Are you skipping the whole month of June for some reason?
April 18 
Home Post
I finished up the ending I was on! ルナ… 
sad times, seeing her face like falling apart was pretty rough. Only one ending left now… I wanted to play more but I’m like super tired so maybe I’ll finish tomorrow? 
We shall see!
Ah yes I’ve definitely seen that in Zero Escape repeatedly, and definitely looked it up every time because it refuses to stay in my brain 
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Day 18: April 18th
What did I read?: 異刻メモワール
How much did I read?: 29 pages
How long did it take me?: 19 min
Today was an off day. I was in kind of a restless mood when I got home from work and I didn’t really know what I wanted to read after finishing Zenitendou, so I kept procrastinating on reading anything, and then while I was doing that my laptop died so when I finally sat down to read I had to use my phone for lookups which I hate. Such a pain. Luckily this manga didn’t have that much text so there weren’t as many look-ups. I spent like 10 min trying to remember/read the dumb title though (it’s in a super-stylized font and has no furigana and my phone’s radical look up is even worse to use than Jisho’s so I couldn’t find it. Eventually I just gave up and decided I’d look it up in my Amazon Japan order history when I got back on my laptop later xD).
Anyway
This manga has a really cool art style! I’ll try to post some pics tomorrow. It’s very…surreal and fantasy-like in feeling. I don’t really know what’s going on, but I don’t think I’m supposed to yet
No words today because a) there were just not that many and b) it was a such a pain in the butt to look up the few that there were without my laptop that I just didn’t keep track 
I still haven’t finished this novel I am going to, I swearrr
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April 18th (Calendar Post)
The manga I am reading had some crazy story development at the start of volume 2…
もし、恋が見えたなら => 86 pages (94 minutes)
Some non-spoilery manga panels from today:
にぱっ part 2
それは私のセリフ…
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It really does! I added it to my list to check again later.
Aw, that’s too bad, I was going to ask you because it’s not clear to me at all from the sample. 
I love the art and all the creatures though, they’re giving me Spirited Away vibes. I’m looking forward to your next updates to see how it goes!
Edited to add: Happy birthday @Memoria ! 
(so many birthdays! I’m sure I’ve missed a few, in which case: Happy Birthday! to all concerned 
)
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Day 18 
Read:ジャックジャンヌー夏劇ー
Finished: 11 pages
Time: 38 minutes
Took a break from studying and got some reading done. After my exam tomorrow I think I’m gonna read a bunch to make up for the days I could only read a few minutes. A lot of terms related to kanzashi this time, and I occasionally struggled to tell who was talking when more characters were involved.
Story Thoughts
In Suzu’s short story 涙かんざし, while going for a run in the mountains to get his mind off of his worries about things with Yonaga, he runs into Kisa near the shrine there. There they both noticed something shining in the hollow of an old tree off of the path, which on closer investigation was a kanzashi. When they’re both standing there wondering about how it got there Neji-senpai shows up all of the sudden (this makes me really curious what he’s just doing in the mountains lol). When they showed him the kanzashi he seemed to figure out what was up with it but refused to tell them and told them it would be more interesting to figure it out themselves. So Suzu and Kisa set out into town to investigate by looking at a kanzashi shop and then an antique store.
So far they’ve figured out that the kanzashi they’ve found is specifically a 平打ち簪 with a house crest of a 拍子木 on it.
Something along the lines of these I think.
I’m really curious about the story behind the kanzashi, the title of this story makes it sound like it might be kind of tragic.
