April 16
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
Vocabulary
- 報復 = ほうふく retribution, revenge.
- 不可欠 = ふかけつ indispensable, essential.
- 気絶 = きぜつ fainting, losing consciousness.
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Oh intruiging! I’m not entirely sure the best way to get hold of drama CDs from the UK but the LNits based on is available digitally so will give that a bit of a read and if it seems promising then try to figure out how to get hold of the CDs 
thanks!
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Day 16: April 16th
What did I read?: ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 Vol 2
How much did I read?: 14 pages
How long did it take me?: 1 hour 4 min
Read a whole chapter today! This one was interesting because one of the featured characters from the first book returned :o I low-key forgot about him (it has been a while since I read the first one lol) but at the end, I was like oh yeah that guy xD Once again getting outsmarted by Beniko, albeit indirectly this time xD He deserves it~ He apparently hired a detective to try and find Beniko because he was still mad lmao, but that backfired big time. I love how the detective hates this guy, too. Literally no one likes him 
Good words
- しっぺ返し (しっぺがえし) - returning tit for tat; retaliating
- なにげなく - unintentionally; calmly; inadvertently; innocently
- 横柄 (おうへい) - arrogant; haughty; insolent
- 身を乗り出す (みをのりだす) - to bend oneself forward (esp. in curiosity or excitement); to hang out (e.g. over a balcony)
- ひっきりなし - continually; continuously; incessantly; without interruption
- つぎたす - to top up (drinks, water, rice, etc.); to replenish
- 悪態をつく (あくたいをつく) - to use abusive language; to curse; to call someone names
- ぽつねんと - solitarily; in a lonely fashion; all alone; by oneself why is there onomatopoeia for being alone
- 厚紙 (あつがみ) - cardboard; thick paper the logic of this word pleases me
- 復讐 (ふくしゅう) - revenge
- 気晴らし (きばらし) - recreation; diversion; relaxation
- まっぴら - (not) by any means; (not) for anything; wouldn’t do for anything; had enough; flatly refusing I like the kanji of this, it’s 真っ平
@NicoleIsEnough Happy birthday! 
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I want to vent. I don't want to end the Easter Triduum in a bad mood so I decided to complain out loud in a safe place.
This evening, I was at the longest Easter Vigil that I could ever remember attending. Now that the COVID-19 measures are lifted, we can have full church attendance. We didn’t have any baptisms taking place and we didn’t do all the readings, yet the Mass took a whole three hours before it was done. The Vigil started at 6:30 pm but I had to be there an hour before for choir rehearsal. We finished after nine in the night but I had to wait almost an hour afterwards before I could go home. My brothers were altar servers and had to help pack up the church but my mother decided to take the chance to chat with other attendees. If I didn’t start acting vex, she might have chatted longer. I still had to chores to do when I came home and it’s that time of the month for me: TMII’m on my period.
In any case, I didn’t want to lose my streak so I still read a few pages of しゅごキャラ！ １ today. I also have a reading streak going on my Kindle app. I don’t want to have to restart it for the fourth time this year so I also read a few pages on my Kindle.
Happy birthday and many returns of the day! @NicoleIsEnough
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April 16
Finished chapter 1 of Spy x Family. Turns out it was a long chapter! May read some more or something else before the end of tonight.
Progress on Tadoku graded readers
44 / 44 level-zeros
12 / 12 level-ones
1 /10 level-twos
x / 18 level-threes
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17th of April
Day 17
75% → 100%. Finished 君ノ声!! I must admit I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel at the ending. I’m left with a few questions (like who is the man who took the hairpin away from Nana?), and according to the reviews left on Bookwalker by Japanese natives, they seem to be asking the same questions as well. But I’m also unsure about the ending itself, so I think I’ll just ask the Japanese friend who recommended the manga to me about that. It’s not a simple fairytale ending though, that’s what I know.
So this was definitely above my level. There were lots of different language used by some of the characters, such as the use of へん as a negative and ねぇ instead of ない, which made it harder to comprehend. There was a fair bit of honorific language in there as well. And so much vocabulary that I didn’t know at the start! I don’t think I’ve used DeepL so much for anything else I’ve read. It was a good learning experience though — because with books, the more you intake, the more patterns you find, and then later on when encountering those same patterns, it will be easier to understand. That’s what I think, anyway.
Well, I can finally tell my Japanese friend I finished it, lol. From tomorrow I’ll be reading かがみの孤城. Who knows how long that’ll take me!
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April 16th (Calendar Post)
Bookclub reading:
ゆるキャン△ => 26 pages (32 minutes)
夜カフェ => 7 pages (54 minutes)
I also managed to read the final chapter of my main book! This marks my 7th finished novel in japanese yey~
三日間の幸福 => 10 pages + 2 of the あとがき (80 minutes)
Checking my stats, this 230-page novel took me 1 month and 13 days to read. Sadly novels still feel too much of a struggle for me (sigh), but it was a very good practice at least.
