Today was a good start to the challenge!
I read pages 34-56 of Yotsubato vol.3 on the subway, then went over them again in the evening and looked up some new words.
For the near future I’m planning on alternating between Yotsubato vol.3 and FukaBoku vol.2. There’s a big difference in their difficulty for me, so it will be nice to have an option of challenging myself on days when I feel up for it 
DAY 1
I fiiiiinally finished chapter 8 in 海辺のカフカ - Kafka on the Shore 
(Advanced Book Club) . It was honestly such a struggle for me. Here’s hoping the chapters here on out are smooth so I can catch up with the book club!
I think puns should be shellebrated! I reel-y love them 
And good call on おやすみプンプン; now that you say it, I do recall hearing something about the dark themes from somewhere… It’s actually good for me to know before reading it too. 
Thanks for that~
Finished volume 3 of K-On!
Also started reading volume 15 of One Piece, finishing chapters 127-131. 
All in all, pretty decent first day of the challenge!
(Home Post)
Fist day of the summer challenge 
I started off today with an overnight bus down to London for the JLPT on Sunday (and some general touristing) which meant that I’ve been very tired all of today and so have only read a few snippets of Flesh & Blood while on various modes of transport (have listened to lots of audiobook and podcast today but that’s for the listening thread I guess )
But! I happened to come across a big bookshop on my wanders today and so popped in to see if they might have any books in Japanese and they did! Quite a few that are on my list actually but I managed to restrict myself to just getting キッチン & コンビニ人間. They are so cute and teeny(diet coke can in photo for scale lol)!
I was vaguely planning for this challenge to serve as a ‘Focus on getting practice at reading fantasy/things set in the past that I can chill out and play Fire Emblem Three Hopes’ training regimen 
…but now I have these pretty physical books calling to me to be read. Argh, the troubles of wanting to read everything at once.
Happy start of summer challenge everyone! May your reading be plentiful and joyous 
Home post
Time for another attempt at being consistent with reading, maybe second time is the charm? 
I’ve joined the advanced book club to read Kafka on the Shore - so I am hoping this will keep me entertained for a while.
Anyways, it is exciting to be back to a fresh beginning with a clean calendar Thank you @windupbird for organizing this again!
| Jul | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
| 01 | 02 | 03 | ||||
| 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
| Aug | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
| 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 |
| 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | 31 |
I’ve fallen behind on the Kafka on the Shore reading schedule due to prolonged illness and deadlines, so I’ll be playing catch up for the next few days. Will probably add some other stuff later.
These are so lovely - I’ve read both of these in English and now I’m wondering if I can get my hands on these versions somewhere when I’m ready to read them in Japanese (which won’t be for some years, I imagine…)
July 1
(home post)
Orange page 5 → 19 (12 pages, some where blank)
It was July 2 in Japan when I read, so I technically started the manga on the correct day for the book club. 
Already enjoying the art so far. I think I’d already skim read about this much at some point, so no surprises but definitely made sure to look into any unknown word to help fill in the vocab sheet.
I feel so responsible as the club shepherd. Or whatever to call it. 
So happy to finally start reading Orange. I’ve waited two weeks for this, which feels like forever. And to get to do it on the first day of the summer challenge too. 
Which bookshop? I’ll probably be in London in a couple of weeks so if I have spare time I might check it out…
Nice to be back, I always love this challenge. I remain reading Summer Pockets, but not for much longer!
Appropriate text – not the best timing to be finishing the summer VN, haha. Still, great start for me. Today’s reading was relatively easy, with lots of repetition circling around a major plot point that’s slowly occurring. With that, I managed to hang in there for 12,000 characters read today. This route moved a little slowly but I think it did effectively develop the characters and relationships, so I’m hooked to see the end of it. And very, very excited to start on new things.
One interesting little thing I learned: 川の字 . Apparently refers to parents sleeping with their child in the middle. You know, 3 people lined up, like the 3 lines of that kanji. Cute.
| REDC | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 |
July 1
Final Fantasy 7: 1 hour.
来たー！ Finally went back to FF7 and reading altogether after a couple weeks. I felt a tiny bit rusty at first but quickly caught up on reading speed, though as always nothing fancy. I swear video games are gradually making me a pro at reading katakana, I’m so grateful that my brain starts to catch katakana words without the need to read each kana individually.
