📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

[Daisoujou]

@vonnutje

I was feeling a bit sick yesterday, so today I did a Covid test and it was positive So far it feels like a heavy flu so I’m going to relax a lot by myself for some time (since my fiancé is not positive, so even in our house I’m isolated )

Oh no! Take care of yourself; I really hope you feel better soon.

@pocketcat

The cold I’ve been battling all week has taken over my sinuses and it’s oddly difficult to focus on reading when you can’t breathe through your nose.

Same goes for you. This club is starting to feel like a sickness magnet . お大事に!

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Summary post

Rather big Summer Pockets day! I did indeed finish Ao’s route quickly; I’ve been adding in a little extra reading at night and was less than 1000 characters away. It managed to really hit me at the end, so I have to say despite the grevances I’ve alluded to, I quite liked it.

Learning by reading like this, there’s really no way it can be approached but holistically, but do you all ever feel like you’re bouncing between certain parts of the language as what’s jumping out at you at the moment? In the past I mentioned struggles with onomatopoeia… recently it feels like it’s all compound verb time. I don’t necessarily mean I’m having trouble with them, they vary with a lot being very intuitive and some less so. I’m just really encountering a staggering amount of them recently to contend with in Anki and if my Japanese studies were characterized by anything right now, it’s sorting those out.

So now that I’m back choosing what I do each day, I can choose some of the silly side events I mentioned, and one was dealing with a beehive in an inconvenient spot. I got incredibly confused by the line “ハチの巣をハチの巣にしてくれませんか？” until I read on and the character said it was a 比喩 (metaphor/simile/etc) and some searching has taught me, if I read the Japanese answer correctly, that ハチの巣状態 and similar phrasings refer to how a beehive is full of holes. Interesting.

I’ve decided it’s time for Umi’s route. She’s the one non-romantic full route; a young girl who is the protagonist’s (IIRC) unspecified relative. Her scenes have always amused me and it’ll be nice to see what this game goes for when it’s not romance.

Following her also led me down a rabbit hole to an entire minigame tucked away behind inconspicuous side choices. Turns out, you can unlock a whole monster collecting and battling game, which gives you something to do each day when you’re not hanging out with someone as an alternative to the many side scenes. This game is loaded with optional content. It’s incredibly simplistic but I have to admit it looks addictive all the same. I spent a little too much time today acquiring bugs and fish and battling the low ranked opponents… which were mostly turtles, dogs, cats, anything but humans.

That map is kind of adorable. I only read about 5000 characters today, but a lot of that ended up being card game tutorial stuff, which got a little dense and used a weird font, so I don’t feel too bad.

I have too much to say today! Well to conclude, my favorite new word is 雄姿 (ゆうし), which intuitively means something along the lines of “magnificent appearance.” There’s a lot of meaning packed into that word.

[Daisoujou]

@_Mae

これは、生えてくる 人と 生えない 人が います。

It’s saying that there are people who “grow” wisdom teeth and people who don’t. I’m lucky enough to be the latter

Edit: See Nicole explaining this better below, since I kinda skimmed over transitivity.

[NicoleIsEnough]

@Daisoujou

there are people who “grow” wisdom teeth

Maybe it’s a bit clearer to express this in an intransitive way (as 生える is intransitive after all)?

So I think that it actually is an abbreviation of
(歯が) 生えてくる 人 - people for whom (the wisdom teeth) grow
(歯が) 生えない 人 - people for whom (the wisdom teeth) don’t grow
and now the intransitive nature of the modifying verb should become a bit clearer.

[Daisoujou]

@NicoleIsEnough

Maybe it’s a bit clearer to express this in an intransitive way (as 生える is intransitive after all)?

Yeah you’re totally right; this was a case of being like “yeah I see what this is saying” and being a bit sloppy writing out the idea as it came to me – should have probably slowed down.

