I love seeing your endless dump of fun panels!
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Ah. Hmm. Well when I’ve had conversations at work about a non present coworker for logistical reasons, I feel like we’ve overused their name when necessary (ie when needing a subject in our sentences). I do notice though, if it’s gossip and other people aren’t supposed to know who’s being talked about, more pronouns are used. I try not to engage in gossip, so it’s just my observations while overhearing it 
With that line of thinking, if he’s not present but being talked about with pronouns, it may come across as gossipy? But then outside listeners would probably be less likely to know who’s being talked about.
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May 11 
Home Post
I was busy finishing up papers so really just shoved some ZTD in at the end for habits, but I’m all done with the semester now! My normal chaos can resume tomorrow 
For now thought, bedtime.
@dunlewy I’m very sorry for your loss, sending you well wishes 
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I can’t really answer your question with any kind of certainty, but my feeling is that when 彼 or 彼女 are used in the presence of said person, they indicate a degree of familiarity that may extend to imply close personal relationship (eg boyfriend/girlfriend), and if that’s not the case, then that assumed familiarity could be seen as rude or presumptuous? Sort of like あなた when used from a woman to a man might mean they’re in a relationship, but in other cases it’s totally different. It all depends so much on (social) context, which makes it extra hard. (Since you mentioned 三毛猫ホームズの推理, I seem to remember a sudden change to first name use to imply/claim closer relationship with a person than actually existed. 
That’s more straightforward for a foreigner to interpret though.)
Also, about that book in general, I remember being surprised by the abundant use of 彼 and 彼女 in narration (and in speech). Out of the (few) Japanese books I’ve read so far, this was the one book where I never felt unsure who was being talked about, exactly because of the abundant use of pronouns, which doesn’t seem to be the norm. I wonder if that’s just the author’s style or if there were social clues I missed.
Edit: (off topic) Does anyone else have a “likes” issue, or is it just me? I like a post, and after a while I look at it and it appears I haven’t liked it yet. When I click to like it again, it either opens up the list of people who liked it (and I see myself among them), or adds a like and instantly removes it with a message that I don’t have permission for that action (!). I cleared cookies, logged off and back in, but it persists. Weird.
Edit2: So I listened to this Tofugu podcast on kare/kanojo in search for answers. They veer off on any number of rather off-topic tangents, but here’s the gist of what I got (caution, I may have interpreted some things inaccurately):
- Using kare/kanojo in conversation might be acceptable to avoid constantly repeating someone’s name/title, but using it from the start is equivalent in rudeness to using “he/she” in English for someone who is right there, without acknowledging their name/title before that. Like you think they’re of no consequence maybe?
- By far the most common usage in conversation is for girlfriend/boyfriend. In this case the words are often (especially by hipsters, according to the podcast) said in different pitch accent (to which I was mostly deaf to, I’m afraid). There followed an interesting tangent about pitch accent varying according to your expertise on the subject in question. (!)
- In fiction, it is considered an attempt to sound Western, and it’s somehow a little pretentious, like pronouncing foreign words properly when speaking in your own language. Murakami does this a lot, they said (I’ve only read him in English so far so I wouldn’t know), and apparently (this is my addition, not theirs) so does 赤川.
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Thank you.
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Yes, I’ve been having that problem today, too. I don’t know why. It’s never happened before.
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Day 40 
Just a quick update because my life has decided to get chaotic and final season has started 
Missed one day but managed to read at least a bit on the other days. I started reading a kids book called 悪魔のパズル なぞのカバンと黒い相棒 which so far seems to be very similar to Cardcaptor Sakura but with demon keys instead of cards. Difficulty seems similar to 夜カフェ aside from more fantasy terms and this letter that I think was written to be kind of archaic on purpose.
Then today
Read:マグメル深海水族館 [5]
Time: 18 minutes
Finished: Chapter 21
Started volume 5.
Here’s an out of context panel I liked.
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Exact same issue! Been driving me nuts
TIL! I had no idea this was a thing.
Thank you for investigating! 
I don’t remember there being excessive 彼・彼女 in 三毛猫ホームズの推理 but it was also my 5th book by that author I think? Whenever I get around to finishing 遅刻してきた幽霊 I’ll keep an eye out for it
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I dont know what would count as excessive, but it was certainly much more often than the almost never in all other books I’ve read so far ( a very small sample, admittedly).
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I have had some issues with likes I think … if you keep this page open and don’t navigate away or refresh, it doesn’t like that and will sometimes show only some of the recent posts. So it might help to just refresh if something funky is happening …
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Okay, here are some useless statistics, for no reason whatsoever (please note that Bookwalker’s search function is awful, so these may be inaccurate):
佐賀のがばいばあちゃん (237 pages)
彼 - 2
彼女 -3
地球星人 (336 pages)
彼 -6
彼女 -1
コーヒーが冷めないうちに (348 pages)
彼 - 14
彼女 - 11
三毛猫ホームズの推理 (368 pages)
彼 - 32
彼女 -36
My casual observation seemed to be correct, until …
告白 (320 pages)
彼 - 64
彼女 - 59
So, erm, 三毛猫ホームズの推理 was pretty modest after all. 
