Today I started playing Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind for Nintendo Switch in japanese and I’m really surprised how easy it is for me to play it in japanese. There were only three words I had to look up. Also continued reading 5 pages of the Kanzen Master Reading N2 book.
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July 24
Monster Hunter World
Loopers, finished chapter 2
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Mary does say there’s no relation outside of where her name comes from. I don’t mind religion in a story but to each their own there.
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This isn’t really a proper update, but I got a few books in the mail last week, and didn’t have time to talk about them until now.
I’m not sure how interested other folks will be in these, especially the top two. They’re both essentially designed to teach highly specific English vocabulary to Japanese speakers 
. But as it turns out, they also work in reverse, although perhaps not quite as well (you definitely need to know kanji, at least. There isn’t furigana).
Here are some descriptions of each book as well as some photos:
This book teaches fandom-related vocabulary and slang. The vast majority of it is a glossary. It also has some examples of letters you could write to people that you are a fan of, set up in parallel text format. There is free audio accompaniment! I tried it out, and it reads the English word, the Japanese word, the English sentence, and the Japanese sentence.
This book was made by New Japan Pro Wrestling to teach wrestling-related vocabulary. It has lots of sections, including a glossary, profiles of wrestlers, and interviews in a parallel text format. It also has audio accompaniment, though I haven't tried it out because I'm assuming it's mostly just English audio of the wrestler interviews. Read this book to find out how to say useful phrases like "Boris Johnson ruined my G1" in Japanese. If you don't watch wrestling, you might get a kick out of some of the more bizarre words in the glossary, like "babyface" and "bump", which have very specific meanings in wrestling.
This is a fairly popular beginner novel written in the Minna no Nihongo universe, which is intended to be easily readable after you complete MNN 1 and 2. I bought it because I thought I'd read it after finishing the textbook so that I can experience what it's like to read a novel in Japanese without having to do any look-ups (theoretically).
I bought this one thanks to this challenge thread! Or, well, thanks to the winter one, at least. This is a book with 365 Japanese colors, each corresponding to a day of the year. It's absolutely gorgeous, though there's loads of unknown vocab, so I'm not planning on reading it in the near future. It might be the beginning of 2024 by the time I get around to it, honestly.
A month or so ago, I also bought Read Real Japanese: Fiction, which was discussed in an earlier thread. Here’s Tofugu’s review of it. This book looks awesome, and I’m excited to eventually read it, though I’m holding off until my Japanese is a little better because I feel like I’ll get more out of it then. I’m most excited about the translation section at the back which talks in detail about why it made the translation choices that it did.
The two English lesson books are pretty readable/usable at my current level, so I’m probably going to dive into those as I have time between my other reading commitments. No plans currently to SRS any of the new vocab from those, though the NJPW book is already helping me figure out how to translate a lot of words I encounter in TJPW, which are already in my Anki deck.
Both of those books are handy because they define a lot of subculture-specific vocabulary that I encounter all the time on social media and during immersion and such, which often aren’t included in Yomichan’s dictionaries.
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It’s been a while but I have vague memories of getting stuck on that too; I just went back to double-check how it works, and are you clicking on the key after you input the code? I don’t think I figured out that I had to do that for a while If it’s not that then I’m not sure, if you’re still having trouble I can try to provide more insight 
Ah I remember going down a rabbit hole about this in a previous challenge! (I just looked and it was in February omg, so much time has passed 
) But in case my conclusions are any interest:
Ooooh thank you! It sounds like I need to do some more investigating into amazon japan, see how things compare 
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July 24 
Home Post
Today was a garbage reading day 
I didn’t start until I was already tired and I only got through like a page of 海辺のカフカ before my brain said “nope, it’s bedtime” lmao but that’s okay! I did more listening today so that’s a tradeoff I suppose 
I should have more time to read tomorrow so I’ll look forward to that!
Oh I feel that, going out and interacting with the with the world is exhausting I’m also looking forward to having an easier week this week, more time and mental energy for reading chaos I’m glad things will be nicer for you!
Oooh I’ve heard good things about those games, I’m interested to see how you like it! It certainly sounds like it’d be an on-brand thing for me to play someday
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Day 24: July 24th 
🪄 まじっく快斗 Volume 1 (22% ➨ 36%)
I started this series a while back because it’s an earlier series by the mangaka of Detective Conan. The art style, writing style, character personalities, and scene development are definitely similar to Conan while being a different genre.
However, because my knowledge of the cast of Kaitou Kid is from appearances I’ve read in Detective Conan (based on reading the English release), I don’t have a strong connection to push me to keep reading. Thus, it’s easy for this series to be forgotten as I keep moving through volume after volume of Conan.
