I second this! 
Good luck to anyone taking the exam 
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@MarnieDEB is totally right, haha. The exhaustion I felt after taking that N2 practice test was very real; it more than counts.
Best of luck to you! Since you’ve been hanging in here reading a bunch, I think you’ve got this. 
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Home post 
July 2nd 
・詩的私的ジャック - JACK THE POETICAL PRIVATE (36% → 40%)
New book club week, new reading assignment. Woke up way too early due to tropical heat - too hot for a yukidaruma like me 
So I was a bit tired today. Got stuck on a confusing paragraph, but taking a break helped. I realized I mixed up the characters’ names, there’s a few to keep track of. (Kinda wanted to read SAO, but did listening instead.)
Good luck to those of you who are taking the JLPT tomorrow! 
You got this!
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1st & 2nd July (Days 1 & 2) 
As I joined the challenge at very ungodly hour yesterday, I read a short NHK easy article for the sake of it.
Today I had more time to dedicate to reading, so I picked up Kafka on the Shore again. Before I got ill, I was somewhere midways through chapter 5, but I have forgotten everything since. So I re-read the first half of the chapter again. Although it takes me a long while to get through those few pages, I am still surprised at just how many of the words and kanji I already know!
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3rd of June
Read from page 69 to page 73 (18 – 20%) of かがみの孤城. I read more than I initially intended today! Some parts were easy, and other parts had a lot of onomatopoeia that I constantly kept looking up.
Yesterday I made a list of future books I intend to read, and put it on my study log. Here it is:
Summary
Perhaps I’m being a little too ambitious 
. Too many books I want to read though!
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You know, I had intended to chill out a bit recently with my reading. But here I am, doing the opposite of that. Things got very climactic, very emotional, and very good in Summer Pockets, so with the end somewhat in sight, I persevered for a while. Up to 13,500 characters, which is definitely one of my most read in a day. I’ve been at this VN since 2 challenges ago, but let’s appreciate that when I started, I was reading like 3 or 4 thousand characters in a day. The challenge pays off, folks.
So I read, and I read, and I read. And then I hit the end credits!
…
Then the pocket dimension opened! Get that ALKA out of here, and especially get those naïve thoughts about being done out of here. I read the very beginning, but I’ll save it for tomorrow, and if it doesn’t end quickly, no doubt continue pressing on and on haha.
Anyway, word I learned: バカップル . “Sickeningly sweet and soppy couple.” It’s バカ + カップル .
A little question about Flowers
@AzusaChan Still considering what I’m reading next, the day is very close. I’m thinking about Flowers but I imagine if I did, the plan going in at least would be to read one, then take a break to read something else. I guess I’m just curious how connected the games all are? I don’t really know how the structure works or much about it. I know they were released individually (believe a new one just came our IIRC), and I imagine a little break in between isn’t going to harm anything, but in some series I’d really want to be able to do it all through at once, you know? I just think I’m going to really want to break things up a little more quickly coming off SP.
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Reply
The games are very much connected. If you buy the ps4/switch version there is actually an option to play it as one experience as a single game (it also has an option to play the games individually like they were released). I think at most there is a like a 2-4 week time skip in between each game. If your memory is good there shouldn’t be any issue taking a break in between games but if your experience reading it is anything like mine, you will not want to stop at all once you get to the end of any of the games haha
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Finished reading volume 15 of One Piece today (chapters 132-136) 
Also read a few pages of Re:Zero (volume 1), but didn’t make any significant progress.
(Home Post)
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Hey everyone! Today I read pages 47-59 of かくりよの宿飯 1.
Pretty cover!
It’s my fourth novel in Japanese, so I switched to using the built-in Kindle Japanese-Japanese dictionary (instead of the J-E one)… which is slowing me down more than I’d like 
. My first three novels were in the ティアムーン帝国物語 series, and I was at 20 pages an hour by the third one. Now it’s more like 10, thanks to the J-J dictionary and a new author/series, which is frustrating. Any tips for dealing with being annoyed ?
