📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

[Redglare]

Summary post

April 6th

・薬屋のひとりごと (7% → 9%)

Yay, finally back on track with this book club. I’m still on week 2, while the book club is currently on week 6, so I have some catching up to do. Finished chapter 3, it was shorter than I expected. Thoughts: I like how we didn’t actually see Maomao do anything, but all clues point to her being the one who left that message behind for 玉葉妃. Will that Jinshi person find her? Let’s find out in the next episode!

I’m having fun with the irregular readings (if we can call them that), mostly for names and social titles. #funwithfurigana. Also lots of vocab that are new to me, haven’t read anything in this genre before (in addition to my vocabulary=lacking in general at the moment).

What to call it? Chinese Tang Dynasty-inspired imperial palace kind of setting, especially with all the characters having Chinese names. And historical expressions(?), not necessarily dated, just very relevant to the setting. Like, five different words for “servant”? Check

I haven’t decided yet which one it is, but I’m having fun despite/because of the vocab. Probably both

[NicoleIsEnough]

Home Post

The past few days I was pretty busy, but I managed to chip away on 沖で待つ every day, and today I finished it! I even wrote a short review here (tucking onto the book’s previous review in that thread ^^).

Also, I guess Belerith infected me with her French book I tried the audiobook but could not make much sense of what I understood (vans, knights, and monsters? How does that fit together Ok it’s a fantasy book about a girl who is able to jump to a different world as one can guess from the title, and she does so in the first chapter already, which I totally did not get with my small vocabulary ). Today I read the first chapter again, using a dictionary this time, and now things are much clearer. Interestingly, the scene pretty much reminded me of 時をかける少女 (except that she lands in a different world) so I’m wondering whether the author knew that book?

[meagstudies]

april 6 home post

Wow, two whole chapters of 極主夫道! I’m caught up with the club now!! I don’t know why this series motivates me to read so much compared to other books, but I’m not complaining. I’m still in the mood to read so maybe I’ll try to get through more 夜カフェ

[Gorbit99]

Day 6 / Calendar
Today I’ve read a page and a half of Yoru Café at an ungodly time in the night. Hopefully now I’ll have time to finish this weeks reading goal during the remaining 2 days.

[lucylavelle]

April 6th!

I read chapter 46 of Yotsuba today. It was a pretty funny chapter, though it did make me want some cup noodles…

Does anybody have a suggestion for a manga which is a similar difficulty to Yotsuba, but with shorter chapters? At the moment I often find I want to keep reading after I finish a chapter - but a whole second chapter is a bit too long for the amount of reading time I have. It would be nice to have something shorter to fill that gap

(Home Post)

[Natsuha]

It was such a wonderful day my nose was running the whole day. But even with me catching a cold I still spend lots of time on learning japanese and reading. In one of my manga magazines was a chapter from the beserk manga it was to my surprise pretty hard.

After that I read 1% of the No Game No Life novel it is very hard but I really enjoy reading it.

[sycamore]

Another sleepy day …so I chilled out and read some ギブン！Very much enjoyed spending some time with ridiculous gay music boys as they fail to communicate/have emotions etc etc.

Some examples of said cute ridiculousness

上ノ山くん’s extreme pout face.

Dissapointment

“Omg, my crush just fell asleep on top of me I might die”

Beyond the star eyes level of cute and into the “little fluffy puppies appear above my head” level

Also read a little bit of すべてがｆになる and an even tinier bit of 三毛猫ホームズ but mainly today was all about them silly band boys

[Daisoujou]

@rikaiwisdom

It’s funny that the more you work towards something, the faster you want to reach it.

I relate to everything you said quite a bit. The brain draining part is real – if I could just go without the loss of energy feeling I could fill all my free time with many, many things in Japanese pretty easily, but after a certain point it hurts and I get sloppy. And wanting to reach it faster, yeah, so much. Like, I’ve actually made pretty remarkable strides in this time, but I managed to extremely quickly switch from being intimidated by all Japanese media to being annoyed when there is anything I don’t understand, heh (which is always, to some degree). My brain is always an enemy that way.

I must admit the one big difference is I’ve gotten lazy about J-J dictionaries. I made an effort into using them and still haven’t totally abandoned them, but they’ve largely been relegated to backup when I just think the English on Jisho seems off for the context I’m finding the word in. So many words I look up in J-J dictionaries have like 10 definitions, still using a bunch of words I don’t know, and it’s a bit of a drag to interrupt my reading so much or make my Anki cards take even longer if it’s not a super simple definition.

---

Summary post

I’m here again, trying to focus on Japanese and ignore everything else. While it was hard to do much yesterday, I don’t think anything is going to keep me from being extremely stubborn in the end.

Today was, in fact, quite good! I think it was only roughly two hours for me to read roughly 8000 characters, which is a nice little speed up for me. I always see these near the ends of routes. On that note, my bet is that tomorrow I finish this one. I’m still enraptured by the vibes, with the art, music, and voice acting, but this route has been a little more predictable I think. It basically proceeded as expected once the full situation was laid out. Which is fine; there’s enough character to keep me interested, and it’s not over yet so we’ll see if this stays true. But as of now I feel like Tsumugi’s route hit the emotions harder and Shizuku’s had a little more interesting complexity in its dilemmas.

