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July 9th 
・SAO Progressive 1 (78% → 80%)
Ended up doing just a tiny read at the end of the day. Stopped at page 410/510, so exactly 100 pages left, which is cool. Tomorrow I’ll read Saikawa & Moe book.
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I had hardly time to read but I still managed to read 9 pages 5分で読める恐怖のラストの物語. Finished the story what they found in the safe was the body of an old man who looked like the deceased grandfather. They buried him next to the other grandfather. The story ended with the protagonist wondering who of them was the real grandfather.
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| REDC | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 2 |
July 9
Final Fantasy 7 → 30 min.
Just played for half an hour but I made a choice I didn’t like and I’ll have to replay what I did today tomorrow. But hey, practice is practice 
. It’s not the first time playing this that I replay something for the sake of repetition when I’ve been extra tired/sleepy anyways.
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Today I got back to reading manga for the first time in ages (the occasional よつばと chapters in a read-along club being the one exception). I finished off ブルーロック11 (I’d left it about 40% in, though at the end of a plot arc) and then read volume 12 this evening. This manga is such a joy to read, it’s got a great balance of tense “omg how are they going to win the game!” action and then all the characters are fun goofballs of various sorts.
There was one really cute running joke in these volumes where (no plot details but spoiler tagging to be on the safe side) our MC Isagi is put on a team with two new team mates who are very adorable and considerate/friendly. And he’s like “huh, these guys are nice!… for some reason this seems weird” and then we get flashbacks to all of his previous team mates who are all various kinds of hyper competitive anime boys and Isagi is like “huh, guess that’s why.” There are little non-plot mini comics at the end of each volume and this one featured these three. One of them goes to get a drink and then thinks “my team mates might want a drink! I’ll get them one each too!”…and then the strip ends with all three of them with trays full of drinks being cutely awkward like “haha, guess we all had the same idea!”. I hope we get more of this combo, they are too cute 
One other fun thing is that I also did a a bit of study from TRY N2 today, and 2 of the grammar points came up right away when reading. Always cool when that happens! Also shows that N2 grammar can pop up even in a silly football(soccer) manga!
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July 9th
What did I read?: Flying Witch Vol 11 and Orange Vol 1
How much did I read?: 30 pages and 24 pages
How long did it take me?: 22 min and 29 min
Decided to knock out the book clubs today! As always, Flying Witch was a good time 
As for Orange
KAKERU NO 
Nothing even happened to him yet in the high school part of the timeline, but clearly it will and I don’t want it to 
How did I become so endeared to this character already lmao, we’re like point-five seconds into this and the line “１０年後の今、翔はここにはいません” is already breaking me
This manga is going to wreck me emotionally, isn’t it 
This this this this so much this, all of what you just said
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July 9 
Home Post
More バディミッションBOND today! Lots of fun character interactions and drama, as always. I’m making some good progress on the main plot and I really just need to know all the things it’s always a cool feeling to be so invested in something in Japanese! All is good 
BOND things
I learned a cool new specific phrase today, courtesy of チェズレイ, go figure アーロン was calling him out on always picking fights with モクマ and he had this to say:
To which both me and アーロン were like ??? lmao, but I did some googling and it’s apparently an old saying: 人の恋路を邪魔する奴は馬に蹴られて死んじまえ。So basically if someone’s getting in the way of your romance, you should get kicked by a horse and die
Today had lots of チェズレイ drama; he’s a very complex character actually. This whole thing with his mom not only committing suicide in front of him, but him trying to stop her and her just saying like “let me go, hanging in the air by my leg like this is worse than dying, and you’re a child so there’s no way you can pull me back up” like?? That’s such a horrific situation, if that’s any indication of his life to this point then no wonder he’s like this 
He messed with モクマ as usual, but like in a really rough way today? Imitating the voice of モクマ’s old master that he killed or whatever happened there? Ouchies, モクマ sure reacted to all that:
That’s a face! チェズレイ really brings out sides of モクマ no one else does, in all senses The reverse is true too; チェズレイ’s starting to actually face his feelings a bit, whatever they are? 
I don’t think he really knows either, but this is certainly also a face you don’t see in other contexts:
There was some アーロン angst too for good measure:
Oof how’s it feel アーロン, that your biggest adversary at the moment has the same worldview you claim to have! His already complex feelings about heroes just keep getting more complicated
Obviously I’m all for this If you do I hope you enjoy it!! And I look forward to seeing your thoughts 
AI: The Somnium Files digression
On a related note I see you mentioned AI: The Somnium Files as well; I would generally estimate AI as being harder than the Zero Escape games, but not like a lot? And there’s certainly crossover language between them. I played AI right after the Zero Escapes and by then they’d prepped me pretty well for it. The main language differences with AI are that it tends more towards slang and very specific words for the sake of jokes than Zero Escape does, and there are brief cutscenes that auto-advance, though they’re generally fairly simple.
All this is to say that if you play and enjoy Zero Escape, AI is definitely a good next choice! I absolutely adored it, and I feel like I got a lot out of it language-wise too 
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I read one of the 福井あるある４コマ on the 2.43 twitter.
