📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

Japanese Language Reading
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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
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

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 月 火 水 木 金 土 日
Week 00
Week 01
Week 02
Week 03
Week 04
May 月 火 水 木 金 土 日
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:
日 月 火 水 木 金 土
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:
日 月 火 水 木 金 土
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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May 31st (Calendar Post)

ハピネス => 139 pages (55 min)

So I decided to go ahead of the bookclub and started reading Happiness as my main manga - the story seems interesting and I wanted something with a darker vibe than what I’ve been reading lately for a bit of variety.

This was a really fun challenge! There was one day I thought I wasn’t going to be able to read anything, but thankfully I barely made it. Thanks to @windupbird for organizing this event. It was nice going through this thread and learning about what everyone was reading.

Some compiled final stats during this callenge:

Total manga pages read: 4306
Total Light Novel pages read: 181
Total time spent reading: 6309 minutes (105 hours)
Average time spent reading per day: 105 min

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Home

I’m still so tired today, despite how much sleep I got yesterday. Ugh. And of course it’s the kind where I will at times get overcome with a vague dizziness, which is never fun. Although that could be from lack of food instead… I did sleep through dinner yesterday evening, after all, and I haven’t been particularly hungry today. I did make sure I ate a proper dinner today, though! (And lunch, though I did eat lunch yesterday.)

My ひだまりが聴こえる drama CDs got here! The site I originally tried to get the first two on (originally it was just gonna be the one, but if I got another I’d qualify for free shipping) turned out not to have them in stock. So I checked at Mandarake again, which is more expensive only because of shipping, and they didn’t have a single store with both. So I ended up getting all 5, because two orders would be cheaper than however many, and also cheaper than Amazon (which doesn’t even have the first two available for international shipping anyway). So it was a pain, but I finally got them! I haven’t decided yet if I’ll read the volume and then listen to the CD, or if I’ll read the chapter and then listen to its corresponding track, but it’s still gonna be a little bit before I get to it anyway. For now I’ll just be ripping the CDs and syncing the tracks onto my phone in preparation.

Today I read the previews for: 恋と毛玉とお隣さん; part of the かくりよの宿飯 manga; and かがみの孤城, novel and manga. That novel seems like a relatively easy read, at least as far as known and easily-picked-up-without-consulting-a-dictionary vocabulary goes; I did have a bit of difficulty distinguishing what was present and what was flashback/exposition, although I assume there’ll be less of that after the first chapter, after we get into the story itself.

I read only 2 pg of 海辺のカフカ. After reading those previews (the one for the かがみの孤城 novel was 40 pg long!) and ripping all the ひだまり CDs and getting them organized, I was pretty tired.

Some vocab of note:

至福 (しふく) [noun] beatitude; supreme bliss
脱走 (だっそう) [noun, する verb] escape; flight; breakout; fleeing; desertion
色男 (いろおとこ) [noun] lady-killer; sexy guy
百鬼夜行 (ひゃっきやこう) [noun] nightly procession of monsters, spirits, etc.
様子見 (ようすみ) [noun] wait-and-see
否応なく (いやおうなく) [adverb] whether one wants to or not; without choice
矢継ぎ早 (やつぎばや) [noun, な-adjective] rapid succession (e.g. questions)

I wonder if かがみ (鏡, mirror) comes from 影見 (かげみ), since aside from “shadow,” 影 can also mean “figure; shape” and “reflection; image,” and え-row sounds often shift into their corresponding あ-row in 訓読み compounds (like 雨 in 雨垂れ [あまだれ] or 酒 in 居酒屋 [いざかや]). I had the thought today when I learned that a full-length mirror is called a 姿見 (すがたみ).

Today I also came across まつげ, although with different kanji: 睫. Also, I already knew “eyebrow” is 眉 (まゆ), but not that it could also be 眉毛! Perhaps knowing the kanji will help you remember the difference between them? For some reason, I can often remember words/names better if I see them in kanji, even if I don’t know the kanji yet, though of course, I don’t know if you’re the same.

I’ll definitely be continuing next month, and also updating my home post to include a June calendar. This means I’ll need a new character for the bullet point for the books finished in June…

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I think まつ毛 sounds like 末毛 - that is, tip of the brows? Otherwise, まゆ is quite common. Knowing about 眉間(みけん) may help too (with the Kanji and implied reading).

