I have some maccha tea, I have some reading material, it is time to read!
Hey the site’s been updated a bit, with new pictures!
A rather easy story today since I don’t have a super amount of time.
Okay, that sounds like an excuse already, don’t worry reading神様 I promise this won’t become a thing and I will do a bigger reading tomorrow
But today’s story is about a mean tanuki, but bunny comes along to teach him a lesson.
Japanese found in the tall grass
New Things
裏山「うらやま」ー Mountain/Hill behind a village/house. Side of a mountain that gets little sunshine. ヨボヨボ ー Unsteady; Shaky; Tottering じじい「爺 - rarely seen」ー Old man (kinda insulting, like old geezer). Can also just be: じじ. 火打ち石「ひうちいし」ー Flint; Firestone. Can also be: 火打石. Or with a super cool kanji: 燧石 (this way can also be read as: すいせき). 塗り薬「ぬりぐすり」ー Ointment; Medicinal cream 気絶「きぜつ」ー Faint (as in to faint) or swoon ざまあ見ろ「ざまあみろ」ー “It serves you right”
Additional Meanings 悪戯「いたずら」ー I know this as “Prank” from WaniKani, but it can mean mischief too, is that already on WK too? I dunno, but I’m putting it here to remind me. I have checked, this meaning is not on WK, it is now a shiny new synonym.
Forgotten Readings
畑「はたけ」ー Field for growing stuff/cultivated field I don’t know how I forgot this but the reading just wouldn’t come to me.
I’m out tonight and was working today so just managed to sneak in some すべてがｆになる on my lunch break. I read sections 7 & 8 of chapter 7, finishing up that chapter (I always enjoy finishing a chapter because I can go read what people said about it in the bookclub threads)
It continues to be fun, although in this chapter one character proposed my theory at the time of how the murder happened and another character shot it down pretty definitively so I may need to find another theory…
With this starting on the day before the book clubs roll over to the next week, I started off with reading some Takagi-san. I was halfway through chapter 2 and now I finished that, which was about 8 pages. Next time I should measure how much time it took to see my progress over the 2 months.
I continued on with 夜カフェ. Currently I’m at Chapter 6. Actually I had planned to read the whole chapter today. Plans changed. Due the lack of sleep and my brain being all fuzzy today I only managed to read from page 63 to the beginning of page 69. Can’t be helped
Edit: Actually managed to finish chapter 6. I’m on page 77 now.
I’m wondering if I should read something with a bit more kanji next. Not that I can’t recognise the words when they aren’t written in Kanji, but I sorta would like to practice kanji more…
imo it’s totally up to you! If you’re enjoying reading it even with the difficulties and you’re motivated to keep at it, why not? I think tools like ichi.moe can be really helpful, just maybe be careful not to be too dependent on them, but regardless you’ll definitely get used to parsing sentence structure and grammar and such with practice.
Really it’s about your own tolerance and what you want out of reading; if it’s too hard to where it’s not fun and you’re just weighed down by it, then totally swap to something else, but if you’re enjoying yourself then go for it! It’s not gonna hurt anything
New season, new challenges. For this one I’m gonna make a headstart with reading books, starting with something simple to gain some familiarity and slowly build from there. Alongside that I will be reading manga each day as well. Restricting myself on one book and one manga at this moment to keep things clean. I’ll try to read until I feel a natural stopping point, with manga I like to cover a chapter at least per day, for books I’ll have to see how it goes. Will also play some games every now and then, but I tend to keep track of those in the extensive reading thread.
