I traded in a lot of my books I had as goals today. I think I ultimately just realized I need to just read more and enjoy it. Maybe someday I’ll return to those harder books but right now I am enjoying Persona 3 Portable and adding new words into Anki as I see them. Re:Zero is like whitenoise, I’m reading Persona Q now, but I need to return to 青ブタ and just enjoy the journey.
25 Likes
August 14th!
Today I read Chapter 2 of Yoru Cafe Volume 2. It was a shorter chapter than usual this week, which was convenient for me because its really hot here in the UK today, and getting anything done feels extra difficult. 
22 Likes
The Tanuki Beach Resort: Date 20220814 
吾輩は狸である progress: 3.46% 
Thanks to this book I’m now giving any cats I meet in the wild Japanese pronouns. Today I met a cat that was a big, stompy 俺, and another one I was pretty sure would use ぼく.
Japanese found in the sand
Meowords
劈頭「へきとう」ー Beginning; outset; start
従って「したがって」ー Therefore; consequently
著述「ちょじゅつ」ー Writing; book; literary work
仏国「ふっこく」ー France
奇警「きけい」ー Whitty; original
雪隠「せっちん」ー Toilet; lavatory
Punctuation
I learnt that this thing: ※ has a name.
It’s called こめじるし「米印」
Replies
This is great! Congrats! 
Wonder how many people have completed their first novel thanks to these threads, there’s been lots of successes so far!
24 Likes
Finished free-reading Vol. 2 of よつば&! today. Tomorrow will return to the beginning and reread with help from reference materials. Looking forward to understanding exponentially more than I did the first time through!
23 Likes
Today I finished ティアムーン帝国物語４! It took me 17 hours over about 3 weeks.
It was my fifth book in Japanese, and I overall found it a pleasant read. It was only a bit troublesome when there was a lot of politics/economics-related talk, but other than that it was pretty breezy.
I also listened to the audiobook as I read, at 0.8-0.9 speed, and that made my reading more extensive (especially since it voiced the readings of kanji that I terminally forget 
). It was an entertaining audiobook - the narrator is very talented!
26 Likes
Home post 
Aug 13th
・ 本好きの下剋上 10 (22.17% → 22.64%)
Ended up reading a tiny bit. Had a chill day, feeling much better now :3
Home post Aug 14th 
(first time I post two-in-one)
・ 本好きの下剋上 10 (22.64% → 24%)
Isn’t it kind of funny how the tools and resources [srs] [book clubs] that are supposed to help us reach our goal [read book] sometimes gets in the way of us doing the thing we’re supposed to do [read book]? At least if you’re not mindful about how you’re spending time on various stuff (like me). #mindfulness
Reply~
Yay :D
Like the time when 葉月 had a tea party and the high-ranking タカ子 joined and 薫子 was drunk through the mirror. And when 堯人 arranged a double-futon in Miyo’s room so she and Kiyoka had no other choice but to spend the night together 
ahh that was hilarious, but also very precious.
Now you can read volume six, yes 
Am curious what you think~
26 Likes
August 14th:
Read like 6 or 7 pages of 好きっていいなよ. I didn’t realize I’d ended things juuuust before the volume was done last night. So that means I’ve finished the first volume today! It’s been a really cute read with lots of challenging grammar. I feel like grammar is definitely what’s holding me back lately, so I need to get more studying in. Soon…
Small life rant that should probably go in the "Complaining is a must" thread
I don’t know if you know this, but in Norway everything stops on Sundays. Only a handful of stores are open and if you want to take a bus anywhere, you might be out of luck. I hadn’t thought about that when I signed up for today’s shift I was half an hour late to work because there just weren’t any buses. To make matters worse, there was a bike race going on right when my shift ended, so most of downtown was closed for traffic. I had to walk (!!!) home. 2 hours!!! On an empty stomach! At least the weather was nice 
25 Likes
August 13th and 14th
What did I read?: 今日のさんぽんた Vol 1
How much did I read?: 27 pages and 16 pages
How long did it take me?: 39 min and 21 min
Wasn’t really in the mood to post yesterday 
But I did read! Yesterday and today. I started a new manga series called 今日のさんぽんた, because the cover looked calming and I wanted to be calm. …This is how I choose my books xD
It felt surprisingly hard, though, there seems to be quite a bit of what I think is Kansai-ben. I haven’t dealt with that much, so it’s a bit more challenging for me to parse. It is calming, though 
Each chapter is a memory of a walk that the dog, Ponta, took with his owner, a girl named Rieko. The chapter titles are (I assume) named for the year/month in the dog’s life that they occurred, which is good because they seem to jump around in the timeline a bit so otherwise I think I would be lost xD But yeah, it’s basically just the girl talking to the dog about her thoughts as they walk.
