It’s Sunday again and weekly update time! I’ve read every day this week I’m up to date on ハピネス, reading my easy news articles every day, and also did some Ace Attorney earlier. I’m agonizing over what game to try my hand at next (definitely interested in Zero Escape ) but I’ve been forbidden from buying anything before my birthday.
Next week will require me to plan my reading time. I start work on Tuesday and then I’m heading on a weekend trip to Stockholm. I haven’t been on a proper trip in years (thanks, pandemic), so I’m feeling a little nervous about keeping up my studies. I’ll have to find the time to do my reviews every day, because I refuse to lose my 472-day streak! Thankfully my traveling partner is the one who paid for my sub last year, so I know she’ll be cool with it.
I wonder if there are any stores with resources for learning Japanese in Stockholm… It’s a much bigger city than the one I’m from.
Anyway, I hope everyone has a marvelous week with lots of time to read
I was out and about almost all day yesterday, so I only managed a measly 1% (3-4 pages maybe?) before I passed out. I guess it still counts as reading, but nothing to be proud of. I’ll try and make up for it today (already reached 66% since morning).
I think I’ve lost track of the birthdays So if I miss you I’m sorry! But happy birthday @sycamore and @NicoleIsEnough !
I decided to read another 青空文庫 story last night, and grabbed something (悪魔の宝) by an author (豊島与志雄) who I had liked the work of before. Unfortunately this was a very basic children’s story and I was pretty bored. It’s about a hunter who makes a deal with the devil, and that goes about as well as you’d expect. I left difficulty notes on Natively, but this was a hard one to judge as it was
100% a children’s folktale written in simple language which IMO probably would be mostly friendly to someone with a solid grasp of N4
That simple language was quite outdated (written 1929) and was filled with weird gotchas
I had no trouble following along, but a good deal of the gotchas for the type of language are not going to be covered by the JLPT and unlikely to encounter again until they reach the point of complicated old adult reading material. So I stuffed it into the N3 range, wrote a clarifying review, and am hoping for the best. It doesn’t really “work” anywhere nicely.
Also the library let me poke through books they were gonna sell off and I grabbed more 赤川 and a random book with 殺人事件 on the cover (あらすじ：清滝トンネル内で幼稚園児の送迎車が消失!). I got some 横山秀夫 books from them the other week as well. I wish I could read faster, I couldn’t justify taking any more home. Doubtless I’d find even more to read, though.
I read digitally on a tablet, and look up vocabularies on another device (smartphone). Sometimes I read on smartphone, but the process is still the same (switching the apps). Writing Kanji with my finger, if I have to.
Finished reading through Yoru Cafe vol 1 last night and today I read the sidechapter of Yuru Camp vol 3 finishing that. Yoru Cafe was a comfy read for the most part. Difficulties were sometimes in not knowing who was talking at the moment or me not paying attention and drifting of for a bit. Either way it was a good experience. More thoughts down below, they’ll have general spoilers.
Yoru Cafe vol 1
I think it’s a neat little book that shows some character growth during an important period of development as a kid. Going from one school to the other, situation with your parents growing worse, avoiding life because fear of bullying. At one point it is too much and you break. Luckily Hanabi (the protag) and the other kids are able to come to terms with their life after stepping away from it all. It is kinda like day treatment. Of course good cooking helps with it. In this way they’re able to make friends, socialize and grow as a person. Maybe see things in a different light, experience new feelings, or whatever goes along with maturing.
I liked how it has a certain bittersweet flavor to it. There’s drama, bit of romance, comedy and cooking. Hanabi becomes a more positive person and is able to make friends, but then also has to say goodbye to one… poor girl.
I don’t have volume 2 on me, so that will have to wait a while. Yuru Camp is about more of the same, also comfy and good. I’m starting fresh tomorrow again, as I’ll be reading a new manga and book alongside each other. For manga I’m still undecided and I’ll have to pick something from my kindle library again I think. As for the book, I’ll be reading ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 vol 1 next. I’ll have to see if I can still manage to read a chapter every time I read. These chapters are a bit longer and I noticed it’s a bit more dense.
I finished Book 8, and read 5 pages. The kids and Dad celebrate Mom’s birthday with a surprise party. Dad gives Mom a sweater which is waaaay too big. Mom doesn’t look too happy!
I finished 極主夫道３ today! I don’t know what it is about this series, but something about it makes me want to read all day. I feel like I’ve had to push myself to read anything else recently
Speaking of which...
I really want to continue 夜カフェ, but every time I sit down to read it, it feels like a chore. idk why though, I really want to enjoy it, and so far I’ve liked what I have read. but I still haven’t even finished chapter 1
I want to finish this chapter by the end of tonight and be caught up with the club by the time they start chapter 5 at the end of april. That should be a good goal I think, it’s about 3 pages per day give or take
sorry this got a bit rambly, I wanted to have this all written down in this post so I can hold myself more accountable
Today I started デスノート ・ Death Note 📓 Vol. 2 (read ~20 pages). It was pretty good to be reading Death Note again! I’m still not sure if I like the story of the manga as a whole, but for some reason I really like the writing style. Maybe it’s just exactly the right level of difficulty for me at the moment (just hard enough to feel that I’m constantly learning).