Goals
Read from manga, books or games
Read 猫奥 vol 1
Read ゆるキャン△ vol 1-3
Read 世界の終わりに柴犬と vol 1-3
Read ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 vol 1-3
Read Spy x Family vol 8-9 + 家族の肖像
Read 夜カフェ 1
Read ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 1
Progress
April
週
月
火
水
木
金
土
日
13
14
15
16
17
Days completed (30/30)
May
週
月
火
水
木
金
土
日
17
18
19
20
21
22
Days completed (31/31)
June
週
月
火
水
木
金
土
日
22
23
24
25
26
Days completed (30/30)
Reading Material
ゆるキャン△
ゆるキャン△ 1
ゆるキャン△ 2
ゆるキャン△ 3
夜カフェ
夜カフェ 1
ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂
ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 1
猫奥
猫奥 1
世界の終わりに柴犬と
世界の終わりに柴犬と 1
世界の終わりに柴犬と 2
世界の終わりに柴犬と 3
SPY x FAMILY
SPY x FAMILY 8
SPY x FAMILY 9
SPY x FAMILY 家族の肖像
ヨコハマ買い出し紀行
ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 1
ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 2
ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 3
Updates
June
June 30 - Read Flying Witch ch3
June 29 - Read Flying Witch ch2 | Spy x Family Novel ch4 + Short Novel
June 28 - Read Flying Witch ch1 | Spy x Family Novel ch4
June 27 - Read Spy x Family Novel ch4
June 26 - Read YKK ch23
June 25 - Read YKK ch22
June 24 - Read YKK ch20-21 | Spy x Family Novel ch3
June 23 - Read YKK ch19 | Spy x Family Novel ch3
June 22 - Read YKK ch18 | Spy x Family Novel ch3
June 21 - Read YKK ch17
June 20 - Read YKK ch16 June 19 - Read YKK ch14-15
June 18 - Read YKK ch13
June 17 - Read YKK ch12
June 16 - Read YKK ch11 | Spy x Family Novel ch2
June 15 - Read YKK ch9-10 | Spy x Family Novel ch2
June 14 - Read YKK ch8 | Spy x Family Novel ch2
June 13 - Read YKK ch7
June 12 - Read YKK ch6
June 11 - Read YKK ch5
June 10 - Read YKK ch4
June 9 - Read YKK ch3 | Spy x Family Novel ch1
June 8 - Read YKK ch2| Spy x Family Novel ch1
June 7 - Read YKK ch1 | Spy x Family Novel ch1
June 6 - Read YKK prologue | Spy x Family Novel ch1 June 5 - Read Spy x Family ch61
June 4 - Read Spy x Family ch60
June 3 - Read Spy x Family ch59
June 2 - Read Spy x Family ch58
June 1 - Read Spy x Family ch57
May
May 31 - Read Spy x Family ch56
May 30 - Read Spy x Family ch54-55
May 29 - Read Spy x Family ch52-53 + short mission 6
May 28 - Read Spy x Family ch51
May 27 - Read Spy x Family ch50
May 26 - Read Spy x Family ch49
May 25 - Read Spy x Family ch47-48
May 24 - Read Spy x Family ch46
May 23 - Read Spy x Family ch44-45 May 22 - Read 柴犬 ch35 + sidestory
May 21 - Read 柴犬 ch33-34
May 20 - Read 柴犬 ch31-32
May 19 - Read 柴犬 ch30
May 18 - Read 柴犬 ch29
May 17 - Read 柴犬 ch27-28 May 16 - Read 柴犬 ch26 + sidestory
May 15 - Read 柴犬 ch24-25
May 14 - Read 柴犬 ch22-23
May 13 - Read 柴犬 ch21
May 12 - Read 柴犬 ch19-20
May 11 - Read 柴犬 ch18
May 10 - Read 柴犬 ch16-17 May 9 - Read 柴犬 ch14-15 + sidestory
May 8 - Read 柴犬 ch12-13
May 7 - Read 柴犬 ch10-11
May 6 - Read 柴犬 ch8-9
May 5 - Read 柴犬 ch6-7
May 4 - Read 柴犬 ch4-5
May 3 - Read 柴犬 ch3 May 2 - Read 柴犬 ch1-2
May 1 - Read 銭天堂 ch6
April
April 30 - Read 銭天堂 ch5
April 29 - Read 猫奥 ch24-25
April 28 - Read 猫奥 ch20-23
April 27 - Read 猫奥 ch18-19
April 26 - Read 猫奥 ch16-17
April 25 - Read 銭天堂 ch4
April 24 - Read 猫奥 ch13-15
April 23 - Read 猫奥 ch10-12
April 22 - Read 銭天堂 ch3
April 21 - Read 猫奥 ch7-9 April 20 - Read 猫奥 ch4-6 | 銭天堂 ch2
April 19 - Read 猫奥 ch1-3
