May 19th 
・薬屋のひとりごと 2 (30% → 31%)
Just a tiny read. Can’t wait to finish exam tomorrow, my back can’t handle any more studying.
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Well, I’m certainly another one. 
This is exactly why I voted for Zenitendou too. I firmly believe that - unless someone is already somehow very strong in understanding spoken language before starting to read - books are just better suited in getting beginners comfortable with reading.
Everyone’s mileage varies of course, but here are my reasons:
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First of all, there’s just so much more text - and that’s a good thing. You can finish several volumes of manga, and still not have read as much actual text as you will in one novel (it heavily depends on the manga of course). More text → more exposure → comfortable with walls of text in less time/effort/volumes.
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Second, in my mind at least, nothing supports understanding of text better than more text. At least for me, text gives me much more context than I can get from a picture. I’m not sure how to explain it, but I’ll try: Often the text in a manga is not directly related to the picture you’re seeing, it’s just more extra information. The picture and the text may work together, but not always in a straightforward way. The text may be contradicting the picture, or be about something entirely different (eg characters cooking, but talking about astrophysics). It’s not necessarily easier to follow just because there are pictures - manga are not picture books. In a book on the other hand, there are no other clues as to what is happening, other than text. So the text needs to support the reader’s understanding fully. Which is why more (text) context -in my mind- leads to better understanding.
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Third, a manga is almost entirely speech, with all its drawbacks. Contractions, interrupted sentences, slang, random sound effects, you name it. You can find all these things in books too, but at least there’s more regular text around them to, again, provide all the necessary context. This point does not apply if you’re good at listening comprehension though. So for children, for example, who learned first by listening, I bet manga are easier. Not for me though, because I started learning by reading, and listening comes next (and is left behind, but that’s another story).
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Lastly, and that’s personal, I just enjoy books more. I don’t know what it is. I’ve always loved reading, in any language, and prefer reading to listening or watching as entertainment any day. Similarly, while I have read comic books and graphic novels in the past, and I am reading manga now, for some reason they tire me faster than a book would. This I really can’t explain. I just know that I can easily spend hours reading, but will stop much sooner if what I’m reading has pictures. Sensory overload? No idea.
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After a while of playing 13 sentinels and then fire emblem, I’m back to novels again, or more specifically 三毛猫ホームズの推理 
I’m at 90% now and my main critique of this book so far is that there’s not nearly enough ホームズ! I’m intrigued to see if the ending raises my estimation of the book, as others seemed to really appreciate the finish. So far it’s kind of middle of the road for me…probably half of the reason I got sidetracked by video games for so long 
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Hard relate. Manga just feels a bit more tedious to me to get through, although my page count goes up quicker as there’s far less text overall. I think I like being able to imagine everything for myself? I’m not sure. I was a huge bookworm as a kid, though, and the only difference in adulthood is less time!
I actually didn’t read yesterday and might not have time to today as I must shortly log off and do Life Things 
Been a wild week between work and social obligations. I’m doing much worse on this challenge overall, but generally keeping a good pace on my reading goals despite that so… 
It just avalanches at the end. Good fun, but not sure it will rock your world
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May 19th!
I have house guests tomorrow so I really need to clean my house. So obviously instead I’m procrastinating by doing just about anything I can think of other than cleaning…
Including reading some Shirokuma Cafe. Today Panda met Grizzly, and there was a panel I really loved that had a lion and a tiger playing pool.
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I finished “女の子” from Set 1 Graded Readers, Level 1. The girl had every toy, etc., but was usually alone. She didn’t speak, but watched out the window every day and saw all the traffic and people moving around. Every day, she sees a boy walking to school and he says “Hello”, but she says nothing to him. One day, he stopped and gave her a flower. That day, she spoke and said, “Thank You”.
This book was easier than some of the Level 0 stories. (Or maybe I’m just learning more?)
New Vocabulary:
なに
何も nothing, not anything
まど
窓 window
My favorite picture:
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I still have the cheapest Kindle (8th generation). I haven’t upgraded to Paperwhite yet. If it’s Japanese manga on Bookwalker, I use my laptop. But for manga (in English mainly), I specially bought a tablet so I don’t have to contend with web browsers or PC apps. My Kindle is black and white and too grainy to read manga. My phone is too small.
