📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2021 🏖🏖

Japanese Language Reading
#631

:ballot_box_with_check: Day 22

I finished chapter 10 of カラフル、and went back to look up the words I had highlighted while reading!

The words that stood out:
  • 波乱万丈はらんぼんじょう = Stormy and full of drama, twists and turns
  • 煙けむたがる = to dislike the company of (someone), consider (someone) to be a nuisance. Also literally sensitive to smoke.
  • 世間せけん = Society, the world – unusual reading for 間
  • 真っ只中まっただなか = right in the midst of
  • 緑青色ろくしょういろ = Grean-blue color – unusual reading! But the ろく for 緑 reminds me of 録
  • 木漏れ日こもれび = Sunlight filtering through the trees --another unusual reading, this time for 木
10 Likes
#632
So far

:ballot_box_with_check: June 01: かがみの孤城 上 (63 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 02: かがみの孤城 上 (20 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 03: かがみの孤城 上 (90 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 04: かがみの孤城 上 (40 pages) + 日の鳥１ (10 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 05: かがみの孤城 上 (112 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 06: かがみの孤城 上 (69 pages) ~ Finished
:ballot_box_with_check: June 07: かがみの孤城 下 (170 pages) ~ 48%
:ballot_box_with_check: June 08: かがみの孤城 下 (81 pages) ~ 68%
:ballot_box_with_check: June 09: かがみの孤城 下 (116 pages) ~ Finished
:ballot_box_with_check: 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)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 11: がばいばあちゃんの幸せのトランク (53 pages) ~ 69%
:ballot_box_with_check: June 12: がばいばあちゃんの幸せのトランク (85 pages) ~ Finished
:ballot_box_with_check: June 13: きよしこ (16 pages) ~ 5%
:ballot_box_with_check: June 14: 風立ちぬ (5 pages ~ 25%) + きよしこ (29 pages ~ 15%)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 15: 風立ちぬ (36 pages ~ 56%) + きよしこ (56 pages ~ 35%)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 16: きよしこ (30 pages) ~ 45% + やさしさいっぱいの土の上で (manga, 1 chapter)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 17: きよしこ (68 pages) ~ 68% + やさしさいっぱいの土の上で (4 chapters ~ Finished)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 18: きよしこ (44 pages) ~ 83%

New:
:ballot_box_with_check: June 19: きよしこ (48 pages) ~ Finished + とつくにの少女 Vol. 2+3
:ballot_box_with_check: June 20: 風立ちぬ (8 pages) + とつくにの少女 Vol. 4
:ballot_box_with_check: June 21: 風立ちぬ (26 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 22: 風立ちぬ (16 pages) + ?

I’m done with 風立ちぬ! This definitely was a good read, although it feels like I need to do a bit of background reading to fully appreciate the last third. I really liked the poetic writing style, although sentences tended to be long. Feels like half of the book were descriptions of nature, though. I definitely learned a bunch of old grammar & kanji spellings, but overall it wasn’t too hard to read.

I’ve also read とつくにの少女 Vol. 2-4. I just love the art, it’s one of the most beautiful styles I’ve ever seen in manga. I could look at the cover art for ages.

What’s next?
I’ll read Yoshimoto Banana’s ムーンライト・シャドー in the next couple of days. It’s only 50-60 pages, so that should be quick. In the meantime I’ll also work on my manga backlog. My next long read will probably be Murakami’s 世界の終りとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド if I’m in the right mood, or a non-fiction book.

10 Likes
#633

Finished this week’s IBC and several more pages of Forbidden Scrollerly (51/153, 33.33%, nice). IBC became much easier to read in second half as there were a lot of repetitions.

Reimu has especially interesting face on the page I've stopped reading

image

10 Likes
#634

June 22. Time: 30 min. Manga Pages: 3
What: Manga からかい上手の高木さん (Volume 1), current pick of ABBC. Chapter 8, Page 11-13.