Because I don’t have to hide it, have a picture simply of butterflies. They’re animated in game, so they look a little odd in a still frame. I don’t really feel like spilling out full spoilers right now, but it’s difficult territory to talk about or share spoiler free.

The word of the day is 一挙手一投足 (いっきょしゅいっとうそく), because I’m struck by what a big kanji monstrosity it is, even if they’re mostly simpler ones. In this context the meaning was along the lines of “one’s every action.”

[_Mae]

Day 6

こぐまのクーク物語: はじめての海とキャンプ: 64% → 70%

Busy day so read less than usual.
To decipher certain sentences, I used to type them out in a text document, then type out the meaning of different parts and words. Now I’m writing directly in the book using a pencil. This provides for a more smooth reading experience and allows me to go faster.
And what is your opinion about writing in books? I struggled to start doing it, as I wanted to keep the book in an “unspoiled” state.

[Daisoujou]

@_Mae

And what is your opinion about writing in books? I struggled to start doing it, as I wanted to keep the book in an “unspoiled” state.

There is absolutely, 100%, without a doubt, no reason it would be problematic or something that should bother me to do in the slightest…

and I’m pretty sure I will never, in my life, do it. No matter what, it still just grates.

[Axazel]

Day 6

Today I read the second half of chapter 4 in 透明カメレオン!

HUGE TWIST that I’m not going to talk about, even under a spoiler, in case anyone wants to read it later :0!!

Tomorrow is one week down… that went fast?!

Today’s vocab:

• 尻餅 — (しりもち) to fall back onto one’s butt. Comes from the tradition of putting a bag of mochi on a baby’s bag when they first start walking (thus making them fall on their butt).At first I imagined someone falling on mochi so this is not my favourite expression
• 撥ねる — (はねる) to hit (with a car), run into
• 提げる — (さげる) to carry along
• 呻く— (うめく) to moan/groan
• 飛び退る — (とびすさる) to leap back. I didn’t expect this reading!

My Home Post

[pocketcat]

@Daisoujou

@_Mae

And what is your opinion about writing in books? I struggled to start doing it, as I wanted to keep the book in an “unspoiled” state.

There is absolutely, 100%, without a doubt, no reason it would be problematic or something that should bother me to do in the slightest…

and I’m pretty sure I will never, in my life, do it. No matter what, it still just grates.

This is me too. I don’t care what others do with their books one bit. I couldn’t do it myself.

I also pretty routinely give away books after I’m done reading them, so writing in them would be inconvenient for the next person.

[fallynleaf]

@_Mae

And what is your opinion about writing in books? I struggled to start doing it, as I wanted to keep the book in an “unspoiled” state.

Hilariously, as someone with a literal master’s degree in books (master’s in library science, plus a graduate certificate in book arts that ended up only being like 12 credits short of a full MFA ), I used to be the kind of person who couldn’t write in books, then I took a class in grad school that changed me, haha, and now I write in them all the time.

People during the Renaissance period used to write in their books constantly (in fact, if you didn’t, you weren’t considered to be truly “reading”, or at least you weren’t reading studiously), and one of my classes (on Renaissance reading) required me to do so, and I ended up getting so much more out of my grad school reading once I started (plus, class discussions and papers became way easier to write because I could easily flip back through my reading and see the parts that stood out to me), so I just kept doing it after that class.

One Renaissance reader marked up a copy of the First Folio of Shakespeare, and browsing through that copy of it, I found an answer to a question I’d had about a certain passage in one play that I hadn’t been able to find any actual published research on since I first started looking for an answer when I was 16. But thanks to this one reader’s extensive marginalia, that did for me what years of scholarly research could not do. So I’m in favor of writing in books. Future researchers will love you for it.

I also once bought a very cheap used copy of The Odyssey for a class in undergrad (because I’d left my existing nice copy at my parents’ house and suddenly needed it for a class), and the cheapest possible copy I could buy had loads of writing all over it from at least two previous owners. I was annoyed at first and found it distracting, but then I ended up having a great time getting into one-sided arguments with all of their bad opinions in the margins of the book. That was the first time I really wrote in a book I’d owned, since it was already marked up so badly, I didn’t feel any guilt.

So, yeah, as a librarian, writer, and bookmaker myself, I am 100% pro-writing in books. I’d recommend against writing in library books, haha, or I guess anything you want to resell for maximum value, but if you’re unlikely to get rid of your books, you’ll probably appreciate looking back on them someday and seeing your notes, and if you ever do end up getting rid of them, someone else might appreciate your notes more than you think .

[Thud]

There’s a few that have shorter chapters and I have read them in past challenges before. Of the top of my head there’s Gal & Dino, Shirokuma Cafe and Ame to Kimi to.