Jun 1, Wed :cherry_blossom: calendar post

Expectations, Challenge Recap, and Way Forward

Apparently, it appears that I have a wrong expectation of :books::books: Read every day challenge. It appears to start from every day for 1 whole month as per Redglare - then upgraded to every day for 2 whole months by windupbird - and with an unmeasured break until the next season. I am just blind to seeing Jun and Jul too similarly!

Afterwards, I found Extensive Reading (and Extensive Listening) challenges. They appear to contain some relaxed yearly goals, like number of books.

However, I can’t find a way to settle in both places, by both of their conventions yet. Some time later, I found a third way - weekly goal setting. And it appears that calendar post can be adapted to that way too.

Indeed, I learnt more from a few months than a few years (which I’ve always do some half-assed reading), so I plan to plan weekly for now, seeing how far I can go. (Trying to keep it up for at least 1-2 years.)

  • Much of the progress is still vocabularies (many are genuinely new, others are inferrable), despite the fact that I complained much more about grammar.
  • Some thanks are given to Book Clubs. A lot of thanks would be to WaniKani Community itself, that I have always trust (despite some shortcomings of the app).

I have inserted my trimonthly plan in Extensive Reading Challenge, but not exactly sure whether it fits there. In the end, I might have to create a thread for myself (for my own public learning).

May (monthly) recap

This month, some listening restarted. Music, as well as songs I listened to in the past, is the one.

I’ve tried some serious anime listening, and make sure if I can identify every sentences. Not sure now this will turn out - continuing, adapted, or giving up?

Somehow, I got caught in managing Death Note Offshoot, until the end of Vol.2. It appears to be a good experience, as Death Note is not too difficult to me, nor too easy; and I can exactly keep the pace. (Though, I can usually finish a chapter in one sitting - indicator of relative ease?)

There are several books that encourage me to look up on related topics - including JoJo, Yuru Camp, Night Cafe. I will treasure that. When trying to look up on topics, I had to read Japanese articles (without Furigana), reminding me that I need to be a lot better. Nonetheless, Yomichan helps on laptop, and Akebi helps on mobile. (JJ dictionaries, and other resources built by natives, don’t appear to have a nice browser integration.)

June (monthly) plan

  • Anime as a sidetrack to manga. I will try to find live action, if possible.
  • Maybe Shogi, in Ayumu and March comes like a Lion. Will also check out Xiangqi (Chinese chess).
  • Find some nice public health and medicine ones. Badass surgery is not enough, need more of social management.
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Feels a little weird posting when I “finished” my challenge days ago and I don’t have time to write a real summary post at the moment but :joy:
I just wanted to say a quick congratulations to everyone completing the challenge today! :tada:
And a big がんばって! to everyone who’s still going! :tada:
You are all awesome, and thank you for joining in!! :heart:

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May 31 :cherry_blossom: Home Post

I was in an AI: The Somnium Files mood today so I just played a bunch of that. As is typical when I get into little language slumps, I started reading and was like “wow my brain isn’t doing this at all, there’s no way I can push through” and then I did and before I knew it I was all in again, who could imagine :joy: It helped that things got WILD, oh man. I think I’ve said the plot is really getting going like three times now but it’s really getting going lmao, I’m very invested :eyes:

AI: The Somnium Files stuff

Well things have not been going how I thought; I figured イリス would have the angst of her mom getting murdered since we saw that in our dream, but nope she’s super dead now! That was brutal! There are like different routes though so maybe different things will happen in those? I still don’t really think 瞳(ひとみ) is safe but we’re up to four dead so :man_shrugging: 応太(おうた) definitely didn’t do it, it makes no sense, but why him also? Why’s he still have both eyes? Many questions :eyes: Also very suspicious of the very specific kitchen knife his mom has but well, we’ll see if that’s relevant.

