I’m up to 132k characters read now in Monkeys. I think I’m halfway done with the first route in the game? Not sure how long routes are but I think the choice that led to this route was about 40k characters ago or so and there’s 3 more after this.
There was a cute scene where one of the girls was engaging in some 恋バナ with カラス and she kept comparing everything to plays. カラス was starting to get fed up with it
The わ sentence ender is very cute! I see it used a lot by the more お嬢さま type girls in the stuff I read, I always like that extra flavor it adds to the text.
I find it cute too, although I can see how it would become annoying. I often wonder, if I lived in Japan for a while and became very fluent, what sort of “feminine” speech I might adopt and what I might avoid. I’d be tempted to go full おばあちゃん at first and then try to moderate. I guess a lot would depend on the company I kept…
I played Zero Escape for 1 hour and 15 minutes! Things are Happening. I think the difficulty is just right for me, so that’s nice. I’ll probably write down some thoughts about the plot and stuff later, but right now I’m tired. It’s also hard to believe we’re nearing the end of the first month! I’ve read more this month than the rest of the year combined
I really am! I knew it would be my kind of thing, it’s just taken me a while to get into it. I might not have checked it out if it wasn’t for your posts in a previous challenge, so thank you for that!
Read some easy graded reader stories just to see what I understood. I’d say 80%ish with most of my trip-ups being unfamiliar grammar.
I’m now 58% through カリスタルハンータズ本3
It’s definitely a faster read the more and more I understand. I remember it took a full 4 days just to read the first chapter in book 1. I had to stop and look up words and reread the same thing over and over. It’s really cool to see my fluency and comprehension increase just from less than a month of reading a little every day! I didn’t meet my goal of reading book 3 in a week, but maybe in 2? We’ll see!
I’m also surprised わ is considered N1 now, because I think back when I first started studying Japanese, it was introduced early on (as part of 4級, before the JLPT levels were changed) as just another sentence ending particle. But I think we only needed to understand it because we might hear it from older women, not because we needed to learn to use it ourselves. And that was a long time ago… I guess it’s become uncommon enough that it might as well be relegated to “N1,” not because it’s difficult, but just that this is where we put all the random less-common and slightly old-fashioned expressions that are seen more in media than everyday life.
My theory is that it used to be normal during the Showa period, but that it went out of fashion and turned into character speech. I’ve read a couple of modern books with scenes from the 1970s or earlier, and the female characters use わ even if they seem rather ordinary. I think the author is using わ in those scenes to emphasize the time period. (But I wonder why 赤川次郎 is still using it)
I started volume 14 of Yotsuba today, and read chapter 91. It was a fun chapter. Yotsuba gets some beads as a gift from Jumbo and they make necklaces. Beading used to be a hobby of mine, (back when I had more free time ) and it made me want to go and get my beads out of the garage!
Today I finished three chapters in Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind for Nintendo Switch. After that I was tired and had hardly any power left to learn japanese. But I still read three pages in the Shin Kanzen Master Reading N2 book.
Got busy over the weekend, but at least I’m back now. I read up to the beginning of chapter 3 of それでも歩は寄せて (6% - 17%). Still pretty funny. Best part about re-reading these chapters is that I get to see my favorite panel again.
I sometimes want to make this my pfp, honestly.
Amount of unknown vocab was more intense in this one, I feel like. Lots of explaining stuff.
Replies
So we ended up doing the same thing
On another note, I actually feel a bit empty now that the book club has ended. I guess I used to think “ah, I have to hurry so I can finish this and then I can read whatever I want before the next week starts”, and now I don’t have that pressure pushing me anymore… So I dunno. Feels like reading wheel has deflated
Disco For me it’s Crypt of the NecroDancer
First Nicole and me doing the same thing, now both of us has our reading time has tanked - what’s up with these coincidences?? I guess we might as well enjoy our games while we’re at it :3 I was hoping I could finish Kekkon 4 and 5 this week, but at this pace… doushiyou
Oooooh! I love that game too. I haven’t played it in years, but that intro sequence is still giving me goosebumps.
I don’t know how I survived that fall – something strange must have happened. (MUSIC DROPS) My pulse is beating like a drum but my blood is running cold. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I came here with a question and I’m gonna find the answer if it kills me (TITLE SPLASH)
And then spend way too long there just listening to the music…
Also the first time I came across the shop keeper… The music was amazing and suddenly they just turned it up to 11 (…why is there no scope emoji? Fine, have a pickaxe)
I may have done the skelly dance in public too
Ahem, anyway. Have fun!
Haha, I’m in a similar situation. I was on a roll with 聖女の魔力は万能です, then kept going with nearly half of 怪人二十面相… and then Disco happened. (It’s a RPG-style murder/mystery game, by the way; despite the disco in the title and numerous mentions in the game, there’s very little in terms of actual disco music)
JoJo once again serving as a public safety announcement, this time about the dangers of escalators and the importance of not getting clothing or strings caught in the teeth of the escalator steps. Also don’t touch power outlets. There’s no need to touch them and there should be a bit of grip on the power cord for pulling those out.