I read ch 3-6 and the extras of 君には届かない。finishing the first vol. Fuuuuuuuuuudge I wish I had vol 2! I dunno when I’m getting more books, much less if I should get through the latest vol (5) when I do, but I’m definitely at least getting vol 2!!
Some vocab of note:
のどか [な-adj.] tranquil; calm; quiet; peaceful
吐露 (とろ) [noun, する verb (他)] expressing one’s mind; speaking out
I just realized today that the screencaps I take on my iPad are no longer showing up on my phone (apparently they stopped yesterday), so now if I look up a vocab item on my iPad that I wanna include on here, I gotta remember to check it too. Oh joy.
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july 9 
home post
Read a couple things today: Chapter 2 of PokéSpe and a few pages of this week’s Orange club reading! I’m dropping PokéSpe for now though, I’m having a hard time with the casual speech and I’m already reading quite a few things. I’ll probably go back to it later since I’m enjoying it so far, it’s just not something I want to read right now.
Also the Ocarina of Time manga has now been added to Natively 
so now I can start tracking my progress. Didn’t read any of that today though
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Day 8
カリスタルハンータズ
Sooo tired. Today it got up to 106 
But I still powered through my reviews and read ALLLL of chapter four!
Progress [||||41%]
Sooo many new words. I made myself a nifty table.
New Words
カリスタルハンータズ
Book 2
| Chapter | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | みんな | All, everyone, everybody, everything |
| 4 | 家族, かぞく | Family |
| 4 | 火事, かじ | Fire |
| 4 | 消して, けして | To extinguish, to put out |
| 4 | 待って, まって | to wait |
| 4 | 建物, たてもの | building |
| 4 | 名前, なまえ | Name, first name, given name |
| 4 | なる | To become |
| 4 | ヒーロー | Hero |
I do have a question! The author uses いい quite a few times, which I thought meant “good”? But maybe not in this context? Can anyone clarify what it would mean in these sentences?
「行っていいよ」
「水を使っていい」
どもありがとうございます！
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Slowly starting to make progress through 彩雲国物語。It’s rough going. I think if I didn’t already know the story, I might not be able to understand this well enough considering how hard it is at my level. But it turns out the anime version is really close to the original light novel, so there’s no way to get lost. It’s just really tiring. And after all, thanks to knowing the story, there’s no other medieval pseudo-China book which will be easier for me to read than this. 
Too many of the character names have weird kanji that’s hard/impossible to type in my computer’s IME so I couldn’t type a character list, and instead have to rely on a wobbly hand-scrawled paper list.
I also got out a book to re-read — かなしきデブ猫ちゃん。It’s a relaxing children’s story about a cat traveling around Shikoku having adventures. The level is much easier and I’ve already read it so there are no new words anywhere. I’ve noticed before that when I’m reading something REALLY hard, especially if the setting is somewhere other than the normal modern world, it helps to read something easier as a “warmup.”
It’s the 〜てもいい grammar form, just with the も left out.
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Ah! Is this one of those disappearing particles I’ve been hearing about? Thank you for the response and resource!
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Day 9: July 9th 
🐇 ご注文はうさぎですか？ Complete Blend Volume 1 (42% ➨ 44%)
This re-release contains the original first two volumes of ごちうさ. I’ve almost completed the original volume one portion.
Since that volume is the first manga I ever read (painstakingly looking up every kanji), it’s been really slow-going (as it’s less interesting re-reading it). I didn’t want to skip over it because my original read was before I started WaniKani. Re-reading it lets me see my progress, as I recognize most of the kanji now.
I have read the original volume two, but the first half I read before I was very far in WaniKani and didn’t do very many lookups. The second half I read after making decent progress in WaniKani, but still without many lookups. I’ll be less familiar with that material, so maybe it’ll go a little faster? (Just seven more pages until I reach that point.)
After that, it will be all-new material for me (unless anything from the original volume three appeared in season one of the anime). I wonder if I’ll be reading at a much faster pace by the time I’m there.
SPY×FAMILY Volume 1 (61% ➨ 74%)
ふだつきのキョーコちゃん Volume 2 (21% ➨ 40%)
🥷🏻 くノ一ツバキの胸の内 Volume 2 (34% ➨ 49%)
One of the first things I noticed about this series is the large cast.
Looking at other series by the same mangaka, 「からかい上手の高木さん」 aside from Takagi and Nishikata, the supporting cast is 7 characters: Yukari, Mina, Sanae, Nakai, Mano, and the barely-represented Nishikata’s other two other friends.
「それでも歩は寄せてくる」 has a supporting cast of 3 characters, Maki, Takeru, and Sakurako. There are some one-off appearances of a character in a single story or multi-part story, but not enough to be counted.
Starting out the second volume of 「ふだつきのキョーコちゃん」, it’s too soon to say. Hibino feels like a supporting character, but I expect she’ll be more of a main character.
For 「くノ一ツバキの胸の内」, here’s a scene from yesterday’s reading:
At first, this may seem comparable to seeing Takagi and Nishika’s whole class, but most of the students here have more personality from making a single background appearance than a random unnamed classmate in the nearly seven volumes of Takagi that I’ve completed.
