📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

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 :books:

Today’s words and phrases:

• 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

:cherry_blossom::house_with_garden: My Home Post :house_with_garden::cherry_blossom:

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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:

  • The “N2” level books, at the bottom (level 30 I think?) assume the reader should have a firm grasp on all N3 grammar, but not necessarily much N2 yet. As you move up through the N2 levels, that assumption changes. To me N3 is kinda ‘basic, everyday grammar’ with no/little poetic flair.
  • I personally don’t rate a single area of vocab throughout a book as more difficult, but a wide variety of vocab I will. For example, 永遠のゼロ is alllllll war stuff, vocab I largely didn’t know, but that’s really all it is, it doesn’t go into other areas. So, I don’t count vocab as difficulty there. Likewise for a crime book, I don’t count words about murder, arrest, weapons, and so on towards difficulty although I might mention it in my written review. However, a crime book with lots of different, unique cases (ex: arson, fraud, murder, embezzling) which dramatically increases the scope of required vocab I will count towards difficulty.
  • I also try to be cognizant of how old/unusual vocab is after basilsauce pointed out that I rated a short story with very, very old words as easy…because they were in my default J<>J dictionary. They are not in J<>E dictionaries however… :grimacing: :sweat_smile:
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Summary Post

April 2
Final Fantasy VII

Vocabulary
  • 確実 = かくじつ certainty.
  • 反乱 = はんらん insurrection, rebellion.
  • 未練 = みれん lingering affection, attachment.
  • 幼なじみ = おさななじみ childhood friend.
  • 給水 = きゅうすい water supply. → 給水塔 = water tower.
  • 標的 = ひょうてき target (of an attack).
  • 注目 = ちゅうもく attention, notice.
  • 未知 = みち not yet known.

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 :smile: . 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?

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Yes, in fact spoilered items will show in the search as well. Ex, from Axazel’s post under a summary box:
image
in search:
image

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Oh well, that’s unfortunate :sob: . 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 :smile: . 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.

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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!)

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Summary Post

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 :joy: 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? :joy: 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.

Good words that were actually in the reading lol
  • 息が上がる (いきがあがる) - to run out of breath; to get breathless
  • 耳をすます (みみをすます) - to listen carefully; to strain one’s ears​
  • 逃げきる (にげきる) - to make good one’s escape; to get away; to outrun
  • 入りくむ (いりくむ) - to become complicated
  • ゼーゼー - gasping for breath; puffing and panting; wheezing
  • こびりつく - to stick to; to cling to; to adhere to
  • ぞっと - shuddering; shivering; trembling; being horrified; being disgusted​
  • 古びる (ふるびる) - to look old; to get old
  • たたずまい - appearance; shape; form; atmosphere; look; feel
  • うらめしい - reproachful; hateful; bitter
  • 仮病 (けびょう) - feigned illness
  • ぎょっと - being startled​
  • うってつけ - ideal; perfect; most suitable; just right​

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 :pleading_face:

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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?

Summary

This text will be hidden

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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

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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 :sweat_smile:

EDIT: Btw thanks for putting this together! It’s a handy shortcut for me so far!

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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. :sweat_smile: 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?

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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.

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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… :flushed:

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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?

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April 2nd (Home Link)

Caturday, a.k.a bookclub day 2, going for the more complicated ones this time.

Manga:

  • Shimeji Simulation: 12 pages (40 min reading time)
  • Yuru-camp: 26 pages (35 min)
  • 極主夫道: 32 pages (48 min)

Total Manga pages read: 70 pages

Light Novels

  • 夜カフェ: 9 pages (45 min)

I also managed to read a bit of my main non-bookclub book

  • 三日間の幸福: 3 pages (50 min)

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:

:iphone: :arrow_down: :zzz:

As usual 極主夫道 has some really hilarious situations.

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Home

As expected, I ended up doing eenie meenie miney mo to pick which manga I’d read next, which got me GREEN~農家のヨメになりたい~. I read Seed 1 today. I’m enjoying it so far. Our protagonist Wako-chan is a Tōkyōite born and raised, but ever since living in the countryside for a year during 5th grade, she’s had a sort of fascination with rural life. She falls in love at first sight with Makoto, the son of a farming family who’s training to take over his grandparents’ farm, and starts helping out when the guy who usually does so can’t make it for a week. Despite her ulterior motives of wanting to spend time with Makoto, she does genuinely want to learn to help out around the farm and do the job well, but she’s… bad at it. Which it seems will be the main source of conflict (and humor?) for the series.