Yesterday, missed another day of the challenge :rage:

11 Likes
#635

Main post

June 21
Satori Reader - 恋人 31-35

June 22
Satori Reader - 恋人 36-40

For two days in a row, I thought I was too tired to read much but ended reading more than I had planned :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
I am at a point in the story where interesting things are happening and I don’t want to stop reading. It’s the first time this is happening since I started reading in Japanese \o/
Also I feel like this story is becoming easier to read, I don’t know is it’s because this part of the story is objectively easier to read or if it’s me that is making progress, but well, that’s nice !

I also recognized some grammar points I learnt this past month, and also lots of kanji I can finally read without furigana. This is very motivating :muscle:

15 Likes
#636

Summary post
June 22

・Started SAO 8. (p. 12 → 48) Seems like this 400 page thicc book has 3 stories :eyes: The first few pages were hilarious - lots of grumbling from Kirito and his silly Shakespeare-esque style of retelling one of the scenes right down to characters having lines as if in a play and the old fashioned use of language. 曰(いわ)く、之(これ)、 汝(なんじ) etc. Was just half a page, but I loved it.

・Also read one chapter of Honzuki 5. (30% → 33%) Lots of very specific words about the methods, tools and ingredients. I think I’d more enjoy watching rather than reading about this :thinking:

Finally added some words from SAO 7 to Koohi. Now I have 98 lessons waiting, hehe…

12 Likes
#637

Main post

Day 22 :ballot_box_with_check:
Satori Reader: The River Sanzu, Episode 2.

Lazy day, but worked through an episode nonetheless.

12 Likes
#638

Summary post

Day 22: June 22nd
What did I read?: いつでもサメーズ
How much did I read?: 14 pages
How long did it take me?: 35 min

I thought this was going to be easy and quick like the other shark books have been, but then I ended up looking up goroawase for a while so it took way more time than I anticipated xD I feel like I learned something though, I’d heard of goroawase but I hadn’t really looked into it/how it works that much, so that was kind of fun. ^^ Also learned some random historical facts, so that’s cool too.

11 Likes
#639

Main post

Today I’ve read:

  • Today’s NHK Easy News.
10 Likes
#640

Main post

Started reading volume 9 of Yotsuba. Already off to a great start after reading the first three chapters and the next few chapters also seem fun.

chapter 56

Like the continuation with the candy inside the dream. Poor dad did nothing wrong. Yotsuba runs a very tight schedule and that’s exactly when things turn chaotic when something intervenes.

chapter 57

Super adorable chapter where Yotsuba gets to pick her own stuffed animal. Duralumin is a very cute teddy bear, which yotsuba can’t pronounce correctly. Dad also got his “toy” coffee machine.

chapter 58

Dad finally got his good quality coffee. Yotsuba tried some and didn’t like it, just like me. Love how she goes showing Duralumin to the neighbors and also uses a proper introduction lol. Mom giving the little cart just makes it perfect and poor Fuuka didn’t get to have any coffee for studying. Luckily Yotsuba bounces back fast and plays along with Ena, it’s all good fun.

13 Likes
#641

Forbidden Scrollery. 61/153 completed. At this rate I’ll need couple of weeks to finish it.

9 Likes
#642

Summary post
June 23

・Read two chapters of Honzuki 5. (33% → 39%) I can’t wait for this part of the book to get done, it’s kinda boring 0:

@rikaiwisdom I decided to check out Takoboto for real, and the phone app works offline after all :3 I like the word lists, named one “Add to Koohi”. Cool tiny details like entries for verbs that are marked with を or が to mark transitivity / intransitivity, pitch accent and even has audio! Great app :+1: Again, thanks for the suggestion :grin:

13 Likes
#643

Hey I’m so glad it was useful! :relaxed: It has been a long time since I tried Jsho but I knew many people liked this one better for reasons that I couldn’t exactly point to.