It was a busy day. I went to the next city for Sushi with my mother in law. And naturally, afterwards, went to her home and we sat for quite some time to chat. So I hadn’t much time to read. I still managed to read two pages of chapter 4 of 魔女の宅急便 (the minimum amount I want to do each day). So at least I didn’t break the chain. Maybe tomorrow I have a bit more time.
My goal today was to get up to speed on what I learned when previously using this textbook (up to lesson 6), as tomorrow I’ll start using it with a teacher, starting from lesson 7. So today I read through all the vocabulary, example phrases and grammar to refresh them in my memory.
Hello! Just recently got back from my trip and haven’t been able to keep up with posts but happy birthday @sycamore and @NicoleIsEnough! I’m super exhausted from the drive – it’s only about 3 hours, but I hate driving and it really takes it out of me. And right before that I was celebrating Easter with some family and their youngish kids so it’s just a tiring day. Haven’t read yet today, but I’ll get on it. For now I can’t summon the energy to do Anki just yet so I figured I’d post about what I’ve been up to.
On Friday I read the two chapters of 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん for the intermediate book club. I need to get talking in those threads again but last week I was struggling to really settle how I feel about the book and I still find it slightly hard to judge just yet. The content is fine, some stories about growing up in poverty, though it’s hard for me to engage with stories of hardship that are meant to be sort of “uplifting” the way that they want me to. It’s a tough topic. As for my understanding, it’s… ok-ish. I basically always follow what’s going on, but there’s a dialect I’ve chosen to not spend TOO much energy on right now, a good chunk of words that are very much reflective of the time and poverty (some references to real traditional Japanese objects y’know?), and something about the author’s writing is just new to me. Like, even in sentences I understand, there’s often a little attached particle or word somewhere that I can’t really make sense of its presence. And I mean, I’m understanding the point of the sentence (minus some nuance probably), but I always feel kind of unsure. I should be using the threads to ask questions more but I’d have to look back for instances, especially since I was reading away from the computer totally for this last week.
I also started スマホを落としただけなのに ! I only read the first… part of a chapter? They seem to be split further by letters. It’s the first audiobook file because I’m doing as @pocketcat recommended and listening first, then reading, then listening again (or I did for 1 anyway). It went ok! I still get caught in places cause of course I will right now, but I can figure out almost everything going on so far. The listening side was sketchier, hard to follow a lot of details, but I did get the general idea of the first section even before reading. It’s noticeably longer than the other books I’ve been reading though. Feels like I spent a lot of time on the reading side to be at like 3%, haha.
The letters represent the perspective. Killer, main lady, dectectives. It usually cycles through each of their perspectives per chapter IIRC, but I wasn’t keeping too close of track. One quick note for you! 蛭 (ひる) means leech. If you’re listening first that scene might be confusing for a bit as it’s pretty far from a common word Should save you some pain.
Today I read Chapter 3 of 夜カフェ.
I read it all in one sitting, which was fun but kind of tiring!
My reading stamina has increased so much since January, there is no way I could have read anywhere near as much at the start of the winter challenge! But I think I’ve hit my limit for today, so I’m going to go and play some games while my brain recharges
Day 17: April 17th
What did I read?: ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 Vol 2
How much did I read?: 26 pages
How long did it take me?: 1 hour 40 min
Finished the book! This last chapter was kind of sweet, even though I have mixed feelings on the whole “he only teased/bullied her because he liked her!” thing, in general. But it was in elementary school, and the fact that he essentially built his entire life after that around potentially being able to make it up to her in some way sort of…cancels it out xD What can I say, I’m very much a sucker for that kind of thing :3
Unrelated to that, can we talk about how her first guest from the hospitality tea was freaking Santa Claus How random
I remember the first Zenitendou book feeling much more difficult than this one did, so that was a nice reminder that I am in fact learning something lol
Good words
大のにがて - dread; horror; hatred
ままならない - unable to do (as one wishes); able to do only with great effort; almost impossible to do; beyond one’s control; not always turning out as one wishes; not going the way one wants it to
Barely got enough time to start reading at half past 11 (pm), thankfully the first section of chapter 3 of 夜カフェ was very simple grammatically, so it was easy to follow along.
I’m still reading btw, but thought I’d pop in to make an update.
Learned a new word I love, あちらこちら (彼方此方) meaning (in this case) “all over the place”. I love it because it just means “that way and this way”, which describes the word really well.
I haven’t read anything besides Anki example sentences because I came down with a fever 5 hours ago I’ve decided to count that as having read today and not force myself to do more than that until my fever breaks. I’m sure erring on the side of self-care is the most productive option in the long run (and that’s not to suggest that self-care isn’t also valuable in and of itself ).
Happy birthday @sycamore (I’m pretty sure that’s right but excuse me if it isn’t ^^;)
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
Today I finished the second volume of The Quintessential Quintuplets (30 pages). Such an awesome manga but unfortunately I only had the first two volumes. I am burning too fast through my manga backlog I only have around 30 manga volumes left to read.
and happy birthday to @sycamore today ! 
) but I’ve been forbidden from buying anything before my birthday.
) 
So if I miss you I’m sorry! But happy birthday 
Japanese found in the tall grass 
)
bam 
so pretty and majestic in the sunny weather 
Should save you some pain.
Home post 
I’ve decided to count that as having read today and not force myself to do more than that until my fever breaks. I’m sure erring on the side of self-care is the most productive option in the long run (and that’s not to suggest that self-care isn’t also valuable in and of itself 
).
