The new challenge thread is live!!
(If you are still continuing your reading from the Spring challenge, please feel free to keep posting/updating in this thread until the new challenge officially starts on July 1st 
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I’m looking forward to June being over. It was -for various unrelated reasons- a rather disjointed month, characterized by lack of focus and lack of energy. I missed a few days of reading, and I only read a tiny amount on some others. There were reasons unrelated to Japanese, but it was also because I wasn’t especially invested in most of the books I’ve been reading. So today I sped through the last part of 夜カフェto get it over with. It wasn’t an unpleasant read or anything, but I’m not anywhere near the age group of the target readership, and the book club dragged on for a little too long for me. Anyway, book is now finished and back on its (virtual) bookshelf.
The only scheduled book clubs I’m now participating in are of manga (Happiness, which I will probably follow for another volume, since I already have it from when it was free, and then quit, and Spy X Family). I can only enjoy manga for short amounts of time as I’ve previously written. When I think of curling up with a good book, I never think of manga for some reason. So, while these are enjoyable, they still don’t particularly excite me.
Now 糞尿譚 is quite interesting, but also very challenging, so it’s best enjoyed in small doses. I had been hoping I could finish it within June, it being so short, but I don’t think that’s possible.
In any case, that’s June summed up for me. 4 more days, and then I can start the summer challenge with (mostly) new books and renewed enthusiasm (hopefully 
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Can relate sooo much! I’m so over and done with schoolgirl stories, I can’t even start telling you…
When I started to read it the first time around, I was also young and naive and thought the same…
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6/25
Prefectural stories
2 pages I think?
I tried to catch up but I kept getting frustrated by not being able to tell if something was unfamiliar vocab or grammar 
it shouldn’t be so hard at my level, but it was a pain lmao
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@windupbird Thanks once more for the hosting <3
A small update is in order. I've had a couple chaotic weeks where I didn't have energy to put into much more than distraction, so I haven't done much Japanese reading ever since I updated last time sadly. I've been thinking about how I want to approach the challenge again, and reflecting on what I said a while back about experimenting with no checkboxes... I don't think it's a good idea for me right now. I think it will make it too easy for me to skip days, and even if I don't want to force myself to do something that is supposed to be enjoyable, I think a tiny bit of direction is positive. So I'm not getting rid of the checkboxes, but at the same time I'm changing to a weekly approach, instead of a long two months approach. What I mean by this is that instead of checking day after day after day filling a calendar that will eventually mark two months, my challenge will consist of many mini weekly challenges, where my goal is to mark each day up to seven and try to have a full week.
I think having such a long period eventually burns me out, and I’m hoping that changing to weekly challenges keeps things a bit fresher for me, celebrating small victories along the way. Seeing the calendar and the many days that are left feels overwhelming sometimes, so I’m getting rid of the calendar altogether; I will just add the completed weeks to the home post as I go.
It’s all just mind games to keep me doing the thing, honestly 
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The June Tanuki Den: Date 20220626 
No Longer Tanuki Progress: 50.64%
Not a whole lot of time today, but managed to fit in some sentences.
Japanese found in the tall grass
Learnthings
書画骨董「しょがこっとう」ー Calligraphic antiques; antiques and curios
ヒラメ「平目」ー Flounder; olive flounder
電話機「でんわき」ー Telephone
消毒「しょうどく」ー Disinfection; sterilization
麻繩「あさなわ」ー Hemp rope
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For the next challenge, I’ve already got 穴 and a Riku Onda book (木洩れ日に泳ぐ魚) lined up, but it being Japanese ghost season, I wonder whether anyone has a good horror-ish recommendation? Nothing too extreme, mind (although I couldn’t tell you what is too extreme, I don’t know myself!). I guess 雪女 might fit the bill?
Right? 
I’ve been looking at my books list, and, just like with funerals, there’s barely a book (okay, a couple maybe) that doesn’t feature a schoolgirl in some way.
It’s worth it though. I’m really enjoying it, whenever I find the mental energy to tackle it, that is.
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I don’t really think that’s horror although I did enjoy it. To me it’s horror in the same sense that Little Red Riding Hood is
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Oh.
I noticed it with yokai stories, they’re not really all that scary. I guess I’ll need to keep looking…
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Oh yeah, I wanted to ask whether you had looked into it yet? I still have ~10 pages to go in the main story (and haven’t read the two other stories yet), but so far I must say it’s somewhat fascinating but not necessarily a story that I enjoy a lot… (just so you cannot say you haven’t been warned 
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Oooh, that’s my favorite word (no, not 魚) - there is even a book that features it in its title?
dashes off to bookmeter to add it to the list
Do you mean like supernatural stuff? Hm, maybe this ゲゲゲ manga? 
If you mean horror as in “crazy people do crazy bad things to other people”, I think that リング is quite popular in that regard? (but I haven’t read it yet, so this is all just hearsay)
Clearly you need to alter your book research techniques
(or maybe your selection techniques, i.e. when you see the label “Light Novel”, RUN! 
)
I think I’ve managed to accumulate quite the list of books without schoolgirls, happy to share if you’re interested!
I totally don’t dispute that! (Even my Japanese friend liked it. But it only took him an hour or so to read it, so it’s of course much easier to like something that way.)
It’s just that I maneuvered myself pretty much into a corner right now, with ~150 pages worth of weekly reading just from the two Advanced clubs alone (and I can’t even blame anybody as I set up both schedules myself) plus the last week of JLPT preps plus occasionally being required to do something so that the incoming flow of money does not stop 
But the advantage of those heavy-load book clubs is that they are over pretty fast, so there is light at the end of the tunnel August
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June 26
After 3 days off reading, I feel refreshed and went back at Zenitendou. I did as I planned and reread the first story 6 pages of the first story. On the last page I was reading I could feel my mind drift/trying to fall asleep. I blame the heat a little, but not entirely.
