Read Chapter 12 of よつば&! at the doctor’s office today. Found this chapter difficult to understand; I would normally say I’m looking forward to rereading with a dictionary, but I was also irritated by Jumbo’s infatuation with Asagi (am I misinterpreting how old each of them is?) and the general tone around bodies in bathing suits. To be expected, I know, but not my favourite chapter.
23 Likes
Well, my health seems to be more or less completely restored, which means I’m working like crazy to make up for all the time I lost while ill. Which means that reading is suffering once again: I’m reading 十角館の殺人 at quite literally a snail’s pace (a sentence or two whenever I can find the time, so frustrating!), and as for Tsugumi, I just realized I’ve missed a whole book club week, and may very well miss the next one too the way things are going. But it’s okay - I’m sure I’ll be able to catch up sooner or later! I can see gloriously lazy reading days in the near future. At some point… 
27 Likes
This month, the two book clubs for Kafka and TUGUMI have been smooth sailing - Kafka getting ever more interesting, and reading TUGUMI feels like kinda indulging in the feels. And then there has been Flesh&Blood. While the first volume was mainly devoted to world building (which means 16th century European history 
) the second volume really picks up speed regarding personal and interpersonal 
development. Interestingly, it is my slowest book (at ~8 pages/hour) but I enjoy it tremendously.
My current plan is to finish Flesh&Blood vol. 2 as well as Kafka part 1 until Monday. I’m ready to jump into F&B vol. 3 straight away, and I’m hoping to be able to finish it until August 27th, when the new ABC pick 狼と香辛料 will start. Let’s see how that goes 
28 Likes
Home post 
Aug 12th 
・ 本好きの下剋上 10 (19% → 22%)
I’d like to say I spent the afternoon decompressing but… yeah, not quite there yet. Will try to chill tomorrow, my calendar looks like chaos already, three things overlapping and whatnot 
But yeah! Weekend! 
27 Likes
August 12th!
Today I read the final chapter of Volume 7 of Teasing Master Takagi-san - it was a super sweet story this week 
I also read the Chapter 17 of Happiness - that was… not sweet
23 Likes
August 12th
What did I read?: 猫には猫の猫ごはん Vol 1
How much did I read?: 54 pages
How long did it take me?: 34 min
It’s been a minute since I last posted here lol I’ve been listening most days, but honestly I did nothing yesterday. I was tired and just…didn’t feel like doing anything. Sooo I didn’t 
But today, I finished off this first volume. There were so many precious moments 
This is like my favorite panel, this little interaction is just so
28 Likes
名探偵コナン Volume 11 (25% ➨ 42%)Glad you’re feeling better! You’ve got another week to catch up, so don’t sweat it. The prologue is lot rougher to read than the main story (once it gets over the setting descriptions) so don’t worry if it seems oddly hard right now.
As for myself I read another ~10 pages of the above book (same as omk3) and have about 10 more to finish the reading. I’ll have at least one grammar question for the club but I’m saving it incase something later in the chapter makes that sentence make sense 
We’ll see if I’m feeling like finishing the reading tonight or not, I’m still trying to take things easy.
24 Likes
| REDC | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 7 |
８月１２日
ルーパーズ
Loopers day! I thought I could finish the chapter but nope. Did about 6600 characters, finishing it tomorrow for sure. My reading speed doesn’t seem to go up (around 2400 c/h) because I keep looking up words and adding cards but honestly, at the risk of repeating myself and possibly being annoying xD, but I’m having such a blast adding words that the version of me that wrote being so tired of SRS in a challenge thread not long ago would be surprised. Swapping to a freestyle, personal, J-J anki deck was an amazing decision for me. I sometimes still have days when I don’t want to keep doing SRS and then Loopers’ new chapter comes in and suddenly I’m in love again because it seems to be at just the right level for me to increase vocabulary relatively comfortably. And I’m still keeping my decision of not adding words every day if I don’t want to. I still don’t feel the pressure anymore, and then I simply have a day where I add enough words for the next few days so it kinda balances out. These challenge threads have proven to be an amazing journey of self discovery for me for sure.
