July 6th - Day 01 - Home
Starting to read 天気の図鑑. I already read a few stories at the start, but it has been a while, so I will restart.
Forewords & Characters Intro - Done
Chapter 1 - 雲のはなし - Progress 2 (+2) / 21
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Since there were quite a few, thank you so much to everyone for the congratulations! Feeling good about what I’ve done and very happy to have you all here supporting 
Summer Pockets as a first VN
Hmm, it’s got a lot of good points, but it’s hard to recommend for a few reasons.
One is simply the length, as you might have noticed, haha. I’d think most people would be best served starting with a short-ish VN, but I had a particular desire to read it. It’s a lot, but I suppose that’s already clear. The biggest downside is accessibility in getting it at all – if you buy it, it’s really expensive (something like 9000yen) and it’s also unusually hostile to players outside Japan. Like it checks your system time and everything. I found a means to bypass that but talking too specifically about getting around DRM might skirt a line on WK without taking it offsite? Fuck DRM though, heh.
That said! I think it’s a great read, it’s written at a level that I found good for my first (well other than Ace Attorney), and it plays great with the texthooker. Plus it’s nice that it’s a very modern one, above average in technical polish and the like. I’m running up against small irritations from Flowers in resolution and all that now, heh.
It’s Flowers time. Specifically, the spring (each of the four entries is based on a season). I continue to read things that are seasonal, and at the wrong time.
Content first impressions: I dig it. Lovely art, and I like the quiet, fragile, contemplative tone so far. It’s a solid contrast to Summer Pockets which had a totally energetic, outgoing vibe. Most of what I read was a girl stuck inside her head, beating herself up, and commenting on how pretty the girls around her are, haha. It was a nice prologue, but I didn’t move too much further, reading only a bit over 3000 characters, because…
Writing first impressions: Definitely feeling the challenge of starting something new. I’m also pretty sure this game’s writing is simply harder. They love kanji for words that don’t usually have it (筈 はず has a kanji, huh? and 為る as なる, all sorts of things I’ve never seen). The Catholic school slice of vocab teaching me words like 磔 (はりつけ, crucifixion) might not be immediately useful and certainly isn’t anything I’ve come across yet haha. But more than anything it’s just that sentences are a little denser than what I’ve been reading. Gotta brace myself for the のように, because we are making non-literal comparisons to everything all of the time.
You’re gonna put じっと in kanji like that?
I read slowly in part because I had to look up words in almost every sentence, but also just because I made myself slow down a little to make sure I was soaking it all up. The writing seems really nice and… flowery ( 
), and often the difficulty is just making sure I can hold the whole sentence in my head, even when I definitely understand all of its parts. For example, lines like this are common:
美しい波となった歌声は春の陽を受けて輝くステンドグラスに反射し、緊張のためこわ張り着席している私たち新入生へと届いた。
You ask me, that’s a lot of information piled in there. To put a final pin in that point, a few lines in they hit me with another new N1 grammar point (たら最後, sort of an “if you do… negative result”). I expect to see a lot more of that stuff. Overall though, it’s a challenge, but I don’t feel too bad about it. I’m pretty confident I can comprehend and learn from this. My reading pace has taken a hard reset, but prior to Summer Pockets I have serious doubts about if I could’ve read this at all. I remain excited to continue.
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I’ve noticed this is a thing where they’re trying to give an old-timey or extra-formal-for-kicks vibe. It kind of makes sense given I mostly come across those in very old texts.
emphatic nod
It took me a few passes to take all that in, oof. Very ‘flowery’ language as you said.
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I have heard that Hatsumi (the author) does love to use a lot of unique kanji. She is kind of famous in some language learning communities for her use of very long noun-phrases/sentences overall as well but hopefully it gets easier as you read more. The start of something new always tends to be the hardest!
As for my own reading update, I finally finished the 生命のスペア VN after reading it every day for the past 6 weeks or so. It was the first jp VN I completed in full. It was a decent step up in difficulty compared to the manga/game scenarios I read prior but overall reading it wasn’t too bad. I think the story kind of dragged because I started to get really bored of it by the second half.
Hard to tell if the game itself was dragging on or if it is just because my jp reading speed is really slow. It was a game I was interested in initially though so I am glad I was able to read it! Since the VN club is starting soon, I’ll probably use this next week to read some manga while I wait. I had put all the manga I was reading on hold while I was doing the VN (I usually only focus on reading one thing at a time), so it’ll be good to catch up on that stuff.
