Summary post
July 1
・Read SAO 8. (p250 → 281) Almost page 300 
Reading went a tiny bit better today. Sometimes I think I understood a sentence, but then the next few sentences doesn’t make sense, so I go back and realize there were words I didn’t really know so I look them up and then I finally understand what is going on. This second side story is much more challenging to read compared to the first one 
I really liked the first one, maybe because I remembered it from the anime.
Today I read another 3 chapters of 鬼滅の刃３. Only one chapter left but it’s like 25% of the volume according to bookwalker so managed to summon all of my self control and leave it for tomorrow. One thing I have been doing while I’m reading this series is watching the anime episodes after I read the manga chapters, sometimes using the ‘language learning with Netflix’ extension, sometimes not depending on how lazy I’m feeling. I’ve been finding it pretty useful, generally there’s at least one thing in an episode that I slightly(or majorly 
) misunderstood that I get from the anime (even though Im still watching with Japanese subs) because especially visual stuff in the fights is way clearer when animated. Hoping that it will also help the vocab sink in more through repitition but who knows! Anyway, it’s fun! My boyfriend wants to watch the film together sometime (he isn’t learning Japanese so will be with English subs) so that’s incentive for me to keep up the pace so I’ve read the manga first while also not making him wait like half a year!
Day 31 
コーヒーが冷めないうちに , 6 pages.
I’m already sensing a nice improvement compared to the first days; I have to spend less time for a higher number of pages, and even though it’s still work, I’m getting used to the words that the author likes to repeat, and it became not so bad at all when I added them for review these previous days. I’m encountering them again randomly, which helps both to reinforce it and to read it faster. It has become way easier to sit down and read for example 5 pages, whereas before it worn me out so much it felt like I needed a very long time (I still need a fair amount).
I still feel uneasy when I see Japanese text though, I automatically go: nope, there’s no way I understand this language. Then I start reading and it’s not so bad 
. But damn does it take sooooo long to drop that feeling of panicking whenever you see a page full of Japanese.
(Amazing avatar BTW)
This! So much this!
Even within my reading material I often find it easier than I thought it would be, I see a long sentence and think ‘noooooopppeee’.
Update:
Home post
So yesterday after doing my 高木さん reading I opened up チーズスイートホーム to have a peek and then accidentally read the first chapter.
Day 31: July 1st
Side note: I hate that these don’t match anymore
What did I read?: ふたりのライオン
How much did I read?: 21 pages (actually managed to stop at a chapter break this time lol, apparently I’m 3 chapters in already)
How long did it take me?: 51 min
OK I’M SORRY BUT this is my most favorite thing right now, this manga is the cutest thing 
Literally, this is what happened: Junpei and Onizuka are walking out of Yoshinoya after grabbing some food. They see a stray cat and Junpei gets super excited, goes over to pet it. Onizuka asks him if he likes cats, and he says he loves them. Onizuka then proceeds to, very awkwardly, invite Junpei to come see the cat he’s been taking care of.
Is that not the most wholesome invitation ever
And then Junpei scrambles to switch his work shift so he can go see this cat because he doesn’t want to turn Onizuka down the first time he manages to invite him to do something.
I love these two so freaking much, them getting to know each other is so cute it hurts sometimes.
July 1 Update
Happy new month and halfway through 2021!
Today I finished up the second half of ナルト volume 3. Looked up everything I didn’t know, and it took a total of about 1.5 hours to finish it out. I think this is a good pace for manga/anime I’m super familiar with, and I will probably (try to) maintain it when reading ナルト (and maybe some other older manga). I now only have ホリミヤ and 僕のヒーローアカデミア on my bookshelf as manga I haven’t read (ignoring the huge pile of ハイキュー！！ since we’ll probably get to that during the book club), so instead of powering through entire volumes in two days, my time might be better spent actually reading 君の名は. I’ve been saying this for weeks now though, and I think it’s time to admit that I’ve been avoiding reading this book. My pride was extremely hurt the last time I tried this and struggled a bit too hard for my reading and tolerance levels. I’m not sure it’ll be much better this time, but I think it feels reasonable to set 2 pages for tomorrow as a goal.