[natarin]

@_Mae

これは、生えてくる 人と 生えない 人が います。

In case the 生(は)えてくる part is confusing, it’s basically using the くる part to like… relate the verb to the person it’s happening to more closely? てくる and ていく work like that sometimes, to show the metaphorical direction of the verb, if that makes sense. It’s kind of an abstract concept that I feel like you mostly just get a sense for! But yeah it’s basically like 生(は)えて is happening towards the person whose wisdom teeth are growing, which makes sense since your teeth are pretty directly connected to you

[rikaiwisdom]

Summary Post

April 8
Final Fantasy VII

Vocabulary

• 模型 = もけい model, maquette.
• 野望 = やぼう ambition, aspiration.
• 拡散 = かくさん scattering, diffusion.
• 稼働 = かどう operation (of machine), operating, running.
• 長命 = ちょうめい long life.
• 信頼 = しんらい trust, reliance.
• 相違 = そうい difference, discrepancy, variation.
• 値上げ = ねあげ price increase, price hike.
• 支障 = ししょう hindrance, obstacle.
• 再開 = さいかい reopening, resumption.
• 招く = まねく multiple meanings, but today context was “to cause, to bring on oneself, to result in”.
• 劣る = おとる to be inferior to, to be less good at, to fall behind.
• 繁殖 = はんしょく breed, multiply.
• 再建 = さいけん rebuilding, reconstruction.

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@Daisoujou

do you all ever feel like you’re bouncing between certain parts of the language as what’s jumping out at you at the moment? In the past I mentioned struggles with onomatopoeia… recently it feels like it’s all compound verb time.

Hmm I can’t really think of a specific example but it kinda sounds familiar. I think I’ve also struggled at times with compound verbs. There are times when I go into one of these phases of “wow I know absolutely nothing of this language” and I feel like a complete beginner again in so many aspects, nothing seems to click. But then I keep going and I come out of it like it’s nothing. Currently I’m having one of those phases where I feel I’m improving, but it goes back and forth constantly so I’m learning to enjoy both phases, weird as it sounds. Mostly because I’m starting to understand that bad phases are as important as good ones, if not more.

I swear learning a language feels to me like 5 steps forward 3 steps backward. I’ll go back to failing to recognise the easiest words and grammar soon enough, just wait .

[Daisoujou]

@rikaiwisdom

Hmm I can’t really think of a specific example but it kinda sounds familiar. I think I’ve also struggled at times with compound verbs.

Yeah I think it’s just a mental thing but I’m very good at overthinking it. Can’t just let things happen, gotta be overly monitoring them cause that’s what my mind will do. And I think I’m just picking up on random patterns that happen to stand out, but right now it’s “wow every other sentence has a new compound verb.”

@rikaiwisdom

There are times when I go into one of these phases of “wow I know absolutely nothing of this language” and I feel like a complete beginner again in so many aspects, nothing seems to click. But then I keep going and I come out of it like it’s nothing.

Yeah this seems to be common. I think the only times I can noticeably feel progress is after coming off a period of “what am I even doing, I know nothing” feelings that I can’t shake off for a bit.

Right now I’m in the middle zone: not really feeling like I’ve noticeably improved in a bit (maybe in speed/stamina a bit, hopefully, but…), but not feeling like I’m hitting a wall either. Just feeling the slow grind of vocab accumulation a little too hard. I’m hoping to soon feel like I’ve gathered enough that the unfamiliar words are a little more spread out, but I seem to be right in the muck of the thousands of “not super common but not weird enough to be rare” zone, where you just have to learn and learn but it’s only going to feel like you’ve truly done anything as a collective thing far in the future. I understand it but it’s not the greatest

[Axazel]

Day 7

Today I finished section 2, chapter 1 in 透明カメレオン!

The chapter felt so quick. Which is great, because I am very sleepy Rest now, read more later!!

My Home Post

[windupbird]

Summary Post

Day 8: April 8th
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?: 18 min

I had every intention of reading more of this today, but I’m suddenly very exhausted and about to fall asleep so I think I’ll stop with just this for now Pleasantly surprised by my reading speed, though, considering it’s not a manga.

