📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

[Daisoujou]

@Beyond_Sleepy

By the way @Daisoujou I went and updated your info in the participant list

Oh thank you so much, haha. It’s occurred to me a few times but I somehow never end up actually changing it. Super glad Satori Reader is already working well for you. By the way, because I forget how upfront they make this part: if you have questions beyond their explanation, you can post them and they’re great about responding to anything with detailed answers.

@Magillou

Hey April Birthday Reading Crew! I want to join in. My birthday was/is on April 12th

Happy belated birthday to you too!!!

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Summary post

A little better overall, today I read ~5400 characters and it wasn’t too awful. Slowish, but fine. Early on there was some whacky vocab… gotta know about 一斉射撃 (いっせいしゃげき), “volley firing.” Somehow that didn’t make it into Genki back when I did those books. The one particularly hard section, which luckily didn’t last too long, was a harsh rebuking of チャーハン cooking techniques. Specialized vocabulary really brought me back to those beginner days of literally 6+ unknowns in a sentence, oof. Otherwise I did fine though, and there were some nice longish sentences with words I know well enough by now that proved that I can feel out a little more grammar better, and that I’ve learned a lot of words in the past month or so. Whether through coincidental WK levelling or SP vocabulary, there are some words I’m running into nonstop recently, which is nice.

The story is taking its turn into seriousness more or less now. Parenting is a clear theme going on with this one. I don’t know how hard it’s going to lean into it, but there were a few suggestions of touching on work turning Japanese dads borderline absent in their children’s lives which I’m here for if it wants to really go there.

Two new words/phrases that excite me today. First, 腹の虫が鳴く (はらのむしがなく), to rumble (stomach). So… the stomach bugs are crying? I love and hate that. Second, お袋の味 (おふくろのあじ). Super straightforward, mom’s home cooking. It’s a sweet one.

And with that, I’ll keep reading something that isn’t Summer Pockets as much as I can, shouldn’t be breaking the streak, but after today I won’t be updating for a few days. See ya again soon.

[pocketcat]

@Daisoujou

腹の虫が鳴く

I swear bugs come up in the weirdest places (for me) in Japanese. 虫がいい (selfish) and 虫が好かない (dislike) I always forget the meaning of and either have to guess from context or check. 虫の息 (dying breath) comes up a lot and always makes me giggle during inappropriate scenes. There’s a whole bunch of 虫 related ことわざ (see here) which makes me think bugs are the horses of the East…at least for idioms

[Greti33]

April 10th-14th (Days 10-14)

Home post

Yet another bunch of busy days… Been feeling extremely exhausted - really looking forward to getting some extra sleep over Easter. I could only bring myself to read one or two NHK easy articles daily, so I don’t feel like I have much to report on. Though I did find this incredibly cute one today: 三重県みえけんの水族館すいぞくかん 「スナドリネコ」の赤あかちゃんが人気

Just how fumken precious are these lil beans. I can’t get over the video of them squealing and fighting. Best damn article ever

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Happy belated birthday @Beyond_Sleepy, @Daisoujou and @Magillou!

[MaraVos]

I read chapter 10 of 夜カフェ today, the first time I’ve read a whole chapter on a workday! やった！

Also I think I read an NHK article first thing in the morning (Todai pops them up on my phone’s notification bar) but I seriously can’t remember what it was about. That’s the problem with reading pre-coffee.

Oh wait, it was the same article @Greti33 read!

[MaraVos]

@Yuru

Did I hear you say that you wanted to do even more browsing spree?

Two can play at that game …! Have you checked out miraibunko.jp yet?

[rikaiwisdom]

Summary Post

April 14
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

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Another day, another mission. Not a lot of vocabulary again. The game is fun and all, but language wise… I don’t think it’s going to teach much. Not because I know everything, which I definitely don’t, but because dialogue is rather short and super fast, and there’s no way to stop it so I end up missing words that are worth looking up. I understand enough to see what I need to do in the mission and some more details about the story. But all in all, I don’t think it’s being very productive. I don’t know, we’ll see.

Also happy belated birthday @Magillou , missed your mention yesterday .

