📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2022 🏖 ☀

:house:
7th of June

Read page 83 to 85 (23 – 24%) of かがみの孤城 today. I was super unmotivated today and only started after half past ten in the evening… pretty tired now lol. Hopefully I can wake up early enough tomorrow to do WK reviews and get reading done before leaving for work.

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I was super busy and didn’t even have time to post in this thread. Yesterday I read seven pages of 5分で読める恐怖のラストの物語. For some reason I enjoy reading it, it’s pretty much like an anime in written form so other people would probably not like it. If I continue reading at that pace I should finish it this month and I could join the TUGUMI reading. But on the other hand I want to try the JLPT N1 next year reading newspapers, magazines, essays would probably increase my chance more than reading books.

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Today: 13 more pages of よつばと!: now on p. 116. Would like to read more but we have a contractor in the house and it is really putting a dent in my study routine, so this might be it for today.

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:tiger2: :books: The Tanuki Beach Resort: Date 20220707 :beach_umbrella: :raccoon:

No Longer Tanuki Progress: 79.81%

Got a lot of work to do so not much time to read today.

Learnthings

日暮 「ひぐれ」ー Twilight; sunset; dusk (more common as: 日暮れ)
質入「しちいれ」ー Pawning; pledging (more commons as: 質入れ)
納涼「のうりょう」ー Escaping the heat (of summer eg.) to enjoy a cool breeze
(I like how specific this word is)
区別「くべつ」ー Distinction; classification
粉薬「こなぐすり」ー Medicine in powdered form (also こぐすり)
丸薬「がんやく」ー Medicine in pill form
駄洒落「だじゃれ」ー Bad pun; bad joke (more common as: 駄じゃれ or just だじゃれ / ダジャレ)
対義語「たいぎご」ー Antonym
「すみれ」ー Violet (flower)
浪花節「なにわぶし」ー A sung narrative popular during Edo times
臓物「ぞうもつ」ー Offal; entrails; tripe

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I need to come say hey, congrats! We almost synced up. I’d tuck this into my update today but I have a bit of a busy day before I’m going to get to read this time, and I don’t trust myself to not be too scatterbrained :sweat_smile:

Looking forward to ルーパーズ with you all and I hope we successfully entice @MissDagger .

Honestly kind of impressed by people who do so. I never had the patience when digital tools are so convenient (well, with a few exceptions for things that had WK made vocab lists). I’ve had あずまんが大王 sitting around that I got as a Christmas present, put it on hold before because I felt the kanji lookups were still a bit much at the time. I can obviously handle the writing now but I think some day I have to make a bit of an effort to ween myself off my instant lookups, heh.

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@AzusaChan Oh right! Congratz on finishing your first VN!

Part one is just having a really good app on tablet/phone to do look ups in. There are multiple ones. I use Midori that I found about ten years ago when I first tried learning Japanese. Midori can figure out almost everything I throw at it, it also is fine with conjugations. And it’s kanji drawing doesn’t need stroke order (it can help on the really complex kanji) and it is very lenient in interpretation (sloppy lines isn’t a problem and such).

For the VN club specifically I’d have to play on my PC if I wanted instant lookups. My PC is not my main computer, and it’s a desktop, so locked in place. My main computer is a mac laptop. So for me, playing a VN on a computer would be most inconvenient, even with the quick lookups. (Since almost none of them release for Mac…)

To be fair though, on paper, I haven’t been reading things without furigana (while doing look ups), so maybe it would get a bit more annoying at that point to read on paper. And honestly, once I move over to reading more books/LNs, I’ll probably move to reading on tablet/similar because when there are no pictures, I don’t see as much point in having a paperback. (You never have to worry about a poor scan of a manga when buying paper. :joy: )

So for me, it is pretty medium dependent (manga/books with loads of art=paper; other books=ebook; switch for VNs because easier and more convenient for me). Basically it follows my preferences for media outside Japanese ones too.

