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ジョジョの奇妙な冒険21
14 - 27
I got too excited researching last night and then it was pretty much time to go to bed 
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July 21
(home post)
Night Café page 55 → 66 (11 pages)
I read right before bed yesterday. It is nice that Night Café is easy enough that reading it right before bed isn’t a problem. I’m also really enjoying the story. Although Hanabi’s dad have to get over himself. He behaves a bit like a kid in a candy store whose parents won’t allow him to buy everything he wants. My wife should cook our dinner, do laundry, and everything else despite both of us working. And it is all because of mom/my wife that you don’t wanna live with us, isn’t it Hanabi? >_> I totally get why Hanabi wants to get away from the war currently happening between her parents.
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I just finished the second story. This was much more a “short story” in terms of both length and feel. The way it began, it could have gone in any direction. I can’t say I particularly loved where it led - neither the theme of trying to conceive nor animal extermination are among my favourites. I did enjoy the explanation on why it had to happen like this, though, and especially the final twist on the wife reevaluating her desire to be a mother.
Once again there were strange details that seemingly led nowhere. The wife lying about having eaten wild boar before, the friend calling his own wife 奥さん, the emphasis on the food (I was convinced they were eating weasels at some point), on drinking, on the ばばあ neighbour and the fruit with no smell, to mention just a few. It’s probably like @NicoleIsEnough says, I’m probably too used to crime novels and constantly on the lookout for clues.
I do need some help with the story’s title, いたちなく. “Not weasels”? I threw it into Deepl to see if it had something else to suggest, and it had, but I have no idea where its interpretation is supposed to come from. ”Incessantly". How and why?
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Today: p. 59-74 of よつばと！Despite painstakingly looking up new words, I laughed a lot again during this section, where Yotsuba crawls out the bathroom window and then makes bewildered Fuuka demonstrate greetings with the neighbour.
New stuff:
追いかける (おいかける): to chase, to run after
いらん: don’t need/want it (Kansai-ben)
がたん: bang, crash, jolt
つまり: that is to say; in other words
そっと: softly; to leave as it is
訳 (わけ): conclusion from reasoning; situation
何か用なの (なんかようなの): what do you want?
どうかした: is something wrong?
にっこり: grinning
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Could it be イタチ鳴く? Like… Weasel’s cry? Do weasels make noise? Surely they do. 
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I think you’re on to something! There is a weasel cry mentioned that’s quite significant actually…
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The Tanuki Beach Resort: Date 20220722 
Tanuki Scroll of 蒲鉾 
Random article - today’s reading is about kamaboko! First time seeing the kanji for it.
The article is a bit too long to read all of it, I managed to get up to the 歴史 section.
Japanese found in the sand
Learnthings
広義「こうぎ」ー In a broad sense; in a wide sense
薩摩揚げ「さつまあげ」ー deep-fried ball of fish paste (more common as: さつま揚げ)
狭義「きょうぎ」ー In a narrow sense
代表的「だうひょうてき」ー Representative; exemplary
円筒形「えんとうけい」ー Cylindrical
蛋白「たんぱく」ー Protein (usually written like: タンパク)
筋原繊維「きんげんせんい」ー Myofibril
Fish Names
介党鱈「すけとうだら」ー Walleye pollock / Alaska pollock
糸撚鯛「いとよりだい」ー Golden threadfin bream
石持「いしもち」ー Silver white croaker
太刀魚「たちうお」ー Largehead hairtail / Scabbard fish
鱧「はも」ー Daggertooth pike conger
狗母魚「えそ」ー Lizardfish
葦切鮫「よしきりざめ」ー Blue shark
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Thanks for sharing! I’ll have a listen to this when I can, the whole case seemed pretty confusing even when I looked it up on English wiki.
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Disorganised plane reading - ended up reading ahead in Shadows House to the beginning of chapter 9. Whoops! But will need to go over it again.
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I always thought it was いたち無く, without weasels, but the interpretation with 鳴く makes a lot of sense! Maybe a double meaning? 無く and 鳴く are both very relevant to the story.