New Vocab
装飾 （そうしょく）ornament; decoration
家紋 （かもん）family crest
冠婚葬祭 （かんこんそうさい）important ceremonial occasions in family relationships
振り出し （ふりだし）starting point; beginning; outset
骨董品 （こっとうひん）curio; antique
横道 （よこみち）byway; side street; cross street
物騒 （ぶっそう）dangerous; unsettled; troubled; disturbed; insecure (never realized these were the kanji for this one)
和小物 （わこもの）Japanese trinket
奥行き （おくゆき）depth; length
がま口 （がまぐち）purse with a metal clasp; handbag (with clasp); pouch (with clasp); coin purse (with clasp)
櫛 （くし）comb
平打ち （ひらうち）type of flat ornamental hairpin made of silver and inscribed with a clan’s crest or patterns of birds and flowers
かざす to hold up over one’s head; to hold aloft
労る （いたわる）to pity; to sympathize with; to sympathise with; to treat with sympathy; to console; to be kind to; to appreciate
皆目 （かいもく）entirely; (not) at all
見当がつかない （けんとうがつかない）having not the slightest idea
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Started reading way too late yesterday so I only managed a small handful of Spy x Family chapter 2 pages before I ended up falling asleep 
Happy Birthday!
Oh interesting, I came across that one in 約束のネバーランド but didn’t know that was an actual expression and not just something the character made up 
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19th of April
Day 19
Read pages 21-23 of かがみの孤城 today. I might read some later, but I doubt I’ll get around to it. I got stuck on a few sentences, and also spent some time reading a grammar point explanation, so each page took me a lot longer than usual today.
Another one! Happy birthday @Memoria! 
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Thank you, that was actually an oversight on my part.
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oh gosh, more birthdays. Happy birthday @Memoria ! Hoping again I didn’t miss anyone
Last night:
I finished Case 0 (鬼熊) of 戦前昭和の猟奇事件. Honestly my comprehension felt way lower than I’m comfortable with. I know people were sympathizing with and almost kind of rallying around 熊次郎 but I didn’t totally get why. It also started to talk about the rising militarization of Japan in the prewar period and at one point referenced a headline stating 「マルクス主義は鬼熊より怖い」(Marxism is more frightening than Demon Bear (serial killer))* and I feel like the author was trying for a point that I just straight up missed in my tangle of new words. I have a truly pathetic vocabulary around anything politics and I think there was something about political corruption that just flew right past me.
Debating rereading the chapter now that I have more of a hang of how to read it and see how much my comprehension picks up. It won’t be as exciting as new content, but if I understand it more fully that would be satisfying.
I also wrapped up the 3rd volume of ミステリと言う勿れ. I admit I wasn’t really feeling this case but once it finally got to the bit about curly haired ‘demon descendants’ being murdered I got drawn in.
*I’m not sure how to translate that into English so I just went literal. They took the 鬼 from 殺人鬼 and smashed it into the first part of his name, 熊次郎
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Happy birthday @Memoria!
Yesterday: I didn’t get to Japanese reading all day, so right before I went to bed, I read 1 page. Feels kinda cheaty to count it…
Hopefully I can plan better in the future.
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I got very tired very early yesterday, so I didn’t do much reading, just Seed 14-15 of GREEN, finishing vol 3. Just 5 more chapters to go!
Some vocab of note:
亡者 (もうじゃ) [noun, usu. ～の亡者] obsessed person (money, power, etc.)
百年目 (ひゃくねんめ) [noun] out of luck; at the end of one’s rope. rare chance; unusually good fortune. I’m not sure which it was in context since it could be either depending on who Wako-chan was referring to (which I couldn’t figure out), so I just put both.
借金 (しゃっきん) [noun] debt. I learned this on WK and then encountered it not an hour later in GREEN lol
世知辛い (せちがらい) [い-adjective] hard (life); tough (world)
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A happy birthday to you hope it’s a lovely day!
I made sure to do some reading early in the day yesterday, which was good for my reading (I’m now 95% through すべてがｆになる, just the epilogue left!) but maybe not an amazing idea over all as it meant that I ended up having to work until 1am to finish my deadlines 
will probably finish the book today and then will get back to 三毛猫ホームズ 
… or get diverted to something else lol.
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Tanuki Den (aka Homepost): Date 20220419 
Tanuki Scroll XIX: 峠の一本足 
Read today’s Hyakumonogatari, from Nara Prefecture!
About a one-legged monster that attacks people on a mountain pass. A hunter manages to strike a deal with the monster - the monster won’t eat him provided that it can hunt on the mountains on the 20th of December each year.
Even nowadays many in the Nara area won’t go out into the mountains on December 20th. The day is known as: 果ての二十日「はてのはつか」.
