continue reading it at some point.

And with this, the spring challenge is concluded! :tada: I had great fun reading everyone’s updates, and discovering just how far I can push myself. I finished three books and three manga, not counting all the book club reading. I could never imagine I could do that in such a short time a few months ago. Progress!

After this I’ll definitely keep reading, but I’ll let myself skip days, I think. And if people keep updating here before the next challenge begins, I may also do so. We’ll see what tomorrow brings!

Congratulations everyone! :partying_face:

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May 30-31

Read a few pages of chapter 10 yesterday and finished it today. Asagi is still the best, poor mum though. :joy: Nice to have another fairly easy chapter but still with some comedy gold.

Actually reading that chapter (especially early on) reminds me of a goof I did once. So I was over at a friend’s place, still fairly early in our friendship. This was a little more than a decade ago btw. I was in my late teens.

And for some reason he told me to look in the fridge for something to eat when I was hungry, so I opened their fridge and looked through it and said: “Här finns det inte mycket att hurra för.” :joy: (Basically “There isn’t anything appetizing here” but possibly more rudely put by saying there wasn’t much to celebrate/exclaim about there.)

Talk about talking without thinking first. :woman_facepalming:


Challenge review!!!

I set a goal for this year to at least read one book/volume of manga each month. It didn’t have to happen in each month, but a goal of at least 12. After three months, I still hadn’t read anything so that is why I joined this challenge and now I have finished:

So while I am still behind, I made up by one over 2 months and I’m about halfway done with Yotsubato& 2 (3/7 chapters). 3/12 for the year.

The one I’m the most proud of was the 坊っちゃん 上下 in Ask Graded Reader lvl 4, vol 3. Probably the hardest thing I’ve read (that I could read by myself; 結婚しても was the hardest difficulty (for when I read it), but I couldn’t have read that by myself and gotten anywhere, also when I got a crash course in casual Japanese).

I also enjoyed 坊っちゃん a lot (that enjoyment really propelled me through the story after it got going). I have no idea how it compares to the original since the graded reader version was both shortened (by a lot) and simplified in language, but I would recommend reading it; at least in some simplified and shortened version. :wink:

The funniest read is Yotsuba&—surprising no one. I’m remembering how casual language works. And it is a fairly comfortable read for me, with exceptions for when it temporarily dips into different genre conventions since I haven’t read widely in Japanese yet to know even the basics across multiple genres.

It feels good to learn that I can read some native material with just a bit of grammar help and a healthy use of a dictionary. (I use Midori which is an apple only app, but it is excellent if you have apple. Not free though, but I don’t think it is that much. I can draw kanji and it doesn’t care about stroke order, or by radical, or you can type romanji (obviously you can use hiragana/katakana/ime). It also includes a lot of set phrases (and some phrases that would be called grammar), can recognize conjugations and tells you which it is. So yeah, super helpful. Oh, and there is like a name database too I think, but it has to be switched to, but sometimes when I stumble on “words” I don’t know, it turns out they are names. :joy: )

Anyway, enough about the digression. I’ve had a good time, and a lot of it is due to all of you guys. Reading about what you are reading, the discussions we’ve had, the grammar help, etc. All so appreciated. Thank you all so much, and I hope to keep seeing you in this thread and then in the summer challenge. :sailboat:


For June, I added a new section to my home post with three June calendars. I’ll just quote my intro to those. My plan is definitely to continue reading, and my main focus will probably still be on Japanese first, but I’m gonna keep it more flexible until the summer challenge.

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I didn’t, but now that you’ve asked (and now that book clubs have their own category!) I will try to start working on it! I nominated something for the BBC, not fully realizing that the nominator usually gets asked to lead the group. It seems likely to get picked this time around, so I’m a little nervous about the time commitment. I suppose I can always ask if someone else is willing to lead the BBC so I could work on the … Japanese-Japanese Book Club…?

@MissDagger thanks for your replies to my posts! In all the activity on here I usually lose track of them and forget to respond, but I appreciate them, and will keep you updated on キリシマ-kun, whose name I mispronounced today as シロクマ-kun (and I kind of like it) haha.

