㋃5日 – Day 5
- ジョジョの奇妙な冒険
p75
I got serious distracted last night, wow. I was surprised at how (relatively) good looking a guy was in his flashback and then got distracted and forgot to read more before bed. 1 page counts though, right? 
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Thank you for a lovely start to my morning! 
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Day 5: April 5th
What did I read?: ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 Vol 2
How much did I read?: 8 pages
How long did it take me?: 41 min
Finished the chapter! Kind of ended in a fairly predictable way, though I sort of thought it might be another thief that would be his downfall for some reason, like there would be another thief who also ate the 怪盗ロールパン and they would have some big showdown or something? (Idk why I thought that lmao) But nope, it was a cop who ate 正義の味方、ヒーローデカプリン, lol
Good words
- ちりばめる - to inlay; to set; to stud (e.g. star-studded sky); to enchase (something) with; to mount (gems)
- くらむ - to be dazzled by; to be dizzied by; to be disoriented by
- なめずる - to lick one’s lips
- ふさわしい - appropriate; adequate; suitable; fitting; worthy
- ほくそえむ - to chuckle to oneself; to gloat (over)
- さんぜん - brilliant; radiant; bright; sparkling
- 現行犯 (げんこうはん) - caught red-handed
- がくぜん - astonished; shocked; amazed; astounded; aghast
- 誘拐事件 (ゆうかいじけん) - kidnapping
- しょぼくれる - to be dispirited; to be dejected; to be disheartened; to lose heart
- 見向きもしない (みむきもしない) - taking no notice; ignoring; not even looking at
- あびせかける - to inundate (with questions); to heap (praise); to hurl (abuse); to level (insults)
- われに返る (われにかえる) - to come to one’s senses
- こけにする - to make a fool of someone
- ずきんずきん - throbbing (pain); pounding; stinging
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I finished 山田くんと７人の魔女２ today so tomorrow I can start a shoujo manga. I’ve decided to start しゅごキャラ！ １ and see how that goes. I remember reading a fan translation of it back in the day and liked it but it’s been over a decade since then. So my memory on the story would be vague. Let’s see how much I can pick up from reading alone.
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April 5
8 more level-0s, although two of them contained multiple stories within them lol
This time reading through them, I started to notice the grammar patterns being subtly taught. For example, one mini-story was highlighting the different uses of the で particle. Another story showed the patterns for modifying a noun. Neat to pay attention to that stuff since I already know what each story is about.
I also read my iTalki’s teacher response to my message, and after this I’m going to work on translating my MEXT research plan into Japanese lol
Progress on Tadoku graded readers
36 / 44 level-zeros
x / 12 level-ones
x /10 level-twos
x / 18 level-threes
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Vol. 7April 5th (Calendar Post)
Managed to finish chapter 11 of my current book, 4 more to go!
三日間の幸福 => 9 pages (97 minutes)
New kanji I’ve run into:
捲 => 捲る => to turn pages (of a book)
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april 5 
home post
Read a chapter of 極主夫道 this evening. I’m trying to catch up to the rest of the book club, I keep getting stuck a week behind for some reason
Also, seeing people playing Zero Escape and FFVII in this thread makes me so happy, I love both those games (I’m actually planning on playing 999 in Japanese over the summer). one of these days I’d love to play some FF in Japanese too
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April 5 Home Post
A bit of a sleepy day today; I tried to finish another little ending but it’s uh… more involved than I expected 
so that’ll be a tomorrow morning thing then, I’m too sleepy.
Oooooh this is very validating, thank you for the confidence boost 
Lmao perhaps this is relatable, could you have guessed It’s a cool feeling though! Definitely feel the struggle haha
999 responses!!