Japanese found in the tall grass
New Things
Kanji
藪 or 薮 ー The kanji for やぶ: thicket; grove; bush
Onomatopoeia
ズドーン！ ー Sound of a rifle being fired, but can be for explosions, collisions, dropping of heavy things.
Places
十津川「とつかわ」ー Totsukawa, Yoshino district
伯母子岳「おばこだけ」ー Mt. Obako
Happy birthday!!
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15.-18.4.
What a busy weekend! I worked pretty much all day on the 15th and 16th (13 and almost 15h respectively), then had a social thing that took up all of Sunday. I barely managed to read a tiny bit of La quête d’ewilan on those days. Yesterday I had a bit more free time and tackled some more of the questions at the end of Le petit Nicolas with my family. Sadly none of us knew terribly much about sports or French fables. I also finished the last bit missing of the chapter of La quête d’ewilan I’d been dragging out over the weekend.
Today hasn’t seen me read more than a duolingo story in French so far, so I’ll keep this day for next time. 
My progress since last time
Le petit Nicolas (157→163/148p)
La quête d’ewilan: d’un monde à l’autre 
(53→79/334m) 
(17→21%)
A1 5 Minuten-Lektüren Où est le thym (2→NA/20 stories)
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Oh yeah, that sounds tough. I haven’t touched anything political at all yet but I’m going to have to work on that one day – there are so many fascinating Japanese New Wave movies (that being post-war, but still) I want to watch, but most of those are really overtly political. You never really think about just how segmented vocabulary for certain fields is until you start doing this.
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For those of you who are interested in Mori Ougai and who can understand German, there is a talk about him on 2022-04-21T16:00:00Z that will also be streamed on Youtube:
It’s not very clear from that page but the stream will show up here.
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Thank you so much for all the birthday wishes, everyone! It genuinely means a lot to me 
I haven’t been able to read anything today (yet!) but I’ve decided to buy Zero Escape for myself with some of the money I got from my parents. I’m really excited to start playing next week when I return from my trip
Now, I’ve got a few hours left before the day ends, so I’m gonna hurry up and read!
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So the current booklet is called 日本の食卓 in Ask Graded Reader level 4, volume 3. So it talks about Japanese food and have pictures of food that make me hungry. WANT JAPANESE FOOD. 
(No Japanese restaurants in town except maybe sushi and that is probably my least favorite Japanese food.)
Read about half of it. It went through traditional Japanese food and both reminded me of some cooking vocab I knew before, plus teaching me some new.
Food/cooking vocab goodness
食卓 = dining table
一汁三菜 = a type of typical Japanese meal: rice, one soup (miso soup for example), plus 3 side dishes (often fish, veggies and tofu)
銘々膳 = individual dining table
栄養 = nutrition (double checked I remembered this one correctly)
大豆 = soy bean
調味料 = seasoning
タンパク = protein
小麦 = wheat (reminder)
塩辛い = saltiness/salty taste, since I learned 辛い as spicy (as in hot spicy), I found this a fun word
成分 = ingredient/component
煮る = to shimmer/stew/boil (but with more than water/other than water; since ゆでる is for boiling water or possibly boiling in water; not 100% sure on these differences)
食材 = the book helpfully gave the definition as 料理の材料, ingredient
A couple of interesting sentences, the second one I could use a double check from someone that I got it right.
肉や油を使わず、濃い味をつけなくても日本食がおいしいのは、しょう油や鰹節、昆布などに「うま味」があるからです。I thought this was a great way to explain the difference with Japanese food (#notallJapanesefood)
できるだけ食材そのままのおいしさを楽しむというのが、日本食の考え方です。The philosophy/way of thinking behind Japanese cooking is to enjoy the original flavor/taste of the ingredients. (Implied: Rather than changing them with a lot of spices and cooking methods). Have I missed something?
This booklet have been fun so far, especially since I’m feeling pretty confident I’m understanding the more complex sentences. Perhaps most of the complexity comes from using context from not only the previous sentence but things they talked about a couple of pages ago; and I’m getting that. Feels like a real step forward in Japanese understanding for me.
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