Anyways, boring SRS talk. VN so far so good. The right kind of difficulty is crucial, it seems.
25 Likes
Makes me extremely pleased seeing all the positive reactions to the club, seems to be a big success so far
Since I’m already here, on my side I’m still going along with the usual. Agreed on Loopers – it’s a relatively easy overall read for me now, but it’s packed with new words to learn still. And plenty that seem more immediately useful than what I encounter elsewhere. I haven’t actually timed myself, but I’m pleased I’ve read every chapter in a day when they came up, and they’re never a terrible lengthy strain either (this week being the most at over 8500 characters, but I was done within a couple hours at most I think). It’s my day of building back confidence before Flowers hahaha.
Which actually hasn’t been quite as bad recently. It’s still a harder piece of writing, but I’m pretty confident I’ll get through Flowers fine. And I’m enjoying recent developments as a more main conflict is brewing! I’ll have to take the time to talk about this VN in more detail soon.
I also finished Azumanga Daioh volume 2! There are still frustrating strips I don’t really understand; one for example I could tell was making zodiac references but I was pretty out of my depths as to what they were saying. Manga is easier than ever before but beyond references I don’t know, I’m still a bit weak with it precisely because it tends to be so concise and slangy that mistaken impressions are easier than longer form writing. Still, I’ve got a pretty big attachment to the characters and I’m definitely going to see volume 3 through.
24 Likes
Start/Stop Love/Hate relationship with SRS checking in! I stopped Anki some time ago also and recently picked it back up but am still after a week+ working through my backlog of cards. I limited it to 100 reviews a day. Whatever, I’ll get there. I also made a brand new deck for medicine/science/anatomy as those are words I need more and more frequently for the books that I really want to dig into. And like…it’s so pretty. I snagged an anki template off some medical school subreddit and I love it
Also minor taboo of posting twice in a day but! I finished the reading for 十角館の殺人, surpassed 4000 pages read this year, and learned a new, bizarre word! 
三白眼 - さんぱくがん - to have whites around the eyes, basically? I was staring at Google images of this one for several minutes. I don’t think I have ever consciously thought about how much white space is around someone’s irises
21 Likes
August 12 
Home Post
Played more バディミッションBOND today! I’m really at the end now, like if I go feral enough I could finish tomorrow kind of close Pretty wild to think about. I’ve completely abandoned book club stuff for the moment whoops, but there’s just so much happening all the time now, I have to know
buddy bond!!
Lots of drama today; モクマ and チェズレイ are alive and safe!! I really would’ve been shocked if they weren’t, but it was still great seeing them again, and their reunion with ルーク was very cute:
They hug! I think モクマ and チェズレイ have basically adopted ルーク at this point lmao, especially チェズレイ keeps treating him based on his positive memories of his mom and even some stuff from his time with the ファントム. And モクマ called him out on looking like a doting parent and チェズレイ, well:
So yeah do with that what you will some of it was really angsty too though, like モクマ and チェズレイ did fall from a skyscraper (and we still don’t know how チェズレイ saved them, he won’t tell us because he wasn’t presentable apparently) and モクマ had to get surgery, and チェズレイ did not take that super well:
He was just angsting in front of the operating room about how he should’ve done the pinky promise, refusing to leave even though he was also, you know, injured and in the hospital But yeah they both turned out fine, and then they just had to get アーロン who was still imprisoned by the ファントム in the building that he was about to blow up to get rid of all the evidence… so super frantic rescue mission to get him out before the bombs go off involving the helicopter guy and his delinquent brother from before, and lots of very distressed ルーク and very close calls, but they got out! Now they just have to stop the grand plan to turn the whole island to aggro mode Tomorrow!
I’m glad it worked out!! That sounds like quite the task, very impressive!