I am at least quite happy with my comprehension level with this book, and felt I understood pretty well both the events that were going on, the motivations of the characters and the more abstract analogies - sadly I can’t say the same thing for some of the previous novels I’ve read.
It was also nice running into N1 grammar points more often.
I’ll take a break from opening my kindle app to see scary walls of text reading novels and go back to manga for a while for my main reading.
Fun manga panel from today:
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I read Seed 13 of GREEN.
I read 3 pages of 2.43, finishing 1-3! Next up is 1-4. RIVAL’S SHADOW. Hopefully starting Monday I can read more again, 'cause I am just too tired from work. It wasn’t as bad as yesterday, but I still just wanted to lie down and sleep for most of the day.
Being tired ain't gonna stop me from rambling about my hyperfixation though lmao
Apparently Subaru comes off as naïve to others. I never saw him as such, but I can see how people might if they don’t actually know him, especially with his rather carefree nature and his idealism. Plus, this is Ochi thinking this (how he used to think he was just a 天真爛漫な人気者), and he’s rather jaded.
Oh my god they have a height difference of 21 cm. Like, some part of me knew this since I know Subaru’s 189 cm and Ochi’s 168, but it never really registered. They went from probably around the same height in middle school, to a little over 10 cm’s difference in 高一, to 21 cm in 高三. That’s… well maybe not nearly a full head taller since that’s more like 30 cm (the height difference between Oda and Aoki!), but that’s still a lot.
(I’m a sucker for height differences.)
Another word used in relation to Subaru using the kanji of his name! 伝統, “tradition, convention.” This time not directly describing him though: 県内で全国大会最多出場を誇る伝統ある強豪校の主将として。
Also, I was reminded of this seeing the title of a track on the OST when I paused it, but smol Chika tells smol Yuni just before he leaves for Tōkyō with his father,「忘れんでの、ユニ。絶対に忘れんでの」and I still don’t get how that’s a negative. “I won’t forget you.” Unless that ん is the contraction of ない that’ll also show up in Kansaiben (like in 知らん or わからん). There are definitely a lot of places where ん trips me up, especially as there are multiple things it could be. Then if that’s the case, I still don’t know what the で is, and I guess the の would be explanatory or whatever? It’s definitely not a question particle here.
I also read the final two chapters of Colloquial Kansai Japanese.
Some vocab of note:
天真爛漫 (てんしんらんまん) [四字熟語, な-adjective] naïvety; simplicity; innocence. That’s a lot of characters ending in ん in a row lol
分かれ道 (わかれみち) [noun] branch; forked road; crossroads; parting of ways; turning point. Also written 別れ道.
核 (かく) [noun] core (of an organization, team, etc.); nucleus; heart. At its heart (hah), the kanji means “core; nucleus” and is used to refer to the core of many things, like the pit of a peach or even the nucleus of an atom. Mostly I just picked this one because I like the look of the kanji lol
顰める [一, transitive] is usually written in kana, and it has two different readings depending on how it’s used. In 顔を顰める, it’s read しかめる; this reading means “to pull a wry face; to screw one’s face up; to scowl; to grimace; to frown.” In 眉を顰める, it’s read ひそめる; this reading means “to knit (one’s eyebrows).” I’ve only seen this with the latter reading, in kana, and I was like “all right so I get from context that he’s frowning, but how does ‘to hide one’s eyebrows’ mean ‘to frown’” because I’d thought it was 潜める. Glad that’s cleared up now lol
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I Think Ill try to find some japanese short storys or at least a poem each day.
| Apr | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
| 01 | 02 | 03 | ||||
| 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| May | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
| 01 | ||||||
| 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 |
| 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 31 |
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April 16 
Home Post
More VLR today!! All still going well; シグマ has white blood?? Absolutely wild, it’s late so that’s all for today, but tomorrow 
@NicoleIsEnough happy birthday!!!
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I’ve had to import them through amazon jp, and they’re not very cheap. Costs like a new CD release (music), so for a longer series that amounts to a bit of money for sure. If you’ve been buying them once a year, once new releases got available it’s less noticeable. Sadly, physical CDs is the main format of audio dramas, though there are some that get digital releases.
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Day 15:
日本語: I read a bit of ミニスカ宇宙海賊, a bit of 冷たい密室と博士たち, and a fair amount of 鋼の錬金術師 (finished v4 
).
中国語: I read an intermediate entry on Mandarin Bean.
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Day 16
Read: 夜カフェ
Finished: 2 pages
Time: 4 minutes
New Vocab
もぐもぐ mumbling; chewing one’s words
ねぼけまなこ sleepy eyes; drowsy look
and Happy Birthday to @NicoleIsEnough! 
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Thank you sooo much everybody for your birthday wishes! Y’all made my day big time 
And now let’s pass on the staff to the next team member: Happy Birthday @sycamore! 
