Today I read and translated the ABBC book club’s 5th week material. This was 25 pages worth, and I got through in 50 minutes or so, so about 2 minutes a page, whic I think is acceptable when translating alongside the reading. My biggest issue sofar it seems is my almost ADHD-esque attention span 
April 2nd 
・Honzuki no Gekokujou 9 (77% → 84%)
Reached the epilogue already 
I get surprised every time. The second short story (which is after the epilogue) is of a situation that happened earlier in the book, just from a different POV. Finally some questions are being answered. I’d read more, but it is getting late.
Favorite word of the day: 報連相
which is a contraction of 報告・連絡・相談 and means “reporting, contacting and consultation”.
Hmm, I’ll think about it. I would like to read it. Hope it’s within my ability when I get to it but I dunno anything beyond the premise. Though I’m too taken by my many whims in what I choose, that I think if it didn’t win I probably wouldn’t stick around for whatever got chosen instead, and I feel weird being like “I’ll join the club if you pick this exact book I want” haha.
Thanks, I appreciate knowing that too! I think I’ll definitely make an effort at some point… though there’s such a pile to get to.
I’m still super pleased to hear about you making your way through that! Great job!
Today, in Summer Pockets… I made it to ~5100 characters, ~415 lines, and stopped because I’m sleepy, haha. Read a little slower but not terribly. I got woken up by noises several times last night so it’s pretty understandable. If I get the chance I might read a little extra later tonight, because I’m very into what’s happening. At least when Ao isn’t bearing the brunt of various kinda immature sexual jokes and references (I had avoided her at first because that’s entirely how she’s introduced)… the game basically dumps most of those impulses onto this one character’s route, but everything else happening around her is interesting and draped in beautiful imagery, so it evens out I guess.
Lots of little observations I want to talk about in the actual reading! I came across another allegedly N1 grammar point in ずとも, “even without doing/being.” I believe there was another yesterday, too. A lot of these I’ve found pretty intuitive in context these days. By this point this game alone must have given me a pretty large chunk of N1 and N2 grammar first encounters.
It’s a very good feeling to get a joke in a foreign language, and having the main character wake up late and be greeted by “おそようございます” which I understood without batting an eye was wonderful. It’s a dumb joke but hey, I understood wordplay!
Today came with a reference to a butterfly, the “オーロラモルフォ.” I don’t have a lot to say about it; it was a very offhand reference, but wow they are quite pretty.
I don’t think I ever showed イナリ, IIRC? Well, everyone, meet イナリ. It seems like a running thing for Key visual novels to feature a cute animal companion, and I can’t complain about that.
Oh, also, at NicoleRauch’s suggestion, I joined the intermediate book club for 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん as my reading material on the side. So far so good with the prologue! Overall, given its vocabulary, I feel like Zoo may have been slightly harder? But we’ll see where this goes. It’s also hard to separate out the possibility of me just improving. I think I’m realizing I didn’t start off QUITE as beginner friendly as I intended (not to say Zoo is hard in a relative sense), which is just good news for what I’m able to handle, heh.
A family weekend today, so only a little time for reading; read 5 pages for かがみの孤城 🪞 Week 19
Day 2
I read the prologue and first chapter of 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん!
This is my first time joining a book club here! I wont go in-depth with the story, since anyone can read about that in the IBC thread, but just know it’s good so far 
• 冒頭 = (ぼうとう) Beginning, opening
• 切ない = (せつない) sad and painful
• とてつもない = Unreasonable, exorbitant
• 忘れ形見= (わすれがたみ) a momento, keepsake
• 犇く = (ひしめく) to jostle, throng
• まさに = exactly
Thank you! I was able to pick up the book from the library this afternoon so looking forward to diving in tonight!
Yay! Also I totally get where you’re coming from. I have had issues with grading things much easier than the majority of the userbase before, but I think I’ve mostly got a system worked out now that is at least consistent and aligns reasonably well with other users’ ratings:
April 2
Final Fantasy VII
Day two, followed a little bit more of the story but also read all of the menus and tutorials to understand a bit more of the game’s system. Second day that everything seems alright. There are unknown words frequently ish but not enough to overwhelm me at all, which is awesome and feels very nice. I think the level might be just right after all, but it’s still too early and I know I might struggle at times once the plot starts developing.
Also I would like to talk about the game, but damn I would hate to spoil it to anyone 
. I’m probably safe using summary boxes, but I’m still kinda hesitating ;-; . Do those show their content if anyone makes a search in the community?
Yes, in fact spoilered items will show in the search as well. Ex, from Axazel’s post under a summary box:
in search:
Oh well, that’s unfortunate 
. Thanks for testing!
