📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2021 🏖🏖

[Aislin]

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.

[MissDagger]

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.

[Axazel]

Day 30

A WHOLE MONTH! 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!

[maykeye]

• 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.

[Belerith]

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

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.

[Redglare]

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

Translator’s note: keikaku means plan

[sycamore]

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)

@BarelyFragile

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.

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

[Natsuha]

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.

[Belthazar]

@MissDagger

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 really gotta get around to reading the rest of that. Not entirely sure if it’s worth finishing off the book club thread, though…

[deejayyp]

Finished the first volume of ベルセルク, will buy the next one today maybe.

[phin]

I’m reading this series too!! How do you like it?

[deejayyp]

Pretty cool so far, violent as I expected. I’d watched some episodes of the anime about 5+ years ago so I can follow the story no problem. Now, word-wise I can’t understand everything cos some of the words are pretty archaic (makes sense considering the setting, however).

[phin]

Yeah, those archaic words slow me down too.

I’ve never watched the anime so I’m going in fresh! Do you recommend the anime too?

[deejayyp]

Didnt watch enough of it, but I’d say go for it. Just uh, watch the old version haha. The new version was made with CGI or something so it looks reaaally odd.

[phin]

Oh god yeah the new version was actually my first exposure to Berserk, and I hated it lol. Love the manga though, so maybe I’ll try the anime! Thanks~

[rikaiwisdom]

Main post

Day 30
コーヒーが冷めないうちに , 4 pages.

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One month!!! Congratulations to everyone that is participating; whether you have read just one day or everyday, you’ve done more than you had previous to this challenge. And if you’re not participating yet, join in! We still have another month ahead . I’ve been thinking, big shout out to @Redglare for the idea, it has motivated many of us to read more or in my case to plainly start reading. I’ve been thinking that perhaps we could make this a recurrent thing in the forums? Like, I will definitely take a couple of weeks after this to completely cool down, but I wouldn’t mind an Autumn 2021 challenge at all. Maybe when the time comes we can even swap to year quarters to avoid confusion for our southern hemisphere pals ^^ . So something like two months of challenge and one off to prepare for the next. Just an idea!

Response to trunklayer

@trunklayer

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

I’m honestly liking it very much! There’s this slightly uneasy feeling whenever you finish a series and look for a new one, the feeling of expecting the next one to be up to the previous one’s quality. This one got me hooked really early, and I’ve only read 6 chapters so far but the build-up has been great, not to talk about the voice acting. I really love Satori Reader at this point.

[Axazel]

I second aaall of this!

[chrisosaurus]

Home post

• June 30th からかい上手の高木さん chapter 4 page 12 panel 3

Today I was very tired, it was late, and my arm was quite sore but I didn’t want to break my streak, so I convinced myself I would sit down and just do part of what I thought was a big complex panel.

But then it was done and I found it much easier than expected!
I only needed to lookup どうしよう.
Seeing しまう was also great fun and had me excitedly highlighting it in my note book - I’ve been writing out and breaking down every line, which is why my dominant hand being injured is slowing me down so much.

Maybe it is just a few days of really good luck, but this definitely feels like something is clicking.

The panel, for the curious.

それはマズイ… 高木さんの方が身長が高くなってしまったら、今まで以上にからかわれてしまうじゃないか。どうしよう…どうしよう…

[windupbird]

Summary post

Day 30: June 30th
What did I read?: ふたりのライオン
How much did I read?: 28 pages (from the middle of one chapter to the middle of another lol)
How long did it take me?: 1.25 hours

Reading strength restored! Honestly I’m surprised it took me that long to read this much, but it did not feel like it took that long at all. I love this manga and these characters, they’re so cute :3 I love Onizuka so much and I do not know why, he’s just adorable to me.

And this makes a full month of me reading something in Japanese daily! I’ve never read that consistently and frequently in Japanese before - I never used to read on the weekdays at all, but I’m surprised at how painless it’s been most days. Part of that is probably my choice of reading material, but I feel like my mindset is starting to change a little bit too - like, yes, I can read something on the weekdays, even if it’s just a little, and it’s fine. I’m always afraid that it’s going to take “too much time” or too much mental energy/effort to read, so I don’t bother trying at all. According to Bookmeter, I finished 5 books/volumes this month :o (Some of those were started before the beginning of the month, but at least 3 were read completely from start to finish in June)

@rikaiwisdom

I’ve been thinking that perhaps we could make this a recurrent thing in the forums? Like, I will definitely take a couple of weeks after this to completely cool down, but I wouldn’t mind an Autumn 2021 challenge at all. Maybe when the time comes we can even swap to year quarters to avoid confusion for our southern hemisphere pals ^^ . So something like two months of challenge and one off to prepare for the next.

Honestly I would love this! I was just thinking about how nice it would be to continue the challenge on for longer than these 2 months. If we take a break month, I might make that my own personal English reading challenge month lol, I have lots of unread English books hanging around too xD

[cineebon]

log

Okay so I took a break from fictional books because work and life crazy.

not reading related

I had to swap entirely to Japanese at work which meant a big and immediate focus on spoken and written Japanese. I’ve had to teach kids how to use computers at work which meant learning just so many computer words in Japanese and reading a lot on computer terminology along with Japanese-only user manuals. And you know what, I’m going to count that.

Here’s me tentatively getting back on the official reading wagon because today I read multiple local news articles relating to Corona, multiple bear attacks, and our new lord and and local savior, イカキング.