i just realised: i can finally read the title 
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お誕生日おめでとうございます！！
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ayyy, nice!
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どうもありがとう
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So I started reading 天使の傷跡 which is a winner of the 江戸川乱歩賞 (which btw - is a thing?! Now I have so many other books to read…). I picked it up because someone told me the author writes trashy/pulpy crime books and that’s My Genre so of course I snagged it (it was in a pile of books being given away for free). I’m only ~15 pages in and it’s actually quite slow going for me right now because the author loves them some old kanji. So far I have collected:
曳金（note: read 引き金）、 総べて、筈、判る、積り、閑、委せて、成程、畠、and 矢鱈. Honorable mention to 云う instead of 言う but that one is relatively common.
Also can I just say that opening the first page and seeing this was a trip? 
I do enjoy a bit of whimsy in writing styles though, so it’s all good, I’m having a blast.
Also honorable mention to an English book I started reading! I started on The Seven 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (just 7 deaths outside the US though, we’re quite extra, us Americans, so naturally we have an extra half death) and it’s so good. I’m 80ish pages in (on my phone so there’s 1000 pages total in that version ) and it’s just so fun. Loving the descriptions too. I actually saw it recommended by a Japanese mystery novel reviewing youtuber I watch 
EDIT: Such a long post, unusual for me! Forgot to say I also started on 火車 because with 2 close read books I decided to go with the one where I’d be whipped along by the audiobook. And whipped I am, oof. It’s a hard one to read without pauses or lookups, at least the first chapter (all I’ve read so far).
Yay! I have 2 more volumes to go (how are there only 5?!) and it’s a lot of fun. Definitely takes a different path than the show, but I enjoy it all the same.
Also from one of the notes from the author (don’t recall which volume) I found out that みき is based on this guy?!
I can see it if…I really squint and give some artistic license.
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August 17th
What did I read?: 今日のさんぽんた Vol 1
How much did I read?: 12 pages
How long did it take me?: 8 min
Welp, bad mood is back 
I would so love it if people would communicate what they are planning to do before they make major changes that will affect and in some cases deeply inconvenience other people. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about today (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ✲ﾟ｡⋆
Just a tiny read today, but I learned a fun expression: 風上にも置けない (かざかみにもおけない) - a disgrace (to a whole group of people)
Also, in only vaguely book-related news, look at this 
Some of you may remember this little friend from a previous challenge thread - baby shark buddy comes from the most adorable manga in existence, おでかけ子ザメ. And now I could have a baby shark buddy of my very own.
Look. Look at him
…Someone please tell me no xD
Amazon sent this directly to my inbox as a suggestion lmao, it knows too much
Thank you :3 
And congrats on your first novel! 
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No because check these hella cute alternatives
https://www.animate-onlineshop.jp/pn/【グッズ-バッグ】おでかけ子ザメ+巾着付きエコバッグ/pd/2087124/
https://www.animate-onlineshop.jp/pn/【グッズ-ぬいぐるみ】おでかけ子ザメ+きぐるみぬいぐるみマスコット+さめ/pd/2087123/
https://www.animate-onlineshop.jp/pn/【グッズ-ぬいぐるみ】おでかけ子ザメ+きぐるみぬいぐるみ+さめ/pd/2087122/
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Oh nooooo not in the shark きぐるみ 
That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen omg 
Now I need all of them 
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Right? I’m having to hold myself back from getting the reusable bag too because it’s practical after all.
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August 17 
Home Post
Varied success today; I started with 十角館の殺人 and man I clearly need to get through the first part of this chapter but it’s still wrecking me I’ll get there one day! Then I decided to start up Steins;Gate again as my probable next VN adventure. It’s pretty smooth so far! Rintarou or whatever of his eighty names you wanna call him is an absolutely ridiculous man lmao, very fun to read and so far not nearly as much of a nightmare as I might’ve expected what with all the chuunibyou. So yeah interested to see how that goes!
Then I really just felt like some Haikyuu? So I decided to check out the first light novel I’ve had lying around and wow it’s a breath of fresh air I think like half of it is how not dense the text is but wow, especially in comparison to the like one page of 十角館 I managed, casually reading like 30 pages in an hour felt great. It’s just a fun time too, most of it has just been Hinata being chaotic and excitable and that’s really a delight 
So yay a much lighter read, we love balance!
Oh man that sort of thing breaks my brain lmao; there were some robots in バディミッションBOND that talked like that and my brain did not like it, though I guess fighting through it got me pretty used to it
Omg how could I forget amazon really knew you needed to see that today, terrifying and thank you!!
