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ジョジョの奇妙な冒険19
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I’m starting to wonder if Sailor Moon’s mangaka was inspired by JoJo. This part of JoJo came out a year or two before Sailor Moon and Moon’s signature pose is very similar to Kakyoin’s and they also both have a famous line about punishment that includes the same Japanese word as well.
So what you’re saying is basically “Is this a Jojo reference?”
Me trying very hard not to be that person and getting hit with this reply
i’ve been watching a little bit of sailor moon recently, and i was wondering what this お仕置き was! mystery solved 
＊home＊
yesterday i was very tired and fell asleep on the sofa after just one chapter of 隣の吸血鬼. it continues to be very cute slice of life with a teenage girl living with a 360 year old vampiress (who looks like a teenage girl), and their friends. there is no drama whatsoever, and a lot of situational comedy. mostly because the vamp is very naive about humans, and a total weeb. and the girl has a really creepy obsession with dolls, and getting the vamp to drink her blood. which the vamp doesn’t want to do, because she gets her blood from the internet.
very wholesome overall ^^
continued to read some more of that today, but don’t know how much time i’ll have tomorrow. i’m going to see the tour de france, which is passing nearby, and that’s going to be a whole day outing. but i’ll bring my kindle along, and perhaps i’ll find a bit of time while we wait
The Tanuki Beach Resort: Date 20220709 
No Longer Tanuki Progress: 86.04%
Today’s reading was pain
木立「こだち」ー Cluster of trees; grove; thicket
四の五の言う「しのごのいう」ー To complain about trivial things
共鳴「きょうめい」ー Resonance
一顰一笑「いっぴんいっしょう」ー One’s mood or caprice
留保「りゅうほ」ー Reserving; withholding
可憐「かれん」ーSweet; cute; lovely
猥画「わいが」ー Obscene art (like erotic ukiyo-e - shunga 春画「しゅんが」)
密売「みつばい」ー Smuggling; bootlegging
愛撫「あいぶ」ー Caressing; physical intimacy
A lot going on today so just 10 more pages of よつばと！ (now on p. 143).
In somewhat related news, the library received 7 DVDs for me today:
晩春
おくりびと
パプリカ
茶の味
and 3 by Koreeda:
歩いても 歩いても
誰も知らない
三度目の殺人
I’ll be watching with English subtitles for now, but will add films I love my own disc collection to watch with Japanese subtitles/no subtitles in the future. Would love recos on what to watch first!
Yes!! They’re really fun to read, even the more difficult parts, and I found they were a great introduction to grammar/vocab that’s slightly above my level
That’s the one I started with, overall I found it pretty approachable and a lot of fun to read. I’m guessing they’re all about the same difficulty though (except I’m guessing Twilight Princess will be a bit more difficult b/c iirc it’s meant for an older demographic, so I’m guessing the language is a bit more complex).
ALTTP is also the only one on Natively right now since I haven’t gotten around to adding the others (except OoT, but that request is pending)
All of the ones by Himekawa Akira are available digitally except apparently Minish Cap.
Oh, and also, the Complete Edition versions are physical only. So for example if you want to read Ocarina of Time you can only get the 2-volume version digitally. As far as I can tell there’s no difference between the 2-volume and the 1-volume, content-wise, except the side stories are moved around a bit. But there’s no missing content or anything.
Not sure if the Link’s Awakening manga’s available digitally (it’s by a different author/artist so even though I’ve heard about it I haven’t seen it when searching on Bookwalker)… Just checked, I can only find a physical version
No Wind Waker, unfortunately 
there’s more out there too by other authors, like Link’s Awakening and like three other versions of A Link to the Past lmao, I know almost nothing about those though
That’s the next one I’d be looking for if there’s no Wind Waker =(
I was taking a shot in the dark that a Link’s Awakening even existed =D
Thanks for the info!
July 9th!
Usually I try to do extra reading on Saturdays but today was a beautiful sunny day so I spent a lot of it out and about enjoying the sunshine, but I read Chapter 12 of Happiness this evening. The last few chapters have been really interesting.
