📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2022 🏖 ☀

july 15 :sunflower: home post

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100 days read!!

I read ch. 1 of シャドーハウス today. Tonight I’ll try to get through more of 魔女の宅急便

I think I’m ready to join the Intermediate Book Club, but I’m not sure if I should start reading Spy x Family now or wait until they start Tugumi

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:house:
16th of July

Read page 104 to page 107 (29 – 30%) of かがみの孤城. Today’s pages were easier than usual.

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Home post

REDC
Week 3

July 15
Chrono Trigger → 50 min.


@Zakarius congrats on finishing the book! :tada: First of many many to come, hopefully! :slight_smile:

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Summary post

Checking in again, a week later! I didn’t read quite as much as I did last week, but I finished translating 7,000 characters for Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling’s Summer Sun Princess show! (So I guess the equivalent of almost half a volume of manga? :sweat_smile:)

Here’s my much more detailed post about it with a general summary of the translation, and all of the things that I found particularly interesting or confusing.

And here’s a photo from the show that took my breath away when I saw it:

That’s the moment the Magical Sugar Rabbits lost their tag team championship belts to Saki Akai and Yuki Arai. As Yuka Sakazaki (being restrained by Arai as she desperately tries to get into the ring to save Mizuki) put it, they lost by just one or two millimeters. Just before this, Yuka sacrificed herself to take a hit instead of Mizuki, but it ended up costing both of them the match because Yuka was unable to save her afterward.

I’m caught up on the TJPW translations for… a couple hours :sweat_smile:. Starting tonight, they’re doing three shows in a row, which I definitely will not be able to get translated in time. I’m hoping to get them done within the next week if possible, though!

My Spanish reading is also still going strong! I haven’t missed a day yet, but I did have a few close calls where all I got read was just a couple pages of my book.

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:green_heart: Home :green_heart:

ジョジョの奇妙な冒険20

55 - 79

Sometimes things don’t go according to plan. I’m surprised again that I read that much at least

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July 15 :blossom: Home Post

Today wasn’t a great brain day so not a whole lot of reading, but it was the first day of the VN book club so I read the prologue of ルーパーズ!! It’s been a comfortable read so far, just some cool new vocabulary sprinkled in but overall really solid! I’m excited to see where it goes and experience it with everyone :grin:

Omg that’s great :joy:

Woah that’s even wilder, congrats!! :tada:

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Home

I read the last section and the extras of 山田くんと田中課長. They get sent on a sudden business trip to Ōsaka, and at one point on the train, kachou-san stands on Yamada like thus:

to read emails on the laptop and has a lil gay crisis and has trouble focusing lol:

I read 5 pages of 2.43, leaving off on pg 117 and finishing ch 1-6!

A bit on names

I think this is the first time we’ve heard Subaru call Ochi by his given name, Mitsuomi. Usually he calls the others by their given name or a nickname (it seems more in the anime than the novel, though, as when we first see him in HS it’s during a match and he’s calling out, “Kakegawa!” but in the anime it was “Tomoki!”), but for whatever reason, he sticks with Ochi’s surname. It’s only when he’s serious that he calls him Mitsuomi. And Ochi is probably his best friend, so it’s interesting that Subaru will throw around everyone else’s given name (and has everyone call him by his) but will only call him Mitsuomi when he wants to be taken seriously. (At least, everyone on the team, and it’s not like he doesn’t consider Ochi to be part of the team.)

(…And now I’m imagining how Aoki might get jealous if Subaru started calling Oda “Shin’ichirou” or “Shin” lol. Though it’s not like he himself hasn’t been calling him Shin at least since second year. I wonder which would be worse though, given name or nickname…)

In non-reading news:

So apparently アオアシ is still airing, which would explain why it has 14 eps currently, as that’s a very weird number for a completed anime/cour. Well we’ll see how well I do keeping up with it… Anyway, I watched ep 9-14 today. Umehara-san’s character finally had lines in ep 12! He also read the title of the ep at the very end of ep 11, so I knew he would. I love his voice a lot. ♡♡♡ Man, ep 13 broke my heart though, right along with Ashito’s.

Make it a bit shorter (I just can't write short posts, can I)

Y’know, I really like though how whoever subbed this didn’t cover the text, like on the letter or on messages, so you can still read the original JP. A lot of times subbers will just slap it overtop. But I can actually try my hand at reading them with this one (even if I gotta pause to do it), and I actually didn’t have any difficulty with any of them.

Since this is a somewhat longer series though (and likely will just get longer), I’m not sure yet if I will eventually be buying it at some point. Granted, Oofuri is half again as long (38 eps vs. the 24 that アオアシ s01 will be) and I’m definitely getting that, but also… comfort series. As for the manga though, on the one hand, I’m a bit annoyed that Amazon doesn’t seem to have the regular edition for the volumes for which the ジュニア版 has been released (they have full furigana as well, it seems, as a few full-color non-story extra pages, although that may just be vol 1?), but on the other hand, the ジュニア版 seems to be cheaper than the regular version… Well, I’ll probably be getting the cheapest set I can find on eBay when I do end up getting it, so that may not even matter anyway.

