Promised a picture of my book (and game) haul:
Will do my daily report later. I might read more today than I already have, so I’ll save it for later. ^^
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The June Tanuki Den: Date 20220628 
No Longer Tanuki Progress: 54.44%
The paragraphs aren’t too long at the moment but there’s a lot of law and legal jargon in this part so it takes awhile to make sense of it.
There’s also a character that I don’t even know if he gets a name, he just gets called ヒラメ because he looks like a flatfish.
Japanese found in the tall grass
Learnthings
じめじめ ー Damp; clammy; soggy
カチャカチャ ー Clattering; clinking; clanging
策略「さくりゃく」ー Scheme; tactic
銚子「ちょうし」ー Decanter (for sake)
卓上「たくじょう」ー Table-top; desktop
畳鰯「たたみいわし」ー Sheet of dried sardines (I seem to recognise this, no idea from where)
仄々「ほのぼの」ー Dimly; faintly
蔑視「べっし」ー Contempt; disdain
起訴猶予「きそゆうよ」ー Suspension of indictment
前科「ぜんか」ー Previous conviction; criminal record
更生「こうせい」ー Rehabilitation
That’s a lot of books!!
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Twice I tried to start the second chapter of Spy X Family, and twice I dropped it in favour of 糞尿譚, a book where I have to look up every third word and where the end of the sentence is half an hour of reading away. 
So I’m thinking I might drop the manga, at least for now.
In other reading news, I’ve been looking at the some horror award winners (夜市 was among them), and found several that people in reviews complain they weren’t scary enough, so I might be safe trying them out? Not sure yet. One I’m considering is 化身, about a man (I think) who falls in a lake and starts… evolving? Not sure exactly what’s going on, but the writing seems pleasantly straightforward, and the story pleasantly introspective, without much of the gore and shocking twists associated with horror. Probably.
Another one I’ve been looking at is あやし by 宮部みゆき. She’s written a lot of books, many of them mysteries, a genre I generally prefer. The most famous of hers seems to be 火車 (translated as “All she was worth”). あやし is a collection of ghost(?) stories set in Edo, and it’s been translated into English as “Apparitions”. Theoretically it sounds good, although I’m not very comfortable with historical fiction, especially in Japanese where I’m bound to have tons of unknown vocabulary. However, both the Japanese and English sample read a little too dry for me. I’m sure it gets better, but I lost patience.
She has also written another horror/ghost story series called 三島屋変調百物語事始. This is again historical fiction, and the ghost stories are connected to a central storyline about a girl overcoming trauma or something? I don’t know, I sometimes think I spend more time researching books than actually reading. 
I’m thinking I might just try a few Aozora short stories instead. Edogawa Ranpo’s 人間椅子 or Akutagawa’s 河童? But I’m sure the language will be quite a challenge, and I’m already reading one very challenging book…
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Akutagawa is much harder to read than Ranpo in my opinion. I loved 人間椅子 and will add his short story 幽霊 to that list if you’re going that direction! 
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I’ve read about a dozen of 宮部みゆき’s books, including あやし. I find I can’t remember anything about it, which I guess means it was “fine” 
If you do want to dip into historical fiction this author isn’t a bad place to start, since IMHO her stuff is fairly easy to read so you only have to deal with getting up to speed on the genre vocab, rather than that plus inherently difficult text… Of her historical stuff I think I liked 初ものがたり best, but it doesn’t have any supernatural elements.
I liked 火車 – it has some interesting social commentary on consumer credit and debt as well as being a good mystery.
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I’m not interested in historical fiction as such, it was more the supernatural element that I was looking for at this point (although I tend to avoid it usually). I guess I’d better leave those books of hers aside then, and put 火車 on my list for later. Thanks
Both downloaded and ready to read! 
the only question is when…
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I have read some of her other Edo-period ghost-story-ish books, but although I know I had fun reading them at the time I can’t remember enough about any of them to specifically recommend one. I don’t think
あやし was particularly atypical, anyway.
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June 28th!
I read chapter 75 of Yotsuba today, but found it too sad to leave it without finding out what happened next. (It was the Chapter where ジュラルミン gets washed and the voicebox inside gets broken)
So I ended up reading Chapter 76 too to find out what happened!