Home post 
July 9th 
・SAO Progressive 1 (78% → 80%)
Ended up doing just a tiny read at the end of the day. Stopped at page 410/510, so exactly 100 pages left, which is cool. Tomorrow I’ll read Saikawa & Moe book.
I had hardly time to read but I still managed to read 9 pages 5分で読める恐怖のラストの物語. Finished the story what they found in the safe was the body of an old man who looked like the deceased grandfather. They buried him next to the other grandfather. The story ended with the protagonist wondering who of them was the real grandfather.
| REDC | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 2 |
July 9
Final Fantasy 7 → 30 min.
Just played for half an hour but I made a choice I didn’t like and I’ll have to replay what I did today tomorrow. But hey, practice is practice 
. It’s not the first time playing this that I replay something for the sake of repetition when I’ve been extra tired/sleepy anyways.
Today I got back to reading manga for the first time in ages (the occasional よつばと chapters in a read-along club being the one exception). I finished off ブルーロック11 (I’d left it about 40% in, though at the end of a plot arc) and then read volume 12 this evening. This manga is such a joy to read, it’s got a great balance of tense “omg how are they going to win the game!” action and then all the characters are fun goofballs of various sorts.
There was one really cute running joke in these volumes where (no plot details but spoiler tagging to be on the safe side) our MC Isagi is put on a team with two new team mates who are very adorable and considerate/friendly. And he’s like “huh, these guys are nice!… for some reason this seems weird” and then we get flashbacks to all of his previous team mates who are all various kinds of hyper competitive anime boys and Isagi is like “huh, guess that’s why.” There are little non-plot mini comics at the end of each volume and this one featured these three. One of them goes to get a drink and then thinks “my team mates might want a drink! I’ll get them one each too!”…and then the strip ends with all three of them with trays full of drinks being cutely awkward like “haha, guess we all had the same idea!”. I hope we get more of this combo, they are too cute 
One other fun thing is that I also did a a bit of study from TRY N2 today, and 2 of the grammar points came up right away when reading. Always cool when that happens! Also shows that N2 grammar can pop up even in a silly football(soccer) manga!
July 9th
What did I read?: Flying Witch Vol 11 and Orange Vol 1
How much did I read?: 30 pages and 24 pages
How long did it take me?: 22 min and 29 min
Decided to knock out the book clubs today! As always, Flying Witch was a good time 
As for Orange
KAKERU NO 
Nothing even happened to him yet in the high school part of the timeline, but clearly it will and I don’t want it to 
How did I become so endeared to this character already lmao, we’re like point-five seconds into this and the line “１０年後の今、翔はここにはいません” is already breaking me
This manga is going to wreck me emotionally, isn’t it 
This this this this so much this, all of what you just said
July 9 
Home Post
More バディミッションBOND today! Lots of fun character interactions and drama, as always. I’m making some good progress on the main plot and I really just need to know all the things it’s always a cool feeling to be so invested in something in Japanese! All is good 
I learned a cool new specific phrase today, courtesy of チェズレイ, go figure アーロン was calling him out on always picking fights with モクマ and he had this to say:
To which both me and アーロン were like ??? lmao, but I did some googling and it’s apparently an old saying: 人の恋路を邪魔する奴は馬に蹴られて死んじまえ。So basically if someone’s getting in the way of your romance, you should get kicked by a horse and die
Today had lots of チェズレイ drama; he’s a very complex character actually. This whole thing with his mom not only committing suicide in front of him, but him trying to stop her and her just saying like “let me go, hanging in the air by my leg like this is worse than dying, and you’re a child so there’s no way you can pull me back up” like?? That’s such a horrific situation, if that’s any indication of his life to this point then no wonder he’s like this 
He messed with モクマ as usual, but like in a really rough way today? Imitating the voice of モクマ’s old master that he killed or whatever happened there? Ouchies, モクマ sure reacted to all that:
That’s a face! チェズレイ really brings out sides of モクマ no one else does, in all senses The reverse is true too; チェズレイ’s starting to actually face his feelings a bit, whatever they are? 