Yesssss, glad to be accurate Santa is an absolute chaos man, love him and all of his nonsense
I remember having absolutely no idea so weird nonsense? Absolutely, perfect choice
Truly, he really did not dress for his name huh
Ah the 999 experience very relatable, sometimes it was really like “you know I don’t think I’d really understand this in English even, what are we talking about” lmao, thanks 紫
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worked for as long as my daily mix on spotify lasted so i guess i gotta go to bed for now.
fun vocab I looked up
- 要因 - よういん - main cause
- 〇〇による - by means of / due to (grammar)
- 整理する - せいりする - sorting; arrangement
- 影響 - えいきょう - influence; impact
- 取片付ける - とりかたづける - to clean up; to put in order
- 所持品 - しょじひん - personal belongings
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I’ve definitely been doing more reading since starting this challenge, which I’m happy about (I’m also happy that it’s getting easier to read in Japanese!), though I was getting a little worried that I was letting my actual studies slip through the cracks, but actually it seems I’m doing about as much as I usually do on days when I have work, and I’m mostly just spending the extra time on days off that I wouldn’t have if I were at work to read, so I guess it’s kinda balanced out?
I read Seed 4 of GREEN, as well as the 特別番外編 where Ninomiya-sensei talks about how this series came to be, finishing vol 1! I’m definitely enjoying this series so far, and I hope the remaining 3 volumes hold up.
Live commentary:
lol Nozomi told more lies again trying to get Wako-chan to give up on Makoto. This time that Makoto left behind an ex-wife and 7 children in Tōkyō. And then a woman Makoto’s on good terms with drives up as they’re walking home together and whisks him off to her store to taste-test her new menu, making Wako think there may be some truth to him already having someone after all.
Baa-chan does want them together, so it is just that she doesn’t want Wako helping out on the farm and doesn’t want anyone wasting time teaching her to do it properly. She tries to comfort Wako-chan by saying that Makoto is a simple man and the only thing he thinks about is the fields (not helping when Wako wants to know if he ever thinks about her!) and then by lending her a yukata and telling her to wear it and go with Makoto to the festival tomorrow (which does help) with the ulterior motive of wanting them to hurry up and give her great-grandchildren lol
But then a big storm sweeps through and the festival is cancelled. Wako only has 5 more days until she has to go back and she still wanted to use this as a chance to go on a date, as when it clears up, they’ll just have to help out on the farm again, but Makoto doesn’t even think about that and just wants to read books about pests and crop diseases and the like (well, baa-chan certainly wasn’t lying lol), so she gets mad and shuts herself in the closet. While waiting for someone, preferably Makoto, to come find her in her purposely easy hiding spot, Makoto gets called by the fire brigade (who call on him in times like this as one of the few young people in the area) to help people who’ve been injured due to all the rain. Wako falls asleep waiting for him to come back and dreams he comes home (from a regular office job lol) bringing her a bouquet of flowers, which is how he finds her. He does actually have a small sprig of wildflowers he’s picked and gently tucks them behind her ear before curling up next to her and falling asleep as well… but it turns out it’s a poisonous plant and they both end up with a rash that takes a week to heal (whoops)
I read 17 pages of 夜カフェ, which is all of ch 2. This week I only needed to read the first half, but there was no way I was reading only part of it lmao I didn’t even look at which line we were supposed to leave off on.
I have Thoughts. (Well, not all of them are capital-T, but.)
I really don’t like Hanabi’s dad. I don’t care if you’re raised to think the women should be doing all the cooking and housework and child-rearing and whatnot and that’s how it was when you were young and that’s all you know, if you see your wife struggle to be able to do all of the cooking and cleaning and laundry and etc. etc. on top of her job (just as I assume you saw your own mother do when you were younger) and instead of offering to help all you do is feel sorry for your pre-teen daughter who can’t cook when she has to try and cook for herself or buy a conbini bentou (why don’t you try cooking when you get home before dinner, huh?) and get on your wife’s ass for not doing it all and demanding she somehow magic up the time and energy to do it when you are perfectly capable of doing at least some of it yourself, you are a grade-A dick. He either needs to grow up and stop being a child or Hanabi’s mother needs to find someone better.
「つかれてるのは、おれだって同じだ。」
Oh, so you’re allowed to kick back with a beer after work, but your wife isn’t even allowed to rest on the couch for one single second when she gets home before you’re hounding her to cook and clean? Asshole.