April 18 - Read 銭天堂 ch1 April 17 - Read Yuru Camp sidechapter
April 16 - Read Yuru Camp ch17-18 | Yoru Cafe ch13
April 15 - Read Yuru Camp ch16
April 14 - Read Yuru Camp ch15
April 13 - Read Yuru Camp ch14 | Yoru Cafe ch12 April 12 - Read Yuru Camp ch13 | Yoru Cafe ch11
April 11 - Read Yuru Camp ch 12 | Yoru Cafe ch10 April 10 - Read Yuru Camp ch11
April 9 - Read Yuru Camp ch10 | Yoru Cafe ch9
April 8 - Read Yuru Camp ch9 | Yoru Cafe ch8
April 7 - Read Yuru Camp ch8 | Yoru Cafe ch7
April 6 - Read Yuru Camp ch7 | Yoru Cafe ch6 April 5 - Read Yuru Camp ch6 | Yoru Cafe ch5
April 4 - Read Yuru Camp ch5 | Yoru Cafe ch4
April 3 - Read Yuru Camp ch3-4 | Yoru Cafe ch3
April 2 - Read Yuru Camp ch2 | Yoru Cafe ch2
Apr 1 - Read Yuru Camp ch1 | Yoru Cafe ch1
Oh no I’m sorry to hear that! Take care of yourself, and I hope it passes quickly.
I agree with @natarin on this! I’ve tried to do some reading on what to aim for in the past with regards to difficulty, but ultimately, I don’t think anyone knows with enough certainty. While the idea of going just above your level sounds good intuitively, I’ve seen pretty quick strides in comprehension by struggling through things I could barely hang with at all at first, and some of the other big success stories seem to be people who just hung in with slamming against things way above their level. As long as you’re not getting too frustrated and are figuring out some of it / learning some new things, any reading is fine. And I wouldn’t feel bad at all about using such tools – in fact I’d probably say it’s almost impossible to make the move into reading native materials so smoothly that you don’t require such tools, or a lot of guidance from others. The deciphering rather than reading stage is very real for everyone.
I made my first post into a home post/calendar post and added a progress tracker.
Today I started my audiobook challenge, and as expected I didn’t understand much, only bits and pieces here and there. Having the text to read along side helped a bit, but since I’m not stopping to look things up it’s still a very rough understanding of what’s going on. If I ‘read’ 11 minutes of the audiobook every day, I’ll be done by the end of April. Here’s hoping it’ll help me get used to the sounds of the language and to reading french faster. And that I manage to stick to it, of course. That said, I’m mostly missing a bunch of vocab, I think. The sentence structure itself seems relatively simple so far, so understanding it might not actually be as far off as I thought!
I also read a chapter of my main french book, Le petite Nicolas. Very cute, and very much my level.
Today's progress
Le petite Nicolas (73→80/148p)(41→47%)
La quête d’ewilan: d’un monde à l’autre (0→11/334m)(0→3%)
First challenge! Been trying to read more lately, this is a good excuse to do it more consistently. At this point mostly reading NHK Easy news and (slowly) working through ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂.
I started the spring challenge with heavy rain and snow falling outside.
Today I read about 5,5 pages of 博士の愛した数式. I’m still at the very beginning (though I’d read the equivalent of book club week 1), but I’m looking forward to what’s going to come up next.
April 1st it is, and the Spring Challenge is upon us!
