📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2022 🏖 ☀

I have a free account on Crunchyroll and Funimation, but I don’t watch enough to make a paid one worth it. I also have no qualms about streaming via less, hrm, official means when I can’t find them elsewhere, but my favorite shorter series I do get/plan on getting the Blu-Rays for since they’re region-free. Also friggin’ expensive though, which is why it’s only the shorter ones, like 1 or 2 seasons. So YoI is on my wishlist, same with Uramichi-oniisan and Oofuri, and Cool Doji Danshi will almost certainly be going on there as well after it airs… and I may make an exception for NatsuYuu. It’s got like 6 seasons but it’s my comfort series, so. It’ll definitely take a lot longer than getting the manga lol

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:sunny: :beach_umbrella: Memoria’s Summer Readin’ :beach: :sunny:

Day 11:

Super tired today, so I was not in the mood to do more Zero Escape tinkering :sweat_smile: I figured I wanted something easy instead, so I read 40 pages of ハピネス2. I was supposed to read it with the book club, but unfortunately my new job just ran away with me. Wow, though. It’s just so easy after reading ピーチガール! I know it’s read in the absolute beginner book club for a reason, but it’s kind of amazing to read 40 pages and not have to look up a single word or grammar point.

Realizing how weak my Textractor game is

Haha… right…

Is that how people use it?! I’ve literally just been using textractor and copying & pasting from the clipboard thing in the program :skull_and_crossbones: In hindsight, I really should have looked up a guide on how to use these tools, huh. Your explanation makes it sound way more convenient. I love your little DIY solution for the squished katakana problem, too!

This is probably a silly question, but is the clipboard inserter browser extension… safe to use? I’m always very anxious about installing things, and especially if it’s not a very well-known app or program. If this is how everyone here does their vn reading though… :sweat_smile: (Thank you again for taking the time to troubleshoot and suggest fixes :yellow_heart:

I didn’t know about game2text either :sob: Where did all these nifty tools come from, all of a sudden?! Maybe it’s because I’ve been playing games on my Switch and got used to things being really inconvenient. At least you didn’t have to deal with the odd katakana problem. It’s ok, though! I’ll figure it out somehow…

Thanks for the tip! It’s nice to know these things before diving in fully. I think I don’t mind either of those modes too much. Oh, and even though I loathe tutorial screens, I’ll take my time when I start over again. Just gotta treat myself like a kid sometimes. Boring text first, fun text after…

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I watched YoI through less than legal means the first time, but couldn’t find the final episode with English subs anywhere, so ended up watching it with French subs instead - my French is fine but it definitely created a continuity issue in my brain! Once I got the dvds, watching the whole series through with no ad interruptions or weird glitches felt like a wonderful indulgence.

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July 11th.

I did too much exercise at the weekend and injured myself, I’m sunburnt, work was rough today and its really hot here and I’ve been in such big grump about everything all day.

…So tonight called for a dose of Yotsuba to cheer me up! :slight_smile:
I started Volume 13, and as always it was lovely and improved my mood instantly.
Only managed one chapter before being too tired to continue, but its nice that one chapter now feels like a casual everyday read instead of a massive task. :slight_smile:

(Home Post)

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:evergreen_tree: :books: July 11 :books: :evergreen_tree:
(home post)

Hotel :evergreen_tree: page 61 → 88 (28 pages)

So tired today after doing a lot of work in the yard today. So I only read one chapter of ホテル・メッツァペウラへようこそ. I’m really enjoying this slow revelation of Jun’s past and how it has shaped him. Also really enjoyed how a past thing that happened at the hotel is remembered very differently by the two who’s worked there forever. It could also have been told to them, I wasn’t entirely clear on that part of it.

I do enjoy just reading for enjoyment and not worrying about perfect comprehension, but it does mean having more ambiguity. I don’t think it has impended my enjoyment of this manga so far though, so I don’t care. ^^


Edit: Gah, just remembered I had some replies to do too. Tired brain, as I said.