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Home
ジョジョの奇妙な冒険18
142 - 151
Last night I got so caught up in figuring out logistics that I looked up and it was already time for bed. I had really wanted to finish off this volume but I didn’t have time. 
I’ll definitely finish it tonight though. I only have 30-40 pages left.
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I always thought people just liked having their home posts linked to their current posts so people reading their current posts can refer to it when they liked. 
Well, I just bookmark my home post so when I open the forum to the home page, I click my profile icon and pick my latest bookmark.
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Oh that’s smart. I’m going to use bookmarking to find my previous day more easily now
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thank you all for the many replies as to why we link our home threads ^^ i wasn’t expecting that many answers! i’d started doing it because it seemed like everybody (well, many people) were doing it. i like the “so that others can consult the home thread and figure out what the heck i’m going on about” reason most 
that said: home!
i’m on page 94 now, solid progress. pretty sure mu confusion yesterday was indeed because they were talking about hypothetical situations.
Saeki and Touko are slowly getting closer. Saeki is totally in love with Touko, and doesn’t yet know about Touko’s policy to reject all confessions. and Touko is presenting a perfect and impenetrable facade. but Saeki is Touko’s closest companion, and would like to get a bit closer i think. it’s a complicated dance.
it’s kind of strange reading this while knowing what the outcome will be: in a year’s time they will be close friends, student council president and vice-president, number 1 and 2 of the year by grades, the perfect power-couple. except not a couple. Saeki will still be in love with Touko, and Touko will fall in love with Koito… in a way, there’s a lack of dramatic tension. on the other hand, there’s this careful dance of building friendship and trust…
mostly was okay with comprehension today. at one point a new section started, and i thought they’d timeskipped a year (we’re actually a year behind the point where the book starts currently), because the scene was so similar to one from the manga. but figured it out soon enough. and then there was that column of text, 22 kanji, not a single kana, that made me gulp 
ahh, and i signed up on natively, and listed everything i’ve read so far. i like how it shows me the relative difficulty of what i’ve read 
and i’m thinking of taking a breather from やが君 at the end of this part. want to read something easier to relax my brain a bit, thinking about 隣の吸血鬼さん. i really enjoyed the anime for this, it’s cute and wholesome, i ought to enjoy it ^^
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Home PostDay 5
カリスタルハンータズ 
Progress - [|||||||79%] Read about halfway through chapter 3 because it’s looong and the last one in this volume!
New words/vocab 
なったよ (to become/it became)
I’ve had this manga for a while, but didn’t have the motivation to actually sit down and READ. Thankful for this challenge and all of you!
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I continue to be lower energy than usual, although I’m making efforts to cut out the things that are draining time and not bringing me any happiness in return. Such is life - always fine tuning!
As I was lower energy I read more 本好き, because it is a simpler read than 硝子の塔の殺人, although I do want to know the ending there. As expected this is a faster read, although the fantasy vocabulary is throwing some new words at me. The writing style is also not at all what I’m used to, but I don’t mind it. It reminds me of books I read as a kid, with the protagonist’s adventurous spirit and single minded goal. It’s cute.
edit: keep forgetting to say that I did complete my grammar point for the day!
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くノ一ツバキの胸の内 Volume 1 (79% ➨ 100%)I read mission 8 of SPY×FAMILY.
I'm 99.9% certain there's gonna be a spinoff club, so, spoilers
loooool is “ugly” the only insult Damian knows, or does Anya just piss him off that much? And it’s hilarious that when they first meet, he thinks Anya’s recognized his charms and fallen for him already, but she hates his guts and he’s the one who falls first. I can’t wait 'til we get to the part(s) where he flashes back to various scenes with her and he remembers her looking all cute instead of making those stupid faces. Scion boy’s got it gonna have it bad lol
Damian:
Also now that I know that Plan B for getting close to Desmond (since Loid’s half given up on Anya becoming an Imperial Scholar?) is for her to befriend Damian and get them invited to the Desmond house, the post(s) [like this one] I’ve seen on tumblr where Loid’s bemoaning Anya and Damian not getting along (“The mission!”) make a lot more sense.
Oh my gosh apparently Endou-sensei drew this last month in response to the damianya ship tag trending on JP twitter:
Amazing.
Y’know I almost didn’t even notice that the other kids use kanji in their speech, it’s just Anya who’s all kana. I’m sure part of it’s the difference in their upbringing, but mayhap it’s because she’s actually a year or two younger than they are?