I’m glad her aunt’s place is a safe space for Hanabi. Aiko-san doesn’t try to make her go back even though she’s already received a call from her sister, just welcomes her in and makes her feel seen and heard and makes sure she eats (as Hanabi’d only had half a conbini bentou before her parents got home and started fighting). We also meet Yamato-kun, another of the main characters, who it seems took a big tumble off his bike in Aiko’s front yard and injured himself (though not seriously, thankfully) and has been staying with her for the two weeks since. For some reason. I wonder if we’ll learn why he isn’t staying with his family.
This chapter was Tina’s first appearance, too. I hope she’ll be a friend to Hanabi. She deserves to have someone on her side who’s her own age.
I read 2 pages of 2.43, putting me at pg 44.
Fanboying/rambling:
どどどどどっ、と上のほうから地響きが降ってきた。反射的に逃げ腰になって振り仰ぐと、脇にある階段から三村が飛びおりてきた。文字どおりの意味で、踊り場から飛んだのだ。スパイクジャンプのフォームと同じように弓なりに反った長身がビル半階分の虚空を舞った。ガラス扉から射す光の筋の狭間にその姿が一瞬消え、次の瞬間、光の中から突然現れたように見えた。
I had to include this whole paragraph because I love it, I love the imagery, and I love the scene in the anime too, and also, Subaru, babe, you are an idiot. You’ve injured both your knees and have had surgery twice already and you’ve gotta be careful on them (which is why he wears braces—called サポーター in Japanese—when he plays), and what do you do? You take a flying leap off of a half-landing! I love you, but you’ve really gotta listen to your voice of reason (which I know you have!!) more often. (Also, dashing down stairs? Not fun on your knees.)
Because this is a pattern, him doing dumb things (which I know he knows are a bad idea!!) because, I dunno, he thinks it’ll be fun? There’s this in first year, leaping off a stone breakwater into the sea chasing after a ball while playing beach volleyball in second year, a snowball fight right before the finals in the HaruKou prelims in third year. The first and third are the only ones in the anime (the second was mentioned in 途中下車の海). Yuni I know has no voice of reason, but Subaru I’m fully convinced does have one and he just chooses to ignore it.
Side note, but one of the reasons I’m really looking forward to getting to next 4 years is seeing how Yuni and Subaru get on when they’re on the same team, because I have a feeling they’d get on swimmingly, but not always necessarily in a good way lmao they definitely have the potential to cause trouble together.
lol and then Ochi internally a few lines later:
大事にしなきゃいけないんじゃなかったのかよ⁉
My thoughts exactly.
Ooh, we do get their heights! Well, not exact heights, but Subaru’s surpassed 180cm, as I’d somewhat suspected, and Ochi’s a little under 170 cm and has given up on growing any further. His height as a third-year is 168 cm, so he likely never does, unless he grows in college (I did, though only slightly). I think he was a setter though, or at least the image of him in the anime during the flashback scene where Subaru and Hata-kantoku are talking about the team they’re building suggests that he was a setter, so height wouldn’t have mattered much for him had he remained a player.
I read ch 11-20 of コナの大冒険. A lot fewer kanji to add to my known list, so it went more smoothly today.
Today I also picked up Holy Cow!, a book which explains (though not always in detail) the origins of many an animal expression that I picked up for like $3 at Barnes & Noble back in January. I’m happy they acknowledge bisexuality.
A gay dog used to mean someone pursuing an idle lifestyle while displaying the symbols of (usually inherited) wealth. Or it was a young man with an active romantic life. Now it would refer to a homosexual or bisexual canine.
Never heard that expression before. Although dogs being considered nuisances rather than “man’s best friend” for a significant portion of history explains a lot of the less-than-complimentary canine expressions. Also I don’t think at this point I’ll ever be able to come across “dog days” without thinking about my fic that I named “真夏 -the dogs days of summer-” lol. Pry doesn’t help either that Yuni’s ADHD ass reminds me of a dog (which actually didn’t influence the title; it was purely because it was hot as bleeping heck outside) and he’s even in canon compared to a border collie. (And even if Chika’s never compared to a cat in canon, I’ve already got that covered in another of my fics lol)
Some vocab of note:
土砂崩れ (どしゃくずれ) [noun] landslide
桧 (ひのき) [noun] hinoki cypress; Japanese cypress. It’s also written 檜 or in katakana; the name apparently comes from “火の木.”
