📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

Japanese Language Reading
2510

june 13 :cherry_blossom: home post

So in my June goals list I said this:

And that’s now checked off my list! I just reread through all that I read before: i.e., the prologue and act 1. The reason I wanted to restart was because about halfway through act 1 the difficulty jumps because Zelda appears and she’s a princess so of course she speaks like one. I think I like Link’s dialogue better :laughing:

But anyway, I wanted to start from the beginning to see if I could understand it a bit better this time. And I think I do! But it still took a while to get through. I’m kinda surprised I did it in one sitting

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2511

These past few days I’ve been pushing myself to do some real study and my time/energy for reading has been down. I got through a few more lessons in the Sou-Matome N1 grammar book. It’s been years since I started this book and I’m still only in “week 6.” :frowning: I’ve gone so slowly and procrastinated so much that at this point I really have to force myself to look at it, because most of what’s left are expressions I’ve already encountered in the wild. But there are still a few unfamiliar ones mixed in, and being honest I know that even for the ones I’ve seen it would be useful to look at the usage and meaning/nuance. Somebody on Reddit described the Sou-matome books as review books rather than textbooks, and actually that makes a lot of sense for the way they’re written, and helped me understand how/why I should be using them now.

I’ve been reading バンギャルちゃんの日常, a manga/comic essay about the visual kei fandom. I’m a longtime VK fan and went to concerts all the time while living in Japan, so for me this is a wonderful, nostalgic, and hilarious look back at those fun and foolish days of youth. I think some of these experiences are probably common and relatable for anybody who was a hardcore geek in any fandom, but this is full of detail about the visual kei world during a specific time period. The text is super dense for a manga, and also in very small print because there’s ~so much~ (and forget about furigana, there isn’t any, it wouldn’t fit anyway), and it’s really tiring on my eyes even with reading glasses.

Bookwalker has coin-back on the manga ガイコツ書店員本田さん which I’ve been interested in reading, so I splurged. Now I’ve got even more stuff on my to-read pile.

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2512

My brain isn’t cooperating lately. It’s been super hard to focus on novel-reading. Or maybe anything. I’m not really sure.

Anyway.

Last night I thought it was too late to watch more anime before bed, so I went back to Yotsuba again. (My lifeline!) And after having to push through in one spot I easily read 35 pages and finished the festival chapter! I was pretty proud of myself for being completely unfazed by the noun かけ声. (I understood it without even having to think about it!)

Today (so far) I read exactly 2 pages of 霧島くん. Everything felt kind of fuzzy, though.

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2513

June 14

Read the next short story in Best Selection by Yuu Watase. Once again, the story was better than I expected it to be. (I seem to have paged through this volume throughly at some point.) Was mostly fairly easy and decided to trust I was guessing words correctly from context instead of looking them up each time. Also skipped looking up some words since I judged them unnecessary for understanding the story.

Made the reading much smoother and nicer. I look forward to finishing this volume so I can read something longer, but I’m definitely having trouble deciding between continuing Sailor Moon and reading (all of) Orange. Page-wise Orange would be shorter if I read all the remaining arcs of Sailor Moon, not sure how long the next arc is.

What do you guys think?
  • Sailor Moon
  • Orange

0 voters

Because polls are fun, right? :crazy_face:

お願いいたします :bowing_woman:

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2514

Day Something

  • ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 15巻

6/14
15-64

This was about 1 arc/fight. I’m tempted to see if I could do 1 daily :thinking: That would have me reading a vol in 3-4 days instead of 7. I think I have the motivation, I just have to figure out budgeting my time

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2515

:tiger2: :books: The June Tanuki Den: Date 20220614 :cherry_blossom: :raccoon:

No Longer Tanuki Progress: 20.54%

Think today is the most I’ve read so far, and probably the most Japanese I’ve ever read in one sitting.