I was a little bummed that the extensive reading thread’s been quieter / a little worried that I’d inadvertently contributed to that “BIG posts only!!” feeling (or scared everyone away with wrestling), but yours is a good way of looking at it, so I’m glad both threads are around too! 
The difference for me is that I’m currently way too slow to do a 多読 challenge when it takes about a month to get through a short story rip. I see the 多読 thread as a goal I’m aiming for while celebrating the little victories of just reading for a few minutes a day in this thread. I love reading the 多読 thread while collecting a list for future recs though!
Reading related:
I got a bit further in Buddy Mission Bond. Still in the beginning though. I’m super motivated for this game because there isn’t any English language content for it. I would have absolutely spoiled myself or whatever if it was possible, but because I can’t find it, I’m forced to just slowly work through it lol.
Somewhat related to reading but does anyone have any good resources related to オノマトペ？ I can remember a few but most are completely lost on me haha. Especially オノマトペ that have more abstract meanings.
Eyy, you’re a champ. Much appreciated！
Day 4: July 2nd
After work at the library.
気のきいた短いメールが書ける本：メール術
・約束を変更する
・複数メンバーの日程調整
・わかりました
8 pages total.
I’m so glad I started this challenge.
I’ve been using this book for reference without actually reading through it for literal years, and now that I’ve started going cover to cover I’m realizing how much essential stuff is packed in here. My emails are polite, of course, but there are SUCH specific expectations for each situation that I’ve been completely unaware of. Fortunately, it seems like because the phrases are so specific, it won’t be that hard to memorize the stuff that’s new to me.
I really recommend this book to anyone who wants to get better at writing emails in Japanese. I regret not reading it properly sooner. But better late than never!
In case it helps with this - before this challenge I’d also seen the extensive reading challenge but been like a) hmmm…do I read enough for it? b) how on earth would I set a yearly goal?
To be honest, as someone that’s still very new to reading in Japanese b was more of a barrier as I don’t feel like I really have a good judge of what reading goals would be manageable or challenging for me yet on such a long term basis. This challenge has changed that a little bit as it’s given me a bit of a benchmark for how many manga vols I can read in a month if I’m reading daily…but also I expect that per month number will change by the end of the year or plummet when I eventually start reading novels. Basically I’d always be like “oh I should join in on this!” and then get myself in an endless deliberation about what yearly goals I should set before deciding to just leave it haha. Whereas with this it was easy to be like “I know I can read a chapter of manga in a day, that will be my daily goal!” without having to think too much about it.
So yeah, I think it was less anything about the extensive reading challenge itself that was off-putting, more that I’m early enough with reading in Japanese that setting a yearly goal is daunting whereas a daily goal is much simpler, especially as it was set up with the expectation of ‘even less than this is fine so long as it’s something’. As I said though, hoping that I’ll come out of this challenge with at least a rough idea of what kind of longer term goals might be good for me 
Oh wow, double POV? The manga is indeed from カタリナ POV only. Now I’m intrigued what the other people thought of her behaviour. 
Guess there’s no way around it - I do think it’s way above my current skill level but I’ll give it a go when I’m finished with my current books. 
Had a friend visiting for three days which once again meant less time for reading.
June 29
Read 56 pages of やがて君になる 2 .
June 30
Finished reading the remaining 29 pages of やがて君になる 2. Had some free time in the evening so went through my BookWalker library and saw 月刊少女野崎くん 1 that we tried reading with my Japanese study group last autumn. I remembered it was hard so thought I’d give it another go. Read 8 pages - it’s still hard 
. Not certain I’ll try and finish reading it during this challenge.
July 1
Really wanted to continue reading ふしぎ駄菓子屋 銭天堂 1 but I think I’ve made a mistake by buying the digital version of this book - my brain is having such a hard time reading this in digital form. I’m super glad I can read manga in digital form since it would be way too expensive to own all of them in physical form but I think light novels and books might be something I have to buy in physical form for the time being. We’ll see. I’ll try and finish ふしぎ駄菓子屋 銭天堂 1 in digital form during this challenge and take it from there.