毒草 (どくそう) [noun] poisonous plant
地響き (じひびき) [noun] subterranean rumbling; earth tremor. This was even used with what I’m assuming is the “to come; to arrive” sense of 降る.
袈裟懸け (けさがけ) [noun] wearing a kāṣāya (monk’s stole); wearing an article of clothing in the same manner as a kāṣāya (i.e. draped over one shoulder). I have come across this word multiple times in 2.43 but never did look it up until now. I never paid attention to how it was used, but I’d bet anything it was always used to describe how the characters carry their enamel sports bags.
ドツボに嵌まる (どつぼにはまる) [expression, ラ五] to find oneself in deep trouble
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Day 6 - April 6
- 美少年探偵団 1 - 10,27% → 13,64%
Didn’t get to read more yesterday, because of a lot of traffic on the way home for work (2 hours and 40 min instead of 1 hour and 10 min drive…) 
Today I finished reading Chapter 3! I have a feeling that I am approaching the end of the introduction to the story, now that the characters have been introduced and the main girl has asked for help with her problem. I’m curious how they are going to help her find what she’s looking for, since it’s something that isn’t tangible.
I hope I can keep this pace going, so I can finish this novel by the end of the challenge! 
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Home Post
Day 4
I was taking a 5-hour flight today. I read quite a bit of 車井戸はなぜ軋る on the flight, bringing the progress to 56%. I mentioned yesterday that “葛の葉” is related to 安倍晴明. I learned more about the story in today’s reading. 安倍晴明caught葛の葉 tranforming into the fox, or transforming back into beauty. I like how she describes and analyzes the picture on the 屏風. It brings me to the front of the 屏風. I agree with 鶴代 that it would be hard to put on the finishing touch on that kind of drawing. Knowing the story of 画竜点睛 from Chinese folk tales, I know it could be intimidating to have the finishing touch of the eyes, or it could just be superfluous if one tries to draw the eyes.
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I keep seeing you mention how you’re reading these stories and it’s making me very happy, haha. We’ll start reading the extra stories from 本陣殺人事件 with the 金田一 interest group 
next week. We’re only 2 reading (+1 person who’s read these particular stories already) so we’re a very small group, but if you’d like to share impressions please feel free to come by. 
We’re also very interested in historical and political background info, haha.
(This is a link to the thread we’ll use)
If you’re not interested that’s fine too, of course. I’ll be quietly basking in the knowledge that someone else is/was just ‘reading the same thing’ anyway. 
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April 6, Wed home post
I haven’t really read much the past few days. Falling (堕落) to programming loophole is pretty much a curse, and I am not really a programmer as a career. In particular, fixing IME2Furigana and my Japanese blog’s parser (like bracket matcher and imitating Discourse’s syntax).
- As for improving forum experience, I can recommend IME2Furigana above, and another one of mine.
- Also, today, I found how to format in Discourse.
Nonetheless, I actually did something,
- 4 Apr
- On trying to name image radicals, I notice a backlink in the OP to another post by Nicole, and eventually special kanji words derived from other words. Here, I reorganized the whole list, and study every one of them.
- I thought I gave up studying Kanji separately, but now, I decided that I should study Kanji, both from WaniKani and outside.
- A reason for doing this, is that WaniKani doesn’t teach enough vocabularies in the first place.
- I thought I gave up studying Kanji separately, but now, I decided that I should study Kanji, both from WaniKani and outside.
- I tried to read Yuru Camp a little, but felt that it may take some dedicated effort, though not particulary hard.
- On trying to name image radicals, I notice a backlink in the OP to another post by Nicole, and eventually special kanji words derived from other words. Here, I reorganized the whole list, and study every one of them.
- 6 Apr
- I quickly read Death Note Vol. 1 Ch. 8 (again), and notice some things.
