April 17th!
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 
Happy birthday @sycamore 
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
Also @sycamore
Day 17 / Calendar
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 
@NicoleIsEnough Happy Birthday!
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.
April 6 oops 
- April 17
I missed a day x_x That streak thing didn’t last long.
Anyway, I read a combination of 死神の精度, NO. 6 and 999 on the other days. Not as much as I would like, got a bit busy with classes and stuff again, but… I’m working on it? 
I also started Spy x Family!
Step 1 of my plan to actually read the manga I’ve bought already: 
I was planning on reading the first volume before the release date of the anime but… I did not 
. So instead I watched the first episode first and… honestly it did not go too well 
So many text heavy scenes I had trouble following. Oof. this is why I usually stick to romance and sports stuff
Read the first chapter of the manga afterwards and that definitely cleared up a lot.
It’s really cute and pretty funny so far, I think I’m going to like this 
My favorite line was ずっとまえからちちの子どものアーニャです
I approve of that option
April 17th 
・薬屋のひとりごと (28% → 31%)
Finished chapter 12. No problems (with my understanding) this time I think. Thoughts: holy, I did not expect Maomao to rage at those maids like that. And with Jinshi standing probably not five meters away too! And before all of that when she was like, ‘oh the emperor has such a long beard I kind wanna touch it’. She’s a funny one. And of course she couldn’t deny the emperor’s request of trying to cure Li Hua, as she put it “she very much would like for her head and torso to continue being good friends”
Word of the day: 蟹
!!
Day 18 / Calendar
I’m writing this up, because I’m fully expecting tomorrow to be a hectic day with next to no free time left for me. I’ve read a bit more of the 夜カフェ weekly chapter. To give some context, on the phone I’m reading on this chapter is about 10 pages and I just finished page 3. I’d say this is a good pace. If I can read some more today, I’ll update this post.
I’m realising that these update posts tell more about how minute to minute I live my life than about my actual reading journey. Oh well, will be fun to look back.
Yes, it’s 2 am, I’ll go to bed, shush.
Edit:
Had a bit of time in the afternoon, so I’ve read 2 or so pages. I’m around 40% of the way through this week’s reading. If I can do 20ish percents a day, I should be done on thursday leaving me a day to read my filler book.
Happy birthday and many returns of the day!
April 17
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
@sycamore @NicoleIsEnough Happy birthday you two!
April 17
Happy Easter to those who celebrate! I’m happy to be on the other end of big cooking holiday myself. Now I have time in the evenings again lol. (minus the conference I’m attending this week 
)
Read a level-two graded reader, and I need to reply to my teacher before I go to bed tonight. So that’s my reading practice for today although I would like to start chapter 2 of Spy x Family ( @Scylie )
Progress on Tadoku graded readers
44 / 44 level-zeros
12 / 12 level-ones
2 /10 level-twos
x / 18 level-threes
Happy birthday @sycamore !!! Hope it was a good one 
4/14
16-35ish possibly?
4/15
Oh boy, I just have to guess for this one. I think 35-48?
4/16
Due to… stuff… I read the stairs incident in Part 3, volume 27 I think.
4/17
Back to Part 1 Volume 3, 48- 58, or Zepelli’s backstory
Short story, but long weekend. In brief, I was busy with irl stuff not conductive to reading. I’ll try to see if I can manage getting through 2 volumes of manga this week, but we’ll see.
April 17th (Calendar Post)
Started もし、恋が見えたなら today. I think it’s the first time I read a tri-color manga - black, white and pink
もし、恋が見えたなら => 138 pages (170 minutes)
Some fun manga panels
桜
にぱっ
ガーン
I accidentally run into this odd archaic expression when looking up something else:
And some interesting new vocab:
I’ve been saving up Amazon gift cards (mostly free ones I’ve redeemed, but there was one that I bought) to get a snowflake textbook (or, I dunno if it’s exactly a textbook per se, but it’s certainly more formal than the author’s other books on snowflakes), and I finally got enough today! It’s apparently supposed to be getting here tomorrow already, so I’m excited. I’ll try not to let it get in the way of my Japanese reading. (I may be allergic to all other textbooks, but science ones I will absolutely try to read all in one sitting. My astronomy one in uni I ended up reading like half of in one night when I only needed to read one chapter. And no, telling myself that linguistics is technically a science has not helped me any with starting/getting through language-learning textbooks.)
I ended up burning my finger on the edge of a frying pan trying to make dinner (it’s minor, but it still hurts), and as I hadn’t done any reading before then, I didn’t end up doing much today. I read a couple paragraphs of 2.43 before giving it up as a lost cause and switching to Satori Reader.