To be fair, this book is a series of monologues, all related to one specific event, and they tend to focus on a few people and their role in the story. More than 1/3 of the 彼 were in the first chapter, for example, and another one later on (haven’t read it yet) was very heavy on the 彼女. The rest were more equally spread, but I’m not going to do a chapter by chapter analysis.
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Tanuki Den (aka Homepost): Date 20220512 
Tanuki Scroll XLII: テングを説きふせた男 
Read today’s folktale from Toyama prefecture! About a tengu and some lumberjacks.
Japanese found in the tall grass
New Things
途端「とたん」ー Just now; at this moment; in the act of
突風「とっぷう」ー Gust of wind; blast of wind
仕業「しわざ」ー A deed or act, especially a bad one
神通力「じんつうりき」ー Supernatural power; divine power; magical power
Places
黒部市「くろべし」ー Kurobe City, Toyama prefecture
Kanji Form
天狗「てんぐ」ー The kanji for Tengu, don’t think I’ve looked up the kanji for these before.
算盤「そろばん」ー The kanji for abacus/soroban
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Hello there, I’m squarefairy. 
I hope you enjoy the リリアーネ book!
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I read four pages of “Hikoichi and the Flower Viewing”. Hikoichi gets “the short straw” and has to carry all the food for the Lord and the retainers out to the viewing area. The retainers laugh at Hikoichi because he has the heaviest items to carry. When the Lord is ready to return to the castle later, after viewing the cherry blossoms and eating, Hikoichi suggests they go back the long way to see more of the beautiful blossoms. What will happen next?
New Vocabulary and grammar:
と question marker, “said”
な sentence ender indicating emotion or emphasis
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Yesterday I grazed from a random manga to be able to check the box.
Today I read more of the next booklet in lvl 4, vol 3, Ask graded reader called 四十七人の侍, plus a few more pages.
I reread the first page of the actual story (the booklet starts with a little history) because when I first read it there were a few words I didn’t know and I was too tired to look them up, so while I got a very, very vague idea of what was happening, I didn’t get the details. So today I looked up the few words (3-4) I needed and my understanding went from just the gist to basically complete understanding. And that only because I looked up a few words. Funny how important a few words can be sometimes.
So first “chapter”, this story is divided into chapters a few pages each (guess on my part that all are about as long as the first chapter), sets up our antagonist (Kira) as a petty guy who will happily ruin someone for not giving a good enough gift. I predict that the next chapter will have our victim (Asano) forced to do the thing everyone knows will happen (well if you know of the historical event that this booklet is telling), or that it will be decided he has to do it.
In either case, I don’t know if we will meet our protagonist (Ooishi) next chapter, or the one after, but I look forward to that moment. I only know a facts only told version from (English) Wikipedia several years back, so it will be fun to see a narrative telling of the historical events.
So uhmmm, will anyone be mad if I don’t even blur the spoilers to this retelling of a historical event?
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May 12th!
Chapter 61 of Yotsuba today. This chapter had a lot of really beautiful artwork so I really enjoyed it. Only one more chapter left in this volume too 
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Day 42: May 12th
What did I read?: クマとカラス
How much did I read?: 7 pages
How long did it take me?: 21 min
Jeez, I was really not feeling it today either. This chapter was felt exponentially harder than anything I’ve read in recent memory for some reason - it was mostly centered on some humans who were (I think) looking for bears, to conserve them? Or something? I couldn’t remember or didn’t know like any of the words they were using, so it was like back to the dictionary every other word, it felt like 
Not here for that today. At least there was a nice cute picture at the end.
A couple words from the mabillion I had to look up
- 長いこと (ながいこと) - for a long time
- 見なす (みなす) - to consider as; to regard (as equivalent); to deem (as); to equate
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Today I read 9000 characters! 
. Some of this definitely just involves reading longer, but I’m seeing progress all the same. Even now I’m not really worn out like the reading was too hard or anything, just been at it long enough that it feels like a good time to quit.
And on a vague cliffhanger, because not long ago I got locked into the route for good, and right as I was quitting it did this day transition it normally does, but the picture became vaguely spokier (that sorta lighting and filter is unusual) and it did that to the number. It’s really minor, but that day transition page has been a constant for me for the past several months so I appreciate it as a little thing haha.
Overall, Summer Pockets seems to really be repeating the words I’ve learned from it right now. Reading doesn’t feel too bad and I can appreciate how in individual sentences I hit like 5 words that were all learned in the past from this game. Nice to feel that progress. I also hit double N1 grammar today! も同然だ (もどうぜんだ) means “just like,” and is really barely distinct from learning a new vocab word. ならでは requires at least a bit more thought with how parts are structured around it – it means things along the lines of “distinctive of; uniquely applying to.”
And an amusing new word: 食っちゃ寝 (くっちゃね), living idly, like just eating and sleeping.
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Day 41
- ジョジョの奇妙な冒険
start-26
I got too into reading last night. I was pretty busy in the evening and then as I was laying down to sleep, I realized I hadn’t read yet 
Compound nice scenes with my favorite character and not too difficult reading, and I wanted to keep going. It was about 2am though… I convinced myself to stop after a battle lol. Cognitive functions definitely not at 100% today…
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