Also Mariah is so pretty??? alskfdjfjohwdijjaowjeiowa I don’t remember feeling this way during the anime… ladies
I keep making these posts when I’m super tired I also keep not reading until I’m pretty tired so rip I guess lmao. I finally finished the chapter of 海辺のカフカ I’ve been reading, I don’t know why my brain put up such a fight with it? I’ve been generally able to read a chapter in a sitting lately and that one didn’t really seem harder, my brain just said no I guess After that I missed バディミッションBOND so I played a bit of that, but I was already pretty tired so not a whole lot. It was just a weird day lmao, on to tomorrow!
Aw yay, I’m glad my absolute inability to shut up about zero escape could be an inspiration that’s really what happened to me too though, I randomly saw someone talking about it and was like “oh yeah that game! I could give it a go” and then it was all over lmao; I look forward to seeing your thoughts!
Noooo that’s such an irrational fear of mine though maybe not so irrational I suppose, rip
I stumbled upon someone on twitter who writes 2.43 fics, and I read the odaoki one they wrote for Oda’s birthday. It was so cute… So yeah I’m gonna read their others at some point, too. I’m really happy to have found 2.43 ones! On AO3 it’s really just me anymore, and there aren’t any JP ones either.
I also asked them for permission to translate it and post it on AO3, though I don’t know how to phrase some of the things in JP (like that I’d give them proper credit, so I went with “I’ll say properly that the author of this story is (name)”…), so I put it in both JP and ENG, and hopefully between that, they’ll understand what I’m saying…? I dunno when I’ll hear back, but geez, am I nervous. I’m not used to talking to people, especially for stuff like this.
I read 8 pages of 強者の同盟, finishing ch 1 and leaving off on pg 19. We learn that Akao and Jungo live in the same direction, but Akao takes the train and Jungo rides a bike, which is also part of why they rarely see each other anymore. Also, this is my only time seeing あっという間に 福井弁-ified into あっちゅう間に, and now I’m wondering if I have only seen it in the narration in this series, aside from this instance… And I’m seeing a lot of that tendency to drop the く in connective forms of い-adjectives, I just never noticed the first time I read since this was before I actually knew how conjugation worked.
Some vocab of note:
気取られる (きどられる) [自一] to arouse suspicion; to be suspected
大輪 (たいりん) [noun, の-adj.] large-flowered
一割 (いちわり) [noun] 10%
路面電車 (ろめんでんしゃ) [noun] tram; streetcar; trolley. I really like the way this word sounds, for some reason.
re: わ: I encounter it as the dialectal, gender-neutral わ more often than the feminine わ, to the point that when I do see it as the feminine わ, I gotta remind myself that it’s generally spoken with a rising intonation, as my instinct is to read it with a falling one lmao. I do actually see it as the feminine わ fairly often though.
I had a very busy and stressful day so I just used the little free time I had to continue with what I was doing the previous day.
I finished this week’s ルーパーズ chapter, which took about 30 more minutes, and then I played バリバリ for 15 min which was enough to do a subsection real quick. It’s nice to still be able to get some progress in on a busy day.
Random article - a space shuttle mission in the 80s.
If you’ve ever wonder how to say NASA in Japanese it’s: アメリカ航空宇宙局
Japanese found in the sand
SPACEWORDS
乗組員「のりくみいん」ー Crew/crew member 操縦士「そうじゅうし」ー Pilot 離陸時「りりくじ」ー Take-off (also just 離陸) 着陸時「ちゃくりくじ」ー Landing (also just 着陸) 近点「きんてん」ー Periapsis (the closest point in an elliptical orbit). 遠点「えんてん」ー Apoapsis (the furthest point in an elliptical orbit). 軌道傾斜角「きどうけいしゃかく」ー Orbital inclination 軌道周期「きどうしゅうき」ー Orbital period 対地同期軌道「たいちどうききどう」ー Geosynchronous orbit
Forms
徽章 ＝ 記章「きしょう」(Emblem; insignia; medal)
(I love the insignias for space missions and the like, they always make them so cool looking)
I think the difficulty is just right for me, so that’s nice. I’ll probably write down some thoughts about the plot and stuff later, but right now I’m tired. It’s also hard to believe we’re nearing the end of the first month! I’ve read more this month than the rest of the year combined 
I might not have checked it out if it wasn’t for your posts in a previous challenge, so thank you for that!
July 26th 
(…why is there no scope emoji? Fine, have a pickaxe)
After that I missed バディミッションBOND so I played a bit of that, but I was already pretty tired so not a whole lot. It was just a weird day lmao, on to tomorrow!
くノ一ツバキの胸の内 Volume 3 (37% ➨ 52%)
スーパーマリオくん Volume 1 (21% ➨ 27%)
