I’m alive! I have over 200 messages to catch up on in this thread alone so I probably won’t I’ll just resume reading from here. I’m back from traveling (until next month ) so here’s where I’m at:
Tried reading 推し、燃ゆ on the plane, it was too hard for me to read without lookups. Need to get back to that.
Read two assignments of レベル７, both barely on time
Read a little bit of 死体は語る here and there
Felt worn out on plane ride back so no reading there
I also got some free used books, 柔らかな頬, １３階段, and 短篇集 少々官能的に (which I’m excited to see what ‘slightly erotic’ short stories are like ).
The book club for 告白 starts tomorrow so depending on how busy the rest of my day is I might try to get that reading done.
I only had a little reading time these two days, but I think I was also a bit exhausted from my かがみの孤城 sprint the day before, so rather pitiful progress. I think I’ll get back to it tomorrow.
April 23
神去なあなあ日常, 44-56%
Today I was still finding it hard to concentrate on reading even though I now did have time, and I realized it was because I was missing the audio. Who would have thought. Luckily 神去なあなあ日常 has a really good audiobook available, and it really enhanced the experience.
There were some parts in today’s reading about summer problems in nature, ticks and leeches among them, and I felt constantly itchy for a long time afterwards.
Spent the whole day reading! ウスズミの果て ended up having more dialogue than before, so I didn’t end up finishing it today. I’d still say it’s a quick read, but there’s a lot more text now.
Read a chapter of ふしぎ駄菓子屋 too. I’ve now come across the kanji 晶 in both ウスズミの果て and ふしぎ駄菓子屋 now so I was wondering if it’s on wanikani. Turns out I’m supposed to learn it this level. Based on this and 鬱 from yesterday I really need to start doing lessons lol
And then I ended the day with more 999. I’ve been switching back and forth between adventure and novel mode just to speed things up a bit but now that I’m a bit further along I’ll probably stick to novel mode
Seasons was about flowering dogwood. I don’t think I learned anything new other than the name, but it didn’t stick in my memory.
It was a great day for reading, I finally finished Part 2 of JoJo. I ended up asking some friends about how certain lines were translated out of curiosity and found out that both the scanlators and professional translators give some poor translations and skipped lines. The more I talk with English speaking fans, the more I feel like we really are reading different stories lol. I’ll probably take a short JoJo break in order to read a couple of chapters of a different manga for a book club. Possibly. Assuming the book club is meeting. I think I’ll try to convince them to talk atemporarily by typing.
I was looking up some titles for friends and ended up rereading one of my family friendly doujin lol.
二ノ国白き聖灰の女王
Played a little 二ノ国 and then got a monster head ache last night so I never posted. Just worked on a few side quests and leveled up party members.
April 23
日本語500問N3・pg 20
Going to try to do 5pg/day like it’s scheduled in the book and see how it goes.
日本語基本文法辞典・pg. 83
I think I’m going to start typing these out as I go through them, just so I’m not irritated by the romaji.It would be a waste to use whiteout or correction tape, but I’m sorely tempted to resort to that.
二ノ国白き聖灰の女王
More side quests and material collecting today. There are a LOT of side quests that opened up that I found after going back to the mainland.
Spent the last 2 days out of town in a place with pretty limited internet access, only just got back tonight and I’m exhausted
Read:
四月は君の噓 ch 26, 27, 28, done w volume 7! - thankfully these chapters were mostly easier, not a lot of lookups, but I did have to kind of move quickly through some sections that I definitely would’ve spent more time on if i’d had a better connection to look things up
Didn’t jot down any words, I did look some stuff up but it was on my phone and took ages to load the dictionary
I use Satori a lot, too! I’m reading Jam Maker at the moment. It took me a while to find my feet on Satori. Especially in the beginning I had a similar experience as you and it was helpful to start 4-5 different stories before choosing 1 to work all the way through. It feels great to finish a whole series and it gets easier after that!
Nice guess! If you’re wondering whether I’m albino, then I can tell you that’s not the case. I’m banana – yellow on the outside and white on the inside My mom is from the Philippines.
As for the username, I picked it back in 2019 for this account which is 2-3 years prior to me starting optometry studies. The name Redglare is from Homestuck
yeah, I kind of found it a balance between ease and interest. The first one I finished was Sakura and Suzuki if that helps. The story line isn’t something that would naturally draw me in, but I figured out it’s basically informal text chat between two people, and once I got halfway through it did capture my interest. Each episode is really short and it’s great for getting used to informal speech patterns (sooo helpful for reading manga later) Maybe the one about John in Tokyo will be similar and more interesting?
The other thing that helped me was to decide I’ll read these all again in the future because it takes the pressure off of having to “get it all” now. Then I don’t worry about needing to rely a lot on the translations. Especially early on, I would start by rereading (e.g., 2 episodes back and 8 episodes back). Each session I just tried to learn a few things, and over time when rereading episodes, I noticed that the earlier episodes were in fact getting easier.
Another thing that helped a lot was only making flashcards for the most common words (that I would reasonably come across again or use at my current level), and even then only words where the new word is the only unknown word in the sentence. It’s kinda a cool game, trying to find a few words/sentences in each episode that fit that criteria. I think doing that actually forces me to engage more with it and learn more than if I just willy nilly make loads of flashcards.
did the middle section of case three of 逆転検事, which took a little longer than it should have done cos i accidentally dropped my 3DS on its face towards the end of the first half and the whole thing froze game survived, thankfully, and if there wasn’t a fast forward function i think i would have given up for the day. oldbag also turned up, which was a pleasant surprise! had no hope of keeping up with her rambling stories tho, the text goes by too fast.
words that stood out: 蛍光灯 (fluorescent light), 全貌 (the full story, all the details, total picture), ダース (dozen. thankfully wasn’t written in kanji), and アジト (hideout, safehouse).
I’ll just resume reading from here. I’m back from traveling (until next month 
) so here’s where I’m at:
).
APRIL 23 2023 
ウスズミの果て ended up having more dialogue than before, so I didn’t end up finishing it today. I’d still say it’s a quick read, but there’s a lot more text now.
二ノ国白き聖灰の女王
April 23
日本語500問N3・pg 20
日本語基本文法辞典・pg. 83
My mom is from the Philippines.
game survived, thankfully, and if there wasn’t a fast forward function i think i would have given up for the day. oldbag also turned up, which was a pleasant surprise! had no hope of keeping up with her rambling stories tho, the text goes by too fast.