@rikaiwisdom Congratz on finishing FF7 in Japanese! :tada:

@Daisoujou I hope your hands/arms get better soon. :green_heart:

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8-11th July (Days 8-11) :sunny: :cat2:

Home post :books:

Damn, I keep forgetting to update. I didn’t have all that much time to read for the past few days. I went to my first ever pride event on Saturday, and it was such a long day in the sun that I can honestly not remember whether I did any readings :sweat_smile: However, I have finally managed to get past chapter 5 of 海辺のカフカ in these past few days! Damn did it take forever… I can now (finally!) move onto the next chapter. I can already sense all the cats in the air, and I am honestly so excited. I remember loving this story-line when I first read it, so I am hoping to re-live that experience again :cat2: :cat2: :cat2:

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June 9th-11th - Day 04-06 - Home

天気の図鑑
Chapter 1 - 雲のはなし - Progress 11 (+7) / 21
Comments:

  • Read about cloud formations, with miso soup analogy.
  • Cloud colours
  • Cumulo(nimbus) cloud. In Japanese, they called it 積(乱)雲(せき(らん)うん).
  • There’s also 入道雲(にゅうどうぐも), because it looks like a Buddhist monk, although my imagination is too lacking to find any resemblance.

Here's a nice 入道雲(にゅうどうぐも) footage I found on yt.
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textractor²

I mean I wasn’t trying to imply that’s the only way to use it :joy: It’s just common. Without that squished katakana problem (I’m stealing that term :eyes: ) copy pasting seems fine too honestly, it’s just a bit more effort. I just really like yomichan and will take every opportunity to use it :joy: So convenient. :durtle_love:

… probably? :see_no_evil: (Not silly, btw - browser extensions can absolutely be a security risk)
I mean there are probably different ones that have this functionality - I’m currently using this one. I just took a quick look at the code and it seems fine to me. In the sense that it doesn’t do anything weird you wouldn’t expect. :sweat_smile:
Of course can’t technically guarantee that for other extensions or even this one in the future :woman_shrugging:
(If you don’t wanna use an extension, copying the text over manually would work too :woman_shrugging: Would just take slightly longer.)

I don’t mind at all :yellow_heart: Zero Escape squad unite :joy:

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Appreciate the nice messages, again. I want to try to say a little bit without harming myself :crossed_fingers:. Trying really hard with stretches, rest, ice, on and on. Bad timing for typing to hurt when the VN club is about to start :grimacing:

Anyway, Flowers has been good! The backgrounds are so colorful and pretty; I’m in love with these locations. Inching my way forward so nothing big has happened, but there was a nice little tea party:

My immediate inclination towards the less serious types has me leaning much more towards one girl than the other, heh. Excited to see more マユリ. Though I do enjoy a good tea, strong point in favor of 立花… The movie references and stuff were interesting – wasn’t expecting to hear about The Shawshank Redemption here. The writing remains tough, it’s the sort of reading where every other sentence is a minor ordeal that I look a bunch of words up in and reread a few times, but I somewhat like that. Wish I could read VNs a little faster, but because of the ease of lookups, I like for my VNs to be my particularly hard reading to push myself with. スマホを落としただけなのに provides a nice middle level (simple grammar, a decent chunk of word lookups still) and then Dragon Quest is almost free reading. Good way to hit all the levels.

Character Count

I’m proud that thus far, every day’s character count has increased. (by the way @AzusaChan thanks for teaching me this inadvertently – until you posted a screenshot of your own character count, I didn’t know it would split this way and I was clearing it every day).

Anyway, I mostly figure everything out, though certain sentences have a hazy element or two. Happy overall. Stuff like this really pushes me though (for context, she’s describing a sort of gazebo):

季節柄バラの花々が様々な色を咲かせ誇っている只中に建てられていることから、ぐるりと見渡せば酷く圧迫感を覚えてしまうほどに。


Oh and congrats @rikaiwisdom on finishing FF7! It’s an excellent game. You have me wanting to go do an FF game sometime. I’d really like to play the remake but I feel like I wouldn’t quite be satisfied with my level of comprehension just yet – I know I can half get it, but I probably want to be more confident first.

