📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

[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.

[MissDagger]

I’m free! Finished the booklet about Tokyo. I did get a couple of possible places I want to visit plus a reminder of some places I have visited.

Also English reading still moving along. Will probably finish the second novel (Haunted Witch) tonight.

Also my super busy period is coming towards an end of a sort. Won’t be fully over until Friday, just in time for Easter.

---

Also I wish everyone who is sick a quick recovery.

[Baves]

			Apr
月	火	水	木	金	土	日
				01	02	03
04	05	06	07	08	09	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30

			May
月	火	水	木	金	土	日
						01
02	03	04	05	06	07	08
09	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

[Nishi790]

Check in time - definitely haven’t been on the forums as much the past few weeks, and Saturday morning is usually a good time for me to sit down and reflect.

I have read something every day so far. Almost lost it last night as I was falling asleep on the couch to a podcast episode, but was awake enough when I went up to bed to get in a few pages. I’ve almost finished ヲタクに恋は難しい１ - I’m having fun, but definitely feeling like I’m missing things - I should probably look up more grammar as I go.

I liked the ‘character profile’ type pages after chapters 1 and 2 - it gave me some practice with more paragraph type writing with less visual support again. Definitely took me longer with more look-ups - mainly because, without the picture context, I felt less comfortable with the places where I was taking a best guess and instead looked up more things.

I am enjoying being able to pick up things without furigana and get more of the kanji than I don’t. It does make the kanji I don’t recognize more obvious and annoying. I definitely also notice words that are familiar, but I just can’t quite recall when I see them. Well, lots of time to read more and get them stuck in my brain.

Expecting to finish this volume this weekend, so will have to go down to my shelf and see what I want to read next. I suspect I should go back to having an ‘easy’ read and a ‘harder’ read going to balance things out a little bit.

[eoame]

9th of April
Day 9

I’m tired… left home at 5:30am this morning and only arrived back at 10:30pm.

So here’s the thing. I’m reading Kimi no Koe on Bookwalker on my phone, alongside DeepL on my laptop, since there’s about a million words I don’t know on each page (to clarify: I’m not translating every single thing, only words or phrases I don’t know). I open my laptop, and for some reason I can only type Japanese into DeepL and nowhere else. Typing Japanese into the search bar gives me this, but when I use the arrows to select options it disappears. Edit: apparently the image never uploaded
And now I can’t even type Japanese anywhere, including the forum and DeepL. Ha. How frustrating.
My menu bar at the top of my MacBook isn’t working either. I can’t open the mail app.
I don’t have energy for this. I need to wake up early tomorrow morning. Let’s hope it fixes itself while I’m sleeping.

Anyway, I read about three pages, and although I get the gist of the sentences the story still isn’t making that much sense to me. I’m only on Page 14 though, so maybe I’ll start understanding somewhere along the way

[pyororon]

Day 8
Read: 夜カフェ
Finished: 2nd 1/2 of chapter 2
Time: 18 minutes
Finished this weeks reading for the book club. I’m glad Hanabi finally has someone she feels like she can talk about her troubles with. I like her aunt a lot so far.

New Vocab

雫 （しずく）drop (e.g. of water); drip (all kana here, saw with this kanji in Virche)
面する （めんする）to face on; to look out on to
蛇口 （じゃぐち）faucet; tap
まな板 （まないた）chopping board; cutting board
おタマ ladle​
あふれんばかり overflowing; effusive; exuberant; bountiful
よそう to serve; to dish up; to dish out​
難関校 （なんかんこう）hard-to-get-into school; elite school; highly-selective school

Read: 終遠のヴィルシュ -Error:salvation-
Finished: 1 ending
Time: 2 hours 10 minutes
Finished the first of the remaining endings. Read for way longer than I planned because I could tell the ending was coming. Oh boy was that an emotional roller coaster. There was a while where I was like “wait there’s no way it’s going to end like this right?” But with this game it was totally possible so I was totally freaking out

