📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2021 🏖🏖

Japanese Language Reading
#742
Long reply in return

Oh yes, I completely forgot - the コナン light novel also had a ridiculous amount of onomatopoeia, sorry. :sweat_smile: Might just be standard for light novels? No? I hope not

I don’t think me being a fan had that much of an effect on my perception of the difficulty since I’ve read the manga in English. All of the Japanese vocabulary specific to the series was pretty new to me as well. I do get the sheer terror of trying to get into the series though since it’s at what, 99 volumes right now? :skull: And it’s not perfect - I only got into the series 3-4 years ago and there were plenty of moments where I had to remind myself that this was written 20+ years ago when sexual harassment among other things was apparently okay.

Not really; even though the novel itself is indeed about one murder case the characters and their dynamic would make zero sense for somebody who is not familiar with the series. Sorry if I got your hopes up. :sweat_smile:

Oh wow, really? I just went straight for the manga since I wasn’t certain I would be able to read it. According to Natively it’s the same difficulty as the 夏目友人帳 light novel which doesn’t bode well for me. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: Still, now I’m wondering if I should still give it a try and switch to the light novel… :thinking:

I get what you mean - reading a light novel that is close enough to my level where I don’t have to look up 10+ words per page would be the dream. Thanks for mentiong 乙女ゲーム though, I think I’ll give it a try and hopefully it will be a pleasant read for me as well. :slight_smile:

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#743

:wolf: woof :wolf:

I wonder if there is a werewolf page :thinking:

… seems sadly there isn’t, there’s one for it in Chinese: 狼人, guess it’s written the same in Japanese too. (Yay, newly learnt word!)

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#744

Main post

Day 29 :ballot_box_with_check:
Satori Reader: The River Sanzu, Episode 7.

:eyes:

Tomorrow.

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#745

Wiki post

June 29 Update

Today I decided to take it easy and just catch up with the ハイキュー！！ book club reading. This manga has become significantly easier to read, even when looking words up (took about 45 min with looking things up and updating the vocab sheet), so I’m hoping the next volume can be at a faster pace if everyone agrees.

I’m not currently keeping up with any other book clubs, and the next book club I’m interested in doesn’t start until the end of August, so I guess the next couple of months is a great time to push myself to reach my own reading goals. Unsure when the next intermediate book club will start, but I’m hoping to have finished 君の名は by then (I say, without having started it at all, and still having a pile of other books I want to finish).

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#746

Summary post

Day 29: June 29th
What did I read?: いつでもサメーズ
How much did I read?: 4 pages
How long did it take me?: 6 min

I’m honestly really upset at how little mental energy I have for reading today :disappointed: I wanted to read more of ふたりのライオン so badly but I knew I wasn’t really going to enjoy it because of how fried my brain is. Four pages of sharks feels like a cop-out, but I didn’t want to not read anything and break the streak entirely because I’ve noticed that when I do streak-based things and I break the streak, I break it really hard. Like I don’t break my streak and pick back up the next day, I break my streak and pick back up after like…a week or two maybe, if we’re lucky. If we’re not, it could be months, or it could be never. :woman_shrugging: I’m bad at that. (And I feel like the period of not picking back up gets longer in proportion to how long my streak was…long streak = long break). So this counts, I’m counting it. I had a feeling this would happen some day during the challenge and the day is here lol.

One of the pages today was ベッドの日, which is exactly the type of holiday I would like to celebrate right now. I am exhausted.

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#747

Oh hey it’s me!

I’m currently crawling through on 1 ~difficult~ (non-trivial) panel a day to avoid breaking my streak and falling into that pit.

Any progress is still progress (this is what I keep telling myself).

and while I’m here… progress update
Home post

  • June 29th からかい上手の高木さん chapter 4 page 12 panel 2

Today’s mind blowing moment:
The manga panel was そういえば、どこかでそんなコトお聞いた覚えが。。。
Without looking anything up, I was able to work it out except for 覚えが, which I could pretty much infer from context and/or the rest of the sentence.
I hadn’t encountered どこか before, but I had seen いつ、いつか、だれ、だれか and was able to make a guess. This felt like a huge win, I’m very happy with my progress from this reading.