As far as 伊達(だて)… there’s definitely a lot to be figured out. There’s no way all these things being six years ago is a coincidence, and he just happens to also be missing an eye? Like we’ve never talked about why or how that happened, I guess because he doesn’t remember, but someone has to?? And イリス saw him in her somnium which doesn’t have to mean anything necessarily, but she also knew way more about the whole situation than she should have so who knows! I feel like his boss is perhaps hiding more than just “state secrets,” she seems weirdly like… melancholy about how supposedly unrelated the incident six years ago is to what’s happening now and also 伊達(だて)'s situation.

Basically I have so many questions and very few answers and I want to just keep going but I have to sleep at some point, rip :pensive:

And with that the challenge is (theoretically) over! I did complete my goal of finishing VLR and ZTD so yay! :tada: Looking back the only other thing I finished was ヴァニタスの手記(カルテ) but I was really focused on Zero Escape (and finals :sweat_smile:) so that’s not shocking. I’ve gotten about 15 hours in AI since I finished those, and I’ve started 海辺(うみべ)のカフカ with the bookclub, so I’ve certainly got things to work on. I think I did well with the Zero Escape games; very consistent improvement! 80-ish hours for VLR compared to like 100 for 999, and then down to about 30 for ZTD… I’d call that a successful challenge! :grin:

As always I’ve absolutely loved seeing what you all are up to; everyone’s accomplished so much! There’s a lot to be proud of in this thread :blush: Considering how much I babbled about AI today I don’t think I’ll be stopping my posts anytime soon lmao, I look forward to seeing you guys around in June or next challenge or whenever you feel! :grin:

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June 1

Read chapter 11 of Yotsuba& and I was laughing out loud through the whole chapter. Dad’s dance, Yotsuba drawing her dad and then deciding to add a beard to the drawing, and then the look at her sleeping dad. :joy: So many good looks in this chapter. Her panic eyes when wondering if dad would get angry, and then the look of Ena and the frozen expression of Fuuka about the mayonnaise/butter. Not to mention the poor postman/newspaper man and the person on the phone going “?!”.

I’ve always wondered why Yotsuba& was so recommended considering the summery most people give of the manga (a young girl and her every day life is usually what it boils down to). I don’t feel like anyone have ever tried to impress on me how funny it is. It is the kind of absurd situations you get with a child, because they will take you literally, or make leaps that make no sense to you because of vaster knowledge but when you think about it from the child’s perspective it makes sense. And then the surrounding characters are a mix of different people that just enhance the whole thing.

Also, forgot to mention (yesterday) Asagi’s appearance at the end of chapter 10. Stealing her mom’s いちご and then about to steal Yotsuba’s but then sees Yotsuba’s face and instead makes it into a silly this いちご went flying and now it landed back where it belongs.

I realized I forgot to thank @windupbird yesterday! Thank you! :tada: For making sure this challenge keeps going and for the wonderful calendar template! (Had to make my own for June, didn’t I? So I learnt there is a bit of work to even just adapting a previous one. Not having to make that for April and May was so nice. :blush: )

Already read a bit of non-fiction today too, and would have read some fiction in English except my ereader was out of battery. :low_battery: Hopefully later. ^^

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I haven’t caught up on recent posts here yet, but for those who are interested just wanted to quickly link the Japanese-Japanese (working title) Book Club thread that I just posted! (Gah, I feel so nervous!)

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Decided to continue with this, I’ll be reading No Longer Human each day for the challenge, not sure if I can complete it by the end of June for the Summer challenge to start, but we’ll see! (highly unlikely)
I’ll update my homepost with a June calendar. Looking at my emoji-calendar for this challenge it looks like there was a lot of foxes this time :fox_face: wonder what I should use for June :thinking:

Thank you @windupbird for hosting the thread again! And congrats to everyone was has participated, I like how much variety there is in everything everyone’s reading, always interesting to see!

And for those who are continuing:

:raccoon: タヌキ頑張って！ :raccoon:

Onward to reading -

:tiger2: :books: The New Tanuki Den (it’s just the old one but now with more June): Date 20220601 :cherry_blossom: :raccoon:

No Longer Tanuki Progress: 0.01%
That felt like a lot more reading than just a fraction of a percent… this is gonna take awhile.

Verdict so far: that was pretty difficult. First time reading more… not sure of the word, but more literatesque Japanese over folktales and kids stories. The meaning of some of the sentences took awhile to work out due to the poeticness of them, it’s also a little heavy on the kanji, but not extremely so, thankfully there’s furigana for the more obscure stuff.

