Thanks everyone for the kind words. Very strongly recommend not catching if you can! I’ve had three vaccines and I’m pretty fit but it’s completely wiped me out.
Managed to finish the second story in ぼくは王さま today and start the third one.
Good words today:
草むしり weeding
ゼンマイ clockwork
I mentioned that I wanted to start practicing my German again so I’ve been used my enforced bed rest to bingewatch Queer Eye Germany on Netflix. It’s funny but my German feels like it’s got better after 5 years of not studying it!?! I mean, obviously it hasn’t but it’s just that I now have Japanese to compare it to I think that when I was studying German I focused on the 10% I couldn’t understand whereas now I’m happy with a bit more ambiguity.
I’ve just finished watching the March Comes In Like A Lion anime which I absolutely adored and I’ve seen that manga continues beyond the anime so that’s very much on my reading list. Seriously considering buying one of the shogi games for my switch to help with learning some of the vocab.
Reading Japanese every day is basically an excuse to see everyone else’s cute pics, this did not disappoint, thank you.
My First Challenge! So excited to participate!
Currently reading: 君の膵臓をたべたい side by side with the English version for the first read
Genki 2 読み書き編 --the part at the back of the book because I actually made it through the book with my fabulous italki teacher Elly. I completed this section thanks to the reading challenge.
Apr
月
火
水
木
金
土
日
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May
月
火
水
木
金
土
日
01
02
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Finished the 感動的な話 “I Want to Eat Your Pancreas” (I was already on the 2nd book when I started the challenge). Working on saving the vocabulary now on a quick second read. （Haha, that didn’t happen. Worked on saving the vocab list but it’s just another list I’m supposed to learn…)
My Tech discovery yesterday: Gboard keyboard app for iphone. So much easier to toggle back and forth from English to hiragana/kanji–I set the Japanese keyboard to the QWRTY layout–it also has a quick access to Gtranslation right there and Japanese emojis and GIFS.
Continuing Satori 壁の穴 Hole in the Wall on Satori Reader. (Follow up:Didn’t do much reading of this during the challenge. )
Reading the 小説： 名前は Only read first few chapters during the challenge. This is pretty labor intensive–lots of descriptive vocabulary and internal dialog so too much to look up for now.
Listened to, translated, and read lots of podcasts during this challenge.
Stayed stuck on the same level of WK during this challenge because I was devoting my study time to reading.
Signed up for and enjoyed a month of Kindle Unlimited on Amazon Japan. Not going to keep it yet because the manga words can’t be transcribed easily on Kindle. Easier to work with short stories.
Most of my reading was focused on the 読み書き編section of Genki 2 which I was almost able to finish in the 2 months of this challenge with 2 days a week of iTalki time with my teacher. It was extremely helpful and got me to demonstrate my comprehension more with questions about the text.
Just found the Tofugu article about Graded Readers here: so I will be focusing on trying to level up my reading this way after the challenge.
I just discovered this lovely challenge! Too bad I missed the first day but I did read in the “Happiness” book club on that day, soo… I’m just gonna say that was for this challenge.
So I wanted to read “Three Days of Happiness” but it was too hard for me so I’m gonna read a few sentences of the manga version “I sold my life for 10 thousand yen every year” every day.
I’ll probably try to read an easy Japanese news article everyday too. I found this really nice app “TODAI” which has easy Japanese news articles everyday with translation integrated. It’s really useful!
I hope I don’t forget. Wish me luck! Good luck to you all too, I hope you finish this challenge!
Currently Reading: “I sold my life for 10 thousand yen every year”
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
三毛猫ホームズの推理 ~7% to 10%, from the middle of chapter 1, part 2 to the end of part 2
I read to the end of part 2, the first portion of the book that was new to me. (the spoiler that follows isn’t especially spoilery, but I decided it to hide it just in case, what with several people reading the book at the same time) We’re introduced to some more new characters, and there are hints of the mystery being more compex than it seems (it still feels very much like an introduction though).
Interesting words and expressions
ウマが合う - to get on well with someone
物思いにふける - to be lost in thought
素知らぬ顔 - feigning ignorance
かまきり - praying mantis
切れ長の目 - almond eyes/slit eyes
知れ渡る - to be well known
気を利かす - to use tact, to exercise discretion
If I find the time to do some manga reading I will update this post later.
Regarding new vocab: at the beginning I listed all new vocab, and then input what seemed the most important ones into SRS. I ended up with a lot of vocab so far, so I’m going to try a new strategy: I’m noting all new vocab and the number of times it appears. Then, after having finished the book, I’ll input the most frequent words (that I didn’t manage to learn naturally) into SRS.
And how did you handle new vocab as a beginner reader?
I use yomichan and so I would (actually still do!) copy out unknown words to a google doc / evernote / notion (I’m fickle). Then each time I came across them again I would hover to see the reading and meaning. At the end anything I hadn’t absorbed and was something I could see myself caring about went into Anki. Now I’m even looser about adding things to anki, but I still put unknown things into docs for easy reference. I also make lists of characters along with their name readings + roughly who they are. Ex, this is from 遅刻してきた幽霊:
Personally, my strategy has always been mining full sentences into Anki at near i+1, sentences with just the word in question unknown (I actually break the i+1 rule kind of a lot and I feel like it’s helped me learn “bonus things” that aren’t crucial to my understanding of the point of the sentence and the mined word but I let them sit there for passive exposure, but I think it’s good for people to feel out what works for them). There’s no real way to quantify what parts of my methods have been more or less useful, but I want to say that that opportunity to reread sentences that I know I understand when reviewing did a lot to kickstart my understanding of how Japanese grammar works, and of course gave some context in which that word makes sense.
