My streak is laying in pieces on the ground and have for days. But I’m still here. And reading will be picked up again.
For me, this challenge is more about reading more than I did before, but maybe that just means I’m a bit of contrarian that can’t stick to guidelines. ¯\(ツ)/¯
I count YT subs as reading(in first days of challenge I did only them before branching into manga). No one called me on that so far, so guidelines here are very lax.
I’m sick and didn’t want to do anything today, so instead I swapped gears for Buddy Mission Bond, which I’m like… a little obsessed with. It’s a detective buddy cop game with a manga style that I picked up a few months ago. Playing detective games in Japanese really feels like a huge test of understanding ability that I only somewhat possess, alas!
June 01: かがみの孤城 上 (63 pages)
June 02: かがみの孤城 上 (20 pages)
June 03: かがみの孤城 上 (90 pages)
June 04: かがみの孤城 上 (40 pages) + 日の鳥１ (10 pages)
June 05: かがみの孤城 上 (112 pages)
June 06: かがみの孤城 上 (69 pages) ~ Finished
June 07: かがみの孤城 下 (170 pages) ~ 48%
June 08: かがみの孤城 下 (81 pages) ~ 68%
June 09: かがみの孤城 下 (116 pages) ~ Finished
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)
June 11: がばいばあちゃんの幸せのトランク (53 pages) ~ 69%
June 12: がばいばあちゃんの幸せのトランク (85 pages) ~ Finished
June 13: きよしこ (16 pages) ~ 5%
June 14: 風立ちぬ (5 pages ~ 25%) + きよしこ (29 pages ~ 15%)
June 15: 風立ちぬ (36 pages ~ 56%) + きよしこ (56 pages ~ 35%)
New:
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)
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)
June 18: きよしこ (44 pages) ~ 83%
June 19: きよしこ (48 pages) ~ Finished
I finished きよしこ! Another great book; more in the 多読 thread later. Took me one week.
やさしさいっぱいの土の上で (manga) was a post-apocalyptic, dystopian, philosophical but cute and surprisingly light-hearted one-shot story.
After reading ~2100 pages back to back since mid-May, I’m starting to feel a little burned out. I will finish 風立ちぬ in the next 1-2 days, but then focus on manga, shorter stories (e.g. ムーンライト・シャドー from the キッチン book) and Japanese writing for the next week or so. I don’t know yet, my plans always change. But I will continue reading.
18.6.
As for reading, yesterday I read 1 chapter of 妖怪の子預かります.
I’ve been neglecting the book club reading for 1Q84 until now because the chapter this week is so long. 
I didn’t feel like reading ahead with かくりよの宿飯 5 (gave up a few pages in). Instead, I finally started reading 天冥の標 3. Only got through the prologue (30 pages) but I’m going to call it a day anyway. I have to pick up the pace if I want to return it to the library on time though.
Day 19
Today and tomorrow suddenly became very busy😭 Luckily, I’ve made a habit to read a few pages (Started chapter 10 in カラフル) right when I wake up. Tomorrow I should have time to read on the train. I said I’d post a word list today, but I don’t think I can do that till Monday.
Just happy to be prioritizing reading at all 
Thank you guys!
Work has been a lot for the last week or so and my reading energy has been low. Also, this weekend my boyfriend is visiting (he’s been away studying) so will lose most of my normal weekend reading & bookclub time (for a very nice reason though so it’s not like I’m complaining!)
That said, I have been reading something everyday…just not finding the time to record it here! Have mainly been sticking to よつばと、ナルト & やがて君になる - as those are my easier reads that I can enjoy even when tired. Have also been reading Kikis…finding it a bit hard to get into, I think because I’ve only had time to read for half an hour to an hour and so only reading 2-3 pages or so at a time, which means I’ve been on the same conversation for multiple days. It’s a big contrast, given that the same word count/amount of reading will cover a lot more plot in most manga which for me helps keep momentum/interest.
Starting to think that a better approach would be to find a bigger block of time to get through a whole chapter on one sitting…or just get faster hahaha.
Well, I finally read again for the first time in… a week or something? I don’t feel compelled to go back and look. I’d rather be in the dark. 
Super inspired!!! 