It probably also doesn’t help that I’ve never read this series in English (is there even an official English release?), so I’m relying purely on my own ability with Japanese to understand everything.
I last left off a few pages into chapter two, where it seems there’s a princess of a European country with an expensive jewel, which an accompanying famous French police officer hopes to use to lure Kaitou Kid.
You can tell he’s impressive because even his laughter shows up in photographs.
The art style clearly shows that this is an earlier work. I’m curious if it improved over the series’s five-volume run. Although Detective Conan’s art style was refined a bit during its first year (1994-1995), it was already much improved over where Kaito started.
After the many months of seeing 現れる in Sailormoon before I finally properly remembered the reading and the meaning, I keep starting to misread this 現われる as あらわわれる, which is instantly followed by “that isn’t right” feeling each time.
Even though I’m mid-case at the end of the last volume of Detective Conan (maybe one chapter left), I’m aiming to finish up this first volume of Kaito before buying the next volume of Conan. But if I do a purchase of anything else before then, I’m grabbing the next volume of Conan at the same time.
おじさまと猫 Volume 6 (90% ➨ 100%)
ふだつきのキョーコちゃん Volume 4 (58% ➨100%)
Thread Comments
I’m facing similar due to certain reasons. The ones here are small (like fruit flies), so I put out some small jars with about half an inch of apple cider vinegar and a drop of liquid dish soap, and each day about 20 or so little flies suicide themselves into each.
Seem to be infectious. From my reading today…
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Because I’m a mess, and also I wanted something cute, I picked up 君に届け today. I read episodes 0 and 1, which make up a little more than half of the first volume. I didn’t read most of the hand-written stuff though because sensei’s handwriting tends to be difficult for me to read.
I also read 2 pages of 強者の同盟, leaving off on pg 11. Apparently Jungo and Subaru had had a game of 1-on-1 (basketball) after practice, and if Jungo lost, he had to treat Subaru to a crêpe from this crêperie. And clearly Jungo lost lol
Anyway, in yesterday’s section, he ran into a classmate from middle school, Akao Azusa (who will be another of the main characters in this story), who goes to an all-girls’ high school in the city and whom he rarely sees anymore because their schedules and routes are different. Pretty much as soon as he’s sat down, Kouhei starts grilling him about her.
Kouhei: Who was that girl you were just talking to? Do you like her? Is she your girlfriend?
Jungo: You’re an idiot.
lol Jungo’s like, maybe you would only talk to a girl because you wanna date her. 女子とひと言ふた言話しただけでイコール彼女のわけあるか.
Some vocab of note:
座右の銘 (ざゆうのめい) [noun] favorite motto; pet saying
不快感を与える (ふかいかんをあたえる) [expression; 一] to jar; to grate; to make uncomfortable
いやいや [adverb] unwillingly; grudgingly; reluctantly
うちとける [自一] to open one’s heart; to throw off reserve; to be frank
ビリ [noun] last (on the list); (at the) bottom; (in) last position
うぬぼれる [自一] to be conceited
恩返し (おんがえし) [noun, する verb (自)] requital of a favor; repayment (of an obligation, kindness, etc.)
人気 (ひとけ) [noun] sign of life; human presence. Often as 人気がない or 人気のない.
ぶっちゃけ [adverb, colloquialism] frankly; honestly speaking; to tell the truth; to put it bluntly
白々しい (しらじらしい) [い-adj.] with feigned ignorance; pretending not to know; disingenuous. It also has the literal meaning of “pure white; very clear,” though, so possibly ピンクピンクしい is pinker than just ピンク色?
These two are definitely going on my list! I’m fairly involved in fandom, so knowing all the Japanese terms would be cool, and possibly useful once I start reading fic in JP. And I love colors. One of my folders in Shirabe Jisho is just for all the color words I come across.
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If you go looking for Japanese fic, just a warning, according to one of my friends, a lot of it is in password locked archives that you often need to be decent at producing Japanese in order to get access to. This probably varies heavily depending on the fandom, so you might get luckier with some, but, just be aware that there might be times where the vast majority of fan content is getting shared in underground communities that you might not know how to find.
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Seconding this for online stuff. I’ve had issues too where sometimes it’s answers that can be written in kana or kanji and you just have to try a lot of combos. Also sometimes the answer is even in romaji or English, but that’s rarer I find.
Alternatively, doujin can be fun to buy! For new, there’s toranoana, melonbooks/fromagebooks, and booth. MB/FB may not have international shipping though. For used there’s mandadrake (yes international) and suruguya (proxy needed). Listings will say what age/gender they’re pushed for and you can also find fanfic listed as 小説. you can find short (usually less than 15 pages) ones in anthropologies and there are also some mixed manga/fanfic ones as well, but those are pretty rare. I think I’ve only bought 2-3 accidently in that format (I consider most Japanese fanfic beyond my attention span rn).