Just a couple words today

• 正々堂々 (せいせいどうどう) - fair and square; open and aboveboard​
• すりつぶす - to mash; to grind; to pulverize; to pulverise; to deface
• はげむ - to strive; to endeavour; to endeavor; to make an effort; to be zealous

[natarin]

April 8 Home Post

You guessed it, more VLR today! Most of my time was spent on that same ending (which still isn’t over, it’s so much omg) but I finished off another little route in the meantime. Progress is being made

VLR stuff

Yeah so this has been the longest route of my life And it’s still to be continued!! Though it’s different; it’s not like locked, I just need more information in my own brain? Idk we shall see But this route is rough, the body count is absolutely brutal. It’s very much submarine ending vibes where I’m like “wait everyone’s dead, who killed them” クォーク’s on the move though at least in theory, I guess it could be someone else but I can’t possibly know at this point, it’s wild

I always feel so bad betraying people like I literally have to in order to complete the game, but!! I feel bad!! I had to betray ルナ and she was so hurt, it was so sad, I still think she’s a robot but I still feel bad lmao お人(ひと)よし through and through

Ohhhh a big moment was when シグマ suddenly had radical 6 syptoms, that was wild, I definitely see how it messes people up. Just… existing in that speed? Yikes

Prediction-wise, I really don’t know what to do like… I don’t think ディオ is ゼロ, he very much has his own stuff going on that is at least partially in opposition to ゼロ’s things. Otherwise… oof. I’m still very suspicious of クォーク but I’m not sure if I think he’s ゼロ really? Something’s up with him for sure, but it’s hard to imagine he’s ゼロ, but who knows! I don’t think I can put anything past Zero Escape

@sycamore

So I hadn’t come across the grammar ending たまえ yet so I looked up and the description was kind of like "it’s sort of ‘please/ください’ but also you pretty much only see it in media and it’s super bossy and sounds like you are talking down to an inferior’.

Lmao yeah that tracks, I definitely encountered that in 999, mostly one character in particular liked to say it (not really spoilers but ) it was 一宮(いちみや) so yeah, that checks out

@Daisoujou

I got incredibly confused by the line “ハチの巣をハチの巣にしてくれませんか？” until I read on and the character said it was a 比喩 (metaphor/simile/etc) and some searching has taught me, if I read the Japanese answer correctly, that ハチの巣状態 and similar phrasings refer to how a beehive is full of holes. Interesting.

Ooooh yes I’ve run into that general metaphor before, absolutely do not remember where but I just remember it being the equivalent of like calling something swiss cheese

[valkow]

Home post

Day 7:

日本語: I read a fair amount of 冷たい密室と博士たち, some of ミニスカ宇宙海賊, and some of ヨコハマ買い出し紀行.
Read-aloud: We read a chapter of ダンジョン飯.

中国語: I read an intermediate entry on Mandarin Bean, one page of 骑士幻想夜, and a bit of 孩子最爱读的中国民间故事.

[enbyboiwonder]

Home

(Also my previous post has been updated with my commentaries, if anyone cares about those.)

Today feels like it’s Sunday already for some reason, but it’s only Friday. If anything, it should feel like Saturday; we were certainly busy like it was Saturday. I’m pretty sure today wasn’t even a day off school or anything, everyone and their mother just randomly decided they wanted doughnuts today. Like, we generally do pretty well on Friday, it’s busier than any other weekday, but not enough to be nearly sold out by 10. I’m exhausted. Ugh, I am not looking forward to the next couple days. Anyway, I did still get a bit of reading done today.

Took me a little longer, partially from being tired and partially because of the increase in farming-related vocab, but I read Seed 7 of GREEN.

Commentary

Since May (it’s November now, and most of the chapter is a flashback through the previous 7 months), Wako-chan has been tending a small plot next to the house that wasn’t in use on her own. Her first venture, growing daikon, failed because they got infested by cabbageworms (cabbage white caterpillars). Next, in August, she goes with spinach. She has been learning on her own, and she’s doing better than Makoto expected. Still, it seems he’s working behind the scenes to make sure things turn out well for her since being able to grow crops herself makes her happy.

(Tangent, but people, at least in English, really seem to like calling things “worms” that aren’t worms. The different cabbageworms and hornworms, for example, which are caterpillars. Bookworms, which are mostly beetle larvae. Not a single “bookworm” is actually a worm. In Japanese, though, all of these are just “something” bug. Like the cabbageworm is 青虫. The adult cabbage white is 紋白蝶, though.)

(Anyway, these two are cute together)

(I love soft scenes like this.)