Apparently there was a lesbian (?) golf anime that aired this past season, Birdie Wing, so I may have to check it out. (MAL only has it tagged as Sports, but one reviewer calls it a lesbian romance, though I dunno if it’s the usual level of sports-ani gayness or if it’s “Oh, this is gay-gay.”) It’s supposed to be funny and non-serious and a little wacky, so even though I don’t like golf, I may have to give it a watch?? Also the main character Eve is apparently the kind of stupid I like in a favorite character, so

Some vocab of note:

四苦八苦 (しくはっく) [四字熟語, noun, する verb (自)] being in dire distress; being hard put to it
恨みがましい (うらみがましい) [い-adj.] reproachful; resentful; spiteful
高鳴る (たかなる) [自ラ五] to throb; to beat fast
たかが [adverb] only; merely; just; at most; no more than

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Small reading day, just the prologue to Loopers/ルーパーズ, which is a much easier read so far than Flowers. Been a rough health day (especially this latter half) so I’m gonna keep it short, but that was a cute little intro.

These forums aren’t so big that I think many people would genuinely be missing a thread like this, but still, I can’t just fail to take the opportunity to do one more plug for my new visual novel club, which just began reading today. This chapter was quite short, good easing in and learning opportunities :grin:

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:spiral_calendar: Day 15: July 15th :beach_umbrella: :ice_cream:

spacer:bust_in_silhouette: シャドーハウス Volume 1 (0% ➨ 11%)

spacer:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: からかい上手の高木さん Volume 7 (46% ➨ 57%)

🪠 スーパーマリオくん Volume 1 (10% ➨ 18%)

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Those of you who’ve played Super Mario World and jumped off Yoshi to avoid falling in a hole, this panel’s for you.

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Mario would later go on to lead the design team for the Nintendo Wii controller.

This is also why the cord is so short.

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Day 14
カリスタルハンータズ Book 2

After missing two days in a row I was determined to read at least a little today! Made it through a couple pages, but it was slow going with lots of rereading. Still confused about some of the verb forms and having to look up a lot of things. Studying those conjugations may be my reading for tomorrow.

Progress :arrow_right: [|||||||67%]

Night :sleeping:

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You should join a book club when they’re covering something you’re interested in reading.

I wasn’t quite at the level to do 佐賀のがばいおばあちゃん (nor the time) but I wanted to read it, and knowing a book club was covering it was enough to get me to buy it and start.

I’m still far from finishing, but it sort of helps that a club has already gone through it because it’s a little extra motivation to finish it sooner rather than later.

If it’s a matter of knowing you can’t do both books at the club’s pace and discussion is important to you, start off with Tugumi first, read ahead and take note of what you want to ask/discuss, then read Spy x Family in between when you have time. You might not catch up with the former, but at least you will be ahead with the latter.

I personally skipped Spy x Family this round because I’m already watching the anime for the entertainment factor. If I were interested in the play on words/kanji, I’d read the manga but that’s not personally interesting to me. Maybe you’ll feel differently!

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

Day 16:

36 pages of ハピネス volume 3. :sunglasses: I decided I’m too invested now to stop reading. I’ll try setting up Zero Escape again later today, but I figured any reading I get done with that will be a bonus. Today I’m gonna focus on relaxing and regaining my energy. My move is coming up soon and I have a sick cat I need to take care of.

Even though I have a lot on my plate, it feels nice to have this one thing I’m doing every day!

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This looks fun! Out of curiosity (if it doesn’t take too long to reply), where are you playing it, how did you buy it, and how hard would you say it is? I’ve never played a visual novel before but now I’m tempted by the plot, haha.

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My daily guideline for rereading よつばと! with dictionary help: read until I’ve accumulated around 10 new vocabulary words or expressions, to avoid overwhelming myself. Today I read 2 pages to accumulate my list of 10.

So this is quite humbling; although I read quickly the first time through without reference material and felt that I understood quite a lot, my closer look is revealing just how much I was missing!

Biographical note: when I was a kid I read extremely fast, to the point that I was almost skimming. One of my great pleasures was coming across a book in the library that I’d read only once, because I knew that on my second read I’d catch so much stuff that I hadn’t absorbed the first time! So I think this habit has served me quite well for learning languages: read once for general meaning and a second time for finer understanding. And I always advise my students to do this: read a text once without any reference material, and then go back with your dictionary and notebook to get the details.