I’ll try to find some safe ways to talk about it. Realistically, the chances of spoiling someone using the search box are probably very, very low, but it would still be awful if that happened to someone. The game is very old at this point and well, even if many people don’t consider them spoilers after a certain amount of time, I always try to protect others from them regardless because well, it might be a very old story, but it’s a new one for many.
I’m probably overthinking it but anyway . I will probably talk more about Breath of the Wild when I start it again, since that one has many more side quests and other activities I can freely talk about.
At risk of slightly going off topic of this thread, @KateTriesAgain the reason it’s graded at level 33 is because people have graded 容疑者Xの献身 as level 33 and it’s in the same series. However, if the volumes of that particular series are not tightly correlated in difficulty, do let me know! We can chat more in this thread.
(PS: Welcome to the site!)
Day 2: April 2nd
What did I read?: ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 Vol 2
How much did I read?: 4 pages
How long did it take me?: 33 min
I did read this again today xD We got the classic intro list of some of the various items for sale in the shop, and I think my favorite has to be ピノキオポッキー I forgot how much I like the tone of these books. It feels comfy, like I’m reading a book from my childhood. I would have read this when I was younger.
Does anyone else accidentally learn cool new words while looking stuff up in Jisho? Like today, I was looking up とうとう, which in this case meant “finally; at last; ultimately; in the end,” but right below that was another とうとう (滔々), which is an adverb or adjective that can mean either “torrentially; swiftly flowing (water, esp. river); voluminously flowing,” “(speak) eloquently; fluently; spout forth (a torrent of speech),” or “flood of the times (moving strongly in one direction); current of the times.” What a cool word? I feel like this happens to me a lot.
I remember the first time I ever laughed out loud at a dumb joke like that in “real time” (meaning I “got it” without having to pause and try to look something up). It’s such a fun feeling! I’m not much for that kind of wordplay in English but it’s so fun in Japanese xD
It’s so cute 
A friend gave me a piece of this when I was doing my Master’s in London saying that it will be sweet. It wasn’t sweet. I’d said that I only eat fruits that taste sweet to me and she wanted to prove me wrong.
Edit: does anyone know how to get the blurred furigana while using the ‘hide details’ tag? I’ve tried to quote people’s posts when I see it but I can’t seem to get it in between the quote marks for Summary. Am I doing something wrong?
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April 2
Read 4 more level-0 books. Going to not try to burn out on them by doing too much at once. Just stop once my attention starts to wander.
In the reader on how to make tea, I got curious if the 湯 in お湯 is what I see on the bathhouse in Spirited Away. It’s not, but it is used in Yubaaba’s name (湯婆婆)
In other reading practice news, translated two more paragraphs of that grammar page I was working on yesterday.
Gonna switch over to watch Love is Blind Japan with Japanese subs probably.
Progress on Tadoku graded readers
15 / 44 level-zeros
x / 12 level-ones
x /10 level-twos
x / 18 level-threes
I think this is みたむら しげる. 警視 is just his title. Looking at this it seems like there’s a couple readings for this kanji when used as a name, but しげる is the only one I can think of commonly hearing by itself.
Also don’t know if they’re important yet or not, but 片山 seems to have a colleague named 岡田 (おかだ). I’m only just past the prologue now so maybe they never show up again
EDIT: Btw thanks for putting this together! It’s a handy shortcut for me so far!
Ah, right, I don’t know how I got confused there, thinking 繁 was part of his title and that his name was nowhere to be seen. Thanks for pointing it out, I corrected it in the list.
I have the colleague (who indeed hasn’t appeared again so far) as りょうた a little further down in the list. Is おかだ the correct reading?
Hmm you have 両田 - りょうた but this is a different kanji - 岡田. For me he shows up first as “同僚の岡田の顔がいささかかすんで見える” Third sentence of 第一章.
Oof, I started to realize a second before you posted this. Corrected, and I need to add 両 and 岡 to my “easy to confuse kanji” list… 
The cover is totally what drew me to it first, they’re all so pretty it makes me want to order all of the other volumes lol. Sounds like you’ve read some other sea creature books, have any recommendations?
April 2nd (Home Link)
Caturday, a.k.a bookclub day 2, going for the more complicated ones this time.
Manga:
Total Manga pages read: 70 pages
Light Novels
I also managed to read a bit of my main non-bookclub book
Total LN pages read: 12 pages
It’s somewhat disturbing that I can read the triple number of pages of 夜カフェ in the same time as 三日間の幸福 =._.= 夜カフェ’s sentences feel concise and direct, while 三日間の幸福’s author just loves these sentences that have a lot of sub-clauses filled with analogies that take me a while to untangle.
A couple outstanding panels from manga today:
As usual 極主夫道 has some really hilarious situations.
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