Happy reading this summer!
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Day 2
Once more, a very full day (lots of touristing and walking & going to see a play) so only read maybe 8 or so pages of コンビニ人間 on various forms of transport. What with all of the walking, I once again did a ridiculous amount of listening - about an hour and a half of the コンビニ人間 audiobook and probably upwards of 3 hours podcasts. I actually visited a bunch of locations/historical stuff today that was of relation to the silly pirate LN I’m reading, (flesh & blood) but it’s probably the hardest thing I’m reading at the moment and needs more time & attention then 5/10 minutes on the subway etc.
So tired now (my phone says I walked 16km today and it certainly feels like it) and JLPT tomorrow so should sleep! Good luck to all the other folks taking it. May the reading challenge spirits guide us through the reading section
would 100% agree with this - from what I’ve read so far it seems like one of the easiest novels I’ve tried- pretty straightforward grammar and everyday vocab.
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day to of the challenge, and it’s going well ^^
i’m reading the LN tie-in to the やがて君になる manga, which was the very first manga i read in japanese, about a year ago. this is now my very first LN, so that’s fitting
it’s going swimmingly, i’m on page 43 of volume 2, so that’s about 120 pages since i wrote the home post. at this rate, i’ll finish the whole thing in a couple of weeks
i’m not doing any deep reading. i look up (the many) words i don’t know with the dictionary built into the kindle, without making any particular effort to learn them (i’ve learnt a lot of them anyway). when i don’t get the grammar, i go for best approximation, and leave it at that. i love reading, have read literally thousands of novels (mostly sci-fi), but i always hated reading for school. that’s not going to change just because i’m self-studying now
despite not doing any “studying” while reading, it feels like i’m making huge leaps forward in my understanding of japanese. seeing grammar applied in context, seeing vocab used in context, it’s really bringing everything together. now i think i will very soon need to start working on production, speaking and writing.
my reading speed has also increased massively, as i’ve noticed with subtitles or song lyrics.
i probably won’t be doing daily checkins, but i’m looking forwards to seeing how much progress another 2 months of reading every day will bring me!
i was using that before i realised that i can switch dictionary. i was getting maybe 1 out of 5 definitions, and most of them only vaguely. but i look forward to the day i can return to it!
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July 2 
Home Post
I read chapter 12 of 海辺のカフカ today! I wasn’t sure how well it would go at first; I have a general awareness of keigo and humble speech and such and it’s usually fine, like ナカタ levels are no problem, but this was a more extreme case than I’ve really seen before Once I got into it it was alright, but it was a bit intimidating 
At this rate, 海辺のカフカ will be the first novel I actually finish in Japanese which is kind of ridiculous actually lmao, that’s what I get for playing VNs all the time 
Aside from that, I read a few side stories in バディミッションBOND, most of which involved チェズレイ so they were inherently wild lmao. Doing that so soon after watching ハイキュー！！ eps with Oikawa in them was interesting; very different situations but yeah, it was a good time as always! I still have a number of side stories to read before going back to the main plot so it’s kinda chill, though the side stories can certainly have their own brand of drama 
Oooh that’s one I’ve been looking at for sure, my friend keeps telling me I’ll like it (talking about the anime that I can’t find anywhere but whatever) and she’s probably right lmao; I hope it goes smoother once you get into it!
Also best of luck to all the JLPT people!! (and everyone who’s been feeling under the weather for one reason or another, I hope you feel better soon 
)
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Thank you! You should check it out; it’s definitely fun so far. I’ve seen the anime, but it’s been a few years so I remember next to nothing aside from the premise except that I enjoyed it enough to want to see what happened next . So far the novel version is good - the main character’s reactions and internal dialogue are amusing, the ayakashi/yokai are interesting, and the story and world building look promising! I hope to finish the book by the end of July, so I’ll let you know what I think of the whole thing then, if you’d like. 
