📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2021 🏖🏖

[Redglare]

@rikaiwisdom

Extreme Summer 2021 Challenge: make a 1000-piece puzzle of your reading material and read it afterwards; can’t check the day otherwise.

omg, I would need 40 hours a day

@rikaiwisdom

You probably know already, but have you checked out Takoboto? Many people including myself like it and I’m not sure how long exactly the search history goes, but mine seems to exceed way more than 30 words. Can export to Anki, save custom lists, etc. I’m not aware if it can be used offline though!

I’m mentioning this because if I remember correctly I didn’t like the Jisho android app myself but this one has been my go-to for bilingual dictionaries on the phone.

Never heard of Takoboto, but sounds like a great recommendation I don’t use Anki (anymore) though, and if the app doesn’t work offline I prefer using Jsho. The names are similar, but I think Jisho is a different app.

@valkow Cool to hear that you like it too! Anki got a bit too complicated for a non-techie like me with all its customization and stuff So now, my go-to SRS program is Koohi. Even if the book I’m reading doesn’t have a vocab list on there (yet), I can still add words through the Reader → Search function, so that’s what I’ve been doing

[Axazel]

Day 14

Today was reading with my friend! We finished the last chapter In volume 1 of ふしぎ駄菓子銭天堂, a very charming book. Definitely gonna buy the next time to keep reading. Much, much easier compared to カラフル、so it feels like a “break” to be able to just sit back and read.

One fun phrase from today was:
目を白黒させる = To dart ones eyes about

[maykeye]

Read 4 more pages of forbidden scrollery and watched two more episodes of マイクラ借金返済物語

Word of the day is ごくごく 1. [adv] extremely; highly. Art style in Forbidden Scrollery is not very consistent. Sometimes it’s very pretty, sometimes the panel looks like a simple doodle.

[Natsuha]

I was bored today so I finished レンタルおにいちゃん manga vol.1. Thus I finished my second manga volume during this challenge, but there is still much more to read. I probably have enough to read until summer 2030.

[momoni]

Main

June 13
Had free time to read but little energy to do so, so I only read 13 pages of 名探偵コナン.

June 14
Once again low on energy so read 10 pages of 名探偵コナン. I’m currently on page 69 of the book and have saved exactly 600 expressions/words/grammar to my コナン vocab list. I think I’m going to finish the whole book before going over the list and deciding what to add to SRS - hopefully some things will have stuck by then from the constant repetition from reading them. Despite having to look up a lot of items per page I am actually really happy with this book - the author reuses expressions and vocabulary often, the spoken Japanese is modern and with the amount of onomatopoeia used I should come out of this with having learned at least a couple of them.

I’m also wondering if I should try and finish コナン before buying the next volume of 乙女ゲーム. I’m horrible when it comes to actually finishing books and setting this limit seems like an excellent motivator to actually finish the things I already have instead of constantly buying new books…

[Redglare]

Summary post

June 14 Two weeks already
・Read the rest of YuruCamp vol 8. Lots of names of places, but no furigana as usual.

・Read 30 pages of SAO 7. (p 160 → 190) Found one of the kanji I consider a leech of mine in the word 変哲(へんてつ). Can rarely remember if the reading is てつ or ざん because I mix it up with 暫 and probably another one, but I can’t remember… That’s the thing with leeches, can’t remember.

・I was going to read Subete ga F ni Naru, but it’s getting late and I’m too sleepy now. Getting closer to the end, so when I see that there’s activity in this week’s thread I want focus on reading this one tomorrow so I can follow the discussion (without getting spoiled)

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Unrelated: I re-subscribed to BunPro (it’s been half a year since last time). Thought there was going to be a huge backlog of reviews, but was only 18. Was thinking it’s easier to get familiar with and review N1 grammar on there rather than buying the Shinkanzen grammar book because shipping is expensive and I feel like I’m not done with the N2 grammar book yet. I’ll probably get around to it when I feel like I’d get a good score on the N2 exam, though I’m in no hurry.

[rikaiwisdom]

Main post

Day 14
Satori Reader: Kiki-Mimi Radio, Episode 19.

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The challenge is going great so far. The new Intermediate Book Club book is starting this week and the challenge has given me momentum for that so I will be reading just a little bit more in a few days.

I’m also going to be trying Bookwalker for the first time so we’ll see how that goes.

[windupbird]

Summary post

Day 14: June 14th
What did I read?: サメーズ -サメとアザラシ-
How much did I read?: 20 pages
How long did it take me?: 33 min

Today was not a high effort day. Like, in any way. Honestly don’t really have the energy to write up a thing. But I’ve stuck with the challenge for 2 weeks And already finished off 2 manga volumes (soon to be 3!). I bought some more manga from Amazon Japan last week…they came today but they’re all the way downstairs and honestly I’m not going to put on normal clothes again today. So I will retrieve them tomorrow xD

[Naphthalene]

Today was crazy in many ways. I didn’t really have time to read much, just 2% of かくりよの宿飯 3 after crashing in bed…

[sansarret]

June 14. Time: 30 min. Manga Pages: 2
What: Manga からかい上手の高木さん (Volume 1), current pick of ABBC. Chapter 7, Page 15-16.

Done with weekly reading for te club! Encountered interesting expression:
もうカンベンしてよ which I loosely translated as “Give me a break!” in the context.