I read a bit farther in 2.43 today! But before that, I went back over a part I’d read before (and spotted a few words I didn’t know back when I read it a few months ago but do now! like 挙手) and translated a bit. Then I read about 2 pages, leaving off on pg 85. We already learned that Seiin and Fukuhou are about 30 to 40 minutes away from each other by train, and now we learn that Seiin is a 20-minute walk from Nanafu Station. That’s kind of far to go to go spy on your rival school’s practice on a whim, but that’s not nearly as far as YuniChika’s trip to the HS section of Chika’s old school in Tōkyō last volume, which was on even more of a whim. (Unless that 30-40 minutes includes the walk from Fukuhou to Fukui Station and the walk from Nanafu Station to Seiin? Still a bit far, though.) Also Seiin’s school uniforms are black here, but they’re teal in the anime lol. Well, the teal looks better.
「男バレなんてうちにあったか？」
「ないこともないんでないんか？」
That’s a lot of ないs lmao. I can’t remember how Funimation translated that line, but uh, he’s really not sure they have a boys’ volleyball club, is he.
I must say, it was rather comforting “hearing” Fukuiben again. I come across Kansaiben (and some 役割語 that’s similar) sometimes, but it’s just not the same. I’m not sure how much of it is that it’s the dialect spoken by the characters in the first JP story I read (I jumped into 2.43 well before I started reading any manga, much less anything else), not to mention I’ve had to figure most of it out on my own due to lack of resources, how much is just that this is my favorite series, and how much is that I simply like the dialect. It kinda feels… softer? and warmer? than standard Japanese? I dunno, something like that. It felt like coming home.
Some vocab of note:
こぎつける [自他一] to reach (a goal after considerable effort); to arrive at; to (finally) manage to do
私語 (しご) [noun, する verb (自)] whispering; whisper; secret talk; murmur
本来なら (ほんらいなら) [expression] by all rights; properly speaking
問答無用 (もんどうむよう) [四字熟語, noun] there being no use arguing (about it)
親密 (しんみつ) [noun, な-adj.] intimacy; friendship
西陽 (にしび) [noun] westering sun; setting sun; afternoon sun
内弁慶 (うちべんけい) [noun] someone haughty and boastful at home but meek and reserved outside; being a lion at home and a mouse abroad
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Day 5 
穴 ~ 19-20%
Day 6
穴 ~ 20-28%
July 5 was a more socially busy day than I expected, so even though I was set to read a good chunk I only managed a 1%. And had to stop right before a titular hole made its sudden appearance! Then yesterday, even though I still had reduced reading time, I managed to finish the section. I was half-asleep by the last sentence, but it was worth it.
I’m really enjoying this book a lot. So far it’s been very quiet and slow, but in a good way. The (seemingly?) mundane is described in such a way that it’s always very slightly off, very slightly uncomfortable. The summer atmosphere is palpable - cicada’s voices permeate everything, and bugs of all sorts make an appearance. I can almost feel the intense heat and smell the scorched grass as I read. I love it.
Some early speculation (not really spoilers except about the very beginning): The narrator has suddenly found herself in a situation far removed from her hectic life in the city, where she suddenly has nothing much to do with her day. She is also apparently for the first time in a smaller community and in close proximity to her husband’s family. Hearing herself be called お嫁さん surprises her. I’d go as far as to say it makes her reevaluate herself, or feel removed from what she thought she knew about herself? Combine that with the sudden joblessness and the aimlessness of her days, and the nature (weather, plants, little and larger beasts) which here is so dominant and all-pervading compared to the city, and it’s no wonder the narrator perceives everything through a rather surreal lens. I wonder how much she is imagining or twisting in her head, and how much is actually there. I loved the little detail early on with the dog design on the slippers. She seems to like focusing on little details and let her mind run with them. How much of what she describes is real? How much is exaggerated? Is any of it metaphorical? I like the mystery of it and I’m here for the writer to take the story wherever she wishes, or even leave it as mysterious as it is now.
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July 6 
Home Post
Pretty good reading day today actually! I started out with some 風つよ for funsies, though they definitely weren’t having a great time lmao; lots of drama, 走's deep in his destructive mindsets and ハイジ fully snapped at him and then passed out, wild times. There are definitely things happening that I don’t remember from the anime and I’m not sure how much of that is the novel actually being different and how much is me just not remembering 
either way it’s a good time!
After that I played some more バディミッションBOND and actually caught up on the side stories and got back into the main plot, and oh boy are we in it now! I always forget how intriguing everything going on in it is until I actually play lmao, I’m so curious about everything 
It helps that there were some pretty smooth sections to balance out the usual linguistic weirdness, but oh man are things going down.
buddy bond stuff yay!