[windupbird]

Summary Post

Day 14: April 14th
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?: 16 min

Another small read today. I have a headache from looking at computers for too long, whoops so I’m not going to write much today I will say that my favorite moment of reading today was correctly intuiting what 二分音符 and 八分音符 meant. I like learning musical words

Good words

• もぎとる - to wrest (away from); to wrench free; to snatch (away)
• せっかち - hasty; impatient; restless; rash​
• 音符 (おんぷ) - musical note; note symbol
• きつね色 - light brown; golden brown (cuuuute)
• 二分音符 (にぶおんぷ) - half note
• 八分音符 (はちぶおんぷ) - eight note
• 音階 (おんかい) - scale (in music)
• あんぐり - open-mouthed

@Magillou

My birthday was/is on April 12th

Well happy belated birthday!

[dunlewy]

I read the first nine pages of Level 0, Vol.2, Book 7. It’s the old fable of the Sun and Wind trying to prove who is stronger by getting a man to take off his coat.

New vocabulary:

つよ
強い strong

[2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz]

April 14th (Calendar Post)

Finished chapter 14th of my current book. One left!

三日間の幸福 => 6 pages (81 minutes)

There was one sentence that really slowed me down and I had to research it for several minutes before actually giving up =T.T= It’s been a while since I felt this lost, and it’s very frustrating. Thankfully, it wasn’t critical to understand what was going on in the story.

Fun vocabulary I ran into:

[Yuru]

Oh no, I have not. What have you done. See you at the end of this rabbit hole

But wow, Mirai Bunko puts in so much effort into their promotional videos! I’m super charmed. I’m also seeing similarities in themes between the different publishers. Time to prioritize what to get so that my wallet doesn’t cry in agony.

[pocketcat]

@2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz

There was one sentence that really slowed me down and I had to research it for several minutes before actually giving up =T.T= It’s been a while since I felt this lost, and it’s very frustrating.

Oh gosh, post it here next time. Several of us like to take a stab at them, myself included Complex sentences can be like working out a little puzzle, more so if the person doing them isn’t mid-interesting-story at the time!

[potatonaught]

April 14

Gonna count the 20 pages of Spy x Family I read at midnight at the start of the day. I’m up against a deadline and have no time for anything else beside bedtime revenge procrastination. Probably gonna read about 20 pages as the clock ticks over.

No progress on graded readers today either. Hoping by Saturday everything calms down.

Progress on Tadoku graded readers
44 / 44 level-zeros
12 / 12 level-ones
x /10 level-twos
x / 18 level-threes

[Naphthalene]

Thank you for the mwehehe. That’s one cute durtle! I have been feeling a bit down for a couple days, and it somehow helps me feel better.
I read something stupid two days ago, and it’s been affecting me way more than it deserves to. Sadly, that also means that I’m not really in the mood to reread 薬屋のひとりごと.

Sorry, just venting

Actually, I hesitated to post about it, because who cares. But since I’m already talking about it… Also, it’s about stuff I read in Japanese, so it kinda fits the topic of the thread?
Anyway, I recently read a random manga that made it to the top 10 of the daily ranking on booklive. The first THREE (3) volumes were free to grab, so I just went with it. Anyway, the content has a lot of smut, but it’s okay-ish since it makes sense in context (I already ranted about it in the other thread).
Regardless, the point is that the main character was a man in a past life, reincarnated/isekai’d as a woman. There’s a male character I ship her with, and I kinda wanted to see if anything was going to happen, but since the manga is way too graphic for me, I checked the original light novel instead.
There, the first review mentions “don’t worry, there’s no [slur for male homosexual] content, or I guess it would be trans?”, and that made me unreasonably upset. Even if we ignore the wording, why is that something anyone should be worried about.
Since it answered my question, I should just shrug it all (series and review) off, and move on with my life. But somehow I just kept thinking about it. Eff you, random reviewer, for ruining my day.

Anyway.

[valkow]

Home post

Day 13:

日本語: I read some of ミニスカ宇宙海賊 and some of 鋼の錬金術師.