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#748

Just noticed you are reading it – this is a great story, I loved it!

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#749

Day 2 (June 30)

Read:
気のきいた短いメールが書ける本（Points 9-13, 10 pgs)
ベルセルク（９巻）21 pages

Read during lunch and at the library after work.

Did you know you in some email systems you can remove the quoted text when you reply? Gmail doesn’t have that setting unless you use extensions, so I never knew. The book said that some people think it’s best to change your settings to not send the quoted text, while other people say there’s no need to remove it (just a holdover from when computers had smaller data capacity).

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#750

Main post

I know I should be reading more… But any reading is better than no reading :sweat_smile:
Anyway, today I’ve read:

  • Today’s NHK Easy News.
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#751

Yesterday I had to get up early. I was tired the whole day and didn’t read anything.

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#752
Another reply

There’s always some amount of onomatopoeia, but I never saw such large quantities as in Zenitendō anywhere else. :upside_down_face:

Oh well, was worth checking!

There’s always a sample available in case of such doubts ^ _ ^

I think that Natively has too many things with the 20-30 score and isn’t using the whole range. There’s also only 1 point of difference between HameFura and Zenitendō :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway, HameFura also doesn’t have furigana, but most of the sentences are straightforward and it’s very repetitive. Especially the 1st volume where every chapter is told both from the カタリナ and the relevant kid perspective. I know they skipped this double POV thing in anime, so I assuming that manga did the same (?).

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#753

Main Post

Started volume 10 of Yotsuba and read the first three chapters. Past volumes typically had an event to look forward to, but that’s not the case here as I have read ahead a little. Although it is kinda nice to enjoy lots of different things again each at their own pace.

chapter 63

Playing with Dad is always a good time, as they have a good dynamic. Yotsuba is great at making up weird games to play. And Ena joining is just a nice way to wrap it up. Really like this panel where he watches them practice headings (ヘディング) or as yotsuba calls it ヘリング.

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chapter 64

Yotsuba already made cake before, but now it was pancake time. Very good chapter.

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chapter 65

Has been a while since Jumbo visited. Wholesome and cute chapter. Liked how they play zoo with the stickers. Yotsuba played so much she was trying to fight off sleep, but ultimately gave in when Jumbo was leaving.

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#754

:heavy_check_mark: Day 5
June 30

  • 魔界戦記ディスガイア6 (15-1 → The End)

Finished! It’s my 4th Disgaea game I have played in Japanese, but the first where I didn’t need to consult English version of cut-scenes using youtube.
Or rather I couldn’t because the English version wasn’t out yet, but it also wasn’t out when I tried to play Disgaea 5 in 2015 and I had to give up after a few chapters and wait for the English release.
This time I finally felt comfortable with my scope of understanding. Progress! 6 years have passed, but progress.

some Disgaea details

I always thought that Disgaea games are nice for learners, because plot parts are clearly divided and it’s soothing for me to know where I will need to focus my attention and where it will be plain fighting. Of course, that assumes that one is okay with UI elements.
As for genre, these are SJRPG, so something similar to Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem series. Stylistically, they are similar in tone to something like Danganronpa (recently reviewed by @rodan), with over-the-top, highly colored characters build with exaggerated tropes. Though of course different gameplay.
I think I like all the entries in the Disgaea series, some more, some less, but there wasn’t so far any that I disliked. 6 in my opinion is somewhere in the middle of my person ranking. It’s true that there were some elements which got cropped out and it’s a little shame, but then, the optional mechanics in this game are very lavish and I usually ended up not fully using every one of them anyway. Same with the postgame which I mentioned some posts ago that I don’t do – and which can take up hundreds of hours.
But of course I realize that leaving out some of the established things is a bummer to others.
On the other side, some people say you don’t play Disgaea for the plot, but I honestly like these plots, silly and garish as they are.

Eventually I want to do all the series in Japanese (and replay 5), but that’s for the future. For now, I’m continuing with Rune Factory 5, but since it’s less intellectually demanding (although I sometimes do hide from events, when my brain is too tired, and I only want to take care of my crops) I’m also gonna continue to read HameFura. Right now I’m at the 4th volume. Which actually feels amazing by the way, reaching a 4th volume in a series. I sometimes look at that number on the cover and still can’t believe it.

