📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

True it could be way easier than I thought. I should explore that option more

I mean… you have a point lol. Although at that point it’s easier to order a physical copy

Is it? maa, whatever you wanna do at the end of the day is what matters.

That’s a thought.

Random but I like the insertion of “maa” here
I used to have a friend who would insert things like that here and there cause she wasn’t fluent in English and it’s just weirdly aesthetic? Like in Japanese songs where they suddenly switch to English

It’s cause the issue is more “how easy is it to purchase things.” I’m logged in to my mother’s Buyee account, so I can just message her like “hey mum can I get a book?” and then she’s like “of course. Books are essential to life, only second to tea” and then I have permission to make the transaction

Also cause I’m a person of habit to a greater degree than I sometimes realize and have difficulty changing what I do

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Makes sense. I never liked physical books because of the inability to use yomichan and stuff in the first place, but the shipping always felt like a hassle to me. I also just don’t like waiting, though.

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International shipping as a private person for packages can be pretty crazy though. Otherwise that could have been a lovely idea. (@dunlewy)

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But ordering from Japan also has the shipping cost attached to it, so that would not make (much of) a difference for @dunlewy I guess?

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Day 19 :heavy_check_mark: :cat2:

三毛猫ホームズの推理 ~79% to 81%, halfway through 4.1

In the end I didn’t finish 4.1 like I was planning. Reading in a moving car on a small screen is not ideal, let me tell you. But! I also finished this week’s two chapters of 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん and, did I tell you I feel certain about the killer’s identity? I’m irrationally excited about that, especially as it’s still perfectly possible I’ll be proven wrong (no way, I know I got it right!). :joy:

Fun vocab from both books

雲をつかむよう - vague, unclear, elusive
言葉を濁す - to speak ambiguously, to be evasive
皆無 - nil, nonexistent
気を許す - to let one’s guard down
突飛 - erratic, offbeat
目を逸らす - to avert one’s eyes, to look away
血痕 - blood stain
無理がたたる - to break down due to overwork, to try so hard that the situation gets worse
ケチがつく - to bring bad luck
敬遠 - pretending to respect someone while in fact keeping your distance
秘密基地 - secret base, hideout
筋金入り - staunch, hardcore
騒ぎ立てる - to make a fuss
罪のない嘘 - white lie, harmless lie
大事にする - to take good care of, to treasure
雨露をしのぐ - to protect against the elements

Oh my, I’d actually been looking for something with that sort of feel but hadn’t found anything, so thanks for bringing it to my attention. :smiley:

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lol, I did not finish すべてがfになる yesterday, or read anymore of 三毛猫…instead I started playing the demo for 十三機兵防衛圏 (13 sentinels) on the switch and got hooked. It almost feels like it was made perfectly for a language learner tbh, it has a voiced log of all dialogue you can replay if you missed something, you can replay whole scenes at any point etc etc etc. And it’s so pretty!!!

Because I’m playing on the switch I don’t have the help of game2text or anything like that but given the features above its been okay. The non-battle dialogue etc has been very comprehensible so far. Inside battles is much trickier, there’s a lot of huge kanji strings for enemy/moves etc that fly past at breakneck speed but I’ve been able to understand well enough the broad strokes of “protect this thing, attack these monsters” enough not to die yet lol :sweat_smile:

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:tulip: Day 19 :tulip: :house:
Finished my exam so today was 読み放題! My brain is fried now but I had fun with it.
Read:夜カフェ
Finished: Chapter 3
Time: 12 minutes

New Vocab

刺繡 (ししゅう)embroidery
(けん)counter for (received) emails, text messages, voicemail messages, etc.
ピシャリ slapping; splashing; splatting; banging shut; flat (refusal, denial, etc.)​

Read: マグメル深海水族館 [2]
Finished: Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9
Time: 23 minutes, 20 minutes, 16 minutes
Finished volume 2! Some more new characters and more thing in the plot being fleshed out. This volume felt a little harder to read than the first one and there was a little bit of different dialects thrown in.