:seedling: Japanese found in the tall grass :seedling:

Learnthings

端書き「はしがき」ー foreword; preface; introduction
前後「ぜんご」ー About; approximately (can also mean front and back / back and forth / before and after)
従姉妹「いとこ」- Female cousin, same reading as 従兄弟 but different kanji.
縞「しま」ー Stripe; bar; streak
美醜「びしゅう」ー Beauty or ugliness; personal appearance or looks
満更「まんざら」ー not altogether; not wholly (not usually written in kanji)
謂いわば「いわば」ー So to speak; so to call it; as it were (also seen as: 言わば)
通俗「つうぞく」ー Popular; common
些か「いささか」ー A little; a bit; somewhat (not usually written in kanji)
頗る「すこぶる」ー Extremely; very much (not usually written in kanji)
呟き「つぶやき」ー Murmur; muttering (not usually written in kanji this is starting to be a running theme)
払いのける「はらいのける」ー To ward off; to brush away; to fling off

New Reading
辺「ほとり」ー Side of a body of water, like lake/river bank or edge or shore, sometimes also seen as: 畔

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June 1st!

I read Chapter 64 of Yotsuba today. It was a super cute chapter where she was learning how to make pancakes. Her struggle to correctly flip one over was very relatable :sweat_smile:

(Home Post)

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We did the Summer 2021 challenge for 2 months too~ :beach_umbrella::beach_umbrella:

Summer 2021: June-July
Autumn 2021: September-October
Winter 2022: January-February
Spring 2022: April-May

If you’re wondering about the Winter challenge, we decided it would be fresh to start a challenge on the first day of the year instead of having it during Dec-Jan. 2 months on, 1 month break.

No longer tanuki :joy:

Btw, if you haven’t checked it out already, there’s a book club for 人間失格. It was read as a part of the Advanced Book Club last year.

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I’ll be watching your experience with a lot of interest! Reading this is definitely one of my eventual goals. Honestly it’s probably not impossible for me right now? I just don’t think it’s the direction I want to apply my efforts just yet.

About to go out so I’ll be brief, but I might as well check in while I’m here! Another 8000 characters read. As Shiki’s story has progressed to the real substance, a lot of her more annoying quirks and even things I didn’t enjoy when the story was focused on them have taken on some new meaning, so that’s neat. Each day the route grows on me a lot more.

船長
船長1920×1076 157 KB

And it’s found an excuse to make Ryouichi a central character while he teaches us how to sail. I love a lot of things about Summer Pockets, but increasingly above all else my thoughts are “forget all of these girls; Ryouichi is my best bro.”

Anyway, overall, I’m back in a time where I find the reading to be pretty smooth, so it’s going great.

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Hey everyone! I sort of dropped off the wagon at the beginning of May, and haven’t been reading for a while… only websites or dictionary entries to help me write for my Japanese class.

I’m in a very busy time right now, but a three-week winter break (I live in Aus) is coming up, which will hopefully give me more time to read! I’ll do my best to get back on track for the next challenge, and continue the habit :smile:

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Summary Post

May 30 - 31
Final Fantasy VII

June 1
Final Fantasy VII

Alrighty then! End of the “official” challenge :tada: . I’ll most likely write my conclusion post tomorrow, though I plan to keep reading and updating through June anyways. I want to tweak just a little bit my approach to the challenges so that I can keep doing them without burnout for a long time. More on that tomorrow!

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Honestly whenever you do hit me up. I’m not looking to do it right now (though will also be watching @Zakarius 's read with interest) but it’s a ‘in the future’ book for me.

Personal aside as to why it's not 'now'

I was actually really excited to read it “eventually” awhile back, as at the time my only friend IRL who also studied Japanese had read it and it was his favorite book. He raved about it, and I really wanted to read it and discuss it with him, but at the time I felt my Japanese wasn’t on par to do it. He passed away rather unexpectedly a few months ago though and while I think my Japanese is there now, the feelings are too fresh :frowning: But I think with a bit of distance I could read it and enjoy it, which I think he would appreciate.

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