中国語: I read an intermediate entry on Mandarin Bean and one page of 骑士幻想夜.

[pocketcat]

Naphthalene reply

@Naphthalene

Eff you, random reviewer, for ruining my day.

People can really suck and just like to spread their suckiness around. That kind of hateful BS comes from a place of icky insecurity. It reflects nothing on the validity of different sexual orientations, genders, or any of the many, wonderful ways to be human. It only reflects their own issues.

I’m sure you already know that, but throwing out some positive words to try to counteract the negative ones.
Also they were reading body switching smut and aren’t comfortable with anything but standard issue heterosexuality? Barking up the wrong genre, that one.

[Naphthalene]

Pocketcat reply

@pocketcat

I’m sure you already know that, but throwing out some positive words to try to counteract the negative ones.

Thank you. Hearing it from someone else is definitely better than just telling myself that

@pocketcat

Also they were reading body switching smut and aren’t comfortable with anything but standard issue heterosexuality? Barking up the wrong genre, that one.

Haha, true.

[enbyboiwonder]

Home

I read 2 pages of 2.43, putting me at pg 62.

Obligatory rambling

I’m sure no one reads these, but I still feel I should assert that Ochi is, in fact, very pretty, even if he doesn’t seem to think so.

(He’s also very gender.)

This being set in Fukui, I get to get fun structures like 今せんとあかん話け (今しないといけない話か). You get a lot of negatives as えん, but する being する turns into せん, and I think I’ve gotten pretty used to them by now. Same with あかん being used with the “must/must not” family of structures, which kinda threw me the first time I came across it.

Ooh, it seems Subaru didn’t take their latest practice match against K High seriously, and Ochi’s gonna chew him out about it before their first afternoon class. Unfortunately though I gotta go to bed, so I gotta leave off here.

Ochi says that when Subaru is serious, he’s their 正統派ヒーロー. (Definitely that word was chosen because the second character is how Subaru’s name is written.) I had to look up in a J-J dictionary because the only definition imiwa gives is “orthodox school,” which just doesn’t make sense here. It’s actually the second definition, “穏健妥当な考え方や行動をする人.” Someone whose thoughts and actions are dependable and reasonable. So, Ochi’s calling Subaru a dependable hero. (He’s also called him a superhero; a supreme king, 至高の王様; and their 絶対エース. I don’t know that he ever calls him these things to his face though, or just in his head. Later on though, Subaru will call him their 勝利の女神.)

Since I seem to keep wanting to write fics set during their college days (including the one that currently has me in its grip), I think, after I finish ch 1, I’ll switch to next 4 years instead. That’s currently serializing online though so it doesn’t have pages, so I’m not sure how I’d quantify how much I read.

I read Seed 12 of GREEN, as well as the next set of 3 chapters of Colloquial Kansai Japanese.

Some vocab of note:

蛞蝓に塩 (なめくじにしお) [idiom] crestfallen; dejected; shriveled (like a slug sprinkled with salt). Those poor slugs :(
共存共栄 (きょうそんきょうえい) [四字熟語, する verb] co-existence and co-prosperity. Also, the 存 can be read as either そん or ぞん, but the former seems to be more common.
不貞腐れる (ふてくされる) [一, intransitive] to become sulky; to become irresponsible (due to disgruntlement)
噛み殺す (かみころす) [サ五, transitive] Aside from its literal meaning of “to bite to death,” it’s also used for stifling a yawn/smile/etc.
正統派 (せいとうは) [noun] someone whose thoughts and actions are dependable and reasonable. Also, orthodox school (of learning, religion, etc.)

Not really that the vocab itself is of note, but today I learned that まさか can be written in kanji as 真逆. Makes sense.

Also, updating my calendar today, I randomly thought, “Hm, what happens if I put a X in the box instead of an x?” and found out that’s how you get the black box with the white checkmark. Not that I’ll be using it, but.

[omk3]

@omk3

尻もち - falling on one’s backside (jisho also says “mochi tied to a baby’s back if he starts walking before his first birthday in order to cause him to fall on his backside” What’s up with that??