Thoughts


This tripped me up for a bit when I first saw it. いいよ、敬語は。そんなに歳変わんねぇ I got but this is the first time I’ve seen べ at the end of something. Apparently it’s 北海道弁 and equates to だろう。
The character talking here is a new one introduced in this volume, he’s an apprentice chef at the submarine resturaunt Latimeria. Koutarou has kind of formed a deep sea related friend group with him and one of the fishermen from volume one. This chapter had a bunch of tasty looking food so reading it made me hungry.

The lattes look so cute, I’d love to eat here.
This volume we learn the meaning of the name Mag Mell which I’ve always been kind of curious about, it’s the name of a land of the dead beneath the ocean, looking into it more it’s from Irish mythology. This manga is even mentioned on the English wikipedia page for it.

New Vocab

キンメダイ splendid alfonsino (Beryx splendens)​ (apparently you can eat these guys)
養殖 (ようしょく)aquaculture; culture; cultivation; raising
修学旅行 (しゅうがくりょこう)excursion; field trip; school trip
多種多様 (たしゅたよう)a great variety of; diversity​
寄生虫 (きせいちゅう)parasite
直面 (ちょくめん)to face; to confront; to encounter
カグラザメ bluntnose sixgill shark
オンデンザメ Pacific sleeper shark​
中層 (ちゅうそう)middle part; medium depth (water); medium layer; middle lamella
減少 (げんしょう)decrease; reduction; decline
降り積もる (ふりつもる)to fall and pile up (e.g. snow); to lie thick
血中 (けっちゅう)blood borne; within the blood
救出 (きゅうしゅつ)rescue; extricate; reclaim; deliverance
慰霊碑 (いれいひ)cenotaph; memorial monument​

Read: ジャックジャンヌー夏劇ー
Finished: 19 pages, second short story 涙かんざし
Time: 1 hour
Finished the second story, it got kind of sad but I probably should have expected that from a story called 涙かんざし. I really enjoyed this one though, it gave a glimpse into things that weren’t in the game.

Very Long Story Thoughts

So Kisa and Suzu are at the antique store investigating the kanzashi. They show it to the old lady there intending to ask if she knows anything about it, and she says it’s dirt cheap, and she’ll nicely give them 5000 yen for it. Suzu realizes by looking at Kisa’s face that something is suspicious with this, speaks up, and the old lady said it was just a joke. It turns out the kanzashi is made of platinum and from around the end of the Edo period, and is actually worth like 100,000 yen. She mentions the term 涙かんざし when talking about it but refuses to say more for free and sends them to deliver something to the kimono fabric store for her and ask the shopkeeper there for more information. Just when they get there it starts to rain and thunder. The shopkeeper there explains to them that 涙かんざし is the name of an old classic play from the Edo period that was put on in the town’s theater. The story is about a girl born the fourth daughter into a samurai family that only had girls and really wanted a boy. This in combination with her mother passing away giving birth to her disappointed her father to the extent he closed her up in a room in the residence so he wouldn’t have to see her. After some time passed a new servant came to the house and began to interact with her. He gave her a kanzashi and she eventually fell in love with him. But she caught the eye of an acquaintance of her father, and he agreed to let him marry her, and kicked the servant out of the house. The night before the wedding the daughter ran away to go find the man. When she arrived at his house all that was there was a note that said「私は死にました。さようなら。」By the time she noticed, she was in the middle of the forest at the shrine. There she prayed that in their next life they could be together, left the kanzashi, and then threw herself off of a cliff. It then cuts to her residence where the man is desperately calling out for her but can’t find her. He wrote that note intending to throw everything away and elope with her. (kind of reminds me of Romeo and Juliet.) And then the play ends. This play was super popular especially among young girls at that time in similar situations, and they would go to the local shrine and hide kanzashi with the hope that “In my next life I can be together with that person.” and the kanzashi they found is most likely one of those. (not sure if this implies things ended similarly for those girls). After learning this they decided to put it back where they found it, although Suzu wasn’t completely sure about this because he felt it would be sad to leave it there. When they returned the old tree had been struck down by lightning in the earlier storm. When he saw Kisa looking sadly at the old tree, he felt like there was something more behind her feelings, 「死を前に、なにかを恐れ、怯えるようなー」 This made him kind of panic so he called out to her and suggest that she take care of the kanzashi. He started acting extra cheerful and pushed for them to head back to the school. Kisa thanked him for being there for her and going with her to investigate. This makes him happy he could help, but brings him back to thinking about how him trying to help Yonaga ended up hurting him. He decides though that he won’t give up on trying to think of ways to be there for him because he’s an important friend, and the story ends. This probably will tie into Yonaga’s story which is the next one.

