📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2022 🏖 ☀

:tiger2: :books: The Tanuki Beach Resort: Date 20220808 :beach_umbrella: :raccoon:

吾輩は狸である progress: 0.88% :closed_book:
.88 on 8/8

I imagine (since it’s international cat day today) that there are many cats out there right now, using 吾輩 to demand to their humans that they are indeed famished and life simply cannot go on without additional kibbles in their bowl.

:beach_umbrella: Japanese found in the sand :beach_umbrella:

Meowords

滅多「めった」ー Thoughtless; reckless; rash
当人「とうにん」ー The person in question; the person concerned; this said person
忍び足「しのびあし」ー Stealthy steps; soft steps
「よだれ」ー Drool
胃弱「いじゃく」ー Indigestion; weak digestion
淡黄色「たんおうしょく / たんこうしょく」ー Pale yellow
不活発「ふかっぱつ」ー Lethargic; dull; sluggish; inanimate
書物「しょもつ」ー Book; volume
出来得る限り 「できうるかぎり」ー As much as possible; as far as possible
飯櫃「めしびつ」ー Round, wooden container for cooked rice

Kanji Forms
炬燵「こたつ」ー Kotatsu (I’ve always wondered what the kanji was for this)

FORMS
徴候 = 兆候「ちょうこう」(Sign; indication; omen)
椽側 = 縁側「えんがわ」(Engawa; external corridor on traditional Japanese houses)
彼等 = 彼ら「かれら」(They; them)

Special Takadiastase Section
タカジヤスター ー Takadiastase (A form of diastase discovered in 1894 by Jokichi Takamine)
(this took a lot of searching for a word that I’m probably never gonna see again)

Other
――
I thought this was いちいち as in one one, and thought what does one-one mean? but it’s dashes to separate a clause.


Replies

Great find! This is really cool to see!

Tried to read this, I can make out the hiragana (mostly) fine, but trying to work out those handwritten kanji is really hard :sweat_smile:

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home post

Read some of 彩雲国物語 vol 2 yesterday. Relatives from out of town visited and we went to the museum all afternoon, so I was pretty tired and it was hard to focus on reading.

But it really is wobbly, simple, and childish :sweat_smile:

Anyway, it’s a little embarrassing, but here’s a picture of my first entry…

photo

The page design itself has a lot of elements which are big and wobbly, and I think that makes it a friendly layout when you’re not good at writing yet. I don’t feel like I need to apologize to the journal for having ugly handwriting. The writing prompts were helpful too. I think if I keep doing this every time I finish a book, little by little, I might get better. It would be pretty cool if I start to see visible differences through the progression of the journal.

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I can give my opinion as someone who has been using koohi for a while ^^ (Tho this won’t be a balanced review at all :eyes: :sweat_drops: :caught_durtling: :see_no_evil: )

Just like WaniKani, Koohi = typing style, while jpdb = anki style.

Their library (number of word lists/decks) as of now:
Koohi has 269 books, 95 anime, 32 games, and 11 uncategorized.
Jpdb has 1112 novels/series?, 1369 anime, 475 VNs, 1266 live action, 20 video games, 1116 web novels, 4 textbooks, 113 YT videos, and 45 audio works.

Keep in mind that even if the sites don’t have the piece of work you’re learning from yet, you can still look up words and add them manually. That’s what I’ve been doing on koohi for the most part. (My style has mainly been “look up words as I go, then review some of them”, not “learn the words beforehand, then read”. Btw, I don’t add kanji for reviews, only vocab, so I can’t comment on that.)

Both sites have the setting to adjust word lists based on your WK level, but on jpdb you have to pledge to patreon to set it to a level higher than 3.

screenshot of patreon advantages on jpdb

To be honest, I think I prefer jpdb right now, even if I’m not a patreon. The UI looks better, there are more settings to adjust, it has ingrained audio (both sites have pitch info tho), many more example sentences for each card compared to koohi (even if the sentences aren’t always correct in terms of usage for the word being reviewed - probably automatically applied, so that’s something to keep in mind), there’s a leaderboard if you care for that and want to compete…

I feel a bit bad for not having much to say about Koohi - please don’t get me wrong, it is also a great tool for reviewing words, especially if you prefer typing rather than anki style.

That’s all I can think of for now. Like I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve only been using jpdb for less than two weeks, so I’m very much still in the “oh! new shiny toy tool” phase, haha. As a side note, no matter which SRS tool you end up using after WK, I definitely recommend getting yomichan with JP dictionaries to supplement your vocab studies if you haven’t already :durtle_the_explorer:

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Oh that’s great to hear! Moving is always so annoying - I wish we could just teleport our stuff and ourselves :sweat_smile:

Oh speaking of which: After our Paris BookOff rampage I decided I need a new bookshelf as well :grin: Will go do some shopping later this month, I guess.

Hilarious story :slight_smile: I hope your sunburn will get better soon!

I get to chuckle every time I remember that - and also every time somebody gets killed or something, in this very interesting “documentary” :crazy_face:

Ooooo I love it! It fits so well into the page, like you said. And I don’t think it looks too wobbly actually, I think you have a nice flow to your writing.