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#755

Read another story in 10分で読める物語二年生, it has a partial bookclub here on the forums. I read the whole thing despite there being quite a few words I didn’t know the meaning of and I couldn’t really figure it out from context either. Like I could figure out what was happening, but not how, if that makes sense. xD

So when I checked the forum, I got the complete understanding of how the story happen, not only what it was about. ^^

EDIT: Today is also the last day of June, so I ended up reading 14 days out of 30. Considering I think I read 0 times in May and previous months before that, I am ecstatic!

Such a huge success! I finished off a graded reader and a manga volume I started last year (yes I’ve been reading that little!) and I started a couple of new things. :slight_smile:

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#756

:ballot_box_with_check: Day 30

:sparkles:A WHOLE MONTH!:sparkles: That’s seriously wild.

Today I read half of chapter 16 in カラフル、the preface of my next book ぼくはイエローでホワイトで、ちょっとブルー, and I took a mock JLPT N3 exam (I’m counting the reading section here haha).

After just a month of reading everyday, I’ve noticed such a big difference. I heard to pass the reading sections for the JLPT 2 and 1 you need to be able to skim-read. Before, I couldn’t imagine ever having enough Japanese ability to do that. But today I was able to scan through quickly and accurately, and even had extra time to review all my answers!

Cheering for all of you guys, that you reach your goals too!

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#757
  • Watched 【Minecraft】霊夢のからくり生活 PART4～ブレイズバーナー【ゆっくり実況】

At this point I’m quite familiar with common Minecraft lingo. First time it took me awhile to figure out that ネザー is nether and not some usual onomatopoeia

  • Finished 4 more pages of IBC’s coffee.

Had once again to lookup 退, it uses the most unintuitive stroke order.
Also I knew 退! I met it twice. Once in WK lessons, once in Minecraft video where it was used as part of the word “strategic retreat”.

Going to nap, I still want to progress with Forbidden Scrollery.
ETA:127/153. Less than 10 pages, but close enough.

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#758

29.6.
I read a section or so of 私の押しは悪役令嬢。 A whopping 2% of the book! :joy:

30.6
Read some more of it. That book is such an example of light novel ness, I guess it’s the easy option. I’ve been putting off some book club stuff… Another day. :see_no_evil:

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#759

Summary post
June 30

・Read SAO 8. (p237 → p250) I was planning to do a super read, but was too sleepy. Did not go according to keikaku :durtle_durtverted_lvl1:

Translator’s note: keikaku means plan

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#760

Summary post

As others have said - it feels so cool to have done a month of reading every day! idk how much of this is in my head but I do feel like there has already been a bit of a shift in my reading stamina. At the start of the month I set my goal at one chapter manga or 2 pages novel because those felt like fairly challenging goals, whereas the last week or so I’ve regularly been reading 3-4 chapters of manga a day and finding it pretty comfortable (granted, some of those days were weekends).

Going into July, I need to consider if I want to rework my goals at all. One choice would be to try to focus on reading more prose as I’m currently only reading kikis at a fairly slow pace and big blocks of text still seem pretty intimidating to me. Or I could just keep reading a bunch of manga and perhaps up my per day chapter goal. Just now I’m leaning towards sticking with manga for the reason that two of the series I’m reading just now (ハイキュー and 鬼滅の刃) have light novel series (that I think are kind of incidental stories to the manga), both of which have first volumes set not too far from where I am in the manga now. Given that (I hope) I should go into those with the advantage of decent familiarity from reading multiple manga volumes - my current plan is to focus on getting to that point and then try reading one of those! Which would probably mean manga for this month and then focusing on whatever light novel I pick next month (because why stop at two haha)

This has also been my experience. I’d be interested to see what the general consensus is on speeding up! i have no self control so fairly often end up reading on to the next chapter anyway :sweat_smile:

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#761

I continued to read the first volume of the アポカリプスの砦 manga. The protagonist was put into jail for a crime he didn’t commit. What he doesn’t know the outside world is attacked by zombies. Dude should better stay in prison lol.

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