I read ch 21-30 of 壁の穴. My heart hurts for Kumiko 
振り絞る (ふりしぼる) [ラ五, transitive] to muster all one’s strength, voice, knowledge, etc., as though wringing it out
香木 (こうぼく) [noun] fragrant wood; aromatic tree. This was today’s (or tomorrow’s I think, because time zones) password on ねこあつめ.
高木 (こうぼく) [noun] tall tree. I accidentally typed this one trying to type 香木 lol. I’d only ever seen this one as a surname read たかぎ.
April 17 Home Post
I’m getting really close now I finished up two more main endings and I’m close to another one but it just kept going and I have to sleep at some point I think I’ll finish in the next couple days so that’s pretty exciting!!
So I did シグマ and クォーク’s endings which were a trip to say the least; cyborg arms huh? Can’t say I saw that one coming but man when シグマ crushed his arm in the door, oof, the sound was so rough lmao. And things with the 老婆 just keep getting wilder and I’m not entirely sure what to make of all of it at this point; people I thought couldn’t be involved in all this might be actually and uh… hm. Much to consider
I think I’m working on ルナ’s ending right now, which is also quite the time oh man. For one thing:
yoooo I was right!! Crushed it But yeah like… there is a lot going on in this ending, ディオ did so many murders, and a lot of past things are starting to come together as they do. Honestly my brain is mush at this point so I can’t even begin to express it all lmao but man, stuff’s wild.
Sooo once I finish the route I’m doing right now, I only have more… absolutely wild it approaches
@sycamore happy birthday!!!
Welcome back! I hope you had a good time
Same, that killed me I absolutely adore her already
Day 18 - April 18
So… Covid is a bitch Glad to be back and healthy again tho! I’ve still read every day, even tho I did not have the energy to write a post everyday.
I did not read a lot of novels, but I did manage to finish three manga last week ^^ Since PとJK vol 3 is free until the 21st, I will be focussing on that. Later this week I will fly to Spain for a week and I won’t bring my laptop, so I will be reading physically (starting another novel while I still need to finish 7 other novels ^^") and report a week later!
Day 17 
三毛猫ホームズの推理 ~61% to 74%, end of 3.4
It was a lazy day yesterday, so I managed a satisfying amount of reading. I’d like to retract my complaints towards a certain plot point from a couple of posts before. It was adequately explained (spoilers for 3.4!) by the brother’s inferiority complex, not to mention there seems to be just the twist I had been hoping for.
Wild speculation: (spoilers for up to 3.4) I keep coming back to the possibility that this has all been staged by Morisaki himself. I have no evidence at all to support this, and all kinds of evidence against it, but I still always circle back to it. It seems to me that his death easily accomplishes all the things he wanted to accomplish in life: Stop the university corruption, get rid of Abe, expose his brother for the scumbag he is, push Yukiko into Katayama’s arms (still unclear on why he wanted that). If this is indeed the case, then Holmes must be in on it. There’s no way to fool an animal the way you fool humans. On the other hand, I’m not sure about the police itself. Mitamura was his close friend, so maybe he was in on it too? But in that case, was even the supposed autopsy fake? I see two possibilities: Either Morisaki is alive and well, in which case there will have to be some other development to let Holmes end up with Katayama for the next books in the series, or Morisaki is actually dead, but maybe by his own hand. He may have been dying (wouldn’t the autopsy show that though?) or have had other reasons we know nothing about, but the way he staged it he managed to frame all the people who were against him in the first place. I really like the idea that even in death he outsmarted his brother who was so proud of his elaborate plan. I guess we’ll see.
Finally got to read this:
That’s an interesting thought, but surely traces of explosion would be found, even in an empty room like that? And wouldn’t the body look a little worse for wear? I think we are told that he looked almost pristine, so that even Katayama had no trouble looking at him.