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:house:
12th of July

Read page 91 to page 93 (25 – 26%) of かがみの孤城 today. I may read more in the afternoon if I have time.

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I hope you’re doing a little better now at least!

The author does love her western media. Expect to see a lot more book and movie references throughout haha. Glad I could help with the character count thing too. I only learned about it a month or two ago myself when I saw other people share their daily character count history.

Reading update for myself, I finished Nekopara Extra the other day. It was really short (about 19k~ characters) and basically exactly what you’d expect from a moege with catgirls. It was kind of relaxing to read something more simple without any complex sentences though.
I started to read an indie jp VN (月の光) that is super short as well (jpdb gives it a character count just under 10k). Its a yuri story about some girls that just graduated high school and one of them is moving to Tokyo for university and the main girl is more or less trying to workout her feelings before the other girl leaves. The game is nice so far and the entire thing is voiced, even the narrative parts. The font is kind of ugly to me for some reason but that’s my only complaint so far :sweat_smile:

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Nah I agree, haha. This one doesn’t seem that old but I’m way too easily put off by interfaces and stuff in a lot of older VNs especially, so I know exactly what you mean.

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Home post :bookmark: July 11th :sunny:

・SAO Progressive 1 (84% → 87%)

Sat outside in the sun while reading, felt very refreshing :smiling_face:

Today I learned that it is not always safe to dismiss unknown particles as typos. (Thanks for helping out! @Kazzeon @Myria ) Totally forgot that phrases in quote will give exact matches in the results when searching for stuff on the internet.

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Home post

REDC
Week 3

July 11
Chrono Trigger → 36 min.


Did finally start Chrono Trigger but I’m so tired today that I only walked around speaking with NPCs at the very start just learning the basics, combat and so on. First impression is already good, I’m sure I’ll like it. Confirmed very few kanji striking back again, egh. But hey it’s forcing me to get better at it.

Honestly it’s really the same for me. I’ve watched just some bits here and there and the dialogues being automatic feels somewhat daunting to me because I’m sure I’ll miss some things for sure. But I’m much more confident after having played the original now, I’m sure it can’t be too much different from it, right? :smile: hehe… r-right? D:

I don’t know, I’ll report back for sure once I start it, which will be later this week most likely. I still don’t know if I can play it in Japanese, hopefully just changing the console to Japanese automatically changes it. If it doesn’t, well, that would really suck.

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Jul 12, Tue of Week 3 of Summer :beach_umbrella: 2022

This week’s plan is in my personal topic.

I might progress here less often, but I by no means stopped reading (e.g. I will probably still read 福娘童話集 every day).

Yesterday, I finish Ch.2 of 妖怪の子預かります Vol.1, just to see the smol plum yokai. Also read a little more of うらら迷路帖, in hope of catching more Kanji (and vocabularies), and now, I also at least take notes of 頭高 (or anything possibly out of expectations) – this is in hope of better listening too, such as by studying subtitles.

I read a little about Chain Saw Man, as there is a post discussing (although I am still at half of Ch.3). Of course, Death Note is still being read 1 chapter a week, as I still want to learn and share the interesting parts.

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Summary Post

July 11th
What did I read?: 猫には猫の猫ごはん Vol 1
How much did I read?: 12 pages
How long did it take me?: 15 min

It’s been a hectic day, so just a little read for now. But finally we are back to saving the kitty :pleading_face: Look at this poor baby and his precious little mitten paws :broken_heart:

Taiyou tries to give the kitty some cat food, but he won’t eat anything. The sincere concern on Taiyou’s face is just the sweetest thing ever, he is as cute as the cat tbh, I love him and I want to protect him

Spoiler for the chapter ending

Luckily, he finally gets the kitty to eat something <3 Homemade chicken soup with dried bonito flakes does the trick :3

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:couple_with_heart_woman_woman: home :couple_with_heart_woman_woman:

well, that escalated quickly!