Of course though, there are also full fanfic and previews on pixiv as well.
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JMdict/EDICT (which is the underlying dictionary for yomichan and most other free dictionary apps) does accept user suggestions for new entries, so if you had the time and inclination you could try submitting one or two of the more common ones to see if they’re interested in adding entries for that kind of vocab. (It’s a bit of work to produce a proposed entry that’s good quality and fits the editorial guidelines, so I mention it only as “if that’s something that would be interesting and that you would want to do”.)
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That’s good to know! Though I feel like for a lot of language like this, it’d probably be difficult to add it. For one thing, there is quite a lot of it, and some of it has the tendency to change . But also these words are almost never defined in standard English dictionaries, either. Here’s a list of pro wrestling jargon, to illustrate the kind of task we’re talking about here.
It would be an interesting project for someone to attempt, though. It’d save a lot of fans a lot of trouble attempting to puzzle things out through google searches, and it would probably cut down on machine mistranslations of Japanese wrestling stuff. Maybe if my Japanese was advanced and I didn’t have to do so much googling myself, I’d try to add at least a few and see if they’d accept them.
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Got a 3 month Audible trial. I am debating reading along with books and just listening after the fact for listening practice.
There’s also less pressure to keep up with the speaker.
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7月25日 (月)
It’s been four days, since I last posted, but I’ve been constantly reading and rereading the stories of the Lvl 0 graded reader free PDF. I am especially proud of myself, as I was on a short vacation (there was a music festival 600km from my home town). Every night in the hotel room I grabbed my smartphone e and read a story, and now on the Trai back I’m reporting my progress here. Much more difficult to do on a smartphone, but the key is constancy, so here we go. I’ll write about the stories in more detail once I am back home 
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Last weekend there was a music festival in my town (Karlsruhe) - maybe we went to the same one?
Wow! You rock 
During the festival, I occasionally took the opportunity to chill and read at the lake shore while listening to the band playing on the smaller stage across the lake 
That was nice too!
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Thanks 
Mine was in Köln (the Amphi Festival), so unfortunately not. Hope you had a great time at yours? We had a great time, though there could have been a little less sun and a little more Wind 
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Yeah, I figured as much. Heck, most fic is like that, although a lot of English-language archives at least are making their way over to AO3. There’s some JP fic on AO3 too, so I’ll start there, and if I don’t manage to find any of the JP-language archives (which, I have zero confidence in my ability to do so), then that’s where I’ll stay lol
I have a few manga DJs, but I didn’t know about fic ones! I’ll have to check out those sites later. Before, I only knew about Otaku Republic, sister site of Manga Republic which can be just as expensive.
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July 23
Played バリバリ for about half an hour.
July 24
Read a few paragraphs of ビブリア before falling asleep after lunch and then at night I lasted about 10 minutes reading バリバリ before falling asleep… I really need to sleep better.
At least things should go back to normal after the weekend.
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Finished reading through Nagatoro vol 2 and Yoru Cafe vol 2 yesterday. It was pretty good, also good contrast as Nagatoro doesn’t take up much of my time each day so I read two chapters when I feel like it. Whereas Yoru Cafe a chapter usually takes me around a hour or so to read, except for the shorter ones. It is pretty light reading, but I still gain plenty from it. Yoru Cafe 2 is also on koohi and of the 300 cards I generated each time I would have like 50 new words/expressions. A lot of these are unique words, but I just add words I don’t know or that might feel handy to know. There’s also some that are not that useful and I ignore them.
What I like about Yoru Cafe is that you can smell the teen drama coming, but the characters do get better out of it. The addition of Ryoma makes for a fun dynamic and I feel it ends on a positive and warm note. Throughout the volume there’s gentle reminders of what happened last time, which books have the room for.
I’ll be reading volume 3 of Nagatoro and Yoru Cafe starting today. After that I’m not quite sure what manga I’ll grab onto next, but I do know I’ll be reading Zenitendo again after Yoru Cafe. Almost forgot to mention, I managed to reach my initial goal of reading 5 books this year. I’m gonna try stretching it to 10 books. Manga wise I’m on my 30th volume, which is how much I had last year. So I feel like I’m making good progress there. I have played some Persona 4 Golden since, still doing some free time until the story picks up again there.
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Would have been really funny, though! 
Same here Although I would have preferred some occasional light rain to wind - the festival was in a usually grassy area but you can probably imagine what happened to the grass in the last few weeks… The announcer called the festival “Germany’s largest dust cloud”
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