Baa-chan realizes what Makoto’s been doing when the spinach sprouts (at the wrong time?) and tells him that Wako-chan will be angry if she finds out, won’t she? (She did say she wanted to tend the plot all on her own. He doesn’t like seeing her all dejected, though.) Ooh and it turns out he’d replaced her Japanese spinach with Western spinach, which he’d previously recommended as being easier to grow, and it becomes apparent when the leaves have started growing bigger as they’re a different shape. Wako doesn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss, though.

Ew, Wako’s planning on baking a spinach cake for Makoto’s birthday present (his birthday’s 27 Oct), but luckily the spinach won’t be ready to harvest until November. (I’m sorry, but vegetables and cake do not go together. That includes carrots.)

Oh no, Wako-chan used to hate spinach as a kid as it was too bitter, but she likes it fine now, and the spinach she buys at the supermarket lately isn’t bitter at all, so that’s why she wanted to try growing Japanese spinach herself. Makoto’s gonna get found out! He was already starting to regret his meddling, but now he really is. “オレはなんてバカなことをしてしまったんだ”

Nope, Wako-chan knew all along. As a cook, she knew the difference between Japanese and Western spinach by sight. We find out at 初詣(はつもうで). She’s determined to do it properly this year without help, and she’s gunning for the status of “farmer’s wife.”

I also translated a liiitle bit of 2.43 today. I plan on translating the whole series for practice in the future once I have more knowledge, but I have been translating a bit here and there pretty much as I go along. Some of it while I’m actually reading, some of it going back afterwards and going “Eh, I know that, I can go ahead and do that” or “I kinda know that, I’m gonna figure out the rest of it” or even “I have no idea what’s going on but I’m curious so I’m gonna figure it out” (particularly when it pertains to background or characterization/development for a character that I don’t already have). The few bits I translated today all fell into the first category. And there were a couple more where I was like “I know that, but that doesn’t mean I know how to phrase it naturally in English.” I’ll leave that for Future Danny. (You’d think I’d be good at translating ideas/impressions into words since I have practice since I’m a writer and most of my thoughts aren’t even in words unless I consciously make them so, but nope. That’s a big reason why I don’t get more written, actually.)

I didn’t get any further reading it today, though.

Vocab of note:

知恵袋 (ちえぶくろ) [expression, noun] fount of knowledge; the smart one (of a group of people); brains. [noun] bag full of wisdom; bag containing all the world’s wisdom.
尻を叩く (しりをたたく) In addition to the obvious “to spank; to slap someone on the rump” meaning, it’s also an expression that means “to encourage to do; to urge someone on; to demand action.”

Scrolling through entries in imiwa, I also stumbled upon a word that describes me:
活字中毒 (かつじちゅうどく) [四字熟語] addiction to the printed word; reading addict; book junkie; someone who loves reading the printed word and gets irritated when they have nothing to read

[2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz]

April 7 (Calendar Post)

Ran into a few problems yesterday and I couldn’t post here, but at least I managed to read a small bit:

三日間の幸福 => 2 pages (33 minutes)

April 8

Bookclub Friday time!

• からかい上手の高木さん => 20 pages (18 minutes)
• それでも歩は寄せてくる => 20 pages (21 minutes)
• 大海原と大海原 => 27 pages (36 minutes)
• Flying Witch => 30 pages

Fun panels:

A rare sighing Takagi-san:

それでも歩は寄せてくる as usual brings the best facial expressions (… and pony tails?)

TIL that in traditional Chinese tea ceremony you actually pour tea over the teapot (wat?) Apparently “This keeps the teapot warm and helps cure the clay of the tea pot.”

[vonnutje]

Day 9 - April 9

• 美少年探偵団 1 - 15,48% → 17,33%
• 無職転生 ～異世界行ったら本気だす～ 1 - 11,78% → 11,78%
• キノの旅-the Beautiful World- 1 - 38,51% → 39,02%

Thank you for your kind words I’m still feeling really bad, but at least I now have a lot of time (and enough energy) to read Japanese! Yesterday I read 10% of the mushoku tensei LN, which comes down to approximately 30+ pages

Today I started off with a chapter from 美少年探偵団, which was about the dream of the main character and how she has to become more serious and give up her dream. It’s still a really interesting read!

[fallynleaf]

Summary post

I thought I’d make a check-in post now that we’re a week in, since I haven’t had the time for daily updates. So far, I have successfully managed to read something in both Japanese and Spanish every day, so the challenge is going very well!