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Day 48: August 17th 
ふだつきのキョーコちゃん Volume 7 (76% ➨ 100%)
からかい上手の(元)高木さん Volume 5 (70% ➨ 91%)
くノ一ツバキの胸の内 Volume 4 (51% ➨ 66%)
With the final volume of ふだつきのキョーコちゃん down, I’m definitely going to miss reading the series. I was uncertain of the series in the first two volumes, but I found it got better soon after, and it kept it up through the end.
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The challenge is going well so far, and so are my translations!
Last week, I translated Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling’s August 7 VOD show (here’s my post about it). Here’s a photo from that show that I really enjoyed:
This is from a 3-way match wherein Hyper Misao (on the bottom) and Pom Harajuku (surfing) got mad at Mahiro Kiryu (bowing) for not showing enough enthusiasm for summer during their match. Mahiro was in the middle of apologizing, hence why she’s bowing (yes, she has an actual move where she apologizes while sitting on top of her opponent).
TJPW just had two very big shows last weekend, and I finally finished the translation for the first one on August 13! I split my posts about it into two because there was a lot to talk about .
Here’s a photo from this show, featuring visiting American indie nonbinary wrestler Max the Impaler just absolutely destroying poor Pom Harajuku:
I still have the August 14 Korakuen Hall show left to translate, which is going to be a lot of work, though not nearly as much as the August 13 one.
There has been lots of, uh, bad twitter discourse over the tournament already, lol, and I’m not sure my translations will do much to help with that, but the one I just completed does seem to be really appreciated. I think it’s my best one yet, in terms of quality of the translation as well as length/thoroughness. My speed is also picking up, too, because I was able to finish translating 6600 characters in just four days.
Going to have another busy week ahead of me, though .
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Oh, I forgot to mention! Something that got posted in the winter read everyday challenge actually came up in a wrestler’s post-match comments!
Mahiro and Kamiyu (Yuki Kamifuku), who both went to school at Toyo University (and who named their tag team after the school), had an exchange after they won their tag team match where Kamiyu pointed out that Mahiro had dyed her hair 鉄紺, which is apparently Toyo University’s color.
I thought perhaps I might find it in the 365 colors book, and sure enough…
So I ended up reading a bit of that book earlier than planned, haha, because I wanted to know more about the color and get a better idea of how to translate it . I ended up not translating it at all and just including a translator’s note, because I thought it was too neat of a color to try and shove into a box, plus I know how particular schools can be about their colors.
As it turns out, Toyo University is the third result if you google the color, haha. Here’s a little more about the color 
.
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Today, 旅かえる updated, and since this app is Japanese-only, that means I got to learn what “bug fixed” looks like in JP! 不具合を修正しました。
I meant to just finish ch 28 of HQ and then go to bed last night, but I ended up staying up until almost 5 finishing the volume. Yeah I got sidetracked a bit while reading it (okay, a lot more than a bit; it would not have taken me 5 hrs otherwise), but did that mean I could actually put it down and go to bed? Nope. I’m just glad the end of vol 4 was a good place to stop and I didn’t have to immediately start vol 5 lol. And I did manage to sleep until a bit after 11 after that, so I don’t even feel poorly today. And then, it was on to uncharted territory, reading-wise! I’m pretty sure I’ve watched all of the anime at least once, but I only had the first 4 vol of the manga in English. I read through ch 43, almost finishing vol 5.
lol Kuroo calls Hinata “chibi” and totally pisses him off. “チビって言う方がチビなんだぞコラァ!” (スガ：それは違うだろ)
I learned the full name for インターハイ is 全国高等学校総合体育大会. What a mouthful lol
I feel proud of myself for figuring out that Hinata’s むひゃうるい was supposed to be <武者震>[むしゃぶる]い before seeing Suga say it in the next panel. I don’t have the meaning down yet, but I at least recognize the word!
Sometimes I like that Hinata and Kageyama are dumb because I’ll get clarification on some things. (Normally I just like that they’re dumb because it’s entertaining, and I love characters who are their kind of dumbass lmao.) Take-chan told them, “そして言ってやるのです! 「見よっ 古兵、烏野の復活だ!!」と!!” and I did figure out that 古兵 here used the “veteran” meaning, but then Hinata was like, “ふるつわものって何?” (影山：俺にもわかると思うのか), and then Suga supplied, “正確には違うけど、「昔強かった」的なニュアンスで.” Of course, there are plenty of times where I’m still confused when I move on because rarely does something like this happen, but.