Interesting that even when reread and not looking up even one word (I remember what the sentences mean so I can usually recall what any word means too from that), I still find it tiring to read this. 6 pages felt like a lot.
That actually baffles me even more. I honestly expected to be able to just read through it on the reread without any problems. And I’m not having any problems with understanding, but I’m still getting tired? 
If it is this tiring on rereading, no wonder I found reading only 2 pages, when looking up everything and wrapping my head around the sentences, was hard enough for a daily amount.
Anyone have any idea why it would still feel dense and tiring on reread? 
I’m baffled. 
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Not yet, but I plan to read it during the summer. Would you say it’s weird enough to classify as light horror-ish? (in the sense of dark unexplainable happenings maybe?)
Not too sure what I mean, to be honest. Something mysterious, dark, and thrilling I suppose. But not at the too-scared-to-sleep-at-night level. Not sure about リング the book, but the movie scenes I’ve seen in trailers weren’t my cup of tea. Yes, ゲゲゲ is certainly an idea, and I probably will give the volume I have a read during the summer too, but while it looks a little darker than the previous collection I read, it’s still “Red Riding Hood” level of horror.
I think my main problem is that I haven’t yet read a lot, so the statistics don’t quite work yet.
I’m still not clear what is a Light Novel and what isn’t, but according to LearnNatively I’ve read none.
Here’s a quick table of what I have read so far or am currently reading/listening to, manga excluded. Any non-trivial appearance of school-aged children is marked as “yes”.
| Book | School-age character |
|---|---|
| 夜カフェ | yes |
| 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん | yes |
| 夜市 | yes |
| 告白 | yes |
| 三毛猫ホームズの推理 | no |
| 小川未明童話集 1 赤いろうそくと人魚ほか | yes |
| 地球星人 | yes |
| コーヒーが冷めないうちに | yes |
| かがみの孤城 | yes |
| 糞尿譚 | no |
To be fair, children aren’t always the main characters in the books marked with a “yes”, nor are they necessarily girls. Still, it appears to me that this age group may tend to get overrepresented.
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I haven’t read the book so I’m not aware of any particular difficulties it may have, but I suppose the effort of re-parsing the grammar and recalling the unknown vocabulary can still be quite tiring? Plus I’ve found that my brain really doesn’t enjoy going over things. If your brain is anything like mine, it may just be subtly informing you that it’s getting bored. That said, in the spring challenge I restarted two books I had started and set aside (several months) before. I expected the parts I had already read to be significantly easier, but they certainly didn’t feel all that easy at all. My speed had slightly increased, and some grammar and vocabulary was now familiar (because of the intervening months), but other than that I found myself struggling at the same parts and looking up the same words.
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Well, I literally read these exact pages just over a week ago, so it isn’t that long since I read them. So there is minimal effort to re-parsing grammar and such. 
And unlike you, I’m a serial rereader. I do it quite a lot actually. Currently rereading some of my favorite fantasy books which I’ve probably reread more than 10 times. 
However, it is possible that my mind could find it boring. Can’t discount that, so I’ll try to pay more attention tomorrow to see if it might be that.
I’ve definitely reread stuff right after I read them on at least one occasion, but not sure I’ve done it more than that one time. (It was a short story and it was perfect. 
Would not be perfect for someone who wasn’t into that urban fantasy series though.)
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I know you dabbled in the audiobook, but perhaps スマホを落としただけなのに | L28 ?
Also if you don’t mind the themes mentioned, おやすみ、夢なき子 | L30 could work. My only hard nope is animal cruelty and it has none of that fwiw. I legit did not want to put it down, I was so engrossed.
夜警 | L31 is a thriller and I liked it a lot. It’s also a nice, fluid read.
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Thanks, all three are on my to-read list. It’s just that I wanted to avoid reading books from the same author at this (early) stage, in order to expose myself to as much variety of writing styles as possible. I guess I don’t need to be too strict about that though…
スマホ is more about a stalker, if I understand correctly? I guess what I’m looking for, and the reason I call it horror, is some presence of, I don’t know, the “unfathomable”? Not straight supernatural necessarily, but just some unknown, not strictly human darkness. Not my genre usually, I was just in the mood because summer in Japan is supposed to be ghost season.
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What kind of crazy schedule does this lead to 
Ganbatte, Nicole! 
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Yeah, stalker and serial killer. Definitely nothing ghostly. I haven’t read much for supernatural outside of short stories and 夜警. I have 月の裏側 in my 積読 pile which seems to fit the bill for spooky and possibly supernatural though. Don’t know anything except the summary on the page and probably skimming the intro way back when, I picked it up on a total whim
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Ah, another Riku Onda! I really need to relax my don’t-repeat-authors-yet rule…
She seems to have written quite a lot of spooky books that fall somewhere in between horror and mystery (and several others that have absolutely nothing to do with either spookiness or mystery).
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June 26th!
I did quite a bit of reading again today.
Firstly Chapter 26 of Mitsuboshi Colors, which I really enjoyed. They were playing with some old fashioned toys so it was fun to look those up and learn a bit about them.
Then I read 2 chapters of Hana ni Arashi, which were flashback chapters. I don’t know what it is about flashbacks, but I always love them. I think maybe I like feeling like I’m getting a peep behind the scenes, or being let in on a secret even though obviously thats not actually the case.
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