As far as my Japanese reading goes, I somehow managed to finish translating two Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling shows before their big April 9 Korakuen Hall show! It was a lot of work, but I’m proud of myself for managing to push through. I talked about those two shows here and here.

Highlights this time include me having to spend a lot of time on the Kamen Rider wiki in order to figure out a couple elaborate analogies (because most wrestlers are nerds), and then struggling to decipher a few names of certain characters from a few very well-known media properties that TJPW had decided to censor in their official transcripts.

Yuka Sakazaki said that after she defends her title, first she wants to fight ミ●キー at ディ●●ーランド, and then next she wants to fight キテ●ちゃん at サ●●オピュー●ランド. I figured out the first, but needed help from a friend for the second, haha!

I got no reading done on 大海原と大海原 volume 3 because the TJPW translations were more pressing, but now that I’m caught up (until they upload the transcript from today’s show… ), I’m hoping I’ll be able to stay more ahead of things, and have more time for side projects like catching up on the book club manga.

As far as reading in Spanish goes…

I’m about 80 pages (out of a little over 400) into Wonder, and reading it has seriously been one of the coolest language learning experiences I’ve ever had. Finally I can see what 98% comprehension feels like! I’m able to guess the meaning of almost every unknown word I come across. It feels pretty much what reading felt like when I was just getting started reading chapter books in elementary school, haha, and I kept checking out library books that were just above my level and struggling through them anyway.

I think I’d definitely recommend this book to anyone who has an upper beginner/lower intermediate Spanish level, and who is looking for something easy but engaging to read. You could literally read this with just Duolingo Spanish if you get decently far along in their course.

It has honestly given me a lot more confidence with language learning, because I truthfully never envisioned that I would ever reach a point where I could easily read a book in a language other than English. It’s extraordinarily cool seeing it happen with Spanish, and it gives me hope that I’ll get here someday with Japanese, too!

[basilsauce]

Summary post

三毛猫ホームズの推理
I’ve mostly been reading 1 section per night, but I took a night for half of section 2.2, to that little break in the middle. That section feels denser than the others, and it has a lot of detailed descriptions of the physical scenery. In English I find lengthy descriptions boring and usually skim them without paying much attention, but I don’t have enough practice to do that in Japanese without potentially missing something. Tonight I finished 2.2 and read part of 2.3, for a total of 19 pages.

I got some new dictionaries. There was a post on Reddit about the Monokakido’s Dictionaries app (for iOS/Mac) having a sale, and it happened to come just when I was starting to think I was reaching a point in Japanese where it would be worthwhile to upgrade my dictionaries. Even with the sale I spent a lot of $$$, but I’m happy.

I got Kenkyuusha’s J-E dictionary (“The Green Goddess”) and the 明鏡国語辞典 (Meikyo) dictionary (which has optional furigana) for J-J lookups. I think the Meikyo J-J definitions are easier to understand than some of the other J-J dictionaries. I also got the NHK pronunciation dictionary, which has audio samples.

The definitions and example sentences are really good so looking things up is taking longer now. I came across a 類 in the middle of a sentence and was uncertain whether to read it たぐい or るい, and wondered if maybe I could learn something about that by looking it up in these。The Meikyo dictionary has usage notes in some definitions and had this to say about 類

［参考］読み分け
「小説の類は読まない」など「〈名詞〉の類」は「たぐい」とも「るい」とも読むが、「妖怪や魑魅魍魎の類」 「手相、タロットなどの類」のような名詞を並立させて例として示すような場合には多く「たぐい」と読む。また、「ヒトという類」など生物学の分類をいう場合や、「類を見ない」 「他に類がない（＝唯一無二だ）」は「るい」と読む。文脈からは読み分けがしにくい場合も多く、常用漢字表では「たぐい」は「類い」、「るい」は「類」と書き分ける。

[Gorbit99]

Day 9 / Calendar
Today I’ve done the reading for this week’s ABBC book club and translated the whole thing.
Usually that one is a bit simpler and I can actually translate it in a reasonable amount of time (took me about 45 minutes to translate the entire thing, there wasn’t a lot of text). This usually helps me know if I actually understand what a sentence is doing and not just making myself believe that I do.

