It’s available in my region, too. 
It’s the one called Old Enough! in English, right?
Happy birthday and many returns of the day! @Beyond_Sleepy @Daisoujou
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April 13
Today I had to focus on cooking / prepping for Passover this Friday and Saturday night, so I didn’t have much time to read.
However, I did pick up the first volume of Spy x Family for free on the Jump Book Store, so I read about 20 pages of that at midnight at the start of the day lol. It’s free to read online until April 24, so act fast.
No graded reader progress but that’s okay.
Progress on Tadoku graded readers
44 / 44 level-zeros
12 / 12 level-ones
x /10 level-twos
x / 18 level-threes
edit: And happy birthdays for @Beyond_Sleepy and @Daisoujou 
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April 13th (Calendar Post)
There was a nice moment today where I managed to read a good part of a page without looking anything up or getting confused halfway through a sentence and having to re-read it three+ times. Now if only that happened more often… sigh
三日間の幸福 => 9 pages (116 minutes)
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I read 5 pages of 2.43, leaving off at a good stopping point for once right before a scene change, and putting me a little way down pg 60.
Obligatory rambling
Ah, okay, it was after he’s sat down that he scolds Kouhei about them not being able afford to get any weaker.
「ったく、弱なっていいわけないやろが。うちの目標はなんや？」
「すいません……越智先輩で我慢します」
「あぁ？」ドスをきかせると戸倉がまた凍りつき「嘘ですっ。越智先輩がいいっす。最高っす」
I think now I may finally be able to remember what ドス means, as I could perfectly picture the scene from the anime while reading this, with Ochi leaning in close all threatening-like, like, “Ah? What was that? I thought so.” (Although, I may end up remembering it as a threatening look, rather than a threatening quality…)
「どうせおれは花ないわ」
Aw, Ochi, you’re very pretty (just not like a girl).
Ochi’s not used to receiving praise. First Hata-kantoku complimenting his handwriting, and now his teammates listing all the ways they appreciate him as their manager. He doesn’t seem to quite know what to do with himself. Earlier, when Hata was praising him, Ochi wondered if he (Hata) was dying, and now he wonders if he himself is dying. Oh, Ochi 
(Now I wanna give him a hug, too.)
So in first season we got Chika thinking that Yuni’s like a border collie, and now we’ve got Ochi thinking Kouhei’s like a labrador retriever.
Oh, I’m so happy Ochi loving spicy foods has shown up here. While kinda sighing over Subaru drinking a 500 mL box of strawberry milk after lunch, he puts enough shichimi tougarashi on the abura’age from his kitsune udon to dye it completely red lmao. Well no wonder he seemed completely unfazed when he had, distracted, accidentally turned the snowy mountain of grated daikon on his oroshisoba into an ominous volcano in that one side story (set during first year shortly after he’d made the switch to manager. In that one, he thinks, Strawberry milk with lunch? Do those even go together? Now he’s resigned to Subaru’s love of all things strawberry and/or sweet) if that’s how much shichimi he uses normally lol
Title drop! Of a sort. This subchapter is entitled ONE AND ONLY POSITION, and in the last line of this first section of it, we get the phrase “唯一無二のポジション.”
I listened to the 12 chapters of 壁の穴 I’d already read while putting away the dishes today, and then I read ch 13-20.
Some vocab of note:
知る者は言わず言う者は知らず (しるものはいわずいうものはしらず) [proverb] those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know. I came across this one today because, while trying to type 汁物 (soup), my IME gave me this beast lol
黄色い (きいろい) [adjective] (of a voice) high-pitched; shrill
双璧 (そうへき) [noun] (two) matchless things; (two) matchless people. Its original meaning was “a pair of bright jewels.” And this is how I learn that 璧 means sphere, so 完璧 is a complete sphere, or, “perfect.”
唯一無二 (ゆいいつむに) [四字熟語, noun, な-adjective] one and only; unique.