Just looking at the panel above, not counting Tsubaki, Sazanka, and Asagao, I recognize at least 11 characters from various chapters in volume one. I’m wondering if the mangaka plans to give every character a chance to present their name and personality throughout the series.
Today’s chapter feels like it could be based entirely on Mokuren (considering she’s on the title page and the chapter is named 「モクレンの医療術」).
And since the cast is grouped into threes, this means her groupmates get some screen time as well:
After a boisterous beginning, finally, the chapter gets to focus solely on Mokuren.
At least, until bringing in more cast members still waiting to be shown off:
Tsubaki does get to fit in an appearance…
…just until some other pending characters show up.
Not all of them had names/roles given beyond done or two panels. But the title page for the following chapter looks like it’ll focus on even more characters. I definitely need to put together a character guide for myself…
🦎 怪獣のトカゲ Volume 1 (37% ➨ 47%)
I discovered today that the mangaka for this series is not the same as the one-off it’s based on. Finally, the change in art style makes sense!
Between my not being interested in the original short story, and these first four chapters of volume one not capturing my interest, and now knowing the series is being done by a different mangaka, I’m probably not going to continue past volume one. I will still try to finish this volume within the free trial period, though.
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Jul 8, 9
Again a post covering several days.
On the 8th I read pages 134-146 of FukaBoku and on the 9th I only managed to read pages 64-70 of Yotsubato.
I’m already 90% into the second volume of FukaBoku, which feels absolutely surreal. I had much more difficulty with the first volume, and my pace was considerably slower. I think the greatest thing that I get from it is that I’m getting used to text with no furigana, so it opens up my possibilities for the next reads!
Yotsubato continues to be incredibly funny and comforting. I only managed to read a little bit of it in the evening yesterday, but even those 6 pages made me laugh. The third volume is the last one I have right now, so I kind of don’t want to rush through it, since I don’t know when I would be able to get the next volumes.
Here’s to another day of reading! 
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July 9
Busy day so I could only manage to play バリバリ for 20 min before falling asleep 
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Day 10!
I figured I’d start early again today! I knew I’d be setting up Zero Escape, so I wanted to make sure I didn’t do it last minute in case any Issues™ would arise. Guess who was right. 
I am absolutely losing my mind trying to make Textractor work with this game. It took an hour to find a working hook, but at least it ran super smoothly for around 20 minutes after that.
Then the game introduced a new font (??) and Textractor proceeded to convert everything to weird, unreadable characters. I’ve been trying to rehook it ever since, but it’s not working and now I’m Angry. I’m probably gonna have to start the game over because I was too distracted by the issues to really take it all in. I’m so bummed!!! Taking any and all advice from pro VN readers.
Replies!
Ooh, this is good to know, thank you! Slang is definitely tripping me up, so starting with the less slang-y game first might be a good call. I love mystery games, so I think both of these are right up my alley! If I can just iron out all the technical kinks, this will be super fun for me. I’m pretty good with dialogue due to reading manga, but I’m having trouble with the tutorial screens, lol. There’s so much information and my brain wants to skip to the fun parts!! but I’m not great with struggling with things, so understanding what to do is probably the best call
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The Tanuki Beach Resort: Date 20220710 
No Longer Tanuki Progress: 86.98%
Only time for a short read today!
Learnthings
掻き「かき」ー Stroke (like a swimming stroke); arm stroke // or used as a prefix it adds emphasis to words (also かっ )
催眠剤「さいみんざい」ー Sleeping medicine/pills; hypnotic
お馴染み「おなじみ」ー Familiar; well-known; regular (like a customer… ！！or regulars on this forum)
致死量「ちしりょう」ー Lethal dose
Forms
電燈 ＝ 電灯「でんとう」(Electric light; lamp)
ＤＩＡＬ
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Home
ジョジョの奇妙な冒険19
29 - 62
Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya
Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama
Key Largo, Montego
Baby why don’t we go
Jamaica
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Read another page of the prefectures book, and 8 pages of Spy Family before my late shift. Started mission 3.
Need to sleep now…
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17 more pages of よつばと！ today; up to p. 159. I’m so glad I have a few more volumes of her to look forward to…
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Did that happen when the game switched from the regular VN scenes with voice acting and all to the first “escape the room” section?
textractor stuff
If so - same In my case it was that some, but not all, hiragana were converted to half width katakana (?? honestly wild would be really curious as to why) so it looked like this:
Since that’s still technically the correct Japanese phrase just in… weird, I ended up converting that to normal text on my clipboard extractor page thingy when I didn’t find a better hook that… doesn’t do whatever this is More a workaround than a solution but works fine IMO. Is the text the same for you or are you getting actual gibbrish? 'cause that seems harder to solve…
Anyway, I’m by no means a pro VN reader™* (this is the only one I’ve tried so far) but Zero Escape works okay for me now so could attempt to help trouble shoot if you want? 
*edit: I can’t believe I wrote ‘VPN reader’ at first, my brain is a potato
That reminds me, I really gotta get back to this game, why do I always get sidetracked
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