Wellll I’m at least partially right with theory things? I don’t have enough information to confirm all of it yet but it definitely seems like ルーク was at the lab that blew up and just doesn’t remember, he had a dream about it and was like “??? what was that???” so I’m so curious what the whole deal with that experiment is, it’s so central to so much of what’s going on.
There were lots of goofs too of course, アーロン tricked ルーク into sitting when he whistled:
So well-trained 
and in front of スイ too, rip. アーロン continues the trend of impressing random men with his sheer power and getting called アニキ:
Wow, danganronpa Mondo showed up just to talk about how cool アーロン is, amazing
There was some real angst too, though… アーロン especially, which is always rough. They found out that people with the whole rat mark situation only have about six months after the fact to live which… doesn’t bode well for his sister, so he’s angsty mode for sure. Dramatic roof time:
You can really see how ridiculous his outfit is from there lmao; but yeah he’s having a bad time 
There was a flashback to him blaming himself for the other kids getting killed which is a thing that happened apparently? But that was rough all around, he was so upset, and still just a kid going through so much. I mean look:
アーロン 
Yayyy, glad to inspire!! I’m super excited to go through a VN as a group like that, I hope it goes well for you 
Ooooh it’s so pretty 
I definitely see what you mean about the language, I don’t know that I’d have the mental energy for that yet it’s really lovely though, I’ll be looking out for your thoughts! Best of luck 
Ahhh congrats, that’s such a good feeling!! 
On to the next one soon
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Finished ナミヤ雑貨店の奇蹟 a couple of days ago.
I started 彩雲国物語 and the vocabulary is a killer. I’m questioning my sanity: why did I think it was a good idea to read a light novel set in some kind of medieval pseudo-China? Even before opening the book it was clearly going to be full of vocabulary that I will see in nothing other than this sort of story, and kanji everywhere too.
(But I like stories with set in medieval pseudo-China. Good heroine a bonus. I read whatever stories like this I could find in English as a kid, and then I ran out because there aren’t many in English. If I can get through this, I’ll surely read more.)
I’m also getting through 暁のヨナ。I like medieval pseudo-Korea too.
And I did my grammar. Only 6 lessons left in the book.
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Day 7!
I read 20 pages of ピーチガール this morning. They’re introducing annoying drama now. The type of drama that would easily be solved if people just talked to each other. 
I miiight start one of the VNs I bought after I finish this volume.
Have a nice reading day, everyone!
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July 6
This was a productive day!
I finished volume 5 of オレンジ which closes the main story, so I’ll just wait for the bookclub to get there and read the other 2 volumes with them.
And a bit later I also finished 夜カフェ! That’s my 4th book this year so I need to make an effort if I want to make my goals for 2022.
Then I played バリバリ for an hour in which I completed a section. I also picked up the 1st volume of 青のフラッグ again, since this is what I’m planning to read next in terms of manga. I’ve read the 1st one already but I figured I’ll do a quick refresh before going on to volume 2.
I’d like to start ビブリア soon and the VN club is coming up in about a week as well 
I hope I don’t overdo it.
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July 7
(home post)
Hotel page 123 → 148 (26 pages)
Well, I keep putting off reading until the last minute. It might be because I’m enjoying the Hotel manga so much; and it is only supposed to be my last resort read.
And I enjoyed it well yesterday. It is a two chapter story arc, but considering it was very late I only read the first chapter of it. I did however flip through the pages of the second chapter. I’m in for a treat today.
I’m not even gonna pretend I plan to read anything else today. I have a feeling, except for Orange, that I won’t be reading anything else until finish the two volumes of Hotel that I have.
Yesterday I spent far, faaaaar, faaaaaaar too much time playing Atelier Sophie. I grinded for a specific material (for a side character’s story), and also cleared out a lot of alchemy that had built up. I could clear a little more, but I want some real story. So today I will continue the main story.
Lots of fun planned for today clearly. Maybe today I’ll get to my Japanese reading early enough to also make my report on the day of. We’ll just have to see. xD
Thanks! Currently I only read on paper, so reading the VN on Switch won’t make it much different (for lookups I mean). So I’m ready. ^^
And then, I’m ready to start the maybe too many VNs I bought in a short time because I always do that when excited.
I’m with you there. Hopefully my worst case scenario is that all my reading time will be taken up with Orange and Loopers. It’ll be interesting to me to see how long the chapters are and how long it takes me to read them. Because I don’t really have a reference for characters vs manga pages. ^^
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Day 7!
Read 12 pages of Spy x Family. If I do the same tomorrow, I’ll finish mission 2 on time with the book club (except I probably won’t, due to work tomorrow).
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