丼勘定 (どんぶりかんじょう) [noun] rough estimate; sloppy accounting; slapdash bookkeeping. This one was in a GRANRODEO song lol (帰結する共犯者)
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April 13 
Home Post
Well VLR decided to absolutely put me through it today, in ways completely unrelated to language 
I only played like two or three hours total and I finished two real endings, so that was a lot to process. I’ve done 4/9 (go figure) now so it’s all getting super real, my poor feelings lmao
VLR... what
Sooo I finished 四葉 and K’s endings and um… wow? Really just stunned still, there was so much For 四葉: I finally got to actually hear about what she’s up to, and it’s not anything particularly shocking necessarily but it’s still nice to know, and the terrorist group they were going after seems like it’s probably ディオ’s clone nonsense? Which in retrospect probably should’ve been obvious but 
And that’s where radical 6 came from maybe? It was also cool hearing about some of the other people from 999! 淳平's MIA looking for 茜 huh… interesting 
But yeah then the body count got real bad suddenly, I was not ready, and then シグマ just… it ended real abruptly, I was not prepared oh man
And because that wasn’t enough, K’s ending… oh man K’s ending, where do I even begin lmao. The suit was unlocked!! He really just shed his whole suit as a dummy so he could go do a murder! Wild But then who smashed ディオ’s bangle But whatever that doesn’t even matter, the woman was the one K talked about! In his backstory a billion years ago!! Man I never even considered that, really sets K up to have a bad time from the beginning (except maybe in the realities where they don’t find her?). But… then we took off K’s helmet and um… huh. I really don’t know what to do with that Like yeah something was always off about シグマ, you never see him except for flashbacks, even when there’s group shots from whatever that weird angle is. And he’s not voiced which might actually be intentional, huh. But like still… what does this mean who am I?? Is it another 茜 situation? We did start talking about morphogenesis again so god knows what’s to come lmao
Oh boy yeah today was a day Good reading-wise though! Reading VLR’s felt really nice lately 
growth!
Happy birthday!!! 
Glad the Satori Reader adventures are going well!
Uh-oh That sounds like dangerous language territory, 頑張れ蒼界の覇者 
That’s wholesome and also super cool! Getting to where you can genuinely enjoy something for the content itself is totally game-changing for language learning
happy tiny birthday!!
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Day 12:
日本語: I read a fair amount of ミニスカ宇宙海賊 and some of 鋼の錬金術師.
中国語: I read an intermediate entry on Mandarin Bean, one page of 骑士幻想夜, and a bit of 孩子最爱读的中国民间故事.
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First of all, (belated, I guess?) Happy Birthday to @Beyond_Sleepy and @Daisoujou! Birthday in April is nice, hehe (mine is on Saturday, so we have kind of an April Birthday team here, it seems 
)
For my reading, I have returned to 大聖堂 and it’s currently a bit more difficult than before, so it takes some time. My Japanese friend is also struggling with the English text quite a bit, so we had a chat the other day to set things straight. It is sooo hard to explain an English text in Japanese 
especially when it’s not clear to me initially where the misunderstandings lie exactly. But I’m also getting better at pinpointing them.
Funniest thing was that he struggled with this bit of direct speech:
„It is clear, is it not, that…“
Now the fun part is that in Japanese I usually struggle a lot with these casually inserted negations that don’t indicate negation but rather emphasis, confirmation or other things. And now he was struggling with the same thing in English! That somehow put my mind at ease. Yes, language learning is hard! And we can all be proud of what we achieved, even if it feels like a tiny drop in the vast ocean of Japanese knowledge.
ok I better stop now before it gets too bad😁
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Happy birthday! Hope you had/have (time zones confuse me) a great day!
Must…resist…clicking…spoilers. Or, you know, spending all of my day reading. The struggle is real.
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I love that! The April Birthday Reading Crew? Mine’s on Tuesday, so another one for the team 
A very happy birthday to you, too! 
That’s the one! I’m in Europe but looks like it’s available in America as well. I know this because I went on twitter and saw some very heated discussions about the show lol. I wish there were more episodes! I’m already halfway through the season.
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Happy belated birthday
Happy belated birthday too you too
Hey April Birthday Reading Crew! I want to join in. My birthday was/is on April 12th
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So I have a grammar question, and I know I probably should ask in the grammar thread, but since this thread is full of readers, and there’s a small group even reading the same book as me, I thought I’d ask here first. I keep coming across ときて/ときた. I can sort of deduce its meaning, but I haven’t been able to find any specific reference in a dictionary or grammar resource. In JLPTsensei it’s listed as N1 grammar meaning “because”, but this doesn’t fit with my sentences.
Example sentences from 三毛猫, not really spoilers in isolation:
- 深夜の実験室、ボコボコと音を立てているフラスコ、ときてはなおさらである。
- しかもそのほとんどが無駄骨ときていますからね。
- 女マッサージ師の次は女占い師、予言者ときた。
(bonus question: Is 女 pronounced おんな when used as a prefix like this?)
