The home post is the most important one! It’s where you clickity-click the boxes, and that’s the whole point of the reading challenge, isn’t it? 
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Here’s where I confess that I’ve definitely done my home post wrong, as it doesn’t click. Can someone go over the steps again and I can hopefully fix it? Or just make a new post!
When that’s done, how do I link back to the home post?
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I think it would probably be easiest to do it all over again, because the “Quote the whole post” thing doesn’t work when editing an existing post, I think
So you take a post of someone with a nice-looking template and you don’t quote it by selecting text and clicking on the “Quote” button that then appears. Instead you click on “Reply” at the bottom of a post and in the draft window, you can quote the whole post
The advantage here is that all the formatting etc. will be inside the quote which is not necessarily the case when you do the “normal” way of quoting
Now you’ll see something like this:
And you want to remove the line that starts with [quote] and the one that starts with [/quote]. That way, the part you quoted now looks like a normal part of your post (as you will see in the preview window). And then you just keep the part of the post you want to keep, i.e. the calendar
Hope it helps but don’t be afraid to ask more questions if something’s unclear! 
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| 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 |
My new home post, I hope!
Currently reading:
ABBC: Prefectures book
IBC: Spy x Family
(I was reading 夜カフェ with the BBC at the start of the challenge but have finished that today)
Upcoming:
IBC: Tugumi
??? what next!
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With regards to the challenge, I’m going ok, but have kind of missed one day already. (I’m not sure if blankly staring at SpyxFamily in a sleep deprived state counts?)
Since I was having editing issues up to now, I’m just going to post my notes from the last 6 days!
1/7 prefectures 1 page, Yoru Cafe 3 pages
2/7 prefectures 1 page, Yoru Cafe 2 pages; skim read 14 pages Spy Family
3/7 minimal - half page Yoru cafe, read over 3 pages Spy Family
4/7 think I failed! Did glance at spy family
5/7 prefectures 1 page, Yoru Cafe 3 pages, Spy Family 12 pages properly read
6/7 prefectures 2 pages, Yoru Cafe 10 pages (finished), Spy Family 8 pages properly read
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The Tanuki Beach Resort: Date 20220706 
No Longer Tanuki Progress: 77.63%
Chapter I of note 3 complete, onto chapter 2!
And the main character turns his creepiness up by about 200%.
Learnthings
交友「こうゆう」ー Companion; friend
義侠心「ぎきょうしん」ー Chivalrous spirit
内縁「ないえん」ー Common-law marriage
動作「どうさ」ー Movement of the body; motion; gesture; action
伝言「でんごん」ー Verbal message; someone’s word
嘴「くちばし」ー Beak; bill
旧交「きゅうこう」ー Old Friendship
Places
築地「ついじ」ー A district in Tokyo, means “reclaimed land”
Can also mean a mud wall with a roof, though this can be specified as: 築地塀「ついじべい」
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This is amazing! Congrats! 
Personally I do it to have a hub of all my posts so I can easily go through them to look at new words I’ve noted down. It’s also interesting to look back on to see how much I’ve progressed.
Plus it feels like an additional bit of motivation to put in an emoji for each day.
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Today: 16 more pages of よつばと! (now on p. 104).
I am really inspired by the reports people are making on the things they’re reading. Maybe people have recommendations for things to read once I move up a bit from the よつばと・しろくまカフェ level? I expect I’ll be at this stage for a bit, but what did you start reading once you were a bit past the absolute beginner stage?
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Cool, thanks! Yeah, Untitled Goose Game lets you change the language in the in-game settings, so I looked through all of Yakuza’s settings like three times trying to find it, but thanks to you and @natarin I could now! Yakuza’s gonna be one where if I replay it it’s gonna be in JP, so now I know how to do that when that time comes
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You probably can’t go wrong with most of what was read in the Absolute Beginner and Beginner Book Clubs.
Around absolute beginner stage, the difficulty of 三ツ星カラーズ compliments よつばと！ well.
Working my way through レンタルおにいちゃん helped me build my grammar and readiness for things beyond absolute beginner.
Before that, I was reading some beginner-level manga, but was still struggling with it. This includes ふらいんぐうぃっち, 怪盗セイント・テール (which I read with the superpower of knowing it well from the English-subtitled anime and English manga releases), and 俺物語!! (which I was constantly referencing the English release for the first two volumes).
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Jul 6, Wed of Week 2 of Summer 2022
From yesterday, I finished
- 進撃の巨人 1, where I felt a big cliffhanger (and some expectations + theories) – so I bought vol 2 (and skimmed
)
- Also planned to go serious on translating big text pages, so I took note of Bookwalker page numbers.
- Also took note of the years
- 夜カフェ 1
- I still feel I don’t understand enough, although I might understand better than the beginning…
- I am thinking on whether to continue, if there is an offshoot; or to repeat vol 1?
- Repeating at all seems to be a good option. – In my notetaking, this is simply creating a new folder.
Today, I read TUGUMI a little (about 12 pages on mobile), but it seems harder than I think… Should I still continue reading this series (with the club)?
Also read 妖怪の子預かります, which I don’t feel overwhelmingly hard or un-understandable, but I did look up vocabularies every once in a while.
- Not really looked up Yokai / name references yet though, although eventually probably I should.
- Read about half of chapter 2. Not necessarily so easy. There are probably some odd grammar and hard-to-interpret things as well.
- I decide to read the whole volume; but I can’t yet promise to continue to next volumes (because I saw Fantasy Series Recs thread, and the world is wide…)
Also played a VN – ATRI -My Dear Moments-, for 50 minutes.
