April 16th!
Today I really needed to get some housework done before we have friends over tomorrow.
So instead I read Chapter 4 of Happiness, though I was only meant to read the first half for the ABBC!
Then I also read the first chapter of Volume 6 of Teasing Master Takagi-san.
Guess I’m staying up late to do the cleaning now… 
Happy birthday @NicoleIsEnough 
Today was a good day for reading: I read the remaining part for Week 3: 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん 👵🏼 (11 pages). The book is okay. A fairly easy read with slice of life scenes of the author living with his grandmother.
Day 16 / Calendar
I had a lot to do today, it was about 11 pm when I got to my PC (that’s where I find reading the most comfortable, which is important if you’re struggling with reading). Luckily, since this is the easiest week of ABBC imho, it was quite easy to get through this week’s material. Took me 30-ish minutes to get through 6 pages worth of dialog, great progress.
I would love to go back and see how I did the first week. We’re at the end of the first quarter of the challenge and it would be nice to see how much I improved in only 2 weeks or so. I feel like a lot, but would be great to have some data.
Day 16
なぜ?どうして?かがくのお話1年生: 60% → 63%
Read about worlds biggest flowers that smell like poop and rotting flesh to attract insects that normally eat this. I was tired and only looked up 3 words (there were more unknown words than that). I think I got the gist anyway, as illustrations helped.
死骸 - dead body
うんち - poop
臭い - smelly
みんなの日本語初級I: 0% → 4%
Also read through first chapter of first part of みんなの日本語. I came back to it because I had my first one-on-one lesson with a Japanese tutor and most of what I was able to say came from what I learned from MNN (drill exercices seem to work) or Tobira Beginning Japanese. I hope I stick with the textbook this time.
I finished eight pages. Two children and Dad prepare a birthday party for Mom.
New vocabulary:
だれ
誰も no one, with a negative verb
サンドイッチ sandwich
れいぞうこ
冷蔵庫 refrigerator
Today I chose to keep reading about コナ, having it “easy” is pretty motivating. Whereas before I looked forward to reading よつばと！every day, I now compare it to Satori Reader and go “… nah, I’d rather do that” … 
Well, I’ll get back to よつば eventually. The important thing is I’m maintaining/reinforcing a reading habit and learning a lot 
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 
Also, happy birthday @NicoleIsEnough 
and thanks for the belated birthday greeting @sycamore
Thank you:) it’s the Norwegian^^; Sea tho (somehow I felt mildly offended on behalf of the ocean 
)
April 16th
・薬屋のひとりごと (26% → 28%) (again)
I reread chapter 11. Also reading the comments in the book club thread helped. Can’t believe I missed the part where Maomao literally says the lady probably faked the whole sleepwalking situation. So turns out court lady didn’t want to be a court lady and woo the emperor, but would rather prefer to be with her childhood friend the military officer. Unless I misread again, 1 am is not a good time to be awake.
Yay, can continue reading as normal tomorrow. Rereading stuff due to confusion is not my favorite activity.
oh btw, this word sounds so not English, like a deep sea creature dwelling in the land of cursed words creeping its way up on the shore to show its face. Like one of these especially cursed durtles.
Yeah, I should go to sleep
Is it ironic that I missed a day just on the same day I posted last time… when I had JUST posted that I found the material pretty good for every day reading? Oopsie. Well, never mind. Luckily I have not missed another day since. Though yesterday when I wasn’t at home it was also more of a last minute thing…
I’m mostly reading ハピネス and am like three quarters through volume 3! I did not really look up anything about the series before reading and I was caught a little of guard by how dark it actually is so far. Still pretty hooked though! After I found Death Note pretty draining I actually thought I wouldn’t read a manga for a while… then I thought “wellll, first three volumes are free, I should at least give it a try”… and now here I am, fairly certain I’m gonna read the whole series and it will be most of my reading for this challenge 
No, you got it!
… but it is right? 
thought process:
Checking, yes it is. I missed the much more common alternative, though.
Want it in the form of listening practice? Had to go search this up, but I just knew BL pirates had come up before:
I’ve heard it before, but it’s definitely uncommon these days. Last time I saw it referenced was ah…a silent film.
April 16
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
Oh intruiging! I’m not entirely sure the best way to get hold of drama CDs from the UK but the LNits based on is available digitally so will give that a bit of a read and if it seems promising then try to figure out how to get hold of the CDs 
thanks!
Day 16: April 16th
What did I read?: ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 Vol 2
How much did I read?: 14 pages
How long did it take me?: 1 hour 4 min
Read a whole chapter today! This one was interesting because one of the featured characters from the first book returned :o I low-key forgot about him (it has been a while since I read the first one lol) but at the end, I was like oh yeah that guy xD Once again getting outsmarted by Beniko, albeit indirectly this time xD He deserves it~ He apparently hired a detective to try and find Beniko because he was still mad lmao, but that backfired big time. I love how the detective hates this guy, too. Literally no one likes him
@NicoleIsEnough Happy birthday!
This evening, I was at the longest Easter Vigil that I could ever remember attending. Now that the COVID-19 measures are lifted, we can have full church attendance. We didn’t have any baptisms taking place and we didn’t do all the readings, yet the Mass took a whole three hours before it was done. The Vigil started at 6:30 pm but I had to be there an hour before for choir rehearsal. We finished after nine in the night but I had to wait almost an hour afterwards before I could go home. My brothers were altar servers and had to help pack up the church but my mother decided to take the chance to chat with other attendees. If I didn’t start acting vex, she might have chatted longer. I still had to chores to do when I came home and it’s that time of the month for me: TMII’m on my period.