I really want to finish FF7 already, not for any bad reason, but because I didn’t want to spoil anything so I didn’t really add much to my updates in the last challenge, and I already want to!! 
That and I’ve already been playing it for a long time and I want to move to another thing.
I might… might, get Chrono Trigger before the summer Steam sales end. Undecided, but likely. And also recently I’ve been really wanting to play RimWorld again and I’ve discovered that it got a proper Japanese translation at some point, I don’t know, I haven’t played in a few years. But going for a run in Japanese sounds like a super fun idea to me, so might do! Sadly RimWorld is a game that wouldn’t offer too much language practice once you learn most of the important things, but luckily there is still a lot of text and a fair amount of commonly known technical vocabulary that might be worth learning.
Also @latepatate !!! Glad to see you here 
.
Jul 2, Sat of Week 1 of Summer (end-of-Spring 
) 2022
So, I’ve just decided to read うらら迷路帳. (Yeah, the one from Borx’s avatar.) It really is light-hearted 4-koma, but there is no chapter. (Also, no Furigana, with ample Kanji use.)
Even with Furigana, I would certainly want to read hand-written text outside speech bubbles; which almost certainly has no Furigana. It’s more fun this way…
I feel like, even though I want to read n+1 for studying, but I really want to eventually make this n-1… (For me, this one counts as n+1, just as JoJo and most other mangas found anywhere.)
Also read 進撃の巨人 Ch.3 – I feel like there are a lot of things I don’t catch, even if I look up on dictionary from time to time. (While I catch a lot more from Urara and JoJo, as long as I look up.)
There is also a thing about psychological trick? Urara has no chapter (i.e. 1); SNK has 5; JoJo in monochrome version has almost 20. Which one do you think I am able to read the fastest? – SNK’ve quickly gone beyond half, now (74%, actually).
I am shifting my main dictionary, from Akebi+Kotobank to Aedict+link to online dictionary (Goo). Aedict probably also has better Kanji breakdown, although I haven’t tried much yet. There are also things like I have to change some UI settings. Also, the former dictionary has older JMdict which more errors, and doesn’t seem to get updated, while has integration in most places’ context menu (but not Bookwalker…); so maybe I can go from Aedict => Goo in web browser => Akebi, too.
Road signs [/spoiler] are also read [spoiler] どう.ひょう
I only read about 20 pages of 硝子の塔の殺人 today and I’m not sure I have the energy to read more so perhaps finishing it this weekend won’t happen.
I also got some inspiration from @basilsauce 's personal JLPT challenge and decided that rather than fiddle with my JLPT books (which…I’ve never enjoyed them much) I’ll do a slightly different personal “one grammar point a day” challenge for myself. It looks like Imabi has 376 lessons to complete “Veteran II” and while I’m unlikely to review everything in the Beginner sections, I might review a few things here and there just for deeper understanding of basics…or because I’m having a lazy day
I made myself a spreadsheet with cells labeled 1-376 and each day I will try to do at least one lesson and will color in the corresponding cell(s).
Day 1: July 1st
What did I read?: 猫には猫の猫ごはん Vol 1
How much did I read?: 20 pages
How long did it take me?: 20 min
I low-key almost forgot that today was July 1st lmao whoops
I am already in love with this manga 
Like this is the first page, I can’t even
And look at this back cover art
The manga begins when boy finds kitten in the snow (the kitty is so small and pitiful-looking in this chapter, it hurts my heart 
). Boy brings kitty to the vet, then takes kitty home. You can tell he doesn’t really know what to do with this cat but he really really wants to be a good owner, like he really wants to help and it’s so sweet
Unrelated to that, I wanted to make sure to give a big warm welcome to all the challenge newcomers, and a big warm welcome back to all the familiar faces from previous challenges 
Happy to have you all joining in, I look forward to reading with you!!
I got a bit of a head start with the SPY×FAMILY club today by reading mission 2… and then read further ahead with mission 3 as well. I had a feeling I’d end up reading ahead with this one too, and I’m honestly surprised I held back this long. It’s definitely not that it’s particularly easy, like 夜カフェ, because it’s not—it’s about the same level as a lot of the other stuff I read—it’s just that I’m really hype for this series and there’s no way I can keep myself to one chapter a week lol. I can already tell I’m gonna feel bereft once I reach the end of vol 9, which will definitely be before September when I figure 10 will be out.