- Seems like a book, with music, and limited text at a time. Audio is a big bonus, but 夏生 isn’t voiced.
- Previously, I successfully set up Textractor (text hooker), but now I didn’t use it. Plain old dictionary app and finger-writing; also frequently I can guess readings.
- It is very good that I didn’t rush, so that I can understand more.
- I can also read and play audio from the log. (Sometimes sfx just for 萌)
Yesterday I mentioned updating Bookwalker. I read some comments on the books as well; but at my level, if comments are too long, I probably won’t read (or like)…
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Art and creativity are always motivational
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Day 6!
I’m tired after work, but I read 17 pages of ピーチガール. Seems like the love triangle plot is taking center stage now and I can’t say I’m excited about that. Oh well.
Congratulations!! That’s such a huge undertaking.
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These are all great suggestions! I’ve been meaning to read ふらいんぐうぃっち in particular. I’m thinking I’d like to build myself a little library of physical manga to inspire me, so I guess it’s time to create an Amazon Japan account. Thanks for your input on this!
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I mostly stuck to reading stuff I was already familiar with regardless of difficulty. My first manga was Haikyuu. A few months of reading that series, I joined the 氷菓 (Hyouka) book club. Then I decided to read the Sword Art Online light novels, even though I was told it is around the N2 level (or partly because of it even, 'cuz I wanted to git gud - lots of struggle and perseverance, but definitely worth it for me).
So my recommendation is “read something you’re interested in”. Joining a book club is also a good idea. If you’re going to read something you’re not familiar with, I’d at the very least advise against picking mysteries (like Hyouka) because the language barrier going on is quite puzzling already.
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This is good advice; I do find myself rejecting some recommendations just because I can’t imagine being interested past the first few pages. I really wish there were a bookstore with a good Japanese section in my city so I could browse (I need to become a member of my Japanese cultural centre, which looks like it has a good library!)
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If you don’t mind browsing things you’d have to import (if you want them physical), digital manga store sites such as BookWalker have a button marked 「試し読み」 on the book pages where you can often view the first chapter of a manga or novel. Some series have a very short preview (10 pages) and some have a long preview (50 pages).
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Really enjoying the time tracking feature on Natively so far
As expected, my speed went up quite a bit after the first chapter of 告白, cruising altitude seems to be about 35 pages per hour.
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June 6th!
Chapter 80 of Yotsuba today. It was Halloween, so obviously Yotsuba was ridiculously adorable 
The next 2 chapters are a 2 chapter story arc so I’d really like to try to read them together but that would mean reading about 90 pages in one go 
I definitely have enough reading stamina to do that now, but I might have to save it for the weekend to have enough time!
@Daisoujou HUGE congrats on finishing Summer Pockets, what a great achievement! Would you recommend it as a first VN to read in Japanese? I’m hoping to start one in the near-ish future.
@MarnieDEB A few things that I would rate as a good step up from よつば from my experience are:
- からかい上手の高木さん
- レンタルおにいちゃん
- 三ツ星カラーズ
- ふしぎねこのきゅーちゃん
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Great suggestions; thank you! I am making a list.
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Home post 
July 6th
・詩的私的ジャック - JACK THE POETICAL PRIVATE (49% → 54%)
I finished chapter 6. (What happened with the “let’s pace ourselves” strategy? Seems like it doesn’t work for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
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HOME POST || Mon 4th - Wed 6th July
Starting off with a variety this week!
Mon 4th - NHK Easy News
I read an article about the four day long interruption of au’s phone/internet services. The first paragraph took me a solid three reads to parse because I wasn’t sure what 宅配便 was (in hindsight, duh) and it knocked my confidence, but the rest of the article was surprisingly a breeze.
The comment from the 50 year old man waiting in front of the Tokyo store regarding how inconvenient the situation was and how he would be considering switching to another company if the outages lasted any longer got a laugh out of me. It’s somewhat comforting to see that the language of customer dissatisfaction is universal.
Tue 5th - ５分後に意外な結末 「バス停」
Yesterday I was stuck on trains between London and Leicester so I took along this book, a collection of short stories that are meant to have surprising endings, and a book that is indisputably above my current reading level. I read the first short story -「バス停」- which took me around 45 minutes. About two pages in I had the bright idea that this could be a good book to document my N3-N2 progress. So, on the last page I jotted some pencil notes down of my understanding of the narrative and I’m going to do that for each short story, then, after N3 I can read them all again and write a new summary, and the same after N2.
I did understand the characters - a new bus driver covering a route between a small mountain village and the main town, and an old lady who used the bus regularly for visiting town for shopping. She then seems to go missing and it’s mentioned that it seems like she could have died. Later the bus driver meets an elderly man who claims that after he hurt his leg the old lady was doing his shopping for him, hence her catching the bus. Then I’m not really clear on the stretch from this conversation to the end as it seems like a small period of time might pass - at the end there’s a description of the old man alighting from the bus and his body just disappearing into thin air (I think). So I’m not sure if the elderly woman and man were ghosts all along and that’s the surprise? The woman was described as having a demon like face at one point in a bumpy journey.
Anyway, I could be entirely off the mark in my comprehension and I can’t wait to re-read later in the year and laugh at myself. 
Wed 6th - よつばと！ Vol.2, Ch.8
Well look who’s finally starting Vol.2 of よつばと！after saying she was going to do it during the Winter challenge.
It was great to read this after yesterday’s headache. I loved Ena’s attempt at diffusing the mood after Miura told Yotsuba she was bad at drawing in this chapter, that whole scene was wonderfully comedic.
Think I’m going to stick to よつばと！ for the next two days and maybe try another of the ５分後に意外な結末 short stories at the weekend. 
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