📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

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I still can’t seem to get myself to read any of the books I’ve already started, so I picked up another of the manga I got recently, その恋、自販機で買えますか? and I ended up reading the full volume. It’s a two-volume series (I think; I don’t actually know if it’s completed or if it’s getting another sequel; guess I’ll find out in a couple years) with two slightly older guys (32歳の会社員と28歳の自販機補充員) experiencing something like first love. It’s pretty cute. Office-worker Koiwai has a crush on the younger Yamashita who restocks the beverage vending machine at the office (who, it turns out, likes him back! And is bi!), and he can act cool and calm and collected in front of him, but as soon as Yamashita’s gone, he’s just beset with nerves. Oh, and his coworker’s name is Ooishi, so they’re all named after rocks.

lol the second time in as many days with outer space when his brain shorts out.

And he was literally just freaking out about going to the house of the guy he likes.

There are words that are normally written in kana that get written in kanji (including ones I’ve never seen before), and absolutely none of them get furigana, but I still did pretty well regardless. I even figured out 充分 pretty quickly despite only ever having seen it as 十分. The only furigana in this volume was on the names the first time they showed up, and then on four other kanji, and one of them only so you could still tell what word it was since Koiwai cut off before the okurigana.

I actually feel like, if I had started earlier in the day, I could have read both volumes, but I started reading around when I was making dinner (around 6 p.m. I think, and I finished it around 11 p.m.), so I’ll be reading the sequel tomorrow.

Some vocab of note:

声にならない (こえにならない) [expression, い-adjective] soundless; mute
ツボに入る (ツボにはいる) [expression, ラ五] to be mad about; to be hooked on
損ねる (そこねる) [auxiliary verb] to miss one’s chance to (do something); to fail to (do what one ought to have done)
煮え切らない (にえきらない) [expression, い-adjective] half-cooked; vague; halfhearted; indecisive
自意識過剰 (じいしきかじょう) [noun, な-adjective] excessive self-consciousness; excessively self-conscious person
同期 (どうき) [noun] same year (of graduation, entering a company, etc.); contemporary; classmate
視野に入れる (しやにいれる) [expression, 一] to consider; to eye the possibility (of); to bring into view
烏龍茶 (ウーロンちゃ) [noun] oolong tea
見合わせ (みあわせ) [noun] postponement; suspension; interruption
既視感 (きしかん) [noun] déjà vu
上の空 (うわのそら) [noun, な-adjective] inattention; absentmindedness
口実 (こうじつ) [noun] excuse; pretext
前言撤回 (ぜんげんてっかい) [noun, する verb] taking back what one has said; eating one’s words; negating one’s previous comment, opinion, etc.

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June 22 :cherry_blossom: Home Post

Alright today was weird :joy: I got in the mood to try translating (かぜ)つよ (translation is something I’ve vaguely thought about as something I might enjoy doing so figured I should see if I even like it lmao) and it was really fun! It’s really slow-going obviously, I’m not at a point where I can consistently read (かぜ)つよ at a practical speed for that, but I like the artistry of figuring out how to convey things and still have it sound nice in English, it’s fun :grin:

So the next stage in my thought process was “okay, I should find something relatively short to read and attempt to translate” so I actually used syosetu for once in my life yay :tada: I ended up reading this short story about a teacher reading a crazy essay one of his students wrote, and it was pretty cute! (In case you’re interested: 子どもが書いた夏休みの作文が、ファンタジーすぎる件) I’m pretty brain dead after that and it’s also late, but perhaps tomorrow I’ll attempt to translate it :eyes: Who knows honestly, even I can’t predict all my actions at this point :joy:

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:orange_book: :eyes:
Will you be reading with us?

You always buy the cutest manga. 可愛すぎよ! :pleading_face:

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I spot tanuki :raccoon:

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(📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱 - #12 by DIO-Berry)

  • ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 16巻

6/22
93-120

Conked out against my will again lol. Every time I pick up on the page I gave up on the night before, it looks so easy :joy:

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:tiger2: :books: The June Tanuki Den: Date 20220623 :cherry_blossom: :raccoon:

No Longer Tanuki Progress: 45.43%

One of my favourite phrases so far: 水底の岩に落ち附く枯葉

I kept telling myself “one more sentence” but I think that “one more sentence” turned into about twelve.

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

Learnthings

躊躇「ちゅうちょ」ー Hesitation; indecision
於いて「おいて」ー At; in; on
煙幕「えんまく」ー Smokescreen
意気銷沈「いきしょうちん」ー Depressed in spirts; dispirited; disheartened
長居 「ながい」ー Long visit; overstaying
仮初め「かりそめ」ー Temporary; transient; fleeting
俗事「ぞくじ」ー Worldly affairs; everyday affairs
狡猾「こうかつ」ー Sly; cunning
主張「しゅちょう」ー Insistence; assertion
燥ぐ「はしやぐ」ー To frolic; to be merry/in high spirits
見較べる「みくらべる」ー To compare with the eye (more common as: 見比べる)

SAKE POND, MEAT FOREST
酒池肉林「しゅちにくりん」ー Indulgent feast

Forms
噺 = 話「はなし」(talk; speech)


Reply

“some” books? :laughing:
That’s quite the haul!

TANUK

THE TANUK! :raccoon:

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I umm, need to post this somewhere and I’ve sure been posting in these threads about Summer Pockets.