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Busy, busy day which had a lot of Japanese (writing, talking, listening) but no time for reading, gah! I technically read a lot of あらすじ while browsing books, but that doesn’t really count towards my personal reading goals I did however study my daily grammar point and filled in a cell on the spreadsheet.
It’s such a silly thing, but filling in spreadsheets is oddly motivating to me, in a way that apps and such are not.
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July 2nd
ジョジョの奇妙な冒険18
start - 27
I started too late at night lol. I think I can probably finish this fight (66) by tonight. The next one is short, but we’ll see if I start early enough to read it too.
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july 2 
home post
Read the rest of this week’s reading for the Orange book club. Tomorrow I should have more time to read so I can catch up on last week’s chapters for 極主夫道 and get through more of 夜カフェ.
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I didn’t read anything on my list today and instead went for something totally different.
Bookwalker has the first volumes of the manga 海月姫 (Princess Jellyfish) and 東京タラレバ娘 (Tokyo Tarareba Girls) available to read free until 7/10 so I threw them into my cart to try. Since they’re only free to read for a limited time I pushed harder than I otherwise would have, and finished the first volume of 東京タラレバ娘. This story is totally new to me so I’m more interested in it… I watched 海月姫 and really liked it but am not that excited about going through it in Japanese, and don’t know if I’ll actually read those volumes within the eligible time period.
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I tried making a twitter account for the second time (the first time was a few years ago. I’d figured I’d follow three people I knew I wanted to follow first and then figure out how to use the site later, but apparently doing that gets your account suspended) and succeeded this time, and I read a few of the tweets on the 2.43 anime official account as well as all of the tweets on 福井県アニメ聖地紹介 (there aren’t all that many). I learned that Monshiro-chou is based off of Oono-shi in eastern Fukui! Of course, I still don’t know where Nanafu-shi is, but it’s cool that I can now place Monshiro and Suzumu, more or less.
I also found out from Umehara Yuuichirou’s twitter that #となりの男の子, a manga I’ve been meaning to check out, is getting a drama CD and he’s in it. So yeah I definitely wanna check it out now.
I watched the first 6 eps of はじめてのおつかい with JP subs. It’s pretty darn cute. I also poked around a little more on Netflix to see if they had any other JP-subbed shows I was interested in, and I came across a few anime whose previews had JP subs… but the shows themselves didn’t. Why. That’s not to say I still won’t consider checking them out, of course, but why.
I read ch 4-5 and omake of SPY×FAMILY, finishing volume 1! It’s cute how Anya will add ます after nouns and the plain form of verbs when she’s being polite; I guess little kids think です and ます work the same way, grammatically. Today I started really seeing how Anya will mispronounce things, which throws me off and it takes me a bit to puzzle it out. It’s easier when she’s repeating what another character has said. Also, it was great getting to read some of the scenes I’ve been seeing on tumblr. Getting context for some of them, sure (like in ch 4 Yor taking down that raging bull with a pressure point), but also getting to see them in their full glory (like in ch 5 Loid and Yor both getting angry over that one interviewer making Anya cry but holding back and only scaring him out of his wits rather than killing him where he sits?? and then the head interviewer punching him in the face like Loid had clearly wanted to after the Forgers have left?? Great scene).
Some vocab of note:
聖地 (せいち) [noun, slang] real-life location used as a setting in a novel, film, anime, etc.
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I don’t know if they still do this, but Netflix used to hide the JP subs from the options on shows where they existed unless your account was set to entirely Japanese. I have my account set to Japanese for this reason.
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I don’t find simply setting display language to Japanese helpful. Some shows have Japanese subs, whether or not being made in Japan. While some shows don’t have Japanese subs even if made in Japan.
Luckily, SPY x FAMILY has Japanese subs, while some (older recording?), like Death Note or Shingeki no Kyojin, don’t have. Also, some aren’t able to find Japanese dub at all.
Sometimes Japanese subs don’t match audio as well; not sure if it would still be the case for ones made in Japan.
Might be mostly about licensing. Newer ones are easily able to gain license.
Maybe it’s only about myself using a shared account.
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