📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

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.

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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 :joy:

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:tulip: Day 8 :tulip: :house:
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

(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 :joy:

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
(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
(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

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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”. :sweat_smile:

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

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㋃9 – Day 9

  • ジョジョの奇妙な冒険

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

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:tiger2: :books: Tanuki Den (aka Homepost): Date 20220409 :cherry_blossom: :raccoon:

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

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:

WeeBippyLEGGES


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

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!

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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)

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

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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.

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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… :upside_down_face:

New vocab

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

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Day 7 :sun_behind_small_cloud:

Yotsuba volume one complete! :sparkling_heart:

Even though sometimes I just cannot with this child.

Afterwards she will just casually drop something like んち (as in someone’s home ー>のうち) on my head midsentence so the entire thing becomes unparsable. Actually, now that I mention it, I believe I already had seen it a handful of times, oh well. Also, I’m a bit bitter that it’s kinda hard to pick up on Yotsuba’s wordplay and I’m probably missing lots of jokes.

In addition today I watched 借りぐらしのアリエッティ and since I’m pausing a lot and mostly read subs I count this as reading, don’t at me. It went really chill mostly because there wasn’t much dialogue at all. Sadly, lots of things stacked like 動けなくなっていたところ (something along the lines place where I was stuck) still trip me up a lot.

I won’t start the second volume of Yotsuba right after, I’m thinking about switching up to それでも歩 because I really really wanna catch up to the book club and I really enjoy the book but always was like two volumes behind schedule. Or I’m better off to 不可解のぼく since it should be a tidbit harder and better for practice in general, go figure.

:pleading_face::point_right: :point_left:

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(without context I could be completely off so if this is irrelevant feel free to ignore) but in case it’s helpful, a lot of times when ところ is in kana like that it’s referring to more of a metaphorical place, like a point in time. So it’d be like “the time where I’d just become unable to move” or more naturally like “right after I became unable to move (got stuck, etc.).” It could totally be a literal place though, just depends on context!

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Yeah I got you. Still even without casual ところ → とこ I have to squint really hard to see the meaning behind the pigpile of な, て and く.

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Oh for sure, trying to parse all of that especially at like speaking speed is rough :sweat_smile: definitely feel you

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Day 9 - Calendar

Today I finished chapter 12 of 夜カフェ and started with chapter 13.
Probably will finish the book tomorrow.

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Read 7 pages and finished the chapter for かがみの孤城 🪞 Week 20. Progress was a bit slow today. This part contained some uneasy conversations between the characters and perhaps that meant more unfamiliar vocabulary and roundabout expressions than usual.

The kids now only have one more month in the castle after this and stuff is going to happen, I think :smiley:

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:bouquet::blossom::bouquet:
\huge\color{ #FDD5FF}\mathrm{🌼Day 8🌼}
:bouquet::blossom::bouquet:

\huge\color{ #96FF94}\mathrm{\&}

:cherry_blossom::bouquet::cherry_blossom:
\huge\color{ #F2F5A0}\mathrm{💐Day 9💐}
:cherry_blossom::bouquet::cherry_blossom:

\small \color{ #FFCB62}\mathrm{★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★}

Today (and yesterday) I translated 11 pages of よつばと!I was traveling yesterday and didn’t have the energy to post anything except a bit of venting :sweat_smile: I’m visiting my parents for Easter so I don’t know what my study schedule will look like, except that I’ll continue reading よつばと! and I’ll be reading on Satori starting Wednesday probably:)

\small \color{ #FFCB62}\mathrm{★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★}

Tooltip

The flowers above the “Day #” links to my post for the previous day, and the flowers below link to the next day, except for the latest day ofc, they link somewhere special :wink:

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I’m sorry if you know all of this already, but just to make sure we’re on the same page:

The stuff that comes before 人 (in this case 生えてくる) is called a “relative clause”, and it modifies 人. In English, relative clauses usually come after the noun (e.g. “the man who is walking”) but in Japanese they always come before the noun (e.g. 歩いている 人). We also have the verb 生える which means “to grow” and it is intransitive, so it means “something grows” and not “someone grows something” (that would be the transitive verb 生やす). Unfortunately, in English the transitive and the intransitive partners are often represented by the same word, so we need to be a bit careful about that in English.

So, coming back to our example sentence, we have two relative clauses:
生えてくる 人 - person for whom something grows
生えない 人 - person for whom something doesn’t grow
Now Japanese is a very context-heavy language, and thus I inferred that they must talk about the wisdom teeth.

You may wonder why it can’t be “person who grows (up)”? That would simply be another verb. 生える is only used for plants, teeth, beards, fur, horns and those things. This is pretty hard to tell from a J-E dictionary, but if you look up the word in a J-J dictionary you can learn about these nuances: 「生える」の意味や使い方 わかりやすく解説 Weblio辞書

Oh, and here is a bit of explanation about relative clauses: https://www.wasabi-jpn.com/japanese-grammar/japanese-relative-clauses/

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It’s Saturday, and it was sunny today which meant some lovely chill reading in the park :sunny::sunny::sunny:

I read from page 74-104 三毛猫ホームズ🐈. Given that ホームズ kind of needed to become our protagonists cat I did have the feeling that perhaps 森崎 might not be too long for this world :person_shrugging: Continue to love ホームズ🥰

I also finished the second volume of ギヴン today. It was so emotional, those cute gay music boys and their trauma :sob::sob::sob::sob: Slightly unexpectedly, the end of volume 2 also took me to the end of what the anime season (but not movie) covered, which I wasn’t expecting so quickly. I haven’t watched the movie yet so need to decide whether to do so before picking up vol 3 (like I have the self control…)

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Thank you for the detailed explanation :bowing_woman:!
Just to make sure I understand correctly: in addition to grammar reasons, the meaning (“person for whom wisdom teeth do not grow”) comes from the fact that the used verb 生える can’t be applied to people? Because I think with a different verb, for example (to move (house); to change residence), the same てくる construction 引っ越してくる人 could mean “the person who moved into nearby”?

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