I don’t think he really knows either, but this is certainly also a face you don’t see in other contexts:
There was some アーロン angst too for good measure:
Oof how’s it feel アーロン, that your biggest adversary at the moment has the same worldview you claim to have! His already complex feelings about heroes just keep getting more complicated
Obviously I’m all for this If you do I hope you enjoy it!! And I look forward to seeing your thoughts 
On a related note I see you mentioned AI: The Somnium Files as well; I would generally estimate AI as being harder than the Zero Escape games, but not like a lot? And there’s certainly crossover language between them. I played AI right after the Zero Escapes and by then they’d prepped me pretty well for it. The main language differences with AI are that it tends more towards slang and very specific words for the sake of jokes than Zero Escape does, and there are brief cutscenes that auto-advance, though they’re generally fairly simple.
All this is to say that if you play and enjoy Zero Escape, AI is definitely a good next choice! I absolutely adored it, and I feel like I got a lot out of it language-wise too 
I read one of the 福井あるある４コマ on the 2.43 twitter.
I read ch 3-6 and the extras of 君には届かない。finishing the first vol. Fuuuuuuuuuudge I wish I had vol 2! I dunno when I’m getting more books, much less if I should get through the latest vol (5) when I do, but I’m definitely at least getting vol 2!!
のどか [な-adj.] tranquil; calm; quiet; peaceful
吐露 (とろ) [noun, する verb (他)] expressing one’s mind; speaking out
I just realized today that the screencaps I take on my iPad are no longer showing up on my phone (apparently they stopped yesterday), so now if I look up a vocab item on my iPad that I wanna include on here, I gotta remember to check it too. Oh joy.
july 9 
home post
Read a couple things today: Chapter 2 of PokéSpe and a few pages of this week’s Orange club reading! I’m dropping PokéSpe for now though, I’m having a hard time with the casual speech and I’m already reading quite a few things. I’ll probably go back to it later since I’m enjoying it so far, it’s just not something I want to read right now.
Also the Ocarina of Time manga has now been added to Natively so now I can start tracking my progress. Didn’t read any of that today though
Day 8
カリスタルハンータズ
Sooo tired. Today it got up to 106 
But I still powered through my reviews and read ALLLL of chapter four!
Progress [||||41%]
Sooo many new words. I made myself a nifty table.
カリスタルハンータズ
Book 2
| Chapter | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | みんな | All, everyone, everybody, everything |
| 4 | 家族, かぞく | Family |
| 4 | 火事, かじ | Fire |
| 4 | 消して, けして | To extinguish, to put out |
| 4 | 待って, まって | to wait |
| 4 | 建物, たてもの | building |
| 4 | 名前, なまえ | Name, first name, given name |
| 4 | なる | To become |
| 4 | ヒーロー | Hero |
I do have a question! The author uses いい quite a few times, which I thought meant “good”? But maybe not in this context? Can anyone clarify what it would mean in these sentences?
「行っていいよ」
「水を使っていい」
どもありがとうございます！
Slowly starting to make progress through 彩雲国物語。It’s rough going. I think if I didn’t already know the story, I might not be able to understand this well enough considering how hard it is at my level. But it turns out the anime version is really close to the original light novel, so there’s no way to get lost. It’s just really tiring. And after all, thanks to knowing the story, there’s no other medieval pseudo-China book which will be easier for me to read than this. 
Too many of the character names have weird kanji that’s hard/impossible to type in my computer’s IME so I couldn’t type a character list, and instead have to rely on a wobbly hand-scrawled paper list.
I also got out a book to re-read — かなしきデブ猫ちゃん。It’s a relaxing children’s story about a cat traveling around Shikoku having adventures. The level is much easier and I’ve already read it so there are no new words anywhere. I’ve noticed before that when I’m reading something REALLY hard, especially if the setting is somewhere other than the normal modern world, it helps to read something easier as a “warmup.”
It’s the 〜てもいい grammar form, just with the も left out.