For my usual English novels, since I’ve started practising Japanese, I’ve been using my laptop more and neglecting my Kindle but I only have four devices in total- laptop, phone, tablet, Kindle and I basically use them in that order nowadays for reading.
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Day 48
- ジョジョの奇妙な冒険・岸部露伴動かない
I read part of the new chapter because Ultra Jump actually arrived on the physical release day for once!! I don’t know how many pages I read because at some point I switched to skimming. Yesterday was a weird day, stuff happened.
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Day 49: May 19th
What did I read?: クマとたぬき Vol 2
How much did I read?: 9 pages
How long did it take me?: 9 min
More headache today I always get headaches on days when I’ve had to go into the office, funny how that works
Today’s cute panel: tanuki + jizo!
My clickbait title worked 
But is it clickbait if it’s the truth
Happy forum-versary btw! 
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I didn’t end up cutting down very much on my book haul after all. I think the total price with shipping was about the same or maybe less than what it originally was before shipping though, so that’s something, at least? I don’t know how to hold back at all when it comes to books, apparently. Bibliomaniac, yup, that’s me, 100%. Anyway I think the first one I read from that will be ボーイミーツマリア. I adore that book so much and I’ve been thinking about it again lately. I think it’s my favorite BL to date.
Ohhh poking around on the forum today I’ve learned that Diluc apparently speaks a type of 役割語, or stereotyped speech. It’s supposed to make him seem old and wise or something. That would explain why it doesn’t feel like Kansaiben despite the similarities.
Anyway, I read the Bookwalker previews for some of the fantasy series suggested to me. If you’d like some recs, or you have some to make yourself, the thread is here, and it’s for more traditional fantasy as well as youkai stuff. The 悪食令嬢と狂血公爵 manga. The novels (at least, the first chapter; the preview extended a bit into ch 2, but that seemed a better place to stop than there) and manga of 獣の奏者, which seems interesting. 狐笛のかなた, which also seems interesting.
Outside of recs (though, technically this was one from my offline friend a while back, I just completely forgot about it and then stumbled upon it by chance on Amazon JP, lol whoops), I also read the preview for 赤い糸の執行猶予. I think I mighta read the scanlation years ago. Anyway, it seems good.
It seems previews for novels are as long as if not longer than for manga, which makes no sense to me. A single page of a novel contains a lot more information than a single page of a manga, so I’d expected the previews for those to be a lot shorter. Maybe it goes off of the percentage of total pages, or something.
I didn’t end up playing any Heroes today, unfortunately (sorry, Terry). I was busy doing other things, and next thing I knew, it was time for me to be getting to bed soon.
Some vocab of note:
鎌首をもたげる (かまくびをもたげる) [expression, 一] to raise one’s head (esp. of a snake)
しゃがみ込む (しゃがみこむ) [マ五, intransitive] to crouch down (completely, generally with face looking through knees)
生い茂る (おいしげる) [ラ五, intransitive] to grow thickly; to be overgrown; to thrive; to grown in abundance
While looking up the reading for 庭石 (it’s にわいし), I learned that Sisyrinchium (blue-eyed grass) are called 庭石菖 (ニワゼキショウ). They’re one of my favorite flowers.
Edit: Wow, I was tired last night, I didn’t realize I tried to close the dropdown with a spoiler rather than details lmao
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May 19 Home Post
I played a good amount of Zero Escape today! It’s nice to be back to it; things continue to be wild. There was a throwback to the AB games but like even more messed up this time, so that was a trip. On to tomorrow!
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May 19th (Calendar Post)
隣の席の佐藤さん => 98 Pages (113 min)
Some more fun 佐藤さん panels
One could easily say this manga is 90% close-ups of 佐藤さん’s face 
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Day 49 
夜市 ~ 0-16%
I was torn on what to read next after 告白. I really wanted to start 穴, but I still have unread books in my virtual library, one of which I had started and paused before. In the end, a power cut (=no internet) decided for me, as I could only read what I already had available.
I had bought 夜市 - selected because I liked the premise and it was read by the IBC before my time - a bit less than a year ago, when I got overenthusiastic about my newly discovered ability to actually read in Japanese. I had managed to read to about 16%, but it wasn’t exactly effortless, and what with Wanikani and other book clubs, time for extra reading was much more limited than I had calculated. So it got left behind.