In any case, I didn’t want to lose my streak so I still read a few pages of しゅごキャラ！ １ today. I also have a reading streak going on my Kindle app. I don’t want to have to restart it for the fourth time this year so I also read a few pages on my Kindle.
Happy birthday and many returns of the day! @NicoleIsEnough
April 16
Finished chapter 1 of Spy x Family. Turns out it was a long chapter! May read some more or something else before the end of tonight.
Progress on Tadoku graded readers
44 / 44 level-zeros
12 / 12 level-ones
1 /10 level-twos
x / 18 level-threes
17th of April
Day 17
75% → 100%. Finished 君ノ声!! I must admit I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel at the ending. I’m left with a few questions (like who is the man who took the hairpin away from Nana?), and according to the reviews left on Bookwalker by Japanese natives, they seem to be asking the same questions as well. But I’m also unsure about the ending itself, so I think I’ll just ask the Japanese friend who recommended the manga to me about that. It’s not a simple fairytale ending though, that’s what I know.
So this was definitely above my level. There were lots of different language used by some of the characters, such as the use of へん as a negative and ねぇ instead of ない, which made it harder to comprehend. There was a fair bit of honorific language in there as well. And so much vocabulary that I didn’t know at the start! I don’t think I’ve used DeepL so much for anything else I’ve read. It was a good learning experience though — because with books, the more you intake, the more patterns you find, and then later on when encountering those same patterns, it will be easier to understand. That’s what I think, anyway.
Well, I can finally tell my Japanese friend I finished it, lol. From tomorrow I’ll be reading かがみの孤城. Who knows how long that’ll take me!
April 16th (Calendar Post)
Bookclub reading:
ゆるキャン△ => 26 pages (32 minutes)
夜カフェ => 7 pages (54 minutes)
I also managed to read the final chapter of my main book! This marks my 7th finished novel in japanese yey~
三日間の幸福 => 10 pages + 2 of the あとがき (80 minutes)
Checking my stats, this 230-page novel took me 1 month and 13 days to read. Sadly novels still feel too much of a struggle for me (sigh), but it was a very good practice at least.
I am at least quite happy with my comprehension level with this book, and felt I understood pretty well both the events that were going on, the motivations of the characters and the more abstract analogies - sadly I can’t say the same thing for some of the previous novels I’ve read.
It was also nice running into N1 grammar points more often.
I’ll take a break from opening my kindle app to see scary walls of text reading novels and go back to manga for a while for my main reading.
Fun manga panel from today:
I read Seed 13 of GREEN.
I read 3 pages of 2.43, finishing 1-3! Next up is 1-4. RIVAL’S SHADOW. Hopefully starting Monday I can read more again, 'cause I am just too tired from work. It wasn’t as bad as yesterday, but I still just wanted to lie down and sleep for most of the day.
Apparently Subaru comes off as naïve to others. I never saw him as such, but I can see how people might if they don’t actually know him, especially with his rather carefree nature and his idealism. Plus, this is Ochi thinking this (how he used to think he was just a 天真爛漫な人気者), and he’s rather jaded.
Oh my god they have a height difference of 21 cm. Like, some part of me knew this since I know Subaru’s 189 cm and Ochi’s 168, but it never really registered. They went from probably around the same height in middle school, to a little over 10 cm’s difference in 高一, to 21 cm in 高三. That’s… well maybe not nearly a full head taller since that’s more like 30 cm (the height difference between Oda and Aoki!), but that’s still a lot.
(I’m a sucker for height differences.)
Another word used in relation to Subaru using the kanji of his name! 伝統, “tradition, convention.” This time not directly describing him though: 県内で全国大会最多出場を誇る伝統ある強豪校の主将として。
Also, I was reminded of this seeing the title of a track on the OST when I paused it, but smol Chika tells smol Yuni just before he leaves for Tōkyō with his father,「忘れんでの、ユニ。絶対に忘れんでの」and I still don’t get how that’s a negative. “I won’t forget you.” Unless that ん is the contraction of ない that’ll also show up in Kansaiben (like in 知らん or わからん). There are definitely a lot of places where ん trips me up, especially as there are multiple things it could be. Then if that’s the case, I still don’t know what the で is, and I guess the の would be explanatory or whatever? It’s definitely not a question particle here.
I also read the final two chapters of Colloquial Kansai Japanese.
天真爛漫 (てんしんらんまん) [四字熟語, な-adjective] naïvety; simplicity; innocence. That’s a lot of characters ending in ん in a row lol
分かれ道 (わかれみち) [noun] branch; forked road; crossroads; parting of ways; turning point. Also written 別れ道.
核 (かく) [noun] core (of an organization, team, etc.); nucleus; heart. At its heart (hah), the kanji means “core; nucleus” and is used to refer to the core of many things, like the pit of a peach or even the nucleus of an atom. Mostly I just picked this one because I like the look of the kanji lol
顰める [一, transitive] is usually written in kana, and it has two different readings depending on how it’s used. In 顔を顰める, it’s read しかめる; this reading means “to pull a wry face; to screw one’s face up; to scowl; to grimace; to frown.” In 眉を顰める, it’s read ひそめる; this reading means “to knit (one’s eyebrows).” I’ve only seen this with the latter reading, in kana, and I was like “all right so I get from context that he’s frowning, but how does ‘to hide one’s eyebrows’ mean ‘to frown’” because I’d thought it was 潜める. Glad that’s cleared up now lol
I Think Ill try to find some japanese short storys or at least a poem each day.
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| 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
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| 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 | ||||||
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| 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
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| 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 |
April 16 
Home Post
More VLR today!! All still going well; シグマ has white blood?? Absolutely wild, it’s late so that’s all for today, but tomorrow 
@NicoleIsEnough happy birthday!!!
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