It’s really interesting seeing Kisa from others perspectives in these short stories, it seems like to other people she gives of a much more 儚い感じ, to the extent that Suzu was kind of worried seeing her lost in thought at the fallen tree. It seems like what really stuck with her there was how she related to the idea of「叶わなかった少女の願い」and how that maybe sent her into thinking more about her situation. Suzu is always treated as not very smart but he’s really good at inferring things about other people, like in this story when Kisa explained why she was suspicious about the antique store ladies initial offer, he kind of figured out the reason she might be so knowledgeable about that kind of thing is because her family is troubled for money.

New Vocab

奉公人 (ほうこうにん)servant; employee
仄暗い (ほのぐらい)gloomy; obscure
すかさず without a moment’s delay​
掘り下げる (ほりさげる)to dig into (a matter); to delve into; to probe into; to investigate; to get to the bottom of
無粋 (ぶすい)boorish; inelegant; unpolished; unromantic; tactless
眼福 (がんぷく)a sight for sore eyes; seeing something beautiful or precious
二足三文 (にそくさんもん)dirt cheap; very cheap
値打ち (ねうち)value; worth; merit
目配せ (めくばせ)signalling with the eyes; exchanging looks; winking
白金 (はっきん)platinum (Pt)​
横文字 (よこもじ)European language; Western language
名称 (めいしょう)name; title
末期 (まっき)closing years (period, days); last stage; end stage; end-of-life (care, decision making, etc.)
合点がいく (がってんがいく)to understand; to make out
居住空間 (きょじゅうくうかん)living space
呉服屋 (ごふくや)kimono fabrics shop; draper
やることなすこと everything one does; whatever one does

Happy (a little late I think) Birthday! Hope it went great! :birthday: :partying_face:

Oh wow that looks like it has such a great atmosphere and the art is gorgeous. Definitely gonna pick this up someday.

This looks amazing, the sharks, the shiny cover, it’s beautiful :astonished:
This thread is bad for my wallet :joy:

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:house:
20th of April
Day 20

No longer holidays… I’m trying to improve my time management so I can do more of the things I actually want to do, like reading and studying Japanese. I did fairly well today, but let’s see if I can do better tomorrow!

I read for 15 minutes today, from page 24 to page 26 of かがみの孤城.

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Day 20 already? When did that happen? :scream:

Anyway, I think I went two days without reading/doing something reading-related* like looking up vocabulary. I did finish reading part 3 of 燃える though and started translating the first 3 1/2 pages of it. I will continue to translate today, and the next two days or so. Depends on how much I manage to get done and how much I need to do the next few days. Spring-cleaning, my friends - a hairy situation with cats :joy_cat:

In other words:

Read up to the beginning of page 36
Translated up to the first line of page 27
Vocabulary: A lot. With some vocab probably twice or more, so a final count is pending.

*I did watch a ton of 名探偵コナン while crocheting/stitching and I looked around on Bookwalker for some stuff and freebies. Does that count?

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Starting 20.04.2022

April
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
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
Legend
didn't read neither news nor books
read either news or a book
read both news and a book
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Main Post

On monday evening I started reading 銭天堂 and I had noticed I made a mistake with the title. I wrote 和菓子屋 instead of 駄菓子屋. I fixed that now. The first chapter was pretty interesting and was able to finish it in one go. Not sure how long it took, but it did get late. Slowly getting used to more hiragana. I also found it interesting how furigana was used. They would introduce a word or name added with furigana and then stop using it for a while. Later on they did add back furigana, so I’m thinking they went with feeling rather than a general rule.