Home Post

Today I finished this week’s Kafka section and started to read this week’s TUGUMI section, but I’m getting pretty tired so will head to bed without reading further. Tomorrow I should finish that and continue with Flesh & Blood where we have a lot of excitement upcoming, it feels :sailboat: :pirate_flag:

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:sunny: :beach_umbrella: Memoria’s Summer Readin’ :beach: :sunny:

August 8th:

4 pages of 好きっていいなよ. Tired again, but… I’m all moved in!! My cats are here, I am here, and I’m just about to sleep in the new apartment for the first time. Feeling a bit lonely since no one else is here, but also very free :sparkles: I think things are gonna stabilize more from now on.

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Home post :bookmark: Aug 8th :sunny:

・ 本好きの下剋上 10 (5% → 11%)

I started reading kinda early, but then uhh… the day went by. Got some more reading done now, but it is way past bedtime :caught_durtling: I really need to up my time management skills. smh

This is what I get for posting so late, don’t know what I’m writing. Meant something more like “with only 33% of vocab known, it’ll cover almost 90% of the words you come across in this series”.

Note to self: I need to stop posting late at night :writing_hand:

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Oh gosh, there’s so many that were referenced. It’s worth noting that several of the main characters are basically “mystery otaku” so they toss out titles and author names as a shared language. You won’t miss any of the plot without knowing them, but you’ll miss a certain ‘air’ to the discussions and some references might be puzzling. I’ll say that knowing your Sherlock will help the most with dueling words references as they talk about some famous cases and events in the series quite a few times. The biggest references outside of Sherlock were Christy, and 綾辻行人’s 館 series. There was one or two references to 江戸川乱歩 (:heart:) and several to Ellery Queen who I am not sure I’ve ever read.

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Thank you so much for your encouragement!! :sob::sparkles:

You’re too good! I’m so tempted, but “comfortable” might be a stretch hahaha. Maaaybe if I start finishing the Kafka readings early then I could try two books at once?? :eyes::fire: maaayybe

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Congrats on the successful move! Those first days are always a bit unsettling, but also so exciting.

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August 8th!

Today I read the first chapter of Volume two of Yoru Cafe. I had a lot of trouble concentrating so it ended up taking me hours to make it through the whole chapter. But I got there in the end.
Afterwards I played Pokemon Legends: Arceus for a while too :slight_smile:

(Home Post)

Replies

@MissDagger @NicoleIsEnough Definitely a bit sore and pink today but not as painful as I thought it would be! Hopefully my face will stop looking so pink and shiny in a few days though :sweat_smile:

@Daisoujou Sounds like its worth keeping on my to do list and giving it a try, but not as a potential Yotsuba replacement! Thank you for the review :slight_smile:

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Home post

REDC
Week 7

8月8日
Chrono Trigger

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:spiral_calendar: Day 39: August 8th :ocean: :fish:

Light reading day as I’ve been working on some projects.

spacer:ribbon: ふだつきのキョーコちゃん Volume 6 (0% ➨ 21%)

spacer:sparkles: キラキラ100% Volume 3 (50% ➨ 55%)

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August 8 :blossom: Home Post

You guys ready for some reading chaos, because I can sure provide that today :joy: I started out with 十角館(じゅっかくかん)殺人(さつじん) again for the book club and finished the prologue; very intrigued so far :eyes: Idk if my brain just wasn’t having it today or if it was new book syndrome or what, but it felt harder than it seemed like it should, but who knows really :man_shrugging: It’s really interesting and I like the vibe of it so I’ll get there I’m sure!

Then I wanted to read some more 囚獄(しゅうごく)のヴァニタス so I finished another chapter, and I’m still really enjoying it! So far it has a good balance of mystery-of-the-week stuff and overarching oddities, and I’m very intrigued to see where it all goes :eyes: It also helps that I like the main characters and their snarky ominous relationship :laughing:

Then I decided to look into the demo of The Protea Cases while it’s still on sale and that was a confidence boost for sure! Especially compared to like バディミッションBOND it was such an easy read for me so that felt good, though I don’t know that I’ll continue with it but it was a nice experience either way!

And finally I went back to my roots with some バディミッションBOND which is always lovely! I think by that point my brain was willing to process things again so it went a lot smoother :joy: Still working through an investigation part, but I think I’m gonna power through it tomorrow so looking forward to that :eyes:

I admittedly have not done much with koohi but I can throw in my two cents about jpdb!

jpdb digression

So I’ve gone in and out of jpdb for a while, and I’m at a point now where I pretty consistently do at least something with it every day, and I think that’s what really works for me with jpdb; it feels really low pressure. As I’ve gotten into reading more, I’ve fallen off of other SRS things (as you can see by my WK level lmao) in favor of just spending more time playing VNs and other fun stuff, and a lot of those once you get out of a rhythm it can be intimidating to get back into it.

But jpdb is like… chill? I think the biggest thing for me is that the SRS is flexible, so like if a review came back after 4 hours but you don’t get to it for two days and you still get it right, you get credit for remembering for two days, if that makes sense. So it really just feels like I can hop in and do some words whenever I feel without any pressure behind it, which is exactly the vibe I need now that I’m more reading-focused :joy: Everyone’s different so your mileage may vary, but that’s where I’m at!