I just found the explanation by the wife‘s grandmother (?) so ominous but it made so much sense. In a superstitious way. It was a scary scene and not one I would have liked to witness, yes, but the whole „a small weasel would say …, that’s why you need a mother weasel“ was kind of cool? I found it a really good 落ち to the story. That was somehow missing from the first story for me. Half of the first story gets explained away by „oops, it all wasn’t real!“ 
There were lots of other weird things definitely going on that don’t get resolved at all in this one too, but the story felt more concluded.
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I agree, the grandmother’s explanation was really cool, and actually very realistic in describing what a typical father/mother/child would do when in danger. It was a good story. It just lacked, to a degree, the eerie mysterious atmosphere of the first one, which I really enjoyed.
I’m sure the title is written in hiragana on purpose to leave the interpretation open. Now where Deepl found “incessant”, I’ll probably never know… 
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It probably just assumed the first い as a typo and read:
立ちなく (without being burnt out = incessantly).
But that’s a total stab in the dark, and oftentimes DeepL’s desire to make something readable means it is very confusing. 
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Day 22:
30 pages of ハピネス volume 3! I’m nearing the end and it’s getting pretty exciting. I’m almost a little upset I can’t read more after this. I suppose that’s why the first three books were free on Bookwalker 
This weekend I am going on a hunt for more manga to read, but I’ll also be diving back into Zero Escape. I feel a bit more like myself now, so tackling challenging reading material should be feasible again soon. Yay!
Happy Friday! 
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July 22nd!
I read Chapter 14 of Happiness today.
I’m enjoying how readable this manga is for me now. I have to look up bits of vocab here and there, but other than that its pretty smooth!
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Home post 
July 22nd
・ わたしの幸せな結婚 3 (36% → 100%)
I did a super nyoom 
This is the first time I’ve finished a novel in two days! 
Spoilers (more coherent this time)
This time we’re introduced to Kiyoka’s parents who are living in the inaka Kiyoka has mission in that village anyway, so he and Miyo visit his parents because why not (even if he is reluctant because his mom is basically an 悪役令嬢 [1]). The mission plot line was a bit weak, it’s really the character driven parts I’m interested in. Seems like plot line was only the beginning of something larger though, there’s an insane cultist leader behind the scenes. More of that in the next book!
Flustered Miyo is cute uwu 
Even though she is engaged, she doesn’t know how to koibito.
-
Have not actually read or seen any series with this type of character that I can think of, so might be an inaccurate description. ↩︎
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July 22
My first actual reading update since posting my home post at the beginning of the challenge, I’ve sure got this updating thing down, huh 
Anyway! I finished a novel (親愛なるあなたへ by カンザキイオリ)
… feels 
I liked it! The first maybe 2 thirds?? 3/4?? of the book were a lot more slice of life-ish than I thought they would be (I was bamboozled by the murdery vibes of the prologue, it seems) and since that’s not technically my favorite thing it took me like a 100 pages to really get into the story 
Ended up enjoying just vibing with the characters though and the plot also definitely drifted more towards a “well that escalated quickly” kind of situation at the end there
The author of this is actually a singer and one of his songs appears in the book. There’s a music video for it that matches the scene in the book and all. I thought that was pretty cool 
Gotta say I kinda like the song too (Not sure which came first - did he write the song for the book? Or base the novel on the song??)
Vocabulary wise this is one of the easiest books I’ve read so far (not that that’s a particularly big sample size…). This is the kind of book that I wish had an audiobook.
Overall not bad for a “hey I wanna read something random and I like this cover” pick!
I have also joined the VN book club on here, soo, on to ルーパーズ chapter 2!
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July 22nd
What did I read?: Flying Witch Vol 11
How much did I read?: 24 pages
How long did it take me?: 24 min
Finally read again today 
Not gonna lie, I’ve been struggling hard this entire week. At least I finally read…last week’s chapter of Flying Witch I feel bad that I haven’t been as active as I usually am in these challenges Work is overwhelming right now, I’m just struggling to do anything now
Also I feel like I’ve probably missed acknowledging some people’s achievements, I’m sorry if I’ve missed yours, it wasn’t on purpose 
That’s amazing! :o nyooooommm
I love this
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Still reading every day….