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Day 13 
Read: ジャックジャンヌー夏劇ー
Finished: 24 pages (story 1: just one life)
Time: 1 hour 5 minutes
Finished the first (and longest I think it was like 70 pages) short story in the ジャックジャンヌ novel. Next one’s is Suzu’s story 涙かんざし, which is quite a bit shorter at 39 pages, so hopefully that one will be a bit easier to get through. I like that this book is broken up into short stories because when I read I always tend to read until the conclusion, but I don’t have the endurance or reading speed to do that in Japanese yet so its nice to have a bunch of little endings in one book.
Reading Thoughts
Came across the sentences 「努力を続けていれば、いつか同期に近づけるのだろうか。間に合うのだろうか、ユニヴェール歌劇学校生という短い時間の中で。あの華に、才能に、持たざる者が、持てる者に。」and it took me a while to figure out what was going on, I’ve never seen so many particles with nothing following them at once.
Storywise, I liked by how the end of the story Kai was able to change his way of thinking in a little bit of a more hopeful direction. It was interesting to see that this is the point of the story where he really started thinking about this before it became a much bigger issue during the winter play in the game.
New Vocab
さらなる even more; still more; further
かたや on the one hand … (and on the other …); on one side
さながら just like
はたまた or
豪快 （ごうかい）hearty; tremendous; magnificent; glorious; splendid; heroic; stirring
独擅場 （どくせんじょう）field in which one acts unchallenged; unrivaled sphere of activity (unrivalled); one’s monopoly
灼く （やく）to tan (i.e. suntan); to burn
肩幅 （かたはば）shoulder width (breadth)
全うする （まっとうする）to accomplish; to fulfill; to carry out
舞踊 （ぶよう）dancing; dance
立ち居振る舞い （たちいふるまい）movements; behavior; behaviour; bearing; deportment; manners; demeanor (heard this one but never seen the kanji)
帯びる （おびる）to have a trace of; to be tinged with
殻を破る （からをやぶる）to break up and start anew; to break out of one’s shell; to make a fresh start; to go outside oneself
爽快 （そうかい）refreshing; exhilarating; invigorating; bracing
息づく to live
見出す （みいだす）to find out; to discover; to notice; to detect
精悍 （せいかん）virile; tough; masculine; intense
and a happy birthday to @Beyond_Sleepy and @Daisoujou!
and a happy late birthday to @Magillou too!
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㋃13 – Day 13
- ジョジョの奇妙な冒険
I read 8-15 yesterday and I was going to go back and reread since I didn’t know a lot of the vocab and kanji used, but I think I’ll ultimately skip. It’s all stuff related to Jack the Ripper, so I don’t think I’m missing out on too much.
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So I did some googling and it seems like it’s one of those expressions that’s hard to give an exact meaning for in English (because of course )
But yeah basically it’s と + 来る, where と is like quoting and capturing the essence of whatever it’s attached to as it likes to do. Meaning-wise, it seems to mostly be a form of emphasis: 来る（くる）とは？ 意味・読み方・使い方をわかりやすく解説 - goo国語辞書
As far as differences in nuance between specific different forms of it, I think it’s another one you get a sense for with time. If you’re reading stuff that uses it at least, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen this before But yeah it seems to be mostly different from (though possibly related?) ときている, so that might help clear it up!
(Also yes I would think so? I think おんな is the typical way to go for that, though I’m sure people change it up sometimes for one reason or another )
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14th of April
Day 14
Back from my trip!! There was practically no service in the camp, but I still managed to get some reading done. Since I couldn’t access the internet at all and I have nothing on my phone, I tried reading かがみの孤城 raw (because there are far too many words and phrases I don’t know in 君ノ声). It was surprisingly not too hard to understand! Of course there were words I didn’t know, and some parts I didn’t get, but not overwhelmingly so, and I could get what was happening. I read up to page 19, but I’ll probably reread them quickly later with a little help for unknown words/phrases.
I got lots of reading done today, in both Japanese and English lol. This evening I really felt like getting immersed in a novel, so I picked up a book (in English) and couldn’t put it down until I finished the whole 315 pages. Three hours gone .
I just finished reading half an hour of 君ノ声, from page 50 to page 80. Which is less than it sounds, because a fair amount of pages didn’t have many words.
Little summary
Page 51-52 was a sort of interlude, and page 53 the start of Chapter 2, apparently.