2nd of June
Day 2
Read from page 64 to page 68 (17 – 18%) of かがみの孤城. My goal for now will be to keep progressing 1% of the book each day — that will mean I would be able to finish it before October. Not too bad! Anyway, I’ll see how I go, and whether I can keep up with that speed.
July 1 
Home Post
Here we are again! I’ve missed バディミッションBOND so I picked it up again; I’m feeling pretty tired though so didn’t get that far, but that’s okay. I’m in the midst of resetting my sleep schedule so that’ll happen Regardless, I should be able to get more in tomorrow so I’m looking forward to that 
Day 1: July 1st 
Rather than tracking pages read (which would make me want to consciously not count pages with little to no text), I’m going based on percentage progress within the volume.
Since my boss had the day off, and my boss’s boss had the day off, and things were slow at work, I made it a short work day. That means more time for reading than normal for me on a Friday.
Today’s reading:
My current Conan reading is right at the end of a case, where the “how it was done” is explained. For anyone who hasn’t read Conan, this typically looks like:
It’s not uncommon for me to read 65 pages of a case portion in one or two sittings, then get through 14 pages of the solution portion in another two to three sittings. (For this case, it was two sittings within one day.)
Looked-up vocabulary words:
からかい上手の高木さん Volume 7 (26% ➨ 36%)
orange Volume 1 (1% ➨ 10%)
I started this series yesterday.
This mangaka certainly comes up with a variety of eye styles. In 「それでも歩は寄せてくる」, there’s Maki, Sakurako, and Rin who all have different eye styles. For 「くノ一ツバキの胸の内」, the primary one is Sazanka:
Tsubaki has a really nice design for her eyes:
Asagao’s eye design is nice, too:
Well, when they’re open:
Looked-up vocabulary words:
That’s almost as many lookups as with Conan, but across a whole lot more pages.
ご注文はうさぎですか？ Complete Blend Volume 1 (38% ➨ 40%)
Not much to say here. This is one of those “quick and easy read” series for me, which is nice after going through a couple of pages from a no-furigana 4koma (or a heavy read like the solution portion of Conan).
Looked-up vocabulary words:
ふらいんぐうぃっち Volume 11 (0% ➨ 4%)
This is one of those series that most learners of Japanese likely wouldn’t find interesting enough to include in their tadoku. For first-time readers, where just being able to understand something makes even simplistic content interesting, I think it’s probably a great pick. It’s among the easiest manga I’ve come across without being targetted at little kids. Definitely one I’d like to nominate for ABBC, but not until my book club duties subside in November.
The premise is simple: it’s a slice-of-life about forest critters of various degrees of anthropomorphic design. The series is centered around the titular wolf, whose duty is to scare away any humans who wander into the woods.
Looked-up vocabulary words:
SPY×FAMILY Volume 1 (35% ➨ 42%)
にじいろフォトグラフ Volume 1 (35% ➨ 39%)
july 1 home post
I didn’t have time to read until really late tonight, but that means it’s close enough to July 2 that I figured I’d start reading Orange! I’m halfway through this week’s reading and so far I’m liking it!
These next few days will probably be similar, where I don’t have much time to sit down and read… but I’ll try to make a little time every day
For daily reading I did a chapter of 暁のヨナ (manga) and a section of ナミヤ雑貨店の奇蹟。 I’m getting close to the end of Namiya — 40 pages left — which I think is going to be 3 days worth of reading. It’s a good book but for me it’s not a page-turner. I got one of the grammar lessons done too.
I’m probably going to be reading lots of 暁のヨナ all through this summer challenge. I watched the anime a long time ago and wondered what happened after it ended, and it only covered up to volume 8. And I refused to read it in English. So this is one of my longtime “things to read when I can read Japanese” projects. The first few volumes were pretty rough, but by volume 7 I was comfortable enough to feel confident I could finish the rest of the series. The part of the story I’m reading now is totally new to me, and it’s getting smooth enough that it’s feeling like actual real fun instead of “my daily reading assignment.” That’s a really nice feeling.
@pocketcat Good luck!