- Reading ジョジョ is as fun as ever. (Did I mentioned that I haven’t read for a while?)
Vocabularies of note
- スケコマシ - lady-killer
- すけ appears to be 助け, and こまし is actually from こます; but Digital Daijisen doesn’t really tell the etymology nor the Kanji. I have to search a little more (in Japanese).
- 女たらし - womanizer
- 誑す appears to mean “to seduce”.
- シャボン - distantly related to soap, and perhaps also saponification.
- I just have to remember the word. Just a non-English loanword. (Another one I learnt a while ago is サボテン.)
-
酸欠
- Abbreviation of 酸素・欠乏.
- 足でまとい - hindrance, drag
- I tried to breakdown vocabulary by my sense, and noticed まとい and thought で is a particle. It appears to be 足手まとい, though.
- のみならず - seems to be のみ + not 成り
- 奥義 - hidden technique. (although it is not really 術)
- 気絶 - I saw this many times, but didn’t remember it yet.
-
仰け反る - to be taken aback.
- The Kanji 仰 doesn’t really have this reading.
- ザル - this one appears to be a leaky basket of bamboo.
-
匠 (comparing with 巧み)
- This one is not particularly a difficult word, but JE (Jisho, Wiktionary) seems to tell more than JJ (Digital Daijisen).
- I can say that I don’t like it when people says I should use monolingual as an ultimate reference. I like referring to monolingual as Digital Daijisen, or Daijirin, or whatever the proper name of it instead. If you don’t count https://www.google.jp, for example, it doesn’t necessarily tell more than Wiktionary (which can be better than Jisho / JMdict).
- Of course, a part of it is that I don’t understand reading Japanese enough. But, hearing people saying that, is just a boast of their skills.
Dictionaries of help
Right now, I like Aedict3 the most, as it gives an easy way to browse links to Goo and ALC (but for some reasons, Weblio isn’t there). Akebi is better for making Anki flashcards with a chosen form (with or without Kanji) with exported pitch accent, (and in Takoboto’s template as well).
- As I actually stopped doing Anki / AnkiDroid for a while, Anki became more of a place for personal, editable dictionary, with recent history.
- As I used to create cards with Takoboto, I can push old Anki card’s history up, by starring / unstarring in Takoboto, and send to AnkiDroid.
On a side note, I also saw 多読/extensive reading challenge, but right here seems to be a better place for blogging. Also, one thread per (temparate zone) seasons, 4 per year, is better for tracking.
I may have written too much as a late beginner, but not yet a intermediate. Maybe the next day I will write a lot less, as I have become much less excited.
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Haha, I read this and had one of those “that could have been me writing this” moments. Sounds like we have pretty much the same process and the same problems Although for me, my general failure to be consistent with SRS might have something to do with it lol. But yeah, I think we’ll get there in the end! It’s fun reading your FFVII updates - I’d love to play an FF game in Japanese in the future, considering 8 as I’ve never played it in English.
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I don’t know the context, but considering that you had fairly casual words in your list, I want to point out that ザル also means someone who drinks a lot of alcohol (the image being that the liquid just goes through).
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Yeah, I’ve literally only seen it as this definition in modern works lol. I mean, maybe thats just the fact that I tend to put myself in contexts that don’t involve leaky bamboo baskets.
Also while I was at it I checked out the rest of the list, 仰け反る is usually like actually a physical action. Its used a lot when people are taken aback (although you’ll definitely see it in situations where its not), but unlike the english phrase we actually use 仰け反る to describe people like physically leaning back to where their body is facing more upwards.
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Probably. I’m using one when cooking (it’s made of metal though, not bamboo), and cooking books will also mention it from times to times.
Google image gave the same thing as its second result (and more)
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the object mentioned in かくりよの宿飯, but, as the title implies, there’s a lot of cooking involved.
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Wait, yeah I’m dumb I was just thinking of leaky bamboo baskets but forgot it can just be a strainer lol. Yeah I’ve seen it as a strainer a few times, now that I think about it. Kawaii anime grill cooking for MC is a prevalent theme in the books I read so I guess thats not too surprising.
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