For my reading, I finished the section of 大聖堂 I agreed on with my friend, and now I’m waiting for him to catch up. I think this will take some time as he was struggling a bit with the English text, and also he is quite busy with irl stuff, so this might take a while. Therefore I returned to 雲をつかむ話, the book whose first chapter I read for the German-Italian reading circle. I really like it! So far there is an underlying plot (which has not yet developed very far) and around this plot the author draws on a lot of autobiographic memories. E.g. she, a Japanese person who moved to Germany a long time ago, describes how she helped teach Japanese in an adult education center, and the mistakes people made, in a very lighthearted and easygoing manner, e.g. 「赤い家の外に出ます」、「火曜日に、町から外に出ました」、「カエルが川から出ました」など、正しさがぎりぎり怪しい例文を作って文法を稽古する. Later on she describes how the students learn to conjugate verbs from -ます form into -たい form and comments on it: 鱒を取り除いて鯛を入れれば欲望が現れる。which I thought is an interesting observation in itself (that these are fish names as well). Of course the book is primarily directed at Japanese readers and so this might all be well-known to them, but I at least enjoyed it 
Whoa! Now we get talking 
Let’s hope I can resist this until after JLPT 
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すみません Norwegian sea, I didn’t mean to mistake you for some measly lake 
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Day 16
Apr 16
I finished Ch. 3-4 of 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん! Did 1 chapter in the morning, and 1 chapter on my way to friends’ home. I shared the “wisdom” from the grandmother with my boyfriend, and we all laughed about it 
I get a hold of some of the 佐賀 dialect, which I shared in the weekly discussion thread. But I think the story is a little bit thin from Chapter 2-4. A lot is about the art of living stingy. I hope the story will be developed more in later chapters.
Words of the day:
下駄ばき: 下駄＋履き
いかだ：筏。a raft
泥んこ：muddy
筋金入り：hard-core、頑固
天日：てんぴ sun
信心：しんじん。faith. In Chinese, this word means “confidence” instead
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Happy birthday, @sycamore!
It is done! Ask Graded Reader, Level 4, Volume 2! Finished!
Yay, first finished in quite a long time. One more volume and I will have finished all the graded readers I own (except for those aimed at natives). Feels good.
Both the stories in this booklet had kinda non-endings in my opinion. Basically there is no indication on how life will be in the future for the characters. Doesn’t make them bad, but also not the kind of stories I really enjoy. Like I’m not likely to pick up another story by the same author.
Won’t have anymore time to read Japanese today. Hopefully will sneak in some regular reading right before bed.
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Late happy birthday @NicoleIsEnough and happy birthday to @sycamore today !
It’s Sunday again and weekly update time! I’ve read every day this week I’m up to date on ハピネス, reading my easy news articles every day, and also did some Ace Attorney earlier. I’m agonizing over what game to try my hand at next (definitely interested in Zero Escape ) but I’ve been forbidden from buying anything before my birthday.
Next week will require me to plan my reading time. I start work on Tuesday and then I’m heading on a weekend trip to Stockholm. I haven’t been on a proper trip in years (thanks, pandemic), so I’m feeling a little nervous about keeping up my studies. I’ll have to find the time to do my reviews every day, because I refuse to lose my 472-day streak! Thankfully my traveling partner is the one who paid for my sub last year, so I know she’ll be cool with it.
I wonder if there are any stores with resources for learning Japanese in Stockholm… It’s a much bigger city than the one I’m from.
Anyway, I hope everyone has a marvelous week with lots of time to read 
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Day 16 (
) 
三毛猫ホームズの推理 ~60% to 61%
I was out and about almost all day yesterday, so I only managed a measly 1% (3-4 pages maybe?) before I passed out. I guess it still counts as reading, but nothing to be proud of. I’ll try and make up for it today (already reached 66% since morning).
Happy birthday!!! 
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I think I’ve lost track of the birthdays 
So if I miss you I’m sorry! But happy birthday @sycamore and @NicoleIsEnough !
I decided to read another 青空文庫 story last night, and grabbed something (悪魔の宝) by an author (豊島与志雄) who I had liked the work of before. Unfortunately this was a very basic children’s story and I was pretty bored. It’s about a hunter who makes a deal with the devil, and that goes about as well as you’d expect. I left difficulty notes on Natively, but this was a hard one to judge as it was
- 100% a children’s folktale written in simple language which IMO probably would be mostly friendly to someone with a solid grasp of N4
- That simple language was quite outdated (written 1929) and was filled with weird gotchas
I had no trouble following along, but a good deal of the gotchas for the type of language are not going to be covered by the JLPT and unlikely to encounter again until they reach the point of complicated old adult reading material. So I stuffed it into the N3 range, wrote a clarifying review, and am hoping for the best. It doesn’t really “work” anywhere nicely.
Also the library let me poke through books they were gonna sell off and I grabbed more 赤川 and a random book with 殺人事件 on the cover (あらすじ：清滝トンネル内で幼稚園児の送迎車が消失!). I got some 横山秀夫 books from them the other week as well. I wish I could read faster, I couldn’t justify taking any more home. Doubtless I’d find even more to read, though.
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