📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2021 🏖🏖

Eyy, you’re a champ. Much appreciated!

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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!

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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 :slight_smile:

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Reply to Aislin

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. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: 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. :muscle:

Main

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 :upside_down_face:. 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.

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:ballot_box_with_check: 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 :triumph:

Today's words
  • 筆跡ひっせき = handwriting
  • ない = cold (attitude), blunt
  • 異様いよう = bizarre
  • 判然はんぜん = distinct, clear
  • おびただしい = innumerable (not a WK kanji! But is considered a common word in my dictionary.)
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+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

  • July 2nd からかい上手の高木さん chapter 4 page 13 panel 3, and チーズスイートホーム vol 1 chapter 2 (8 pages)
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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!

grafik

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:

  • 2 books or 600 pages
  • 10 volumes of manga
  • keeping up or finishing 人間失格 for the book club
  • finishing とつくにの少女 (4 volumes left)
  • finishing 無限島
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An average of 40 new words every day? :eyes: For a whole month!? :exploding_head: Holy… That’s impressive!

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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.

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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.

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132/153 of Forbidden scrollery complete

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Summary post
July 2

・Read a chapter of Honzuki 5. (67% → 71%) Interesting chapter :eyes: Not much of the super detailed tedious stuff, which is a nice change of pace for me.

・Read a chapter of SAO 8. (p 282 → 313) Finally some action. Lots of fighting related vocab - I’d be lost without furigana on those kanji. Thankfully, was tons of furigana :+1:

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Main post

Day 32 :ballot_box_with_check:
Satori Reader: The River Sanzu, Episode 8.


Kinda tired today, trying to slowly adapt to a new sleeping schedule so this little will have to do.

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Read more of 1Q84 Book 2 last night. My friend in Japan sent me her secondhand copies of 2 and 3 so now I can read them wherever I want. So, I read it in bed ahha, i havent read a book in bed since I was like 10, when I used to read Harry Potter before bed every night.
I was a little worried before I received the book because its a 文庫本 (ぶんこぼん), a small A6 font size book but surprisingly it was completely readable.

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Wiki post

July 2 Update

I finally did it. I managed to start reading 君の名は. I read through the first chapter (which is a lot less impressive than it sounds since it’s only 4 pages with lots of spaces) and was surprised to see that I comprehended more than I could the last time I tried this back in February. I haven’t really actively learned any more vocabulary or kanji since then. The increase in stamina and speed however, are both definitely apparent, since these four pages only took an hour to complete. I’m sure I’d pick up more by trying to really write out and break down the sentences and look deeply into each grammar point, but I don’t have the energy for that today. Mostly just feeling proud I managed to read.

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Summary post

Day 32: July 2nd
What did I read?: ふたりのライオン
How much did I read?: 34 pages (1 chapter)
How long did it take me?: 1 hr 12 min

Still so wholesome :blush::smiling_face_with_three_hearts: We met the cat and it was adorable. We also met…probably the literal two other people Onizuka knows lmao. The last couple pages of this chapter had me dying though :rofl: Oh Junpei. He was asking if you liked cats, not Onizuka, you dork

I had such a productive work day today, and I actually feel totally caught up with work right now for the first time since…I don’t even remember, quite honestly, I haven’t been or felt this caught up in a long time. Which means I can actually enjoy my long weekend! I’m hoping I’ll be super in the mood for reading this weekend and get a lot of reading time in. ^^ Watch me say that and spend the whole weekend mindless in front of the TV.

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Day 5: July 3rd

At SO’s apartment.

気のきいた短いメールが書ける本:メール術
・返事を保留する (4 pages)

Groggy from being hungover a bit this morning, so 4 pages might be today’s limit! Glad I managed something at least.

I will still shoot for my 100 daily catchup reviews after posting this, I promise myself.

Edit: Finished volume 9 of Berserk before bed! Around 70 pages, I think. Now just need to hunt down volume 10: I know they don’t have it at the nearest 2nd hand store to me…

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:ballot_box_with_check: Day 33

A little embarrassed to count today towards reading. I read like A PARAGRAPH in my book, 僕はイエローでホワイトでちょっとブルー. But, I’m gonna count it because without this challenge I wouldn’t have even picked up my book at all.

Tomorrow is the JLPT, so I focused more on reviewing Grammer today :sweat_smile: Good luck to anyone else taking the (real/mock) test this time!

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Good reading this morning - more manga - As I’m reaching later chapters in Love so Life, I’m finding them a bit more text heavy - although I suspect if I look back at the first chapters, what’s actually going on is that I’m more able to read the text-heavy parts so I’m noticing and working at them more instead of skimming them and moving on to the shorter, easier bits. End of this chapter was a cliff hanger, but I can’t keep reading right now because I’m headed out to see other humans, so I guess I’ll have to wait to find out what happens (though it’s also a flashback to when the main character was younger, so I do have some idea how it must work out)

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Not in much mood to do anything today. I’ve forced myself to read 1 page of IBCCoffee out of approximately 20. I yet to find end of reading this week and schedule.

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