:seedling: Japanese found in the tall grass :seedling:

Learnthings

文房具「ぶんぼうぐ」ー Stationery
耳垂れ「みみだれ」ー Ear discharge
膿「うみ / のう」ー Pus
耳殻「じかく」ー External ear; auricle
大袈裟「おおげさ」ー Exaggerated; grandiose (more common to see as: 大げさ)
念入り「ねんいり」ー Careful; scrupulous; elaborate
偽善「ぎぜん」ー Hypocrisy
悪計「あっけい」ー Trick; plot; evil scheme
惚れる「ほれる」ー To fall in love; to be charmed with
ふざけて「巫山戯る」ー To joke; to jest; to kid around (kanji form hardly used)
脂下がる「やにさがる」ー To be complacent; to look self-satisfied
伽藍「がらん」ー Temple (usually a large one); monastery
幽か「かすか」ー Faint; dim; weak; slight; vague (also seen as: 微か)
若旦那「わかだんな」ー Young gentleman
感懐「かんかい」ー Impression
数倍「すいばい」ー Several times over/more/larger
難解「なんかい」ー Difficult to understand
薄氷「ほくひょう」ー Thin ice
付合「ふごう」ー Accession
五里霧中「ごりむちゅう」ー Completely at a loss; in a maze/fog; bewildered
痛手「いたで」ー Serious wound; hard blow
笞「むち」ー Whip; lash; scourge (more common to see as: 鞭)
或いは「あるいは」ー or; either
邪慳「じゃけん」ー Cruelty; hard-heartedness
観察「かんさつ」ー Observation; survey; watching
適した「てきした」ー Suitable for; adequate for; appropriate for

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2516

I selfishly chose Sailor Moon so that there’s more of a chance of us reading Orange around the same time. :sweat_smile:

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2517

Although I didn’t vote, I was thinking the same. Maybe we’ll need a little Orange reading group or something =D

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2518

@MaraVos and @ChristopherFritz

The three of us seem to be interested in a lot of the same thing! (2023 for Ouran! :tada:) I’m game for that idea of reading Orange together/at the same time. Do you know when your reading schedules might have some open space for Orange? If we can find a rough time, I could set up a book club (if we want) and see if there would be more people interested. We don’t have to have a weekly schedule, roughly reading at the same time would obviously be fine. :3

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2519

Any time can work for me. I’ve delayed starting it twice (related to other things I was reading), so at this point, it’s best for me to just start at any time!

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2520

Let’s see what MaraVos says, and then let’s pick a time. :smiley:

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2521

I’d be interested in joining you too :slight_smile:
Orange has been on my list of things to read for a while!

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2522

Summary post :bookmark:

June 14th :seedling:

・SAO Progressive 1 (19% → 30%)

Reading in the morning proved to be effective! Probably spent 3 hours. After that I got absorbed in trying to figure out a formatting technique for a couple hours (ft. the poll thread) and then got too tired to read again. Will try reading in the morning again tomorrow.

For those interested, here’s the results of said formatting technique. A list table!

List of books I've read
Year Books
2020 [1]
2021 [2]
2022 [3]
Sum 28 books
  1. 2020
    Jan –
    Feb –
    Mar –
    Apr 氷菓
    May SAO 1
    Jun SAO 2
    Jul SAO 3
    Aug SAO 4
    Sep –
    Oct 本好き 1
    Nov 魔女の宅急便・SAO 5
    Dec SAO 6・本好き 2
    Sum 10 books
    ↩︎
  2. 2021
    Jan –
    Feb 博士の愛した数式
    Mar 本好き 3
    Apr コンビニ人間
    May –
    Jun 本好き４・SAO 7・すべてがFになる
    Jul SAO 8
    Aug 冷たい密室と博士たち
    Sep 本好き 5
    Oct 本好き 6
    Nov –
    Dec 本好き 7
    Sum 11 books
    ↩︎
  3. 2022
    Jan かがみの孤城 上
    Feb 本好き 8・笑わない数学者
    Mar –
    Apr 本好き 9
    May 薬屋のひとりごと 1・薬屋のひとりごと 2
    Jun かがみの孤城 下
    Jul
    Aug
    Sep
    Oct
    Nov
    Dec
    Sum 7 books (pr. June)
    ↩︎
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2523

june 14 :cherry_blossom: home post

Got a lot of reading done today!
神々のトライフォース: 19 pages (started Act.2)
夜カフェ: 2 whole chapters!