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I read on paper, mostly because I just prefer it; but also I find it’s easier not to get distracted into browsing a website or whatever rather than concentratedly reading for half an hour. And I avoid anything with a screen when I’m in bed. As @MissDagger says a lot of it is having good for-physical-books tooling and in particular either handwriting recognition or point-phone-camera-at-text so you don’t have to spend ages guessing readings or doing multiradical kanji lookups. I have one of the Casio special-purpose electronic dictionaries, but that’s kinda old-school these days :slight_smile: It is true that reading on paper pushes you towards more ‘extensive’ reading where you don’t worry about doing lookups unless they seem really important, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing overall.

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Home post :bookmark: July 7th :sunny:

・SAO Progressive 1 (64% → 70%)

I’m getting a bit impatient with vocab, or rather the amount of look-ups?, so I’m trying to add more words on Koohi. Haven’t been consistent in doing that, but now I want MOAR :eyes: :chopsticks: Just have to not bite off more than I can chew :caught_durtling:


I’ve tried that, but my bookmarks are mess and get buried before the challenge is over :see_no_evil: I deleted some earlier this week, but I still have 300+. Seems like it is possible to pin them now tho, so they stay on top of the list :eyes: :sparkles:

image

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Thank you everyone for the congratulations!
In my previous post I said I was gonna read some manga while I wait for the 15th but I saw Nekopara Extra was only $2 before the steam sale ended so I picked that up. The game is really short (its about 19k characters long) so its perfect as a filler for now. If I have enough free time this weekend, I might even finish it then.
I played through about the first 4k characters so far and the game has been pretty simple. If anyone knows anything about the series its basically just a moege about cute catgirls so no real plot but it makes for an easy/relaxing read. This one is supposed to be a prequel so two of the girls are kittens and all of their text is in hiragana when they talk. Usually I have troubles reading when there is no kanji but their text hasn’t given me any problems yet!

Some cute pics from the reading so far:
image

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I’m still reading everyday, slowly working chapter by chapter through a graded reader.

I bought a manga in Japanese (Spy Family). I love the anime, so I’m familiar with the story. I’m setting it aside, but i hope it will motivate me to push so i can eventually read it. I have three manga in Japanese now that i hope to eventually read (Pokemon, Promised Neverland, and Spy Family). I’ve never read manga before, but i feels less intimidating than novels as a goal for now.

For you upper level people: do you feel like wani kani covered a substantial amount of vocabulary? Vocabulary is my biggest issue atm I think. I want to say I probably have around 1500-2000 words, but some of those are passive only.

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:potted_plant: Home post :potted_plant:

I did not have the energy to post updates these last few days, so this is a catch up.

Jul 5, 6, 7

I read pages 58-82 of FukaBoku on the 5th, pages 82-84 on the 6th and pages 84-134 on the 7th, so today.

I have only noticed it today, but since I am basing the pages read on Natively, the first/last page counts twice between days (ーー;). I have also come to the conclusion that I don’t care enough to change it :person_shrugging:

About the reading itself: since the book club vocab list does not contain a lot of the new words I encounter, I have to do a lot of looking up. Have been noticing that I am becoming way more comfortable with searching kanji by radicals and guessing the readings of unknown kanji. That is definitely an improvement that came from extensive reading!

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No idea how I managed that, but I read 16 pages 5分で読める恐怖のラストの物語 today. Also read some pages in the Shin Kanzen Master N2 Reading book. I may be the only person on this forum but I find most of the texts in the book interesting to read :joy:.

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:house:
Day 8

Read pages 86 to 89 (24 – 25%) of かがみの孤城 today. Quarter of the way through!

I might try to read some more later after work, but I usually end up putting it off until late night if I don’t read straight after completing WK reviews in the morning. :sweat_smile:

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July 7th!