[Hantsuki]

4月2日~9日 ~ Days 2 ~ 9/ Back to Home

Sinking back into my old habit of missing daily updates, but we had guests at our guesthouse for the first time in a few months as well as my daughter’s 入園式 which was thankfully a lot more casual than expected. Then my company emails me on Friday to let me know about the 学校周り happening on the same day and long story short had to postpone for the next day because they (my company) thought it would be a little too informal to let a baby tag along (though the teachers were disappointed they didn’t get to see her haha).

But Tan-chan adjusted to nursery school after refusing food the first day. And my first day back at work was productive only because I was at the only school that offers me a personal computer. Also company is late with paperwork and I found at this morning Tan-chan’s nursery school had a Covid positive child yesterday so we might have been exposed.

It was all kinds of crazy the past week. It pretty much sets the bar to what to expect with my schedule from now on too so any time I find to read or do Wanikani reviews would be a blessing.

So I didn’t quite get a chance to complete all the readings for both book clubs yet (got 夜カフェfinished but still working on the vocab list for chapter 1 before rereading the Prologue for がばいおばあちゃん), but I’ve been enjoying reading the discussions going on in both clubs. I have had the misfortune of having to read handouts from nursery school and stuff from work in Japanese so there’s no shortage to opportunities to read Japanese material. It’s just that not all of it is exciting.

絶叫学級 転生 5 (page 37 of 168)

I didn’t actually realized I finished volume 4 when starting this chapter because Line Manga makes the free readings available by chapter (divided into 3 parts per chapter so you have to wait a day to read a new part). They rarely have page numbers so I calculate/guesstimate the page manually and find out my approximate progress when I update Natively.

Anyway this story wasn’t a bad way to start off the volume. It was easy to realize that it was going to be a story about someone unsatisfied with themself and how she was going to regret forcing herself to change. The image at the end was pretty terrifying so even if the story feels repetitive, the scare impact was there.

授業19 「見下ろす女」単語

まつわる 纏わる to be related to; to concern; to be associated with
見下ろす みおろす to despise; to look down on
くじ引き くじびき lottery; drawn lot
いまだに 未だに still; even now; to this day
すくすく (growing) quickly (esp. children, plants); (developing) quickly; fast; rapidly
平凡顔 へいぼんがお ordinary looking face
ぬりかべ plaster or mortar-covered wall
目線 めせん (one’s) gaze; direction in which one is looking
ちぢむ 縮む to shrink; to contract; to diminish (in size)
測る はかる to measure; to weigh; to survey; to time (sound, gauge, estimate)
新鮮 しんせん fresh
不満 ふまん dissatisfaction; discontent; displeasure; complaint; unhappiness

絶叫学級 転生 5 (page 72 of 168)

I laughed when reading this panel. Boy she’s going to regret that was all I was thinking before even getting into the story. I mean that’s what you’d expect from this series.

I don’t usually don’t pay attention to names, but it was a little over the top to name the protagonist 一伽 and her doppelganger 二伽. Kinda funny until it was more obvious that the play on names served a purpose foreshadowing with one of them having 本田 for their family name. So far these stories follow a theme of “the grass is greener on the other side.”

授業20「ドッペルゲンガーの街」 単語

以内 いない within; inside of; less than
街 まち (がい) street; quarter; district; area
人物 じんぶつ person; character; figure; personage; man; woman
集英 しゅうえい gathering of talented people; group of geniuses
ぜいたく 贅沢 lavish (use of something); abundant; copious; wasteful
節約 せつやく economising; saving
無関心 むかんしん apathetic; indifferent
なわとび 縄跳び skipping rope; jump rope
提案 ていあん proposal; proposition; suggestion
退屈 たいくつ boring
休暇 きゅうか holiday; day off; furlough; absence (from work)
伸ばす のばす to lengthen; to extend; to stretch
とうとう 到頭 finally; at last; ultimately; in the end
未明 みめい early dawn; grey of morning; gray of morning
遺体 いたい corpse; remains

[_Mae]

Thank you. Seeing (歯が) makes it clear.
I thought the phrase meant “growing people and not growing people”, which made no sense. How could one determine that there’s actually (歯が) and that 生えてくる is not describing the actions of 人?

[Thud]

Package of new stuff arrived yesterday:

I’ll start reading them after I finish my current pile.