When I restarted reading it from the beginning yesteday, just like with 三毛猫ホームズの推理, I got a little disappointed by how I wasn’t exactly breezing through the known parts. I still looked up a lot of the same words, even got stuck on some of the same grammar. So, has nothing really changed in a year of reading? But then I kept reading, and before I knew it I had reached the furthest part I had read before, in just one day (it had taken several back then). Not only that, but I found that some parts I didn’t remember at all (while others I remembered clearly), which leads me to think that maybe my understanding back then wasn’t exactly full.
So apparently, what has changed within a year or so of reading isn’t so much the size of my vocabulary or even the extent of my grammar knowledge (they have grown of course), but rather my intuitive understanding of the language. Reading just flows more easily now, even with all the lookups. There are just much fewer sentences that I need to stop and reread, or even dissect, in order to understand them. There are much fewer places that I find ambiguous. I guess my understanding has become more automatic, and more exact. Not something that is easy to quantify, but important progress nonetheless. 
On the book itself, I’m enjoying (as I was back then) the magical, mysterious atmosphere, and all the strange creatures and products at the night market. Some are creepy, some are just bizarre. And it’s getting more and more apparent that the visit will probably cost to the two main characters in some way (or at least one of them?). This is the first of two short stories in the book, so the resolution will come sooner than the percentages imply. I’m probably about 1/3 of the way into the story at this point (and eager to read more).
That’s true, I expected ホームズ to have an even more central role. I did appreciate that she was portrayed realistically though. Not a magical cat or anything, just a normal, real cat that just so happens to notice and work out more things than the humans around her.
I really enjoyed the book (even bought it in translation for a friend who’s learning Spanish), it had a good balance of humour and complex mystery for me, even if it could do with even more cat.
Off topic, but this thread seems to have cost me my Regular status 
While I probably spend even more time on the forum than before, it’s mostly concentrated here and in the book clubs rather than across the forum. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted…
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So uh…if that’s a deal breaker, don’t watch the TV adaptation.
Holmes in the TV drama
Also I did end up reading today afterall! 69% → 74% of モテ薬. It continues to be ‘meh’.
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That…is not…a cat…
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May 19th 
Read: 真夜中のパン屋さん 上
Finished: 14%-45%
Finished one of my exams today so I had quite a bit of reading time after, this one’s really interesting so far. Today’s reading wasn’t as hard because I got past some of the more complicated setting establishment to parts that had more dialogue. One of the main characters has a dialect that makes things harder, I’m not sure what it is though. I thought it was Kansai-ben for a while and so did the main character but another character explained it wasn’t but didn’t know the specifics of where it’s from.
Dialect examples
Apparently he’s from somewhere in the Northwest, anyone have any ideas on the specific dialect?
edit: googling a bit I’m thinking it’s maybe 北陸方言 but I’m not sure, I’ll look more in the morning
早よ風呂にでも入ったほうがええ。風邪引いてまうかもしれんで
それやったら、鈴香ちゃん。何が減って、そんなんなっとるんや？
何が足らんくて、そんなに気ぃを立てとる？
Story thoughts
I especially liked this line from todays reading
おたがい人を怒らすセンスがあるせいか、希美と弘基はよく言い合う。最初は猫をかぶっていた希美も、対弘基用の猫は、すぐに野に放してしまったほどだ。
Reading this part was a bit rough in a different way because this part described a lot of how Nozomi is badly bullied at school, mostly ringlead by a childhood friend who turned against her when there were rumors about her dad having an affair with Nozomi’s mom, that’s continued from middle school into high school. This was interspersed with Nozomi adjusting to life at the bread store and starting to get a bit closer to the people there, so it was nice to see her start to have more of a stable support system. This did reach some amount of resolution by the end and established a lot about the protagonist and her personality, it seems like from here is where the story involving the customers at the store is going to begin.
Also a book order came in today! I never realized how tiny bunkobon are
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ooooh! NO.6 & かがみの孤城🥰 some top picks there, hope you enjoy them!
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yeah they tiny.
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May 20th!
Just a tiny bit of reading today, as I had a call with my tutor during my lunchbreak, and I’m going out this evening.
But I found time to read a chapter of Shirokuma Cafe
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