Yes I know I said I dropped 夜カフェ but I suddenly had the urge to try reading it again

With 神々のトライフォース, I think I liked Act.1 better than I’m liking Act.2, at least so far. It’s mainly because I’m not really a fan of ガンティ. It’s not b/c she’s original to the manga, b/c I don’t really care about that. I’ve liked a lot of the changes made! And I like the idea of Link having a traveling companion! But so far I don’t really like ガンティ’s personality very much. She seems a bit out of place too, like she belongs in another manga? Who knows, though, maybe I’ll grow to like her!

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2524

It has been a while since I’ve looked at any NHK Easy articles, but I was wondering if this was related to Hana Kimura’s death, and sure enough…

I think this is the first time I’ve read one of these articles knowing far more context about the situation than was covered in the article.

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2525

June 14th!

I’m posting after midnight, but I actually did my reading hours ago!
I started Volume 11 of Yotsuba, and read chapter 70.

Yotsuba wandered into a restaurant and learned how udon is made, it was a sweet chapter.

(Home Post)

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2526

I heard this on NHK last night on the news. The lawyers are wondering how they will prove and handle the problem in general. Bullying can sometimes be hard to define. Yes, you have the penalties correct.

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2527

June 14 :cherry_blossom: Home Post

Today was kind of a hot mess :joy: the inherent chaos of finishing my main project and having to figure out what I’m doing haha. I immediately got humbled by a rough section in 海辺(うみべ)のカフカ and so I ended up giving Nightshade a go again (because I thought that would have less weird vocabulary and stuff I guess? lmao what) and honestly it’s doable, under normal circumstances I would’ve probably been fine with the amount I was looking up but I was not in the mindset :joy:

Sooo I finally picked up バディミッションBOND and that worked out better for sure. I messed with the demo a while back when I was deciding whether to buy it and I remember it being a little rough vocabulary-wise, especially with like crime/police vocabulary, but AI prepped me well :+1: I’m still looking up more stuff than I generally was with AI but I think that’s mostly starting-new-thing-syndrome, it’s really not bad thus far.

And game-wise I’m really enjoying it so far! Which is probably the least shocking thing considering it’s like… another detective-y visual novel-type thing :joy: But it has some cool mechanics, and I really like the comic book kind of aesthetic it has going, and a lot of it is voiced which is nice. I’m intrigued by the characters too :eyes: They’re probably gonna hurt me but what else is new! It’s also cool playing something that I just completely wouldn’t be able to experience in English, nice little bonus :grin:

Anyway I also fought through that part in 海辺(うみべ)のカフカ and ended up finishing the whole rest of the reading for the week so that’s almost 30 pages total today? So yeah today started out with my brain being like “no. no read >:(” but it ended up really successful so :man_shrugging: whatever the process must be!

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2528

Home

It’s been really hot lately, and apparently that means just lying around playing video games all day when I don’t have anything else I need to be doing. Unless that’s just the hyperfixation. But I looked at my books and my brain said, “No. Dragon Quest.”

…I’ve reached the Masked Martial Arts Tournament and Erik/Camus still hasn’t called me 相棒… I’d thought for sure he did outside of Itemized Kill, but it seems not… I’m sad. His title on the つよさ page does call him エリオルの相棒, but it’s not the same.

Anyway, I apparently played about 13 hrs, which, yeah, seems about right. I finished Daharune, went all over the place trying to complete some quests, and made it through to Grotta where I completed the tournament. I completely forgot that there was a spider boss. Ugh. At least he’s not terribly realistic, but still. Well, next is onward to the ruins of Dundrasil/Yugunoa!

Rab/Rou says 相棒 when he says that someone of dubious origins (El) isn’t going to be the princess’ partner, though I didn’t hear it lol (not last time, and not this time either), his speech is kind of hard for me to understand at times. Now that I’ve got JP text, I can tell that 相棒 gets used a little more than I thought (the innkeeper asks if El is Hanfree’s 相棒さん, the competitors will sometimes call their own partner 相棒), but パートナー is still used the majority of the time. Knowing it’s not just Hanfree doesn’t exactly make me feel any better, though.