Glad to have someone else on the absolute journey I’m on
25 Likes
I hadn’t gotten around to listening to all the Re:coll songs yet, so TIL Hayashi Yuu is SCREEN mode’s vocalist. Also I did actually recognize-recognize his name, rather than just think it seemed familiar because it’s similar to Hayashi Yuuki (composer) and Wakabayashi Yuu (seiyuu), because he’s Tanaka Ryuunosuke’s seiyuu. (Edit: Originally I had Kobayashi, but while there very well could be a Kobayashi Yuu whom I’ve heard of, the person I was thinking of is actually named Wakabayashi, whoops.)
Anyway, I started vol 3 of ハイキュー!! reading ch 17-18.
Ahhh Noyassan declared that he’d buy Hinata a ソーダ味 and a ナシ味 garigari-kun, and I was like, “…eggplant…flavored…?” But that’s ナス. ナシ is pear. That’s a lot better lol
Some vocab of note:
ゲリラ豪雨 (ゲリラごうう) [expression, noun] unexpectedly strong rain; sudden rain. The ゲリラ comes from ‘guerilla.’
いくら [adverb] however (much); no matter how. As いくら～ても.
百戦錬磨 (ひゃくせんれんま) [四字熟語, の-adj.] veteran; battle-worn; schooled by adversity in many battles; hard-bitten; rich in experience; very experienced
ショボい [い-adj.] lackluster; uninspiring; shabby; dull; cheap; gloomy; depressing
大黒柱 (だいこくばしら) [noun] central pillar; mainstay; backbone. And it’s great because this was used to describe Asahi, and he’s the biggest on the team (yeah, Tsukki’s a bit taller, but he’s a beanpole) and their usual game uniforms are black. He is, both literally and figuratively, a big black pillar. (Or maybe that’s half-figuratively and entirely figuratively?)
ロン毛 (ロンげ) [noun, slang] long hair (usually of a man)
23 Likes
Day 43: August 12th 
Little time for reading today. Gotta push book club reading to Saturday.
ふだつきのキョーコちゃん Volume 6 (76% ➨ 100%) Getting really close to finishing the series!
23 Likes
August 12
(home post)
Night Café page 157 → 189 (33 pages)
Guess who just finished their first novel in Japanese?!
夜カフェ 1 is now fully read (yesterday). First thing with only text (except a couple of pics) I’ve read. (Except for some shorter high-level graded readers but those were a lot shorter, even the two booklet one.)
Not sure i have much more to say about that actually. The NC volume ended bittersweetly. With a lot of growth for our main characters, but Yamato moving to LA, USA at the end. Also the 夜カフェ went well its first and second time. So not sure what volume two will bring. More growth for Hanabi and Tina is likely, but no Yamato? 
Look forward to joining the book club for the second volume, I’m one week behind, and Loopers and Orange will go before it, but there should be enough week left after that to read two chapters of Night Café 2 I’m sure.
Just think, after next week I’ll probably have to pick a fourth read to fill the remaining space each week.
34 Likes
August 12
I confess I spent most of my free time today playing vidya (in English with Japanese voice) which may count as listening practice but definitely not as reading. I read less than 1% of ビブリア but at least I did read 4 chapters of 青のフラッグ which is the most chapters of this manga (or posibly any manga) I’ve ever read in one day. It feels like these chapters are getting shorter, but maybe I’m just getting faster?
Congrats!! That’s a huge milestone, and it looks like many more will be coming after it.
23 Likes
I’ve done better last few days. Yesterday I read 4 pages of Tugumi (having managed one page all week!), and today I’m not quite done, but will have read 10-12 pages. This is the most I’ve read in a day of a more difficult book, and I’ll be caught up if I read all 12. Also read a few pages of シャドーハウス - now up to the end of chapter 9.
25 Likes
Super big congratulations on this! I look forward to the day I can accomplish this feat.
7 Likes
Today read Chapter 13 of よつば&! I know that every story needs some conflict, but this chapter made me sad! Miura really bothers me. Why would Ena be friends with such a girl?
(That said, I love Ena’s way of addressing the problem…)
21 Likes
Extremely impressive! Congrats!
5 Likes