Did I get this as a suggestion from here? I really can’t remember
Congrats on your first novels!! 
23 Likes
Congrats on your first novel!
I love this 
I didn’t read yesterday, I was out all day and completely exhausted when I got home. Today I read ~20ish pages of 遅刻してきた幽霊 and am on the last story in the collection. It’s interesting and I’m intrigued…but so tired Maybe I’ll have more energy later
19 Likes
I’m about a fourth of the way through the last volume of Azumanga Daioh, looking to finish it this coming week and start up a new thing. I like it a lot but yeah, sometimes I’m lost. Running into bits of kansai dialect I still don’t quite get, and sometimes the way the jokes are slightly nonsense makes it hard to tell when I am or am not understanding everything.
Let’s talk a little more about Flowers! Still reading that most every day other than Friday’s Loopers. With the long sentences and very frequent new words I’ve had to let myself be content with around 3000 or a little more characters per day. That takes an hour roughly, depending on how I’m focusing and if I hit a dense bit or a nice dialog break. Would like to read for longer but the fatigue is back, with this one. Luckily Loopers proves that I can still read faster when it’s not all written like: 前髪をかき上げる仕草が中性的で実に嵌まっていて……中身が少々変わっていることも忘れつい見惚れてしまう.
The second “mystery” or whatever wasn’t as bad as the first but felt more like odd trivia where the game just asked what number is considered unlucky in Italy and stuff like that, haha. Will definitely just be looking those up. I’m into the VN but it’s all still kinda low key, especially with my very slow reading speed for this one. I think with proper understanding of exactly what I’m up against I would’ve put this off slightly in order to play another VN that would’ve either been easier or simply contained more useful words (much of the difficult vocab is rather niche in a certain type of descriptive prose or Christian-related religious terms). But I can stick it out so it’ll be nice anyway to say that I managed; it’s not regret, just probably sub-optimal placement.
Spoilery stuff
Shame Erika has only showed up a couple brief times, heh. She’s kind of just mean but in a way that’s consistently amusing me. Right now I’m up to the point where Mayuri isn’t talking to people after an awkward experience caused by the Sasaki twins (and to be precise, I quit right in the midst of the cake baking for her). Nice to see these character relationships really developing. Recent stuff has Rikka growing on me a lot more too, as there’s been far less focus on her rule obsession and more on her just being nice and caring. I found the Sasakis pretty funny so it sucks seeing them go too far and kind of be the entire catalyst twice in a row for bad things happening.
This is a normal way to have a meeting with your teacher, with her wandering into the water, right? Weirded me out a bit. The artstyle in this game is so pleasant either way 
23 Likes
Home
ジョジョの奇妙な冒険25
I think the day before yesterday was pages 28/29?
Yesterday was 30-37
Time for F MEGA
20 Likes
| REDC | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 7 | |||||||
 |
1 | 0 | 0 | % | |
８月１４日
Final Fantasy XIV
It’s official, I’m all set with the new character . This is going to be a potential journey of several hundred hours, it’s a huge project but I’m extremely excited to see it started. My attempts last year made me realise that my level was just not there yet to play this without suffering greatly. Now I feel much more prepared and it’s actually not that bad like it used to be, just the hour or so that I was playing before made me realise that I can totally do this now even if it will be hard, but at least it’s not impossible anymore, I actually started to grab some Anki vocab cards already. This is huge for me because this is the one game that I love since so, so many years ago. The one game that I could spend literally the whole day playing with no issue at all, though playing it in Japanese from the start will for sure drain my energy much faster. There’s way too many hours of content and text at this point that even if it’s set in a fantasy environment, common words will appear constantly nonetheless. If I can keep this project long term, I’m convinced it will boost my knowledge of Japanese by a lot. It won’t be my only resource, of course, variety is always very important. But ahhh I’m just so excited to start this, I’m just rambling at this point .
I ended up making the character in my region and not in a Japanese server so I can still take a complete break from Japanese if I need to.
I can also finally talk about sidequests and minor content without the risk of spoiling anything relevant 
. Haven’t talked about the content of what I read in a long time.