I investigated a litlte because it was just too weird to leave alone, and happened upon this blog. Apparently it’s a tradition that happens around a baby’s first birthday and varies across prefectures, but generally involves a giant mochi weighing 一升 (1.8 kg) being carried or stepped on by the baby, promising a lifetime full of rice and independence (pun with 一生). TIL.

Look at the tiny turtles struggling with their mochi

[Axazel]

I’m so glad you looked into this! It’s too much cuteness and hilarity to handle

Years ago when I first met my (then boyfriend but now) husband’s family, we went through all of his baby pictures. There’s one of him crying with mochi on his back, eeeveryone in his family around him laughing. At first I was so confused, but after a little explanation it soon became one of my favorites

[MissDagger]

Well, time for a proper update in I don’t know how many days. The last few days of my travels were more busy in a way I didn’t expect.

So I’ll just give an overall progress report and then move on to a few fun things I’ve read recently.

I’ve so far read Japanese every day (not today 15/4 yet, but will later I hope!). I’m almost finished with the current volume of Ask Graded Reader I’m reading. One more booklet and since it contains two stories, I will likely read them in one chunks each (finished tomorrow maybe!).

As for regular reading (funny, I never used this construction before learning Japanese, は you have broken me), I’ve read all days except the first day (before I decided to actually try for both every day so doesn’t count) and then I skipped yesterday because I was very tired and having just come home, I had some other things I’ve been wanting to do while away, so…

Side note: I started playing Going Under on my Switch yesterday. Such a fun game. I die a lot, but so far I’m having fun and not become frustrated. I’ll turn on assist mode if it becomes too frustrating. Frustration just isn’t something I enjoy, so assist mode in games are great.

Now, on to the fun reading that I will hide under a detail thingy. This is all from Ask Graded Reader level 4, volume 2, booklet #9 (or the fourth on in that volume), called 世界のどこかで日本のどこかで~本当にあった話~. And yes there will be spoilers.

Fun things

This includes 3* different stories. (*Except the first one includes 3 bonus 1-page stories.)

The first one (and the longest especially with the extras) is the true story about a theft of 三億円.

A few days before the theft happens, the bank (that is the victim) gets a letter from the culprit (assumed, not confirmed) and they decided to show it like a letters cut from magazines used to write type of letter which meant it took me a while to manage to read. Enjoy!

Anyone know what 整ふく means (and how it is read)?

How did it end? Culprit got away! With so much money! O_O

And then came the short little one pages that to contrast was about really bad criminals.

These are mostly funny because of the last sentence of each. I’ll just blur these completely because I’ll have to tell most of it to share the funny.

#1 About a burglar who gets hurt during a burglary when he falls/breaks a glass case protecting/showcasing a doll. He later bleeds to death at home. (First the police thinks he’s been murdered until the connection to the burglary is made. The last line goes like this:
人形が家を守ってくれたのかもしれませんね・・・

#2 Another thief/burglar who is apparently so afraid of having his stolen goods stolen that he has a 防犯ベル on his apartment door. Last line:
泥棒も泥棒に入られるのは嫌？

#3 A man comes home early in the morning (from work? Trip? Doesn’t say), and finds an unknown man sleeping in his bathtub. The man who came home also finds his sake drunk, his beer too, as well as food from the fridge gone (aka eaten). Well, easy case for the police. And here is the last line:
仕事中はお酒は禁止です！

The second (long) story of the booklet was about how a Canadian man managed to use an item exchange website to go from a red paper clip to a house (through several different exchanges). Probably the most boring of the main three, but since I hadn’t heard the story before, it was interesting enough.

Story three is a real heartstring tugger. Called 空から降ってきた子猫の話. A few days after a volcanic eruption, a カラス picked up a kitten somewhere and flew some distance with it before dropping it, and some men saw the kitten fall and went to get it. Rushed it to the veterinarian and the kitten eventually becomes healthy and finds a good home. <3

So yeah, enjoyed this booklet. The non-fiction ones can be very hit or miss, but some interesting true stories from Japan (2+2 (shortie)), Canada (1), and USA (1 (shortie)).