Today I read a few pages of 沖で待つ, the hiragana story. I’m slowly getting used to it, and sometimes I even forget for a second that there are no kanji, and then I’m surprised when I look at the text again Anyways, I take this to mean I’m getting better at reading it.
I also started with L’Étranger, where I read up until page 9. It’s a bit of a struggle currently as I’ve forgotten soooo much grammar, and sometimes it’s hard for me to identify the tenses correctly. Plus, it doesn’t help that the text uses lots of tenses But I guess I will get used to it in a few days.
Another good news is that my 大聖堂 friend got in touch today - he returned home from his travels and is eager to continue reading! So I will dive back into that one as well starting this week.
Thanks for hosting this again! I joined the last winter challenge and it was really helpful in improving my reading skill
Last time I finished vols 1-3 of あずまんが大王、this time I’m aiming to finish vols 4-6 of 少女終末旅行.
April 15th update: Finished vols 4-6 of 少女終末旅行. It’s a very beautiful story, I highly recommend it for anyone interested. I’m going to start reading じょしらく, my goal will be to finish vols 1-3 by the end of the challenge!
May 4th update: Finished vols 1-3 of じょしらく！Aiming to finish the last vols 4-6 by the end of the challenge.
May 25th update: Power was out for 4 days so I read a lot! Finished vols 4-6 of じょしらく, finished the one shot manga ルックバック, and vols 1-2 of シメジシミュレーション!
June 1st update: It’s over now! One chapter away from finishing vol 3 of シメジシミュレーション haha. In total I managed to read 12 volumes of manga, 4x more than last season’s challenge. Aiming to finish even more for Summer 2022’s challenge!
This word was a central plot point for a show I recently watched, called, of course, うきわ. It was brought up as sounding similar to うわき (infidelity). The character dreamed of having a うきわ to save her from the pain of experiencing うわき.
I can say I got a decent bump from my binging of Aozora last year. My compression was horrible compared to modern lit, but that improved rapidly and now modern lit (within reason! Nothing too poetic) feels like a cakewalk in comparison.
Well now I’m certainly interested! Added this to my 読みたい list which grows longer every day…
Also, this is my Bookmeter, and for those who prefer, my Natively. I should probably get around to following people back on Natively at some point but I admit that following and being followed on book sites is still a new thing for me.
I decided today that I should probably just report on the things I read the day before, because I often read my books right before bed and I’ll have no interest in typing up a post then. Calendar will get marked on the day I do read, though.
And so I will say I read the third short story in 遅刻してきた幽霊 yesterday, roughly 20 pages I think? It had a very 東野圭吾 air to it, which is not something I expect from 赤川次郎. An overarching metaphor, something of a moral story, with a loose ‘what will happen now’ type ending. I enjoyed it a lot even though it was a bit predictable.
I also read ~15 pages of the third volume of ミステリと言う勿れ. I still have one episode to finish in the show, but I strongly suspect the entire plot arc I’m in right now in the manga is not covered.
Unless you’re reading graded readers, the first few books you try are going to be tough so whatever helps you get through! I sometimes use it with sentences with multiple negatives…Also that book looks v cute, which would be enough to keep me motivated
My aim when I’m reading is to follow the story enough that I can re-tell it to someone aftewards. I might not always understand the details or why something happened or how a character felt but as long as at the end I could give a short summary of the plot to someone then I feel like it was a success. And you can then go back to it in 6 months or a year’s time and see much how much you’ve improved.
三毛猫ホームズの推理 ~3% to 6%, from the middle of chapter 1 to about halfway of chapter 2.
I’ll definitely read some more before bed, but I won’t have the energy to update then, so now is good enough. So yesterday I reread the prologue and half of part 1 of chapter 1 (or is it chapter 1 of part 1?) of 三毛猫ホームズの推理. I decided it to read it properly, as if for the first time, and I’m glad I did. It was funnier than I remembered and I think I could appreciate some parts more. Even though I’ve read several things since the last time I read it, I can’t say the improvement in how fluently I read was especially striking. I could now more naturally understand parts that I remember struggling with before, but I still looked up a lot that I had previously looked up (well, just adding cards to Anki is probably not enough for memorization. I guess I will also have to review them at some point). Anyway, my plan for today was to reach the end of chapter (or part?) 2, which was the furthest I had read before. I may still manage to do that later, not sure.