Because they all have different stories I thought it also felt more natural to take a break the next day and start reading 猫奥 vol 1. This manga is all about the life inside the woman quarters of Edo castle called 大奥. Basically a system inside a system to serve the shogun. The main character is one of the court ladies that has scary expression on her face. It has become pretty popular that they get cats to pass the time, but she never got one. Her senior ladyship does own a cat called Yoshino and he keeps going to her place all the time. It’s a pretty funny contrast and the cat is pretty cute.

猫奥 1

Took some screens from the first 6 chapters (they’re pretty short ones) that kinda sells the idea of the series. I’ll be reading this alongside 銭天堂 for a while.

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Actually, it comes out to less than $100 for all three sets, so it isn’t that bad. If I buy only one set at a time, it’s about $35.

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:tiger2: :books: Tanuki Den (aka Homepost): Date 20220420 :cherry_blossom: :raccoon:

Tanuki Scroll XX: 養老の滝 :shower: & 百物語(百物語から一年目) :100:

Read two today. First, today’s folktale from Gifu Prefecture!

About a son who looks after his parents well (it used the filial piety word!) even though no one has much money. One day he stumbles upon a waterfall that produces sweet-tasting liquor, which, when drunk, makes you go like this:

The second story was today’s Hyakumonogatari, about… hyakumonogatari.

Some people tell hyakumonogatari at a temple but little do they know that their lives have now become a hyakumonogatari.


:seedling: Japanese found in the tall grass :seedling:

New Things

谷底「たにぞこ」ー The bottom of the valley
香しい「かぐわしい」ー Fragrant; sweet-smelling
瓢箪「ひょうたん」ー Gourd (container)
蝋燭「ろうそく」ー Candle. Outdated kanji form: 蠟燭.
Really, why are all the cool kanji forms of things outdated. 蠟 is infinitely cooler than 蝋.
ずつ ー a piece; each (kinda a simple word but this is the first time I’ve sorta noticed it in isolation as its own thing)
ぼんやり ー Vaguely; faintly
恨めしい「うらめしい」ー Reproachful; bitter
氏神「うじがみ」ー Patron god; guardian deity
厄払い「やくはら」ー Cleansing from evil influence, begone vile demons! Exorcism.
女房「にょうぼう」ー Wife - especially your own wife

Places
養老「ようろう」ー Yoro, Gifu prefecture.
Also 養老の滝「ようろうのたき」ーYoro Falls
美濃の国「みののくに」ー Mino province, now part of Gifu prefecture

Random Learning of the Day
Maybe common knowledge to others, but today I learnt that there’s a proper name for the Japanese-English words that don’t really have the same meaning as the actual English word:
和製英語「わせいえいご」ー Japanese word that’s been created from one or more elements of an English word but the meaning is something different.

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Honestly same
It does give you something to look forward to though, so it kinda balances out

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Okay, so. I started reading something new. But it was not my fault, okay? I mean, Bookmeter gave me those coins for my birthday. But they are only valid this month. And of course I could not let them go to waste, you know? But there was this big sale recently, and I got everything I wanted for the time being, so my wishlist was pretty empty. And I was really thinking hard about what to do with these coins. Well, and then there was this talk over in the other thread…

... about this story ...

image

So I guess now I also landed in pulp hell :woman_shrugging:

:joy_cat: :grin:

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:rofl::sweat_smile::rofl::sweat_smile: Please do share how you find it! I am tempted because gay pirates but was a little put off by the very cheesy cover lol.

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Today I actually checked the tags and discovered it’s 女性向け :scream: so that might explain the cover :rofl:
and also maybe it does not end up being a gay pirate story but actually what girls think a gay pirate story would be :thinking:

Will do! :+1:

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