Some things I learned

そこおいといていい: you can leave it there
低下 (ていか): deteriorating
震える (ふるえる): to shiver, to shake
配る (くばる): to distribute, to deliver, to hand out
粗品 (そしな): small gift
用意 (ようい): preparations, arrangements
片付け (かたづけ): tidying up
嗜好 (しこう): taste, preference
お前の嗜好はいい (おまえのしこうはいい): I don’t care what you like

This last made me laugh out loud: ジャンボ offering to go pick up moving-in gifts for the neighbours, よつば’s dad saying “Don’t bring back anything weird,” ジャンボ saying, “I like pudding,” and dad saying, “I don’t care what you like.”

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Yes I think this works well for me most of the time. I’ll skim a section or a chapter, and then go back and read over it properly.

Today I was quite tired and didn’t feel up to reading Spy Family as I know the next bit is quite dense text wise. So I’ve read the first chapter of Shadows house on Bookwalker straight through. I’m still not 100% sure if I’ll buy it, but suspect I will. I understood quite a bit but am now going back over it - managed about half but it’s now gone midnight so bedtime I think!

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I am playing it on PC. You can buy the game here https://dlsoft.dmm.co.jp/detail/ncpy_0007/ (I should mention that the website does list NSFW stuff there as a warning).

Buying games from DMM

The website has blocked most foreign cards so it can be a pain to buy from them right now. From their website: “Effective May 24, 2022 (Tuesday), VISA and Mastercard credit cards issued overseas will no longer be accepted. JCB, AMEX and Diners credit cards issued overseas and credit cards issued in Japan will continue to be accepted.” If you don’t have one of those cards, you can use a third party website to buy a gift card and redeem it there or buy “points” on the site and then use the points to purchase the game (the points convert directly to yen though, 1 point = 1 yen). If you’re interested in buying the game and have troubles, let me know and I can try to help explain more!

As for the difficulty, I’m still in the early parts of the game so its hard to say too much. The MC speaks pretty slangy so far but outside of that, I haven’t really ran into anything that hard. I think if you have experience reading other things in a slice of life type setting then you’d probably be fine.

A pic from today’s reading. Sort of a flashback scene, they were showing how the MC first entered the school and it was his first time wearing the girl’s uniform. The art makes the scene great :joy:

Some additional screenshots in case you want to gauge the difficulty

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ありがとうございます! :smile: The game doesn’t look too hard but it is a bit pricey :sweat_smile: so I’ll put it on my TBR list for now. Thanks again! I look forward to reading more of your progress updates.

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On my last check in a week ago I mentioned that I’d got back to reading ブルーロック and finished volume 11. Well….I caught the bug hahaha. Read volumes 12-17 this week, which took me to what seems really like a kind of season ending arc (there have been like smaller plot arcs up to this point but literally at the end of volume 17 it’s like ‘this is the end of phase 1, on to phase 2!’)

The last few volumes were such a ride…I actually ended up staying up until 3am last night reading until I could no longer hold off sleep, and then read volume 17 this morning soon as I got up. A lot of fun, though reading that much on a tablet is not kind to my eyes (I would love to read this series as a physical manga but it would be so much more expensive :pensive:)

My little manga spree means that I am now behind in almost all of my book club reads haha. Just read chapter 2 of カラフル today before a book club on that tomorrow (early days, but I’m enjoying it so far!), and now it will be back to 海辺のカフカ to try and catch up with that! :muscle:

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I wasn’t sure where I was gonna post this—but it is about reading, so I figured here would be good—today I’m feeling uninterested in all my current reads. I don’t know why. Maybe because I spent so much time talking about Loopers and Orange the past couple of days, so I feel a bit talked out but like also applying to reading those and reading in general. (Also to note, I am tired after I had a very poor night’s sleep, so I expect to feel more 元気 tomorrow (as long as I get to sleep).)

I will probably pick up something and read a couple of pages just to be able to mark off the day, but anyone have any tips for what they do when they feel like this? Even if you know it will only feel like this for one day, do you have any tips for getting excited about what you are reading so you’re still able to pick up your current books? Or do you have some other strategy (like grazing another book as is my probable plan)?

I kinda want to get back to my current in-progress books/manga, I don’t need to add another to them. :sweat: I know if I could just get the energy/enthusiasm up, I’m happy with all the things I’m currently reading.

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To be honest, my strategy is just not to read if I don’t feel like it. Just reading a couple of pages as due diligence seems about right. Maybe those couple of pages will inspire you, but if not, you can try tomorrow. Some days we just need to do something different.

I teach English literature for a living, and during the school term I almost never feel like reading for fun, and I always feel guilty about this: I’m a reader; I should be reading! But the guilt actually makes me feel LESS like reading, even when summer vacation rolls around. In the last couple of years I’ve let myself completely off the hook (“Maybe I just don’t like reading any more, so I’ll do other stuff”), and this summer I’ve found myself reading like mad, mostly English translations of Japanese novels on top of my daily reading in Japanese. Sometimes it just comes around again out of nowhere, and when it does, it feels great.

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