取り澄ます - to look unconcerned, to assume a composed look
公務執行妨害 - interference with a public servant in the execution of his duties
踏み外す - to miss one’s footing
待ちくたびれる - to be tired of waiting
良心の呵責 - pangs of conscience
底が割れる - to be exposed, to be seen through, to be found out
口裏を合わせる - to get the stories straight, to arrange to tell the same story
手に乗る - to fall for a trick, to be taken in
苦し紛れ - out of desperation, (as a) last resort
Day 17 
Read:マグメル深海水族館 [2]
Finished: Chapter 5, Chapter 6
Time: 20 minutes, 12 minutes
Had a bit more time after finishing some assignments so got to read a bit more today. Today’s chapters focused on a メンダコ (flapjack octupus) and the crazy long named ミツクリエナガチョウチンアンコウ (triplewart seadevil). In this volume Koutarou starts his job as an assistant caretaker at the aquarium. The first creature he’s in charge of is みっちゃん the ミツクリエナガチョウチンアンコウ, who’s been there since the aquarium opened and is currently the only success at keeping that species alive long term at an aquarium. But this doesn’t start out so great as みっちゃん won’t eat at all when Koutarou feeds her. After worrying about it for a long while he comes to the conclusion that it was because she’s lonely alone in the aquarium and promised that he’d find her a husband (lol), and she finally ate (of course the actual reason she ate was different). I love how everyone imagined みっちゃん to be super bossy.
We also learn that his dad is a deep sea photographer which explains why Koutarou’s always been so interested in deep sea creatures.
掛け持ち holding two or more positions concurrently
孵化 （ふか）incubation; hatching
まれ rare; seldom
すり鉢 （すりばち）(earthenware) mortar (for grinding)
給餌 （きゅうじ）feeding (an animal)
ひたすら intently; single-mindedly; devotedly; solely; earnestly; with all one’s heart
速攻 （そっこう）right away; without delay; immediately
思考回路 （しこうかいろ）patterns of thinking; train of thought
興味津々 （きょうみしんしん）very interesting; of absorbing interest; having a keen interest (in); being immensely curious (about)
浮遊 （ふゆう）floating; drifting; suspension
生みつける to lay; to spawn
尻に敷く （しりにしく）to dominate (usu. one’s husband)
Happy Birthday!!
4月14-18日
Calendar
On Saturday I wasn’t really in the mood for reading and there were many things going on before Easter, so I took a break. And I’m back, however from now on I might read less daily than before, as I have uni’s assigments which I really want to be done this month.
In the meanwhile I’ve read about 10% of 博士の愛した数式, and overall I’m still absorbed in the story and like its warmth.
I love the bond that’s created between the 博士 and ルート. It surprised me at the beginning of the book, even when the 博士 only got to knew the existence of ルート and scolded his mother for leaving him at home alone while she’s at work - but then I began to like the direction of their relationship. In the parts when ルート cut himself and then at the clinic I couldn’t help but feel for 博士.
However, the very recent parts - especially the one with baseball cards found by the housekeeper - were quite slow-paced in comparison to those in my last posts (I suppose more exciting events are yet to come).
図書館司書 - librarian
長方形 - rectangle
目を付ける - to have an eye on; to zero in on
重ねる - to pile up; to put on top of another
重なり合う - to lie on top of each other; to overlap
For a little change I started 「失はれる物語」 by 乙一 - it contains a few short stories so I thought it would be easy to split over time. I managed to read only about 3 pages so far.
The theme of the first part isn’t really my piece of cake, so story-wise it didn’t grab my attention right away. However, I’m very surprised by the easiness of the language (I wonder if it’s only for the first story though…) - thanks to that, even if there are unknown words, I can follow the narrative without looking them up in the dictionary. 
Because of that I think I will continue the book.
腫れ物に触るように - with great caution; gingerly
特異な - unique; peculiar
積み重なる - to pile up; to stack up
社交辞令 - something said for politeness’ sake; empty compliment
咄嗟に（とっさに）- at once; right away; promptly
曖昧な - vague; ambiguous
見透かす（みすかす） - to see through; to see the true nature of something
身構える - to put oneself on guard; to stand ready
着信 - receiving a phone call
Aww, thanks so much for all of the birthday wishes you guys 
I had a really lovely day.
Heehee - seems about right! You are also reminding me that I should definitely move up the Free! novel in my ‘to be read’ list, I miss those ridiculous boys.
Aw no! Hope you feel better soon! You’re totally right that taking it easy and being kind to yourself is the way to go. 
I didn’t read much yesterday as was fairly busy, but did get a bit further with すべてがｆになる and am now right in the middle of the final ‘here’s who done it and how’ section. I don’t see myself switching back to anything else until I finish this part, but I’m also itching to catch up with 三毛猫 so that I can read all of the spoiler chat! Hopefully I can get these deadlines out of the way soon and have more time 
I’ve been having the same emotions about this book. It’s nice enough but the ‘see, people would be fine living in poverty if they were more like my fun grandma’ theme is kind of fine for the kids story that this book is/feels like, but a bit weird/grating reading it as an adult/with life experience. Then again, I’m only about 25% through so should probably read more and see where it goes, but just now it’s the bottom of the pile of things I feel like picking up and reading more of.
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