I also have to thank you because I didn’t remember you could manually add words to Koohi and now I do :slight_smile: . I used it for a bit some months ago and I liked it but I have been using Anki lately just for adding context as well. Do you find that missing the context hinders you in some way, or do you do just fine and remember the nuance when you encounter it again? I’m asking because honestly, adding Anki cards is just plain boring and it somewhat keeps me from just relaxing when reading :stuck_out_tongue: . I like Satori Reader’s SRS because it adds the sentence you encountered it in, though it’s obviously possible because the texts are directly from their service.

6 Likes
#644

There have been quite a few words I’ve deliberately not added because I probably wouldn’t remember the context it was used in, so I kind of try to avoid that situation in the first place. I wonder how it’ll go with the lessons waiting from SAO 7 - is going to take at least a week to get through all of them so by then I might have forgotten the context… :grimacing: Usually it’s been fine, but for leeches I just for the life of me can’t remember I just delete them from my reviews. Will learn them later at some point anyway :3

6 Likes
#645

Thank you for your thoughts ^^ I think I’m going to give it a try, especially because with the IBC’s new book I find myself struggling quite a bit in a good way; many sentences are challenging and they really make me spend some time assimilating what is happening, and because I sometimes don’t understand many words, it takes a long time to digest, and by the time I do I’ve already forgotten part of the sentence. And on top of that, I spend a fair amount of time adding cards to Anki, and in the end it takes more than I’d like.

So I’m thinking that maybe by using Koohi instead, I can spend less time on Anki and more energy on actually reading. And then maybe I can use that remaining time for rereading and reviewing the few pages I read the previous day.

Am I really just looking for an excuse to not use Anki? :joy: I mean it’s pretty effective but damn is it boring to use…

5 Likes
#646

Summary

Updating for today and yesterday. Yesterday I was pretty busy so just read one chapter of ナルト. Today I read this weeks ハイキュー chapter for the bookclub. It might just be this weeks chapter but the chapter today was such a pleasant read. ハイキュー (as well as being a super fun manga that I love reading) has become a bit of a progress marker for me, as it was the first manga I tried reading in Japanese and I remember how challenging it was initially. It’s really nice that, while a more tricky chapter still does come along every once in a while, it does feel like a pretty comfortable read now :slight_smile:

12 Likes
#647

I bought that in English, and for some reason I just struggled to get into it. Part of that might be that I just never really had much interest in Touhou (and didn’t realise what it was when I bought it).

4 Likes
#648

Main post

Day 23 :ballot_box_with_check:
Satori Reader: The River Sanzu, Episode 3.

Lazy day, part 2. I have to finish this week’s IBC schedule; I’ll try to continue it tomorrow.

9 Likes
#649

:ballot_box_with_check: Day 23
:ballot_box_with_check: Day 24

Between yesterday and today I finished Chapter 11 in カラフル！ We’re 3/4 of the way through the book, and we’re seeing a breakthrough in the main character’s growth.

Chapter 10 and 11 had a lot of conversation with the main character’s father. I noticed I have a hard time understanding middle aged men’s language, though I don’t know why :sob: Anyone else have an age/gender demographic that is easy/hard to understand in Japanese?

Today's new words/phrases:
  • 三球三振さんきゅうさんしん = three strikes and out (Baseball and figuratively)
  • 噛かみ締しめる = lit. To chew on, fig. To reflect on
  • クラクション = a car horn
  • うらみ = resentment
10 Likes
#650

Summary post

Day 23: June 23rd
What did I read?: 不可解なぼくのすべてを Vol. 3
How much did I read?: 26 pages
How long did it take me?: 47 min

I didn’t really feel much like reading today tbh. Probably because I spent so much of my workday forcing myself to read other things that I really didn’t want to read :sweat_smile: But this chapter was so freaking cuteeeee! :hugs::blush::smiling_face_with_three_hearts: More Wデート please :3

13 Likes