I happened upon all 4 volumes last time I stopped at Half Price Books, and I’m glad I did. It was difficult to stop with just one chapter today, and I might not have, except I had a novel in English (Inkheart by Cornelia Funke) that I’ve been (re)reading for a while and I wanted to finish that too. I probably won’t read in English every day, but I have been wanting to read more again in general because I’ve got a lot of books that I still haven’t read as well as a bunch I haven’t read since middle or high school and who knows if I’ll still like them anymore, and now that I’m buying books in Japanese, too… Well, my unread-book situation was already out of hand before this.

I read 6 pages of 2.43, up to the first break in ch 1-2, putting me at pg 34 of 281. It’s actually fewer than 257 pages that I gotta read this challenge. These books don’t have pictures aside from on the 目次 (unfortunately; Yamakawa Aiji-sensei’s art is very pretty), but each chapter has a cover page, and one chapter ends only a couple lines into a page, so it’s more like 254 pages, probably. That’s still an average of 4 pages needed per day, though.

1-2 starts in the same place that ep 6 does, with Fukuhou failing to advance past the 3rd round at Inter-High, which is about as far as they ever get in national-level tournaments. They’ve represented Fukui at Nationals for 8 straight years, but they’ve never won. The title SETBACK could refer to their loss yet again here, especially as this is their second-to-last chance to win at nationals, but also the very first word of the next section is 怪我, so I think we’re still getting Ochi’s injury. I mean yeah, Subaru’s injured both his knees too, but it makes sense to get Ochi’s background here not just because this chapter’s from his POV but also to explain why he’s their manager and not a player.

Some vocab of note:

苦虫を噛み潰したよう (にがむしをかみつぶしたよう) [expression, な-adjective] sour (expression); as if having swallowed a bitter bug
駒を進める (こまをすすめる) [expression, 一] to advance to the next stage (e.g. in a tournament)

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April 2 :cherry_blossom: Home Post

So much VLR today, we love the weekend :tada: Still so much going on, there are so many things being hinted at and I have truly no idea where some of them are going :joy: tons of fun!

VLR stuff!

Oh there were some challenges today, I ended up in the bio lab and it was basically just like I got dropped in a science class with some instruction handouts :joy: I was dissecting things, preparing samples for microscopes under very specific instructions, all kinds of stuff. I haven’t thought about biology in like six years and it’s having me sort out DNA bases? I think seeing the letters G C A and T on little colored shapes in rows dealt psychic damage lmao. I survived though, didn’t take too long, despite everything! :joy:

It was also fun since I was with 四葉(よつば) and ディオ and that is a combination oh man, you know 四葉(よつば) and シグマ are on some nonsense when ディオ is having to reign them in :joy: So lots of good goofs, especially dumb wordplay:

Love 四葉(よつば) :joy: and yeah for most of it ディオ is the “rational” one, but he’s also like this:

Just… yeah lmao, don’t know what to do with him huh. And that’s not even accounting for plot things… ディオ definitely has some complicated stuff going on, I’m very unclear what his motivations are but they’re obviously really important. He’s really putting クォーク’s life on the line (maybe? the reality of this whole virus thing is unclear at best) to force シグマ to pick 協力(きょうりょく), so like I might die??? And maybe I’m お(ひと)よし as ファイ keeps saying, but I don’t feel like he’d do these things without a specific reason, I don’t get that sense from him. Idk :man_shrugging:

Anyway I have a lot of feelings, and I’m very curious to see how things continue :eyes:

Ah funny you mention that, I like just learned it at this school business manners workshop thing and she also was like “you know spinach?? not that” :joy:

Yessss, love understanding wordplay, it’s very validating!

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Day 3 - April 3

  • 美少年探偵団 1 - 5,59% → 6,37%

Today I read about the other two characters in the club! One of the characters seems to be the head of the school since he was 12? Not sure if it’s the head of the school or the head of the parent organisation of the school but still really impressive! This character seemed most boring to me when I looked at the opening from the anime but now I’m kind of interested to hear him speak :eyes:

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Some things don’t seem to work when they are inside these dropdown boxes, e.g. I couldn’t get polls to work inside them. If your blurred furigana work outside of the dropdown but break when you move them inside, then you‘ve found another thing that can’t be in there.

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I can’t do that here (or any styling I think)

But if it’s in here… than it’s just
Like this?かんじ
<ruby>Like this?<rt>[spoiler]かんじ[/spoiler]</rt></ruby>

[details=" Here, I’ll try!かんじ "]
Ah. Nope. The “hide details” tag breaks :expressionless:
[/details]

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