So, decently far into the true route, coming off something like 6 or more months of reading this visual novel… yesterday, my power company decided to do a “planned outage” for maintenance, which they didn’t actually inform anyone of in advance. They just messaged us once the power was off to let us know how premeditated the exact time it would happen was.

Anyway, Summer Pockets was open at the time. Today it appears that everything is corrupted and I can’t read, or even launch it. The game won’t launch because of the presence of corrupted files, but trying to manually back them up and remove the saves for now just creates new, different errors when it fails to launch. It’s been fun while it lasted. :disappointed:

Edit: Ok sorry, false alarm, it took a few hours but it looks like I’ve found the exact combination of files that need to be deleted to fix it. That was scary and I needed to vent somewhere; things have been rough. :smiling_face_with_tear:

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OMG what an incredible bummer… :weary:

That’s such a big pain. I wish you’ll find a way to somehow resolve this issue some way or another… Here’s a hug if you feel like it: :hugs:

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Summary

That’s…absolutely terrible. Just in case you have the game on Steam it seems someone else was able to solve a similar problem, I figured at least trying it out couldn’t hurt any more…
If that doesn’t work I guess you could always leave it on auto while doing stuff until you can get back to the same place but I understand that’s probably a huge waste of time and a big bummer. :pensive:
Sending some encouragement your way ~

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Thank you (and @NicoleIsEnough). I don’t actually have the game on Steam (no Japanese support, and I’m playing the expanded version) but I had found that thread and was trying that stuff, which led to it not launching. But I didn’t notice the post further down detailing 3 exact files to delete, cause that folder is pretty bulky. Turned out that’s the proper combination to fix it! I’d been at this for a couple hours but yeah, false alarm I guess, thanks for the help. :pray:

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Woow!! Amazing :star_struck:

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Great news!! :partying_face: :tada:
Stories of losing game progress break my heart even if it may sound silly to some people plus I’ve been enjoying seeing your progress with that VN through the challenges so I’m glad we can have more of that if the future P:
I’m still getting through my 1st VN in Japanes atm too so that’s going to be a big milestone I think.

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June 23rd!

Only a little bit of reading tonight. The evening just disappeared today!
I read a chapter of Hana ni Arashi though. Its very sweet, really captures the vibe of hiding a relationship from your friends at school. So much blushing :grin:

(Home Post)

Delighted to hear that! Losing a saved game is always horrible, and when you’ve been working so hard to do it in japanese even more so!

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So happy for you. :star_struck:

I wouldn’t call it false alarm. You just spent a few hours thinking you’d lost all your progress. I can’t imagine how horrible that must have been. So glad it had a happy ending. :rainbow:

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Mayhaps :eyes: :eyes: I’m notoriously bad at keeping up with book clubs but the premise intrigued me when I read about it in the thread!

:raccoon: :raccoon: :raccoon:
Actually I’m kind of annoyed with myself because I didn’t realize that there was a 3rd volume of お前、タヌキにならねーか? until about 5 seconds after I finished placing my order :upside_down_face: Another one for the next order lol

I hadn’t ordered anything since January, so I had quite the list of things to buy :joy:

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Appreciate it, everyone. It’s been SUCH an enormous project that just really amplified things.

On that note, it’s been ages since I checked in. I’ve slowed down but I’m still moving through when I can. Being up to August 10th on the in-game calendar puts me at decent progress through the true route, they usually end a little later in the month.

Spoiler impressions and an image

It’s all been pretty low stakes still, but cute. Umi, the girl nebulously related to the protagonist, has been declining in age over multiple routes which was, umm, odd. Well now she’s a pretty young child who insists on calling the main character her father, and he’s spending his time entertaining her. There’s an element of magical stuff to the whole thing so I’m guessing he might just literally be her father? But there’s clearly a big history of her father being always away for work and never showing up, which is sadly pretty realistic. So right now the game is just him and a girl from the island pretending to be Umi’s parents and devoting themselves to entertaining her. The lengths he goes to for that are quite sweet.

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Glad you were able to fix it and continue the game! I played the original game in English a few years back but based on your screenshot, the parts you’re at now were some of my favorite scenes so I hope you enjoy it. :smiley:

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(📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱 - #12 by DIO-Berry)

  • ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 16巻

6/22
120-end (205?)

Did not conk out this time! I just felt really determined to finish the volume.

The Empress fight (battle?) was pretty cool, although I’m not sure I would have understood if I hadn’t watched it in the anime first. The explanation was just tough to get and seemed like it had more kana when it could have used kanji.

As for the end of the volume, the more I read JoJo, the more I can think of silly summaries. Here we have…

The main character fights a car.

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june 23 :cherry_blossom: home post

I haven’t been reading as much in Japanese these last few days. But today I read Ch. 38 of 極主夫道. I might read 夜カフェ a bit later today since I’m getting pretty close to catching up with the book club

Yesterday I finally tried ordering from CDJapan for the first time so I’ll finally have more physical books! I’ve been a bit wary about it since I’ve never used the site before and shipping’s expensive, but I’ve really wanted to read physical books lately. So I finally decided to give it a try! some of it’s on backorder though so I’ll have to wait a few weeks :frowning:

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If it makes you feel any better, I know lots of people who have used CDJapan with no issues. :slight_smile:

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