[sycamore]

Summary

June 14 update
Had work and then a family birthday yesterday meaning that I wasn’t free to do anything Japanese until about 11pm. I was tired and thought that I might have to skip a day but then remembered the littleよつばと bookclub I’m in is starting again this weekend！I read the first chapter of よつばと３ in…10/15 minutes or something, and there were only maybe three words I didn’t know and will have to go and look up before the book club this weekend, and none of them were essential to know what was going on. It felt like such a welcome break after all the other more challenging things I’ve been reading recently. Also, よつばと is always a fun time - it’s the only manga I’ve found so far that (to my tastes & current reading ability) is that easy to read while also really engaging and funny.

[d-hermit]

I haven’t written an update since Friday. I guess I wasn’t focusing too much on reading lately.

However, even on a day I came close to skipping I still thought it wouldn’t be right and read a few pages

June 12-14 2021

• was reading 蜘蛛ですが、なにか？5 for 15-20 mins before bed and read 2 pages every day.
• the language is an interesting combination of colloquial language and slang as well as stiff archaic expressions.
• it’s not a difficult read in general but it’s difficult to look up stuff when I need, because many slang expressions aren’t available in a dictionary.

Interesting things I learned

• 〜致し方ない you can probably guess that it’s a more archaic/formal way to say 仕方ない. But I decided to ask a Japanese tutor about it and he said that it’s curious why a stiff expression like this is used by a character who otherwise speaks very casually. He says that this expression really draws attention to itself, so it was probably used to highlight the sentence. Pretty interesting, right? As a learner I could understand the meaning of the sentence but understanding why it was written this way was beyond me.
• こちとら It’s an old 1st person pronoun that has a similar feeling to 俺 but generally older. A tutor said he thinks a samurai would use it for example.
• 〜パない that’s a slang form of 半端ない

(Back to summary post)

[trunklayer]

Today I’ve read:

• Today’s NHK Easy News.
• Some more はたらく細胞 light novel. Finished reading first chapter. Started second chapter. Reached page 43.

[Belerith]

14.6.
Yesterday I read a couple more chapters of 妖怪の子預かります and the rest of chapter 3 of リゼロ l had left. Oh, and a few pages of 使ってはいけない日本語.

Nothing yet today~

[NicoleRauch]

June 13th and 14th: Read and finished this week’s chapter of すべてがFになる. As expected, that was the most intense chapter so far, and it pulled me along quite nicely.

June 14th and 15th: Back to my 理髪店 book and onto the third story (called 遠くから来た手紙). Am now about halfway through and on a very high level it seems to be a similar story as the others (looking back on one’s life) but it’s always a different setting and so each story is still different. By now I wonder whether all the stories will be like that…

[Thud]

Main post

Read more of Yotsuba volume 8 today, chapter 50 to be precise. It’s nice to reach a milestone and then look back and see I have read quite a bit already.

chapter 50

Was a fun little chapter. Yotsuba takes eating outside at a restaurant quite seriously.

[TheCatgirlMunch]

@maykeye

Forbidden Scrollery

Another manga for my list, thank you

[Axazel]

Day 15

Finished reading chapter 6 of カラフル！ This chapter was kind of a cool off from the drama in chapter 5. At the tail end there’s a nice set up for the next chapter though, so I’m really excited to keep going

I fiiiinally went back and started looking up the words I didn’t know.

My favorites:

• 我武者羅がむしゃら = reckless, daredevil, frantic
• 往復おうふくビンタ = Double slap in the face (with one being delivered via a backhand)
• 引き千切るひきちぎる = Tear off
• 素早いすばやい = (1)Quick (to understand), (2) prompt, nimble

[Zakarius]

Over the past few days I have been on a quest for to find forbidden Japanese lore… but I have succumbed to failure (main post: Captain’s Log, it’s not that exciting, I just wanted to be dramatic).

But then I found this to read:

This is going to amuse me for days

[KazeTachinu]

So far

June 01: かがみの孤城 上 (63 pages)
June 02: かがみの孤城 上 (20 pages)
June 03: かがみの孤城 上 (90 pages)
June 04: かがみの孤城 上 (40 pages) + 日の鳥１ (10 pages)
June 05: かがみの孤城 上 (112 pages)
June 06: かがみの孤城 上 (69 pages) ~ Finished

June 07: かがみの孤城 下 (170 pages) ~ 48%
June 08: かがみの孤城 下 (81 pages) ~ 68%
June 09: かがみの孤城 下 (116 pages) ~ Finished
June 10: がばいばあちゃんの幸せのトランク (136 pages) ~ 50% + 日の鳥１(17 pages)

New:
June 11: がばいばあちゃんの幸せのトランク (53 pages) ~ 69%
June 12: がばいばあちゃんの幸せのトランク (85 pages) ~ Finished
June 13: きよしこ (16 pages) ~ 5%
June 14: 風立ちぬ (5 pages ~ 25%) + きよしこ (29 pages ~ 15%)
June 15: 風立ちぬ (36 pages ~ 56%) + ???

1. Finished がばいばあちゃんの幸せのトランク on a train ride. This book was so much fun I just breezed through it!
2. I started 鹿の王 on the train back, but found the beginning pretty exhausting with all the politics and biology talk. I’ll give it another try when I’m more focused.
3. Started きよしこ, this will be my book for the week.
4. Continued 風立ちぬ after a 2-week break and finally got into a groove! I really love Tatsuo Hori’s prose:

私達はそういう日は、いつもと少しも変らない日課の魅力を、もっと細心に、もっと緩慢に、あたかも禁断の果実の味をこっそり偸みでもするように味わおうと試みたので、私達のいくぶん死の味のする生の幸福はその時は一そう完全に保たれた程だった。

Will probably finish this in the next couple of days!

Maybe my plans were too ambitious, but I also have 6 volumes of manga I’m planning to read. We’ll see how that’ll work out.