This meant I unexpectedly ended up finishing Volume 11 today.
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June 28
Reread another 7,5 (or was it 8,5?) pages today to finish off rereading the first story in volume 1 of Zenitendou. Felt absolutely fine.
So my hypothesis for why rereading the first part felt harder than the later parts of the story: I (re)read late afternoon (right before dinner), it was hot, I was tired, I hadn’t read Japanese in three days.
It just felt inexplicable at the time, but it was perhaps only a matter of several not-good conditions acting together.
I didn’t end up reading more today, partly because I spent a lot of time on the forum today instead, and opening packages with books.
True. 
My wallet is crying tears of blood. 
Funnily enough, I was looking through these books I bought and only 2 of them (of the same series) are not in any way related to a WK book club. (And the grammar dictionaries obviously…)
Some are past books like Fukaboku, or current ones like Yoru cafe (although I think that finishes soon?), or upcoming one (耳をすませば). Zenitendou 4-6 isn’t technically part of a past book club because I don’t think there is any discussion past volume 2 in the spinoff thread (or not much talk past that anyway), but still technically spinoffs from a book club.
Orange 7 is, of course, a future/upcoming part of the book club I’m leading that is starting on Saturday with volume 1. 
Obligatory link to club because as shepherd of the club, I gotta recruit, right?
The rest of the books are nominations in BBC.
And then we have the Hotel manga, the only (currently) non-WK book club books I bought. 
The book clubs are too good at recommending books, me thinks. 
(The hotel manga is however a recommendation from the forum, so even that one I didn’t find outside this place )
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I think we should definitely change that
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June 28th
・詩的私的ジャック - Jack the Poetical Private (27% → 30%)
・Loopers (Part 1 and 2 of this playlist on youtube)
The VN book club got me interested Have only tried one or two in the past, in English, but it was kinda meh, so haven’t really been looking into those since I started learning Japanese. But this one seems fun so far :3 Can’t quite keep up with the pace of the text even if I know all the words, much less when I don’t know all the words, so plenty of pausing throughout the videos.
Leebo for sure would join the grammar book club 
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Maybe @Naphthalene or @rodan could educate us in which book club(s) ホテル・メッツァペウラへようこそ would fit. It could be my first nomination in a main club.
Or maybe you meant:
If it would help me read the introduction to all three volumes, which has a lot of dense, and useful, grammar instruction, I’m game. 
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I would say the Beginner Book Club.
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I haven’t really kept track of either club very closely, but I think either beginner or intermediate would both be arguable.
There’s little furigana and it’s not aimed specifically at a young audience, but all the dialogue is clear and straightforward I’d say, and the only specialized vocabulary I can recall is like… Finnish.
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Yes, I was referring to a book club for the dictionaries! So far I mainly browsed them, but it would probably be quite enlightening to read them completely! Or at least the Beginner one.
But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to encourage you to nominate the manga 
Is there a way to explain this in a few words? I’m getting really curious
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Well, I’d summarize the premise as:
Japanese boy with mysterious past winds up at a hotel in Lapland.
So… that’s why there’s Finnish – it’s set in Finland.
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Haha that sounds pretty hilarious and should probably induce lots of funny scenes 
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Honestly it largely brushes aside any language barrier or things like that (I think he has part Finnish background too? I mostly read it month-to-month so it’s easier to lose track of exact premise details). In practice it’s mostly just about a nice young man being taken in by good-hearted hoteliers and like, learning to accommodate guests and stuff.
But there’s definitely both comedy and drama mixed in!
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Oh I see, feels like a bit of a wasted opportunity but maybe the author has other goals in mind after all.
Thanks for letting me in on the Finnish-related secret 
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(📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱 - #12 by DIO-Berry)
- ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 17巻
6/28
69 - 94
Once again realized that I had to go to sleep in order to function later lol
Enya says something really graphic that she wants to do and I want to check if it’s “via xyz” or “and xyz.” It’s so gory though, I’m not sure I should ask on WK and I worry I might concern my friends if I ask them
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