So, what did I actually read? Found a random supernatual comedy manga 青春オカルティーン. I’ve seen people mention that 4-koma manga are somehow more difficult and it seems I didn’t learn my lesson with 月刊少女野崎くん. No furigana, a crutch I don’t want to live without quite yet, but I enjoyed it well enough despite that and read 16 pages.
Day 32
Today I finished chapter 1 of イエローでホワイトでちょっとブルー! This book is so much harder to read, I almost gave up and started something new… but it’s already really interesting! Plus, if I can hang in there until the end, my vocabulary knowledge will surely expand 
+1, I keep going through exactly this. Wishing I could partake in the reading thread, but also not being anywhere near comfortable to set a goal. Whereas this thread has been easy to join, is motivating and keeps me accountable, yet isn’t pushing me too hard to stick to unrealistic goals past me set before they knew what present me had to deal with.
Update Home post
I’ve mostly read manga in the last couple of days (無限島 下), though only a few chapters.
Today I’ve started 人間失格 (25 pages). I’ve been planning to read Murakami next, but I’ll probably go for something lighter (no, not a light novel :P) because 人間失格 is pretty depressing as expected.
Oh, and here’s the promised June recap!
I’ve read 1478 pages
in 5 books + one short story
06.06.2021 (411): かがみの孤城 上
09.06.2021 (367): かがみの孤城 下
12.06.2021 (276): がばいばあちゃんの幸せのトランク
19.06.2021 (291): きよしこ
22.06.2021 (113): 風立ちぬ
28.06.2021 (60): ムーンライト・シャドー
10 volumes of manga:
11.06.2021: とつくにの少女＃１
16.06.2021: 日の鳥１
18.06.2021: やさしさいっぱいの土の上で
19.06.2021: とつくにの少女＃２
19.06.2021: とつくにの少女＃３
20.06.2021: とつくにの少女＃４
22.06.2021: 無限島上
24.06.2021: とつくにの少女＃５
27.06.2021: とつくにの少女＃６
29.06.2021: とつくにの少女＃７
The majority of book reading was done in the 1st half (1178 pages), while the 2nd half was more manga-oriented.
I’ve read 30 days out of 30.
Learned about 1200 new words.
Most reading was done on June 7th (170 pages of かがみの孤城 上).
On 2 or 3 days I’ve only read half a chapter of manga, though.
Overall I consider this a huge success and a good continuation from my productive May. But I’m definitely slowing down and won’t expect July to be on the same level.
My July goals will be:
An average of 40 new words every day? For a whole month!? 
Holy… That’s impressive!
Thank you!
To be fair I didn’t just learn any word I came across, but was rather selective. Many of the words weren’t technically new to me and I just needed to reinforce the meaning/reading (e.g. 辛抱), or I knew the meaning from the kanji, but wasn’t sure about the reading (日数), or they were compounds of words I knew (去り際 or 押さえつける) or kanji spellings of words commonly written in kana (滅多に). So the retention rate was naturally very high.
Got my second Covid vaccine yesterday evening - don’t think I’ll be reading much today - I was good when I woke up, but am now headachy and having some mild chills. I tackled a chunk of わんわん探偵団 this morning while I still felt good. I’m at about 20% done now - having the odd moment where I’m not totally sure what’s going on, but also finding I don’t need to look up lots of stuff, which is cool. I keep telling myself I will read more of my books before getting more, but I really don’t have a lot of prose-type books, so I went with buying it anyway.
Yesterday’s manga reading was tougher than usual - not sure if I was missing a meaning in the vocab I looked up (or maybe thought something was 2 words, but it was really a phrase), or missing something cultural/unspoken, but was having a really difficult time figuring out why the interpersonal stuff was going on and what people were fighting about. Summarized to my husband later and realized that I did have the gist (because I could more or less explain what happened and it made sense), but my understanding was fuzzier than usual. Definitely 2 chapters I’d like to revisit at some point to try to get it a bit clearer.