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.
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
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.
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~
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… 
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.
Another manga for my list, thank you
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 = reckless, daredevil, frantic
- 往復ビンタ = Double slap in the face (with one being delivered via a backhand)
- 引き千切る = Tear off
- 素早い = (1)Quick (to understand), (2) prompt, nimble
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 
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%) + ???
- 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!
- 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.
- Started きよしこ, this will be my book for the week.
- 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.
I’ve read 4 more pages of Forbidden Scrollery, which means 11% of all pages completed.
I’ve also read article linked by @trunklayer in Complaining is still a must thread.
Then someone from my work called me and I spend an hour debugging stuff, so I haven’t even watch YT today.
I feel like there’s a pun here that I’m not getting…
Summary post
June 15 Almost forgot to post an update 
As I promised myself yesterday, I focused on reading Subete ga F ni Naru today. (85% → 88%) Read 3 subchapters, so now I only have 4 left of this chapter. Had a hard time getting into reading mode today, I think it might be because re-subscribing to BunPro gave me extra stuff on my plate. Reviews take energy, grammar reviews even more so. Will be mindful and proceed with caution, reviewsを ほどほどに, so I don’t burn out 
(posting late)
June 15th からかい上手の高木さん chapter 4 page 6. A pretty simple page so really just a single panel which worked out well as I was pretty exhausted.
Starting later than most, but better late than never, right?
Goals:
- Keep up with 殺人出産 Book Club schedule
- Participate in Informal Nisio Isin Book Club
- Finally finish reading ヒトゴトですから！
June
| 週 | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 |
 ︎ |
︎ |
︎ |
︎ |
︎ |
︎ |
︎ |
| 21 |
︎ |
︎ |
︎ |
︎ |
︎ |
︎ |
|
| 28 |
July
| 週 | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ・ | ・ | ・ |
︎ |
|||
| 5 | |||||||
| 12 | |||||||
| 19 | |||||||
| 26 |
Updates
June 14/15: Finished reading and commenting on Week 7 of the 殺人出産 club. I think we finally reached the point where things are going to take a turn in the titular story. 
June 16~20: nothing but 殺人出産
June 21: coming up on the last few pages of 殺人
June 22: started クビキリサイクル; intimidated by the character list 
June 23~26: read bits of ヒトゴト and a 野崎くん fan book
June 27~30: missed reading anything in Japanese 
Day 15
Satori Reader: Kiki-Mimi Radio, Episode 20.
Another chill day. I’m enjoying this series so far. It only has 7 episodes left, then I will start another one but I don’t know which one yet.
I don’t log them here, but I might as well start logging video games. I’m kinda reluctant to log them as “reading”, and it is reading but they feel different than reading a book or other reading material somehow to me. But anyway, it’s absolutely crazy how fast and efficiently you can learn with something that you like a lot. I’m enjoyiing these Satori Reader stories but I’m not particularly crazy about them. But I’ve been thinking recently that the few times I’ve put Final Fantasy XIV in Japanese, I’ve already almost instantly learned some vocabulary because I’m really into the game and the words stick crazy fast. It’s been a couple weeks since I don’t play it in Japanese but I still remember the words that I learned those few days. Because of this I might consider starting to include video games as one of my main ways of studying through immersion, even though I only play just a very few of them at the moment.
I knew that learning through things you like a lot was recommended, but I would never have thought that it would be this much effective to the point that I can recall many of those words perfectly without the need of SRS after seeing them a couple times and remembering their kanji. Not to say that I’ve also learned some new kanji. If this keeps being the case over time I will definitely think of dropping SRSs for the time being. Although it’s very unrealistic to be this much interested in everything you come across so I’ll probably still keep it around for that. In fact I’ll probably mix both methods.
June 15. Time: 30 min. Children book, 2 pages
What: 霧のむこうのふしぎな町, pages 29-30, old pick of BC
Being done with this week book club assignment, I decide to try something else.
This was the first ever Japanese book I got, it was read by BC in 2020, and back then I only had about 5 levels of WK and zero grammar experience, so I dropped my attempts very quickly. It’s a lovely children fantasy book (I read English translation). What I like is that
- I definetely more comfortable reading aloud furigana and few kanji that this book has now as cvompared to a year ago.
- I knew all kanji (屋敷would be the most levelup ones).
- When sounding of furigana, I recognized a lot of vocab, including recenttly learned しばらく and 花柄のソファ.
What I’m missing most is the knowledge of plain kana-only words, and verb conjugations, which is not a surprise.
I think this book would be great for me to read now, not a year ago. But I’d rather read something with the club, and also not this particular story again.
Day 15: June 15th
What did I read?: 不可解なぼくのすべてを Vol. 3
How much did I read?: 2 chapters (50 pages)
How long did it take me?: 1 hour and 5 min (felt fast 
)
Felt very motivated to read today, much more than I expected - I credit the insanely delicious dinner I had for giving me life (gyudon + souffle pancakes with berries and custard 
Courtesy of a Japanese café that I didn’t know existed until today but now it’s low-key my favorite restaurant). Lots of happy good feelings in these chapters. Tetsu’s friends are great :3
Oh, and I got my manga xD
Choices mostly inspired by the forums~ (with a cameo appearance by my marimos)
Kind of a hodgepodge of things, now that I look at it lol
Now it’s time to slip into a food coma and fall asleep
Can’t agree with this more! I find (1)liking what I’m reading combined with (2)having context and emotion around the new vocab/grammer is what makes it stick for me. Still, I came to the same conclusion as you about mixing methods… I don’t enjoy reading about politics or accounting, so it’s probably better to have the SRS for that 
It’s such an amazing feeling, to finally be able to read something from long before :’) I’m planning on doing this here, after I finish カラフル, with Matsumoto Taiyo’s book ルーヴルの猫. Fingers crossed that I’m finally at the right level for it haha
June 15 Update
This is a very late night update. I had work stuff pop up yesterday all day, so I didn’t get a chance to read (or eat, or sleep - don’t be too hard on myself, future me!). I made up for that today by tackling chapter 3 of 進撃の巨人 all in one go. Boy was this a doozy. 123 unknown words over 46 pages which took approximately 3 hours to cover. This chapter was extremely text heavy as everyone seemed to have something to say (and wanted to squish their entire conversations into one page), and only about 10 low/no-text pages. This has been the most difficult manga I’ve read in a while – while my stamina is greater now, it took me back to when I first started reading ハイキュー！！ and how difficult and exhausting that was.
One more chapter left for this volume, and based on where I am in the story, I expect the next chapter to be slightly lighter in text (and heavier in concept). I seem to be running through my list of books to read fairly quickly at this point. Which is a weird thing to say. I usually find myself in the position of having too many books and not enough time to read any of them, but reading every day seems to actually create progress.