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This has been a great challenge for me. I didn’t think I could read Japanese yet, but once I tried, I really amazed myself! I can read on maybe a 1st grade level. This has been so motivating, and so much fun, too! I will keep on reading Japanese. I read every day except the day my dog died, but I read two short stories yesterday to make up for it.

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@omk3 I’ve been meaning to say for a long time that I love the art of these images you post. Really cool style to a lot of it.

Summary post

And that’s every day done again! There was a day or two I thought I might not, and cut my amount by a lot, but I always read, and my average day’s reading amount is definitely higher than last time. That’s somewhat due to reading speed, but I think perhaps more due to stamina. Both are important, anyway. Today I had time for 8000 characters. There are always peaks and valleys, but I was still feeling out Summer Pockets before, so it’s definitely easier on the whole.

I’m just now really getting into the substance of Shiki’s story, which seems interesting enough. Still a low tier route relatively speaking I think, but we’ll see how it goes. It was nice to get a new background, after playing for so long I thought I might have seen everywhere.

I also finished 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん last night as I was saying! Wrote a little Natively review again. Had a good time with it. Now I’ll give more attention to スマホを落としただけなのに, which I’ve been taking slow between increased listening and split attention to the other book (plus the extra audiobook time) so I’m still only on, IIRC, part 17/60.

It’s been nice, as always! Recently I’ve been inconsistent about posting at all so I won’t say I’ll post daily, but I don’t think I’m going to stop here. I’ll probably want to say more, especially with the end to Summer Pockets and the start of something new in sight. While I missed some posts this time, I’ve loved what I managed to read about what you all were up to.

See you next challenge, even better than before :sunglasses:

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How sweet of you. :blush: Also I can think of a vampire or two that could be compared to polar bears, after all none of them have tans. :joy:

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May 31st!

I read Chapter 63 of Yotsuba today, which is the first chapter of Volume 10.
I’m glad to get back to reading this after taking a short break between volumes to finish off some of my other half finished books.
It’s almost painfully cute. I love it.


End of Challenge Summary: 100% :tada:

Apr
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
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

Books Completed:

  • Teasing Master Takagi-san - Volume 5
  • Yotsuba - Volume 7-9
  • Mitsuboshi Colors - Volume 2
  • Happiness - Volume 1
  • Wonder Cat Kyuu-chan - Volume 1
  • Shirokuma Cafe - Volume 1

Thats 8 books completed during this challenge, bringing my total so far this year up to 21. And more importantly, I’ve really started to enjoy reading in Japanese rather than it being a struggle and am finding I need to look up so much less than I did a few months ago.
Reading everyones updates has been such a huge motivation for me so big thanks to everybody who has been reading along, and of course to @windupbird for organising everything.

I’m hoping nobody minds me continuing to post updates throughout June, because its a part of my daily routine at this point and I don’t think I can stop. :grin:

(Home Post)

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31st May

I finished a whole manga volume in less than a month! :triumph: :triumph: :confetti_ball: :confetti_ball: I finished just in time to end the official challenge on a high note. :confetti_ball: :confetti_ball:

Since this was the third volume in the series ( 山田くんと7人の魔女3), perhaps I’ve just gotten used to the writing style and repeated vocabulary? I really feel like shounen manga is easier to read but I’ve only ever read isolated volumes of shoujo manga. I will be continuing the challenge because I don’t want to stop my reading habit. So this time I will pick a shoujo manga that I have multiple volumes of and see how it compares to shounen manga in terms of readability.

Did you ever watch or read One Piece? During the Alabaster arc, the camel that travelled along with the Straw Hat pirate crew was called Eyelashes but I watched with English subs so I heard it being called まつ毛. Now I know how it’s written in kanji. Thanks.

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Last day, huh? Feels like it was over in a blink! I missed 11 days this challenge, 10 more than last time, but a testament that dropping the ball does not mean you cannot simply pick it right back up again. :joy:

I have not yet finished 心霊探偵八雲 so I bought volume 1 so I can finish it. Trying to finish a whole book during its ‘free period’ was a fun little challenge though, one which I’d like to do again.