I saw おす/おっす in kanji today (押忍), in a bookshelf in Grotta. I hadn’t even known it had kanji. But, well, it also used a たる adjective so I guess I’m not surprised? All the competitors written about in it are in the current competition, so I guess it’s just supposed to lend a feeling of oldness to the setting, even though no one really talks like that in the dialogue aside from some of the elderly characters. An elderly priest who gave me a quest at the Nelson Inn used a 二段 verb! 憂ふ/憂う (うれう), “to grieve; to lament.” Its modern counterpart is the 一段 verb 憂える (うれえる).

I did not get to fake-marry Erik today. I’d thought for sure the quest from 勇者の実家 from the DQIII altar was where you’d do a wedding rehearsal with one of your party members (I don’t get how you can have a proper wedding rehearsal when it’s not even the people who are actually getting married running through it, but hey, I ain’t complaining, I get to pretend gay-marry my aibou) since that’s the only one I remember having anything to do with a wedding, but apparently not. I have no idea which one it is, then.

Some vocab of note:

忌まわしい (いまわしい) [い-adjective] unpleasant; disagreeable; abominable; disgusting; unsavory
キリがない [expression, い-adjective] endless; boundless; innumerable. endless; never-ending; going on forever.
根に持つ (ねにもつ) [expression, タ五] to hold a grudge; to hold something against somebody
八つ当たり (やつあたり) [noun, する verb] venting one’s anger (one someone or something); taking one’s anger out on
むなくそが悪い (むなくそがわるい) [expression, い-adjective] disgusting; sickening; revolting; nauseating
めぐりめぐって [adverb] (after) bouncing around from one place to the next
手に汗を握る (てにあせをにぎる) [expression, ラ五] to sit on the edge of one’s seat; to be in breathless suspense
見損なう (みそこなう) [ア五, transitive] to misjudge; to mistake; to misread. to misjudge (someone); to overestimate.
栄えある (はえある) [prenominal] splendid; glorious
影が薄い (かげがうすい) [expression, い-adjective] in the background; not standing out. Made me think of KuroBasu’s Kuroko; maybe that this is the expression for not having much of a presence is part of why he’s a “shadow.”

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June 15

First I want to thank everyone for their votes. :bowing_woman:

Considering the interest in reading Orange in general and together with me :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:, I’ll set up an independent/misc book club for Orange in the next few days. After looking through my volumes, I saw there are 26 chapters, so if the club started soon and read a chapter a week without break, the whole series could be read by the end of the year. Not saying that is the schedule that will be done, but it was a fun realization.

Edit: Turns out another volume was released in April this year, so it is now a 7-volume series. O_O

So my personal next pick won’t be Orange. It will probably be Sailor moon and Yotsuba& in some configuration. But Orange is definitely gonna happen, and soon-ish, depending on when most people can start reading it. ^^

Read the next story in the Best Selection 2 by Yuu Watase, and I keep being surprised by how good the stories are. Maybe the first volume just happened to have a lot of stories that I didn’t like, or maybe I’m just a bit better at reading now, so I understand the humor better?

パジャマでおじゃま had this super fun panel that I had to share. There are probably minor spoilers for the story in the panel, so I guess I’ll hide it.

Fun panel

IMG_4248
IMG_42481920×2934 638 KB

Couple of vocab that keeps coming up, one of them specifically in this collection and another that I just keep having to look up because I guess it doesn’t quite make sense to me (meaning-wise it isn’t sticking):

おまじない = good luck charm, uttered when doing spells, abracadabra ; seems popular for young girls doing love spells, or maybe just this author uses it for that a lot
くせに = and yet, despite, though, when, in spite of (this is the one I keep looking up) ; kinda funny now that I think about it, because I use “and yet” quite a bit in my own writing (in English)…

There is now only one more story in the collection, so I might read that later today and finish the volume. I tend to do that when I’m almost finished I’ve noticed.

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