Congrats!!
Right!? So many accomplishments (and accomplishments in the making) in these threads, love to see it.
25 Likes
More Monkeys progress. I’m at about 250k characters read, can feel myself getting closer to the end. I think I finished 硝子’s route shortly after my last post and am on メバチ’s route now. I don’t think I posted any screenshots of her before because she is definitely my least favorite character If I didn’t have to play her route to unlock the true end I probably would have skipped it. It’s not awful, she is just definitely the weakest character for me.
On the side, I finished the first chapter of the Sayaka やがて君になる spinoff LN. Although the chapters in that LN are a bit weird, first one was 67 pages and then the second chapter is the rest of the book which goes to like page 228. I’ve never read a LN before in any language though so I’m not sure if that’s standard or not.
The first chapter was pretty good but the ending definitely caught me off guard. Thankfully the language in this one isn’t too hard compared to the VNs I’ve been reading. There are a few similes they use that is hard to make out what they mean but overall nothing too difficult. I have noticed it is harder to stay focused when reading a LN compared to a VN for some reason. Maybe its the lack of visuals and voice acting. Hoping my attention span gets better because I do enjoy the story
21 Likes
Also,
screaming internally when 葉月 brought up the topic of “love”. What are you doing. Stop. She is freaking sadistic.
The 初詣 part at the beginning was nice too
.
I am half way through. I’ll post about it when I am done.
4 Likes
August 14 
Home Post
So I kind of finished バディミッションBOND today? Definitely all the main story and then a bunch of other stuff that popped up now I actually just have a few little side stories I think, unless they pull some other wild stuff on me lmao. So that puts me at about 125 hours for the whole thing, minus a couple hours or so for interruptions. vndb estimates it at 45 hours so like… not bad? Especially considering some of the language struggles this game put me through, oh boy It’s late now so I’ll save more in-depth discussion for tomorrow when I finish up the last little bits, but this’ll be VN number 5 down! By far the longest and most difficult one I’ve done too, so yay!
Woooo congrats!!! Always a major milestone 
Yay that’s super exciting!! I’m admittedly not very familiar with final fantasy but your enthusiasm is contagious, I look forward to seeing how it goes!
Also congrats to everyone else who finished projects today, seems to be a common theme! Crushing it out here 
24 Likes
August 14
(home post)
Super Mario Odyssey
I actually finished yesterday, thinking I hadn’t read any Japanese at all, and then as I laid in bed I was like “wait a minute”… Which day did I play the beach kingdom (can’t actually remember what they are called in English) in SMO? And my brain went yesterday? And I was like “no I don’t think so”. And brain was like so today? And I was like “gotta be I guess, weird”.
So I did a bit of reading (and fun playing!). Reading the leaflet on the kingdom (man those are hard because they typically have vocab I don’t know, but I don’t look it up. But after reading about half of it, I realized one of the unknown words were carbonated (or similar) to say sparkling/bubbly water.
I just realized that I’m in three book clubs and they’re making me read: 1 novel, 1 manga, and 1 VN. Talk about spreading myself across all mediums equally.
Lastly, I think I’m back in that place I talked about a few weeks ago, when switching between things I’m reading is its own kind of ordeal for me. I certainly find that part much harder than just continuing with what I’m already doing. Doesn’t help that two of my current picks are also starting new volumes. The resistance is real.
But I will go conquer it right now, because I have another gaming night planned so if I want to read something today, I better do it now. ^^
And once again, I get to thank more of you for congratulating me on my first novel. 
And now to some specific replies!
replies
Books, smooks. Read whatever you prefer. The only thing I’m disliking with reading a VN is that I can’t add it to bookmeter and get a nice page boost to my totals when I finished it.
Sounds like a lot of fun! I’ve been watching a (main) story focused lets play of FFXIV. They just finished Heavensward’s main story and will start the patch stories soon 
It’s on PlayFrame yt channel. It isn’t played in Japanese, but I’ve been enjoying being able to experience the story without getting into another mmo. (MMOs have dominated my life at different times…)
You’re right, that is pretty rad. 
And then I’ll read Loopers this week and it will slam me back to earth, reminding me how much there is still left to learn to read everything that easily.
Woot! I look forward to your next update.
Absolutely! Will be starting the next in the series any day.
Talk about sneakly announcing your own first finished novel. Well done!
Honestly, seeing you were reading it at the same time and getting close to the end pushed me to keep reading too. So I think we managed to motivate each other there. 