Some vocab of note:
すばしこい [い-adj.] nimble; quick
工夫 (くふう) [noun, する verb] devising (a way); contriving; figuring out; coming up with; working out; inventing. device; design; idea; plan; invention.
見様見真似 (みようみまね) [expression, noun] learning by watching others; learning by imitation; following by example
尻拭い (しりぬぐい) [noun, する verb] cleaning up someone else’s mess. lol so an asswipe is a totally different thing in JP than in ENG
数多 (あまた) [noun, の-adj.; adv.] many; a lot; much; multitude. Would not have guessed that reading.
足を掬う (あしをすくう) [expression, ア五] to trip someone up; to pull the carpet from under
一言に尽きる (ひとことにつきる) [expression, 一] to sum it up in one word; ～ is the word for it. Often as ～の一言に尽きる.
裏声 (うらごえ) [noun] falsetto
傷口に塩 (きずぐちにしお) [expression] This is an expression meaning “(rubbing) salt in the wound,” but Tanaka takes it a step further by saying 傷口に塩胡椒, “(rubbing) salt and pepper in the wound”! Now that’s extremely unpleasant.
切り札 (きりふだ) [noun] trump card; ace up one’s sleeve; secret weapon.
出端を挫く (でばなをくじく) [expression, カ五] to spoil someone’s start; to kill someone’s enthusiasm; to take the wind out of someone’s sails
辛うじて (かろうじて) [adverb] barely; narrowly; only just; with difficulty
臨機応変 (りんきおうへん) [四字熟語, noun, な-adj., の-adj.] adapting oneself to the requirements of the moment; playing by ear; ad hoc approach
親知らず (おやしらず) [noun] wisdom tooth. I can definitely see how this sense came about; your wisdom teeth come in with or after your second set of teeth, without having a set before them.
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I also picked it up recently because of the nostalgia factor (and mainly because most of the volumes were free lol). I think you’ll enjoy the manga better. The anime was good for the music and for the nostalgia factor (if you watched it back then as one of your first anime during the anime boom era like I did), but if you haven’t read the manga before or you’re thinking of reading it to finish the series, then I think it’s worth it.
I’m only on volume 3 right now so I can’t speak on the new recently completed volumes, but the manga and the anime are completely different. You can fully appreciate the characters in the manga separately from the anime because they’re better developed and naturally, the storyline is too.
It’s funny because when I started reading the manga I was thinking, “huh, is my memory really bad? I don’t remember any of these scenes (except like one or two)” so I looked up the anime and skimmed the first 6 episodes and realized it’s because they never did include many of the scenes from the manga. Like, the anime feels like a loosely inspired version of the manga rather than a true adaption, and I decided against rewatching it because I was starting to hate the characters (except Dark) just from skimming the episodes…
So yeah, I highly recommend it even if you didn’t have nostalgia for the anime. And if anyone else is reading this who hasn’t seen the anime, just skip it. You’ve probably seen much better anime out there that 26 episodes of mostly filler would only be a waste of time. Look up the opening and ending songs and play it in the background while you read the manga instead. 
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18th of August
After a ten-day hiatus… read pages 146 to 148 (40 – 41%) of かがみの孤城.
I did it!! I’m flying down to Melbourne tomorrow evening, am super excited 
I’m also looking forward to being able to spend much more time on reading after finishing exams.
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August 18th:
18 pages of 好きっていいなよ volume 2! I was putting things off yesterday, so I decided to get everything out of the way real early today. This series still amuses me. I like the healthy dynamic between the two leads. They’re actually communicating with each other instead of falling into the classic whirlwind of misunderstandings that this genre so often include.
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August 17
(home post)
Super Mario Odyssey
So yesterday, I played quite a bit of SMO. I beat the special boss before bowser’s kingdom and worked my way through most of Bowser’s kingdom. I’m definitely in a bit of a reading slump, and I think I can now say I’m officially behind in all my book clubs. 
Because I don’t think I’ll have enough reading time today to both read most of the current Orange chapter and the longest so far chapter in Loopers.
And dang, I’m tired. I stayed up a bit late, building my IKEA coffee table again. (I got a replacement since there were troubles with the first one.) But I wasn’t that late to bed yesterday. So I don’t know why I feel so very tired today.
Whatever I get done today will feel like a miracle. >_<
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August 17
Varied day of reading. I read ビブリア until the end of the chapter (48% → 53%), played バリバリ for ~45 min, read 1 chapter of 青のフラッグ (started volume 5) and played ルーパーズ for about an hour before fallign asleep (didn’t finish the chapter).
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