finished the 5th volume of the Kase-san series. Yamada-san and Kase-san have moved to Tokyo, Yamada is overwhelmed with the big city. they meet with a friend from their home-town for 花見, all still very wholesome. Kase visits Yamada in her new (tiny little, i’ve seen apartment-tours of tiny Tokyo apartments on youtube, it looks just like that) apartment. a few pages later, they’re having sex.

it’s not that i mind, it’s just kind of very sudden? like, they’ve kissed 2, maybe 3 times so far? they’re still calling each other by their surnames? well, not any more now, but entering that scene. and Yamada is still like, calling you by your first name is going to take some getting used to. but they’re now having sex.

and this is the second manga which suddenly towards the end of the last volume has a sex scene. (Kase-san has two more volumes, but they were added later, i think). and i’ve only finished two manga series. is this a trope i’m not aware of, a way this kind of manga is structured? …i’ve got a lot to learn :sweat_smile:

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Home

I started reading 山田くんと田中課長, a collection of a bunch of shorts that Natsumizu-sensei drew over the years (2010-2015), some that it seems were included as extras in the tankoubon of other of her manga? about salaryman Yamada who arrives at work one day to find his boss Tanaka-kachou waiting on his desk—because he inexplicably has shrunk down to being 24 cm tall, or a little smaller than a Ken doll. And buchou-san has arbitrarily decided that Yamada will be taking care of him, of course. It’s pretty cute. Kachou-san is really cute, too.

Some tangentially related saltiness

Though since nothing really happens and all we really get are hints, apparently there are people who consider it “not BL,” which is a total double standard because if one of them were a woman, no one would question that they’re meant to be love interests. I guess that means Hyuuga and Riko (KnB) aren’t love interests, or Ryouma and Sakuno (TeniPuri), or any other sports manga protagonist with a girl who’s clearly meant to be his love interest! They never kiss or start going out or anything, so obviously they don’t romantically like each other. Clearly the implication that their relationship is heading or would/could head in that direction just isn’t enough!

Yeah, I read it scanlated a while back, or at least what little bit was available (and then immediately added it to my Amazon wishlist because this was after I started actually being able to somewhat read Japanese), and I saw people in the comments complaining that it wasn’t actually BL. On the one hand, I should really know better than to look at the comments, but on the other hand, the comments have been instrumental on more than one occasion in avoiding content I don’t wanna read, especially when the description is unclear, cut off, or straight-up nonexistent. On at least one occasion, I started reading without checking other people’s tags and comments only to find that it’s teenager x adult or some shit…

Anyway, I read the first three sections, which are all shorter ones. There are six (or I guess seven?), and together these three only make up a quarter of the volume!

I read 4 pages of 2.43, leaving off on pg 93.

My rambling got really long. Unsurprisingly. lol

Aoki!! He’s such a little shit lol I love him. looool and apparently, though they certainly know each other on sight, Ochi and Aoki didn’t actually know each other until now, because Ochi’s impression of him is that he seems rational yet gentle, and then he pulls this shit, and Ochi’s like, rational and gentle?? Where?! So I guess this is where his dislike starts lmao (He can be gentle though, just mostly only with Oda. Mostly. Honestly I feel like he cares about the team more than just for Oda’s sake the way he acts like it is, but not in a tsundere way or anything. God no, tsundere’s the absolute last thing he is. I dunno, I don’t think I can explain it well. And yet he’s pretty much all I’ve been writing lately lol Aoki’s actually starting to properly feel like my favorite character.)

Then again, Aoki didn’t play volleyball in middle school, and Seiin and Fukuhou never had a relationship despite being geographically close, so they never had joint training camps or practice matches or anything, so it makes sense that Ochi doesn’t know Aoki at all except as a player, I just never thought about it. But from the anime, Oda and Subaru did seem to at least sort of know each other (even if possibly only by reputation), so I’m looking forward to seeing how they see each other. Oda almost certainly looked up to Subaru in middle school, not just because everyone did, basically, but also because he was also a short player who’s playing left and is a successful spiker and ace (and of course now, despite being little taller than Oda in middle school, he’s one of the tallest players in the league. That’s gotta hurt), but I wonder if Subaru ever took any special notice of Oda. He took notice of Ochi, a rather average (and also short, probably around his own height in MS) but determined and capable player, when no one else did, but what about Oda, a player even shorter than him who’s just as determined but has less success in trying to overcome his setbacks? Did he root for him? Is some part of him excited at the possibility of getting to face him even as he’s annoyed at people (that cameraman with Fukurou TV) saying that, ooh, it’s not fun if Fukuhou just wins again now that they’ve got competition within Fukui, and even as he’s still determined as ever to finally get to that center court at HaruKou this year?