I was planning to leave reading the next chapter of Yotsuba until the weekend so that I would have time to read the two chapters together since its a 2 chapter story arc and both chapters are on the long side.
But then I didn’t want to wait so I just read it all tonight instead. :grin:
Both chapters were very cute and funny, and the end of chapter 81 in particular really made me laugh. My husband was trying to get some work done while I was reading but I kept interrupting him by laughing and wanting to show him cute bits. :sweat_smile:

The 6 and a bit months that I’ve been doing these challenges has made an enormous difference to my reading ability. 6 months ago I would never have believed that I would be able to sit and read 90+ pages of a manga in one sitting, and definitely not fast enough to be able to do it after a day at work!
Thanks to everyone for helping me stay so motivated - I would never have made this much progress without you all :slight_smile:

(Home Post)

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5-7th July (Days 5-7) :sunny: :cat2:

Home post :books:

I thought I’d do a very quick, brief update today. I’ve been slowly progressing through 海辺のカフカ these past days, reading it page by page. I was left feeling quite tired (emotionally and physically) after my presentation on Tuesday - I have tripped up a few times (I am an incredibly anxious individual), and I have no clue what the examiners thought of my work. Also, there was a man who came up to my poster twice, but never initiated conversation. He just kind of stood at the side, staring at my poster and listening in on a chat I had with someone about my work. And at some point he started shaking his head in disapproval? I think? He looked dissatisfied. I genuinely don’t know what to make of it… So ye, I’ve been recovering ever since - and reading just a little to stay consistent.

‐-------------------------------------------------

Thanks so much! :3

Ah can’t wait to get into the more exciting stuff. Chapter 5 has been a little slow :sweat_smile:

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Quick response about paper / non instant lookups

Appreciate all the input on how you all read on paper. Might need to look into the app mentioned to make it more doable in the future.

I think (besides just having my desktop easily accessible and already spending too much time there heh) this point is the crux of it though – I have an addiction to “intensive” reading. I want to know what every bit means, as well as my current reading level allows, so letting stuff go is something I hardly ever do. Maybe something to work on eventually, but I’m clearly learning a lot and I think a big problem with intensive is simply that it can be more tedious and feel more like work for people, but that’s nullified when it’s genuinely what I prefer. I had worried I’d get too reliant on instant lookups, because early on I was double checking so many things I (somewhat) knew, but I’ve found over time the frequency that I look stuff up really does drop as I get more confident, so so far, I’ve felt no desire to change.

Very cute indeed.

Home post

Today’s been pretty busy, but I fit in reading about the same amount as yesterday. I’m still feeling out the writing style and core vocab, there’s so much religion/Christianity related stuff that I have 0 exposure to so far, but that might change later when the protagonist isn’t just taking in her new surroundings. So I’m not worried about speeding up just yet.

This reading at least turned up the quantity of dialog a little bit, which I’m happy to report is easier to read. Mayuri’s pretty cute, and here you can see the protagonist’s permanently blushing face. Right now said conversations, coming from someone as introverted and neurotic as I was saying, are still totally surrounded by big descriptive internal doubts, haha. Otherwise, I’m moving too slow to have big significant takes yet, but I like it!

I think nearly every character has called each other a 美人 already. It’s practically a greeting.

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:woman_vampire: home :woman_vampire:

today i bought the first volume of 隣の吸血鬼さん, and read the first chapter. i really wanted to read something a little easier than やか君, and i wasn’t disappointed.

the only thing i looked up (afterwards) was 人形, because i couldn’t remember the reading. besides that there were 2 or 3 kanji i didn’t recognize, and that was it, and i’m okay with the occasional missed word, as long as i get the story and/or jokes. for the most part there’s no furigana, but i’m also okay with that (except names, i really don’t like it when names don’t have furigana). so that was very satisfying.

however, that means i didn’t read much. but thursdays are always busy for me, so that’s okay. tomorrow i’ll go back to やが君 for my main effort :slight_smile:

(edit: first three chapters :wink: )

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Home post

REDC
Week 2

July 7
Final Fantasy 7 → 1h 10 min.


Quick update no. 234871.

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:green_heart: Home :green_heart:

ジョジョの奇妙な冒険18

152 - end (~188)

Whoot! Finished! At the cost of going to bed late again… Although yesterday something urgent came up so I was dealing with that :sweat_smile:

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2022-07-07T04:00:00Z

I think it does. I did a formal Japanese course while I was in university but that was 10 years ago. I know I’ve learnt more vocabulary through osmosis than I learnt in that course. Now that I’m participating in this read everyday challenge, I am recognising quite a lot of vocabulary words that I’ve met for the first time on WaniKani.

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