I just read some pages of the first volume of あさこ every day. Soon I will have finished it, I wonder what I should read next.
Today I learnt that you can write おはよう using kanji お早う
Just searched for Asako on Anilist, looks interesting! If you read on your laptop/tablet/phone, you could always check free manga on bookwalker JP app (such as Kono oto tomare) or here (To your eternity or Sweat and Soap for example). There are also Japanese webmanga you can check out here (you can read ReLife for free here, all chapters I think).
Summary post
June 19
Finished SAO 7 
(p.223 - 305) Good story. There were several times where I thought “hehe, what a cliché”, but I still enjoyed it. Learnt tons of new words, even on the very last page (which was 花弁, “flower petal”), but have been a bit lazy with adding them to Koohi, so I’ll see if I can find them from search history. From counting the daily updates, it looks like it took me 11 days to complete this book, which definitely is a new personal record. Yay!
Doing this challenge has been really motivating so far, thanks to everyone who are participating and ganbaruing together in this thread
Well… currently trying to pick a next book-book to read - manga are fun, I learn a lot, but definitely different from reading longer text.
Haven’t really decided if I want to pick up the next magic tree house, or something else - so today I downloaded the sample chapter of 大きな森の小さな家 - read about half of the sample - 9-ish pages - it took…a while. I found it a bit harder to follow than Magic Tree house, but not as crushing as some samples I’ve picked up - Of course, helpful that I have a vague sense of the story, but tbh I always preferred the later books in English, so my recollection of this one is vague - I loved that the Japanese version started with a map showing where Wisconsin was and included a brief explanation of bears and panthers for the reader.
On the hunt for other book options - I’ve been browsing the Aoitori Bunko books - samples from those tend to be reasonably readable for me - but am having trouble deciding to invest in reading one when I don’t know if I’ll like it - In English I’d just pick it up and start and drop it if I hated it, but reading in Japanese feels like so much more of an investment. For now, I’m browsing Natively to get an idea of things that are at/near my level, and then working on figuring out what they’re about and whether I want to read them.
June 19. Time: 1 hour. Manga Pages: 6
What: Manga からかい上手の高木さん (Volume 1), current pick of ABBC. Chapter 8, Page 1-6.
Skipped yesterday due to social life happenning on Friday evening. Today reread the pages with looking up everything.
Day 19
Satori Reader: Kiki-Mimi Radio, Episode 25.
Only two episodes left before choosing a new series. Also the new Intermediate Book Club book just started so I will be reading that as well. I will be prioritising it so I don’t fall behind but I’ll definitely try to keep using Satori Reader daily regardless.
Day 19: June 19th
What did I read?: サメーズ 
How much did I read?: 24 pages - finished the book (already 
)
How long did it take me?: 19 min
I should have been reading something else today, but you know, there are a lot of things I really should have been doing today that I didn’t do, so…at least I did something. I was supposed to be relaxing today so I could recharge for the week, but all I really did was stress over all the stuff I still need to do while simultaneous not doing any of it. Fun times.
This is my favorite shark of today and I don’t know why, he just has such a big mouth 
And while looking up his name in Jisho, I accidentally discovered this ridiculous vocab word:
姥捨て山 (うばすてやま):
My other favorite thing of the day was the 4-koma in which the sharks pop out and surprise a surfer in the water, then proceed to steal his surfboard and surf away
This might be a weirdly specific recommendation, but I would honestly recommend this book for anyone who’s interested in learning more sea creature names in Japanese? Like there are lots of animal names in here that were new to me (or more specific than ones I’d seen before, like specific types of sharks etc), and they are all accompanied by adorable illustrations - what more could one ask for, really xD I love sea creatures, so it’s fun to get to see some of their names in Japanese and learn some little fun facts about them.
June 19 Update
Today was another 明日、私は誰かのカノジョ day, though I only managed about 20 pages since it’s been a long day. Only took about an hour to get through, not bad at all.
Read prologue yesterday and +4 pages of コーヒーが冷めないうちに from IBC, completed page 11. Maybe I’ll read more in the evening. Maybe not. I need to reach page 20, so it’ll take couple of days. There’s definitely a difficulty spike between BBC and IBC.