Anyway, all that, plus the info that Subaru and Ochi have gone to and from school together “an incalculable number of times” means I’m not disappointed that this scene goes pretty much exactly as in the anime and there’s no more Ochi-Aoki interaction here. Also I know Aoki shows up in next 4 years, so I can hope for more there. Even if it’ll probably take me four years to get to it.

In non-reading news, I watched 2 more eps of YoI. I met Minami-kun. I adore him. Same with Phichit.

Some vocab of note:

我関せず (われかんせず) [expression] no concern of mine; nothing to do with me
ボコる [他ラ五, slang] to beat the hell out of
茫然自失 (ぼうぜんじしつ) [四字熟語, noun, の-adj., する verb (自)] stupor; stupefaction; (being) dumbfounded
歯軋り (はぎしり) [noun, する verb (自)] grinding one’s teeth out of anger or vexation
便乗 (びんじょう) [noun, する verb (自)] taking advantage of (an opportunity); jumping on the bandwagon

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July 11 :blossom: Home Post

I did kind of a lot today actually :joy: I started off with バディミッションBOND and lost my entire mind as always; I’m so far in at this point and yet I’m still meeting new characters and such and I don’t think that’s done either, wild. I did a boss battle today I guess?? Lmao didn’t see that coming in my silly mystery VN :laughing: But yeah lots of angst with イアン who, surprise, isn’t actually the big bad (in retrospect I probably should have suspected this but alas) which raises even more questions; who’s the phantom huh?? But I finally met AAA for like two seconds and I love him immediately, I look forward to interacting with him more and probably getting my heart shattered :man_shrugging:

And then I read chapter 15 of 海辺(うみべ)のカフカ so I’m all caught up for the week again! Again a relatively smooth read, I just got really tired toward the end and decided to push through anyway :joy: But hey I did it!

(On an adjacent note, through bookwalker sales and coins they threw at me I acquired the first volume of NO.6 which I’ve been wanting to read, but as expected I’m awful about ebooks :laughing: Maybe it’ll be enough to motivate to deal with it, but if anyone has bookwalker reading tips I’m certainly open to those as well :grin:)

Ahhhh congrats, that’s really awesome!! :tada: Finishing big projects like that is always such an accomplishment. FF is one of those of those series that I’ve always wanted to try out more but just never got around to, but one day in Japanese maybe? :eyes:

Yesss, love the cats!! Congrats on chapter 5, I remember that one being a bit of nightmare :joy: but the cats were worth it all!

Omg they’re so cute :sob: new manga for the ever-growing list haha

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:house:Post

Day 11

:open_book: カリスタルハンータズ Book 2

:arrow_right: Progress - [|||||50%]

🧐 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
Chapter Word Meaning
5 もいない Not even
5 もう大丈夫 It’s alright now

:thinking:Thoughts

Holy moly things got crazy FAST. The first volume of Crystal Hunters was very basic. Likely by necessity as it sets up the story, introduces characters, and has you jumping right in to a bunch of basic grammar. It was a pretty wholesome story about friendship with some monsters thrown in. Kind of gave me Pokémon vibes? But book two? It starts off all cute with a blossoming romance and then out of nowhere - everything is on fire?? Everyone is an orphan?? There is sooo much more blood. Good thing the art is fabulous and the writers are crafty because I have never been so invested in a story with such basic dialogue…for my benefit :sweat_smile:If you are looking for truly beginner Japanese reading material that won’t put you to sleep, I highly recommend this series!

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