In some ways they might be easier and in other ways they’re a little harder. The first one uses more slang, the second one has lots of different vocab and the last one has little furigana.

That said there’s always gonna be a rough patch at the start whenever you start a new series. I do recommend switching it up every now and then as you’ll note the difference when you come back.

[sumsum]

Link to Home Thread

I read a bunch of ハピネス the last few days (caught up with the club!) and as it’s pretty low on words so far, I’m thinking of just going ahead with it (ahead of the Absolute Beginner Book Club Schedule). I definitely want to read 夜カフェ with the book club but that doesn’t really fill the whole week I could add a third book, but I feel like I would be spreading myself rather thin then Ahhh I don’t know! It feels off to read ahead as I’m usually just behind on the book clubs

[lucylavelle]

@Thud

Of the top of my head there’s Gal & Dino, Shirokuma Cafe and Ame to Kimi to.

Thank you so much! All three of those are on my “to read” list so thats exciting.
I already have Shirokuma Cafe, so I’ll probably start there

[rikaiwisdom]

Summary Post

April 6
Final Fantasy VII

---

No vocabulary list today because the SRS reviews will come in a bit and I don’t want to check and cheat. Also it’s pretty late ^^.

@Daisoujou

Like, I’ve actually made pretty remarkable strides in this time, but I managed to extremely quickly switch from being intimidated by all Japanese media to being annoyed when there is anything I don’t understand, heh (which is always, to some degree). My brain is always an enemy that way.

Same! And it’s not even realistic in a sense . Like, I don’t know every word I come across in Spanish, my native language. And in English I come across words that I don’t know fairly frequently, but I think the main difference is that my English level is high enough to know when a word is important or if it seems more filler; I know which words are worth checking and which “overlooking”, or which ones I can just passively assimilate, or guess the nuance, and so on. I definitely can’t do that in Japanese yet, so every. single. word. seems super important and must look it up . I don’t think this level of scrutiny is negative though, on the contrary, I think it gives you more language control over time, but yeah it gets absolutely exhausting and you have to unplug your brain at some point.

Actually, I think the way I approach Japanese has influenced the way I approach language in general. The dictionaries have become part of me and my daily life, I’m constantly looking things up and that has given me a more refined appreciation for literature, I feel. Language is pretty cool, after all. Things you thought meant the same thing actually have different nuances or meanings, and so on. It’s cool to guess why an author might choose certain words over others to create a very concrete feeling and whatnot. And it’s also cool that the more language knowledge you have, the more ideas you can put into words.

In summary: languages are awesome.

[DIO-Berry]

㋃6 – Day 6

• ジョジョの奇妙な冒険

p76-91
I finally finished the chapter about the rings. I am still upset that I can understand the logic of that one doujin now. Before I could just write it off as weird and awkward crack. It still is. I just don’t like that I understand now.

I wonder if anyone uses the reverse logic to claim the ring bit in Yuri on Ice is not a marriage proposal.

Anyhow, I look forward to no more rings, but more vampire content! It’ll be interesting too to see more of the gore Araki is know for firsthand.

[windupbird]

Summary Post

Day 6: April 6th
What did I read?: ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 Vol 2
How much did I read?: 5 pages
How long did it take me?: 20 min

This chapter focuses on a little girl, which apparently means it’s super easy to read lol. The sentences are short, the grammar straightforward, the words generally familiar…which is good because I’m exhausted today (probably because I, like…didn’t really sleep lol). Felt like I barely had to look up anything!

Today I learned that ラムネ is not just a type of soda, but also a tablet candy.

Good words

• パチパチ - incessantly (blinking)​
• かがみこむ - to lean over; to lean in
• 手さげかばん - handbag; purse; briefcase; attache case
• 湯のみ (ゆのみ) - teacup
• 色違い (いろちがい) - variation in color (colour); having a different color​
• 横になる (よこになる) - to lie down (and rest) I like this word lol
• あつらえる - to give an order; to place an order; to have made to order​

@pocketcat

Also, for the cute fans in the room, I realized you might enjoy the bookmark(s) I use

kitty
Look at the way its tiny paws hold the pages :3

@pocketcat

Also I bought them here !

slams the buy button

[potatonaught]

April 6
Today was my day off from work, so I worked on my MEXT application some more. It took me several hours to write 10 sentences, but I’m proud of those sentences! Can’t wait to find out how they’re all weird and non-understandable lol I also got better at how to use the different functions of weblio like its sentence database and quasi-thesaurus. ぜひ見てください。

I also read chapter 63 of Haikyuu, the first chapter of volume 8! I joined the book club when they were at the end of volume 2. I’m so amazed at how much I’ve read in just about a year. Way more than I’ve ever read in 4 years of Japanese study at school.

No progress on Tadoku level-0s today, but that’s okay. I think I only have 8 left so I should finish those up by this week.

Progress on Tadoku graded readers
36 / 44 level-zeros
x / 12 level-ones
x /10 level-twos
x / 18 level-threes