That said… the downside here is that when you’re new, finding suitable sentences is REALLY hard. I was using Satori Reader, specifically tailored for learners, and even then I’d go through a full day of reading and maybe mine 5 words. And I had to not be too picky about what those words were because, wow, I found a sentence that works haha. This was a result of me constraining myself both on the sentence not having an overwhelming amount of unknowns AND not using kanji I didn’t know yet, which made it particularly hard… but yeah. That’s the downside to sentence mining when you’re that new.
About a man who gets lost in the snow and is surely to freeze to death, a bear comes along and he prepares for a higher degree of certain death, but to his surprise the bear leads him back to its burrow where it’s super cosy and warm. He goes to sleep on the bear for four days.
Then when he gets back to the village, because he is an ungrateful sod, he takes a hunter to where the bear is… how could you?? But it’s okay because くまくん catches on and rips the ungrateful man in half and all is well again.
Moral: “たとえ相手が動物でも恩知らずな事をすれば、あの男の様になる”
Japanese found in the tall grass
New Things
恩知らず「おんしらず」ー Ungrateful 凍える「こごえる」ー To freeze (your body); to become numb. Similar to 凍る 「こおる」, but こごえる has the nuance of it being you (or someone’s body) that is the thing being frozen. Here in the story it was part of: 凍え死に 「こごえじに」ー which means to freeze to death.
Word that is there to be confusing 止まる …easy enough, means to stop moving, or to come to a stop. と-ま-る.
But it can also be 止まる - which means to remain (somewhere), to stay, but this is read とどまる. And it can also be written like: 留まる (which is the first kanji suggestion to pop up when you write とどまる, well at least on mine it is.), 停まる or 駐まる… but then, plain old とまる can also be written like these. Best to just write it in kana, like it is here in the story.
I’ve been so spoiled for the last little while with すべてがｆになる which has a full character list with name readings and basic character info at the start of the book and now moving to 三毛猫 where they don’t even give furigana the first time names appear it’s a real shock definitely need to make a names list!
Weather conditions: There’s no more rain, only snow falling and piling up.
Today I read:
聲の形 #5 (47-62%)
博士の愛した数式 (8-11%)
I picked up volume 5 of 聲の形 even a few days before the challenge. It was quite a while in general since I read manga (I’ve been focusing on 君の名は。and コンビニ人間 in the meantime) and, oh my, what a difference it was. I even had a sort of mixed feelings because I couldn’t fully enjoy the story (partially also because I know it already) and don’t find reading it as rewarding as reading a book for the first time.
That’s why I think I’ll focus more on 博士の愛した数式.
博士の愛した数式 talk
I’m still at the beginning, but it seems like the book is going to be much denser and more slow-paced than コンビニ人間, which might make it more difficult to read, however I’m getting kind of なつかしい reading it as I remember my high school days filled with maths.
Ah, thanks so much! My handwriting tends to be ugly af (no matter the language), so I am glad to hear this is legible The character is ん - admittedly I did have to go back to the book to double check Thanks for pointing that out, I’ll try be more careful with my んs.
Hey, happy to hear that we have another reader! It’s a great book, I love it.
Please feel free to make use of the book club threads, and please ask questions there as well - I think many of the participants are still watching the threads and will be happy to help.
Just curious, have you read anything else by her? Wasn’t familiar with the author, and no doubt the book you all are talking about is good as well, but looking into her has me really eying 密やかな結晶 now.
@sycamore@pocketcat@basilsauce
and whoever else is reading 三毛猫ホームズの推理, I’ve added a list of names from the book in my home post, to be completed as I keep reading. Feel free to correct me if you see any wrong readings, for some I had to choose randomly among several possibilities.
No, not yet, although I would like to sooner rather than later… Therefore I proposed 人質の朗読会 in the Intermediate club (not sure whether people will like that one, though).
I had also set my eyes on 密やかな結晶 but it’s 400 pages and that’s too much for the Intermediate club
But you could propose it for the Advanced club if you like!
A few others have also read 妊娠カレンダー (it has won the Akutagawa Prize and therefore allows its readers to tick off an entry from the challenge ^^).
April 2nd was a sleepy day for me. Kinda, I’ve passed out around 2pm. I think the very good Spanish wine I drank yesterday during dinner with my colleagues was a bit too much Or it was because the winter made me go into hibernation mode - it is snowing since yesterday. Which is quite unusual for where I live, to say the least. In other words, jokes were made about our much delayed Christmas party/dinner (due to Corona, other sicknesses and shenanigans) in April having snow of all things.
Anyway, I did the translation for yesterday’s page, and the one for today’s, as well as reading it first.
Summary
Neat vocabulary
頭にきてる - to get mad, to be highly offended, to get pissed off - Mnemonic maybe: Heat comes to the head when getting mad? (I know, not the best but if it helps me remember it, so be it)
虚を衝く - to surprise someone - Mnemonic maybe: A short surprise visit today (きょinstead of きょう) for Tsuki.
戸惑う - to be confused - Mnemonic maybe: You got the wrong door, you got lost and are now confused
Also, pocketcat inspired me to make an account on Natively. Looks like a great site even though I was shocked to discover that 探偵ガリレオ is considered to be Level 33. It doesn’t feel that hard. I mean, I have to look up a lot but grammarwise it’s doable?
I think that when I was studying German I focused on the 10% I couldn’t understand whereas now I’m happy with a bit more ambiguity.
Home post 
But it’s okay because くまくん catches on and rips the ungrateful man in half and all is well again.
Japanese found in the tall grass 
I even had a sort of mixed feelings because I couldn’t fully enjoy the story (partially also because I know it already) and don’t find reading it as rewarding as reading a book for the first time.