(To be fair I also don’t treat jpdb as my main source of learning vocabulary really, it’s just a supplement to help keep general concepts in my brain until I actually see the word in use again)

Congrats, glad it’s all taken care of! Moving is definitely stressful :sweat_smile:

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I’m quite tired and had a lot of ‘chore’ type things to do after work, so I only managed a few pages of 十角館の殺人. I’m trying for a closer read so I’m looking up a good deal more than I usually do, but it’s exhausting. I’m usually in the ‘embrace ambiguity’ camp and let my brain just make connections, take a flying guess at 読み方, and distil meaning from kanji + context, but if I’m to be of any help to people in the club I should probably do a closer reading :sweat_smile:

The prologue was pretty fancy writing. It was a lot of older words, poetic ways of saying things, etc. Close to prose and rather gothy.

I’m only a little bit into the first chapter but it kind of continues in a similar-ish vein but seems to be easing off a bit, which is to be expected. I can’t imagine a whole book written so heavily :sweat_smile: Good stuff in limited doses, a bit much as the main course.

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Oh sweet, that’s reassuring :joy: It was manageable but definitely slowed me down a lot, so good to hear it seems to chill out! Challenging as it was it did fit the mood of the prologue nicely so guess I can’t complain too much :man_shrugging:

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I finally finished the Prologue for 十画館の殺人 today. It was more on the challenging side, but it was intriguing enough that it didn’t feel too much of a chore to look up 200+ words :sweat_smile:

It really helped to use the Amazon Kindle version for kanji lookups (only using the free trial though). It makes me regret somewhat that I got the paperback version instead… but it was 600 yen cheaper so it felt worth it at the time!

I also started a vocab list for whoever wants to use it @pocketcat @natarin (??)
I hesitate to post it in the discussion thread since it isn’t perfect. For example, I didn’t fill the definitions in for all words I already knew. I just wanted to record the kanji I couldn’t recognize at the time or that I knew I’d forget at some point :upside_down_face: But feel free to edit!

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:sunny: :beach_umbrella: Memoria’s Summer Readin’ :beach: :sunny:

August 9th:

15 pages of 好きっていいなよ. I have the day off and aside from unpacking, can do whatever I want all day… So I’ll probably read more later! I’m just ending this session early since I have so many reviews and lessons piled up :melting_face: I’ll feel better about reading after that’s out of the way…

Thank you!! It really is… Now there’s only fun stuff left. Decorating, showing off all my games and manga, buying some plants :star_struck:

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:star2: :video_game: August 8 :video_game: :star2:
(home post)

Super Mario Odyssey :star2:

So I ended up only playing some SMO yesterday. I probably read some random bits while browsing the forum too, but I don’t really think about this honestly.

Now that the cat sitting gig is done, I’m just so tired and want to relax, but I have several things I have to do, some of them that have piled up because of the gig. But all I want to do is sleep, because I’ve been having super vivid dreams two nights in a row, and it tends to leave me tired/exhausted when I wake up (instead of rested). So that doesn’t help. :sleeping:


Mystery book stuff!

Thanks for all this!

I guess I need to go read the actual stories about Sherlock. I think I’ve listened to/read maybe one or two of the short stories. But I know a lot about it because I’ve basically seen all the modern movie and TV adaptions. (Well at least all the big ones, there are probably a few I haven’t heard of.)

When it comes to Christy, do you know if they mentioned Poirot or Miss Marple or the independent stories more? I’m on firmer ground with Poirot. xD Although I really should actually read more of them, rather than relying on TV versions. :joy:

I know of Ellery Queen and have maybe read one short story, but not more than that.

The first one of these are being read by the mystery club on the Natively forums, isn’t it? :eyes: If only I was anywhere close to being able to handle something like that. :joy:

What would you recommend?

When I’m better at reading novels, I have a feeling I might have a mystery binge in front of me. :heart_eyes:


Other replies

@lucylavelle Glad to hear it is better than you thought. At least you have a story to tell out of it. :joy:

@natarin Thanks for sharing your experience! I might go with jpdb because it has anki mode and your review. Because if I continue with SRS, I want it to be as easy and painless as possible. Although koohi is free with all features. Decisions, decisions.

Good thing I don’t have to pick for probably another 6 months (most likely more since at my current speed I’ll reach 60 Feb/Mar next year).

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Today I read 2 parts of Re:Zero volume 1, 2 chapters of 映像研に手を出すな! Volume 7, and 2 chapters Chainsaw Man Volume 4.

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Aug 9, Tue of Week 7 of Summer :beach_umbrella: 2022

I continued reading ブラックジャックによろしく to the end of Ch.2. It doesn’t appear to be that hard, although needs some effort. Probably around or just less than JoJo.

So, it’s about early life of a surgeon. In any emergency team, I would want to have a surgeon. And sometimes also urgent, not so emergent, ones; that moving or transferring can be problemtic. Doing a somewhat risky stuff when needed? I would do that too, if law and nurses allow. It’s better to have more abilities in advance, as I won’t know when I will need them.

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