I intend to take part in the next round of this as well, as the talk is fun and I sometimes find new books to add to my ever growing list.

Congratulations to everyone who finished their first book or manga or any other victory! They’re all worth celebrating. I’m always delighted to see people progressing up levels of difficulty and I look forward to seeing many of you make even further strides in the next challenge! :muscle: :books: :sparkles:

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Summary post

Apr
Week 00
Week 01
Week 02
Week 03
Week 04
May
Week 04
Week 05
Week 06
Week 07
Week 08
Week 09

= Japanese
= Japanese and Spanish

Look at that, I managed to make it all the way to the end! The last 20 days or so of May were especially hard for me, for multiple reasons, so I fell off of updating my summary post (and abandoned my plan to post more regular updates in the thread), but I never stopped reading. Some days, that meant that all I managed was translating a single paragraph in a TJPW show recap, but I always kept going.

I also managed to read in both Spanish and Japanese every single day! I actually just finished Wonder (La lección de August) by R. J. Palacio today, on the last day of the challenge! Just in time, too, because today my boss asked me for recommendations for easy books to read in Spanish, and I was like: “oh I have the perfect book to recommend! But I currently have it checked out :sweat_smile:”. But I’ll be able to turn it in tomorrow and check out a new book in Spanish :blush:.

With Japanese, I read… probably about a chapter, maybe a chapter and a half, of 大海原と大海原 volume 3 :sweat_smile:. It was my last priority, so I did not get around to reading it often, but I did manage to keep going with the manga! What was really incredible to me is that every time I came back to it, my Japanese had noticeably improved since the last time I read some pages. So I guess the work I’m putting into WK, Minna no Nihongo, and my translations (with Anki as accompaniment) really has been paying off!

I finished 11 TJPW show translations, including some real long ones! My posts about each of them are all in the pro wrestling thread (as well as some posts about the main stressor that ended up derailing most of my May :persevere:).

I also ended up trying my hand at translating some senryu poems here on the forum. That has been loads of fun. I got so into it, I started trying to write a few senryu of my own in Japanese (my poems are in this study log post).

It feels like I got nothing done in comparison to everyone else, haha, because I didn’t finish a single book in Japanese, not even a manga :sweat_smile:. I’m not sure how many thousands of characters the translations are. The shorter shows are usually 3,000 or so, and the longer ones are usually 7,000 or so, so I probably didn’t get all that much read, considering, though it takes longer when you’re actively trying to translate and not just read.

I’ll probably slack a little during the month off, as usual, though the wrestling show translations definitely keep me on my toes, because I try my best to get each one done before the next show. Even if I’m not posting, though, I’ll still be hanging around! It’s fun to see what everyone else is up to! I do plan on participating in the summer challenge when it rolls around. I guess I’ll be getting my birthday month (June) off, haha!

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Day Something

  • ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 14巻

28-45

Kakyoin’s speech is a lot more casual than I remember. I’ll have to check if he regularly uses teikeigo in the anime throughout or if I’m just selectively remembering

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May 31

Read 3 level-three graded readers to celebrate the end of the reading challenge. One was a folk tale, and two were about different customs / cultural objects in Japan like natto and why people wear masks (written in 2016).

With that, my final count is…

Tadoku graded readers completed
44 / 44 level-zeros
14 / 14 level-ones
10 / 10 level-twos
6 / 18 level-threes

So I didn’t meet my original goal, but I made way more progress than I thought I would considering I mostly stuck to level-0s.

I also branched out and started reading more than just Haikyuu. I plan to continue reading Kiki’s Delivery Service. I’m having lots of fun playing Dragon’s Quest. And I can’t wait until the book club starts for Spy x Family. Looking forward to the conversation.

Plus I managed to write and translate a 2-page academic research plan for the MEXT application. Didn’t think I had it in me, but it was a fun challenge to take on.

Thanks to Windupbird for organizing the challenge, and thank you all for your participation, encouragement, updates, and general good cheer. This is a fantastic community to be in. :heartpulse: :durtle_love:

:sun_behind_rain_cloud: Apr :cherry_blossom:
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 :birthday: 30
:tulip: May :seedling:
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
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