Interesting words and expressions:
知る人ぞ知る - well-known only to those in the know
口と腹とは違う - to say one thing and mean/think another
空き巣 - empty nest, but also burglar who robs empty houses
眼中にない - taking no notice, disregarding
気に食わない - unable to stomach, displeased with
Started booklet two of the Ask graded reader I’m on (level 4, volume 2). So nice to read something fairly easy, and I remembered it often gives definitions of unusual phrases if I just remember to read the next sentence (I don’t know how many times I’ve looked something up only to have the next sentence explain what it was, ).
I only read a little despite the story already pulling me in because two days ago, the start of this challenge went from difficult because I have no habit of reading to also be super busy at the start. Aka boss level difficulty. So I’m tired and I want to get to bed at a good time, and if I had kept reading, I would have read until the end and that would probably have been an hour of reading or so.
Well, success on day one, but I suspect the next week is gonna be challenging.
皆の教えてくれた言葉頂きー！I won’t do this everyday, but I just wanted to take a second to thank anyone who takes time to post new vocabulary
That is really cool! While I didn’t read everyday after the first challenge, it did make it so I picked up a book more often and with more confidence. I’d love to get to where you’re at sometime!
Then it’s gotta be good! Looking forward to hearing more as you keep reading.
I laughed out loud at this haha. I feel this way every time a dialogue page comes up
Soooooo cuuute
I’m thinking of doing something like this too! (I guess that’s the point of a bookmeter though, isn’t it? )
Any progress is good progress! Honestly, even three pages a day for two months would add up
Woah!! I hadn’t thought of training like this. It sounds really challenging in a whole other way.
I love this book series!! Feel welcome to share which story is your favourite. Also welcome to the challenge
I rely so much on kanji I can’t imagine. The lack of kanji was one of the reasons I found the N4 so much more challenging than the N3! But if it’s a good story, I’d be curious to try…
Read 5 pages of 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん 👵🏼 (Intermediate Book Club), finishing the part for the first week of the book club. A thought-provoking prologue with a little history lesson on Japan in the 20th century and a poignant first chapter. Looks to be good read.
And read chapters 23 and 24 of 🐉🐉🐉 極主夫道 3巻 • The Way of the House Husband, Volume 3. I bought the first three volumes of this manga when the book club started because they were discounted, but the humor is still not quite my cup of tea so I’m mostly reading it for practice now.
命中 = めいちゅう a hit (e.g. when you shoot a gun, etc) → 命中率 = accuracy rate.
アジト = secret base of operations, hideout.
供給 = きょうきゅう supply, provision.
First day! I’ve started with Final Fantasy VII, and so far so good. The difficulty seems about right, not overwhelming at all so far, and I’m able to follow virtually everything. It’s also good that the text windows stay open until you click a button, save for two or three dialogues that happened very fast and couldn’t read them properly, but I’m fine with that. I haven’t played this in like forever so I barely remember anything, which is also another positive. Good feelings!
I will most likely be cycling through different resources this challenge, meaning, I won’t be playing anything I don’t feel like playing just because I started it. Or, more precisely, I will be playing whatever I feel like playing that day. I will most likely play Zelda: Breath of the Wild concurrently, and possibly something else. We’ll see!
Ugh mine is long as well That’s the best/most dangerous part of this challenge, is hearing about all of the good books that are out there.
I’ll keep posting updates, and will warn if there’s any major spoilers! It’s still early, so I’m hopeful it’ll get even better from here
Tanuki Den (aka Homepost): Date 20220401 
Japanese found in the tall grass 
Anyways, I take this to mean I’m getting better at reading it.
But I guess I will get used to it in a few days.
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