You’re absolutely right. 坊ちゃん (in graded reader form) was far harder to read than 夜カフェ. And of those two, 坊ちゃん was definitely more entertaining. I do really enjoy 夜カフェ, but it is more of a hanging out on the beach easy read. While 坊ちゃん is more of a reading at night and maybe stay up too late to read more — type of read. I enjoy both kinds of books (they both have their place), but I’d probably pick 坊ちゃん-type reads all the time, if they didn’t also come with a lot more difficulty. I’ll get there. 
(Obviously I enjoyed 夜カフェ enough to keep reading. I feel like I’m slamming it, but I honestly enjoy reading it a lot too. Not only for how easy it is to read, but the characters and their drama.)
Yes please! I can’t say I will be able to start them super soon (considering I’m in three book clubs, 4 starting in September), but I do want to get into more novel territory. I’m certainly more interested in it now, than I was before finishing 夜カフェ. (Also before remembering how dang good 坊ちゃん was.)
Thanks to you reading this book, when Bowser in Super Mario Odyssey used 吾輩 I knew both how to read it and what it meant. I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t been reading this at the same time. ^^
O_O Come on Norway, wake up! Sweden certainly did. Most everything is open on Sundays nowadays, excluding Systembolaget (and the postal service, but they aren’t open on any red days or weekends so…).
What an ordeal. 
At least the weather was good.
22 Likes
Replies
Congrats!! What is happening lately? Everyone is running on Beast mode .
Thank you! FFXIV in particular is an MMORPG so if you think of World of Warcraft, though different games, you would have a general idea of what type of game it is. Only that one of the important features in FFXIV is the story. At this point it’s been going for close to 10 years since it was reworked (it released a bit before that but it was terrible and they had to remake it completely) so if you read every little thing that means hundreds of hours of text, there’s a ton of reading, lore, dialogues and so on. The main story is probably one of the big selling points of the game, it’s really good.
Heavensward is so good! I hope you’re enjoying it .
Yeah I feel you, it’s been the same for me at times. Back then around 2014, FFXIV consumed my life for sure, it was a bad period mentally and I needed something to rely on and take my brain on a vacation. And oh it worked really well, only that it did break a couple other functional things in my life in exchange. But then I couldn’t keep pushing things under the rug and quit, and I started this wonderful Japanese journey right after! September of that year I started in the language school.
Nowadays I have a much healthier relationship with video games in general, though I’ll be honest that I still use them as a refuge often. It’s not as bad as it used to be and since I came back to FFXIV last year I’ve been able to keep it reasonable. It’s not an issue anymore so that’s why I allow myself to play my favourite game . If or when that changes I’ll have to reevaluate my options but right now it’s been good for a year and a half ish.
It’s the internet that now dominates my free time , that’s my number 1 nemesis right now. I can spend the whole day checking and watching anything online only to forget most of it in a few days. At least if I’m going to spend that much time in front of the PC anyways I thought that I could channel it into studying Japanese, and it’s working well. So while I spend way too much time with the PC, at least I feel like a fair portion of it is being somewhat productive. That’s also why for me any study method that involves a keyboard and a mouse is able to keep my attention and energy for a long time, and why I like to use video games as study time. Making use of bad habits I guess .
9 Likes
Today I read the last 4 pages of the ABBC prefectures book, as well as 3 pages of Tugumi, and to partway through chapter 11 of シャドーハウス. So I’m up to date with everything other than Tugumi.
23 Likes
Day 45: August 14th 
ふだつきのキョーコちゃん Volume 7 (21% ➨ 39%)
くノ一ツバキの胸の内 Volume 4 (18% ➨ 34%)
ご注文はうさぎですか？ Complete Blend Volume 1 (50% ➨ 53%)
20 Likes
Wanted to finish this second case of Kindaichi over the weekend and with the heat there wasn’t much to do anyway, so I was able to read quite a lot and finish it. I would say this case is maybe a bit more interesting than the previous one because of how succesful they were at revenge and how many tricks, twists and turns there are. The setting is also very bizarre, love it. It kinda demonstrates that yes only someone like kindaichi would have been able to solve it. Of course as the reader you should also be able to figure it out and you don’t need something as ridiculous as an IQ of 180. I docked one star for the whole teacher-student affair at the start of the volume.
I’ll be starting the third case today and maybe after that one I’ll take a little break and read some Zenitendo.
21 Likes