New Vocab

心なしか （こころなしか）somehow; somewhat; seemingly
滑り出し （すべりだし）start; beginning
億劫 （おっくう）troublesome; bothersome; tiresome; annoying
シャッターを切る to release a shutter (camera); to click a shutter
育む （はぐくむ）to raise; to bring up; to rear
迂闊 （うかつ）careless; stupid; thoughtless; heedless; unobservant; inadvertent; incautious​
一途 （いちず）wholehearted; earnest; determined; intent; single-minded; straightforward; devoted to; doing nothing but
殺人鬼 （さつじんき）bloodthirsty killer; cold-blooded murderer; homicidal maniac
退散 （たいさん）dispersal; breaking up
腱 （けん）tendon
逃げ惑う （にげまどう）to run about trying to escape
自棄気味 （やけぎみ）reek of desperation; feeling of desperation
自我 （じが）self; the ego
棺 （かん）coffin; casket
爆破 （ばくは）destructive blast; blowing up; explosion
断末魔 （だんまつま）one’s last moments; death throes; agony of death
疾く （とく）quickly; swiftly; expeditiously​ (Formal or literary term)
嗚咽 （おえつ）sobbing; weeping; fit of crying
遺言 （ゆいごん）last request; dying wish
一際 （ひときわ）conspicuously; noticeably; remarkably; especially; particularly

[pocketcat]

Last night I read 31 pages of 三毛猫ホームズの推理, putting me at part 2, end of section 5 or 50% complete.

Name readings!

富田 now has a first name! 和生 - かずお
麻子ーまこ
晃子ーあきこ
柳原ーやなぎはら
秋吉ーあきよし

I came across an interesting word, which will provide no spoilers for anyone given the theme of the book, but which piqued my interest: 告別式

Word rambles

So my dictionary basically just says this is a funeral, but I also know the words 葬式 and 葬儀 for funeral so I decided to investigate to see what was up. I found this article which talks about 通夜 as well, which I’ve know as being a “wake”. It used to be all night, now it’s much shorter and closer to a viewing. That tracks with my understanding of “wake” in Western use too, though. 告別式 seems to be more or less wrapped up in the meaning of 葬儀 these days, but it used to be a distinct ceremony that followed the 葬儀.

So then I decided to look up what’s the difference between 葬儀 and 葬式 and found out from here that 葬式 comes from combined 葬儀 and 告別式 as words…so it is the wrapped up included meaning of those two ceremonies? It also suggests that 葬儀 used by itself encompasses things like 通夜 and 火葬 (cremation) so…heh. I’m more confused than ever but it seems like the differences probably aren’t enough to worry about and I can just mentally think “funeral, funeral, funeral”.

If anyone knows differently though I’d love to hear it!

[DIO-Berry]

㋃9 – Day 9

• ジョジョの奇妙な冒険

I forgot to read yesterday, whoops. Today I read 112-127.

[Zakarius]

Tanuki Den (aka Homepost): Date 20220409

Tanuki Scroll IX: 人を食わなくなったオニ & 水の枯れた沼のカエル

Read today’s folktale, from Okayama prefecture!

About an ogre who eats people. One day he swallows VERY STRONG MAN who fears no stinking oni, and finds being inside the oni peaceful. Conveniently, inside the oni stomach there are three strings hanging from the… “ceiling”: one to make him sneeze, one to make him laugh and one to make him cry. The three important emotions of a well-rounded oni.

So naturally he pulls all three at once to see what happens. The oni is in so much pain he spits the man out and says he’ll never eat another human again.

The other story is an Aesop fable, it’s only a few sentences but I had to click it because of the cute frogges:

---

Japanese found in the tall grass

New Things

長閑「のどか」ー Tranquil; peaceful
クシャミ / くしゃみ「嚏」ー A sneeze, the kanji isn’t seen very often. Also, you say “くさめ” twice after someone sneezes to protect them from dying early.
日照り「ひでり」ー Drought; dry weather

Step by step of how to sneeze in Japanese
Step 1: は、
Step 2: は、
Step 3: はっ、
Step 4: はくしょん！

[lucylavelle]

April 9th!

Today I was going to read this weeks BBC assignment of 夜カフェ - but I’m still a bit under the weather and wasn’t sure I’d have enough brainpower for a novel!
So instead I read chapter 15 of Mitsuboshi Colors, which was fun. I had to look up quite a few words, but they were mostly words that I’m not surprised I didn’t know yet - including 便秘 constipation and めんたい Alaskan Pollock.

(Home Post)

[wiersm]

@basilsauce

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.

Congratulations on your purchase! I have the Meikyo and NHK too and they’re both great!

[dunlewy]

Here’s what I’m reading today. I read six pages.

Here is a new word for me:
ちゃんの suffix for a familiar person
Used in the context of finding chopsticks for a friend so they could eat a meal.

[Reni613]

4月9日 - Day 9
Calendar

I’ve read up to 30% of 博士の愛した数式. I really enjoyed mother-son interactions in today’s part.

Today I also realized there is a highlight limit on Bookwalker…

New vocab

使命感 - sense of duty; vocation
使命を帯びる - to be charged with a mission