Finished the first volume of the 彩雲国物語 light novel. The beginning was hard and I’d feel exhausted after a few pages, but around the 50 page mark it started to noticeably smooth out, and around page 70 it got to feel like it was just another book that had a lot of vocab. After that I was able to read twice as much per day, and it’s a short book so I got through it quickly. (224 pages) After this I definitely want to spend time with furigana to give that part of my brain a rest/refresh, but now I have confidence that I’ll be able to read more of this series later.
I started 鹿の王 last night, with the Tsubasa Bunko version. There’s a lot of new vocabulary so I’m glad to have the full furigana. If I already know a word and just haven’t seen the kanji yet it’s not a big deal to remember it the next time I see it, but if it’s a word I’ve never seen or heard before then I don’t learn it instantly (I don’t even know why I’d be expected to but it feels like the language community thinks it’s normal to learn words that quickly?) and it’s helpful to have the furigana keep appearing, especially as the story progresses and they start to pile up. BTW, the illustrations in the Tsubasa Bunko version are really nice.
Almost done with my N1 grammar book 
There’s only 1 lesson left. I took some time off from that to review some stuff about the causative form (〜させる) because it’s been one of my weak areas. Even though I studied it early on, it was such a foreign concept that I couldn’t really wrap my head around it, but now I’ve seen it in enough contexts that the explanations finally make sense.
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I read 8 pages of 2.43, finishing ch 2-1 and leaving off on pg 164! The scene went quite a bit differently from in the anime toward the latter half of it, and as usual, it was better in the book. Not least because Yuni doesn’t just stand around dithering while nervously watching the proceedings (though that is still mostly what he does lol).
I think, next, I may go back to 強者の同盟, the first story in 空への助走 (the 2.43 side short story collection), which is about Jungo as a second-year. Admittedly, I’ve been more curious about him (and the rest of Fukuhou, for that matter) lately. It’s like 73 pages long, though the pages are larger than the version of the novels I’ve got (the 文庫本, though I dunno if this would be a 単行本?), but still, it shouldn’t be that long of a detour.
More on the 呼び方 Subaru uses with everyone, which is unrelated to today's reading but I've written about it a couple times:
In the novel, Subaru refers to everyone by their surname, except Kouhei—and, when he’s serious, Ochi. Yet in the anime, he either uses their given name or a nickname for everyone, which fits well with the half-façade he wears even around the team; even after reading a quarter of the novel, that he refers to them this way feels right. But, as Ochi’s the only one he uses both names for, the anime couldn’t have him just call him by his given name the whole time, because then, the few times he gets 100% serious and calls him “Mitsuomi” would lose all their effect.
Of course, this also makes it seem as though there’s more distance between him and Ochi than between him and the rest of the team, but actually only on the surface. Really, it shows how close they are: Subaru rarely wears his mask around Ochi, and Ochi sees through him when he does. (I fully believe that’s why, after Ochi asked him how his check-up went and Subaru lied about being fine, he quickly and smoothly changed the subject: so that Ochi wouldn’t have the chance to see through his lie.) Subaru as he is around Ochi is as close to his true self as he allows himself to be.
I dunno, the whole thing’s just really interesting.
My friend who’s read the Chinese translation of the novel tells me that the POV character switches within ch 4 (she thinks between Chika and Subaru), so I was somewhat right with my speculation? Anyway, I’m really looking forward to the second half of this novel!
Some vocab of note:
波紋を広げる (はもんをひろげる) [expression, 一] to cause repercussions.
みぞおち [noun] solar plexus
優柔不断 (ゆうじゅうふだん) [四字熟語, noun, な-adj., の-adj.] indecisive; irresolute; vacillating
やりかねない [expression, い-adj.] capable of anything; liable to do anything
年功序列 (ねんこうじょれつ) [四字熟語, noun, の-adj.] seniority by length of service
凛々しい (りりしい) [い-adj.] gallant; manly; brave; imposing; awe-inspiring; chivalrous; dignified
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I don’t know what it is about 青春ブタ野郎シリーズ but when I read it I can actually put together what’s happening in my head really clearly. It’s so cool feeling like I can finally imagine things with japanese descriptions.
Reposted because original was an accidental reply to someone else.
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