I was referring to the businessman as Kyougoku, but maybe I should use his first name. So Kazunari and Nana are at his place. It starts off with Kazunari rethinking his actions (intervening between her and her mother)… and here I realise I missed something: he was going to Nana’s house to break off the engagement. So he’s thinking: Why did I say Nana would be staying at my house from then onwards…
Mostly the chapter is about him trying to interpret her hand signals, and also giving her a piece of paper and a pen to write her feelings on.
Then he and someone else (who came bursting in) ask Nana to write her name on the paper. She writes「諏訪部名無」 (Suwabe No-name) — and so they think up new names for her, and ask her to pick which one she likes best. She circles all seven with her finger… then Kazunari wonders how he can use all seven names in one. He writes 「七名」.
Nana’s reaction:
At the end Kazunari seems to be rethinking the events and trying to remind himself not to get too close to Nana. 「馴れ合うな、深入りするなと」
I didn’t think I would like 君ノ声 all that much, but it’s actually cute.
Happy belated birthday to @Beyond_Sleepy, @Daisoujou and @Magillou!!
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Thanks for going to the trouble of finding this, I appreciate it! This 来る verb is just too versatile for my sanity.
I’ve seen とくる/ときたら like in the example sentences in your quote, and it’s almost always “when it comes to” in my mind.
Searching a little better in my Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns I found ときているから after all (it’s in this exact form in my second sentence), and it’s:
Used to talk about a person, thing, or situation with extreme characteristics. Expresses that the present state of affairs is a natural outcome of those characteristics. Means “since it (s/he) is so…what else can be expected?” Used mostly in spoken language.
So basically more or less what JLPT sensei said. But this still leaves the other two. It’s certainly emphasis of a kind, but the exact nuance is still escaping me.
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April birthday crew represent! Mine’s at the end of the month (29th) and by that time everyone’s tired of April birthdays and the May birthday peeps want to get started
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Last night I read 19 pages putting me at midway through 4.3 or 89% done. I admit I kind of skimmed the big scene being hinted at last night. I think the story overall has not been shaping up very satisfyingly for me, haha. It’s not bad, but my impression is shaped heavily by the author’s later works - it’s not what I thought I was walking into.
Unfortunately the chat last night with the new language exchange partner (which sucked up some of my reading time) was a bust. I really wish people didn’t treat language exchange apps as dating sites. 
omk3 replies which I wrote up before seeing natarin's better one but I wrote it already gosh darnnit
What I feel is a relevant JP Stack Exchange: grammar - What would be the function of the ときたものだ? - Japanese Language Stack Exchange
I think (this one was also weird for me):
(Because) even more (something, probably previous sentence) with the sounds of the burbling flasks in a late night laboratory.
Like sorta…the atmosphere was even more because of the above.
しかもそのほとんどが無駄骨 ときて いますからね。
Again, can’t check where in the book this came from but I think: “And even more so because the majority of it was wasted effort”
女マッサージ師の次は女占い師、予言者 ときた 。
I think it’s read おんな rather than じょ for both but I’m far from an expert on that 
I think this roughly means like “Next after lady masseuses’ are lady fortune tellers and prophets.” Just an emphasis one here I think.
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Tanuki Den (aka Homepost): Date 20220414 
Tanuki Scroll XIV: もどり五斉 
Read today’s Hyakumonogatari, from Mie Prefecture!
About ama divers「海女」who can’t go out to sea because of sharks and a big snake that’ll eat them, there’s also a magical princess who lurks at the bottom of the sea.
Japanese found in the tall grass
New Words
鮫「さめ」ー Shark.
(I’m sure I know this, but I don’t recognise さめ being the reading at all, I thought it was はじ for some reason)
磯「いそ」ー Rocky shore
御輿「みこし」ー Portable shrine (usually found at festivals being carried along)
Places
城ヶ島「じょうがしま」ーJogashima island, Miura
Lone word from earlier
鑿「のみ」ー Japanese style chisel
You cannot escape the birthday wishes
Happy birthday for yesterday!
Happy belated birthday!
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Day 14 - Calendar
Today I had a bit of time and it turned out I spent all of it reading.
In the morning I read from page 30 to 37 in 魔女の宅急便. Kiki now left home and the adventure is about to start. I still have trouble with the book but it is getting better very slowly.
Later on I decided to continue レイトン教授とふしぎ！なぜ？科学の話２年生. I read question 22 and it was about why iron is magnetic. Maybe I’ll continue reading one per day so that I can finish the book and eventually sell it again.
In the afternoon I also read the three episodes about ジャム屋さん on Satori Reader, which was a quick and easy read.
Also, thanks for all the birthday wishes!
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