Spy Room got really easy to read once the story started going. I’m really enjoying it. I am gonna try and read until page around 49 (about the half way point for chapter 1). I’m learning light novels are usually 4 chapters each volume and each chapter is roughly 80-90 pages long. While I dream of the day I can read a chapter in a day, I think getting half a chapter done a day is pretty doable. If I get to the point I am doing a chapter a day I would drop WK xD
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That day is probably a lot closer than you’d think if you do half a chapter a day.
Are they? I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one 4 chapters now that I think about it. I checked a few of my books I have on ttsu and they were: 7,7,10,12,9,10,5 if you exclude the prologue/epilogue. Guess its probably just a series thing.
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Eromanga Sensei is 4, 青ブタ started with 6 but has been 4 pretty consistently (granted, they are broken in to parts). Could just be I just happen to get light novels with the same break up in chapters xD
While I could do a chapter a day, being married I have to kind of plan when my reading time is a bit. My wife doesn’t mind or anything but I prefer to be more proactive about chores that need to be done.
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Man, hearing about eromanga is making me want to read oreimo again. I already read the entire series in english awhile back and its my favorite anime, but I had kinda forgotten about it.
Ah ok so its a time issue more than a japanese issue, that makes sense. Not sure what amount of time you can commit, but yeah in that case maybe it is about as far off as you’re thinking haha.
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スーパーマリオくん Volume 1 (70% ➨ 74%)Yeah, like I have done it with 青ブタ but I was pushing it and lucked out on those days. I can’t do that every day. My pace feels pretty normal though, I spend about 2 to 2.5 min per page. Which isn’t like super fast but not super slow either. I wanna know what everyone else’s averages are.
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I always go off of characters since I don’t actually read physical books and pages vary in text based on format/series/part, but according to the Amazon page I managed about 64 seconds per bunkobon page today at work which sounds roughly correct. 56 pages an hour in other words.
I’m not sure how much you have read, but from the sounds of it you’re probably a bit on the faster side. 2 mins per page is 30 an hour, and I feel like that’s pretty good, even for bunkobon, if you’re still learning a lot of kanji and stuff. Definitely faster than I was, although I think I was on the slower side for a majority of my studies.
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I reckon I read at about 25 pages an hour on average, but it depends an awful lot on the book. Very easy stuff (like Akagawa Jirou who has so much dialogue there are noticeably fewer characters per page!) I go a bit faster; tricky texts are slower. I think I’m lucky to manage ten pages an hour from 吾輩は猫である. In English I read more like 100 pages an hour I think. (Though pages are a very variable unit especially across languages and publishing norms.)
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Yeah, whether or not something is bunkobon affects it too.
I’ve noticed there are kinda two types of readers, skimmers and thorough readers, and people sometimes can switch. I know nath is a very thorough reader in japanese and likes to do mental voices for the characters and stuff. I feel like most learners are (and should be) thorough readers for language learning purposes. I am trying to break free from that though.
I am very much a skimmer when reading English texts. Its just more enjoyable to me personally to like only half sub vocalize and go real fast rather than read everything out at a nice slow pace. My learner mentality just makes it really hard to do that for japanese though and it is annoying. I wont go into all the reasons why I want to change that mindset since I need to sleep (not recommending other people do it btw). But I do wonder if your high English speed comparatively is for that reason. Do you feel like you have a different approach to reading depending on the language?
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The Tanuki Falling Leaf Party: Date 20220909 
吾輩は狸である progress: 20.52% 
There is a female guest at the house! What is this? Master never has a woman calling round.
Sōseki has a great way of describing things - “(hair) bangs rising like an embankment construction” 
Japanese found within the acorns
Meowords
聳える「そびえる」ー To rise (like building/mountain); to tower; to soar
冷淡「れいたん」ー Cool; indifferent; apathetic
実業家「じつぎょうか」ー Businessman; entrepreneur
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I wouldn’t go so far as to call it skimming, but in English I am definitely not reading slowly and thoughtfully or voicing characters or pausing to try to picture the scene. My approach in Japanese is not I think all that different, except that my ability to grasp big chunks of a sentence quickly is not as good – if I push forward too fast I trip over “I didn’t actually take that in” or otherwise failing to read something. For instance I just read a couple of pages quickly as a test and I tripped over the word アクリルケース. Now the meaning of that is clear and if I were reading at a more leisurely rate I wouldn’t have even noticed it, but my brain couldn’t view the whole word and process it fast enough as I was reading down the column so there was a hiccup where I went “a what now?” and had to move my gaze back up and reread that line of text more slowly. (Long katakana words often get me like that.) So I think it’s more that I just can’t process the Japanese text in my head fast enough – I have to think about it a little more and read through it from one end to the other, whereas for me to see a short English phrase is to understand it more or less instantaneously.
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On reading speed, there’s an online test here: https://www.sokunousokudoku.net/hakarukun/ – you give it a nickname, reading level, whether you want horizontal or vertical text; it then shows you a passage of text, times how long it takes you to read it and asks a couple of simple questions to check you actually did read it. I got 244 characters/minute on the 高校三年生 level.
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I tried kousan and figured I would first go as fast as possible and then do a different one at a normal pace, but it keeps giving me the same text. Is there no way to get a new one?
Also, even zooming through it as fast as possible I still just barely managed to be “average” lol. This is definitely not the pace I would read a book at though and it’s way faster than I could ever hope to maintain. But, well this is my first try and I can’t get a new kousan passage so this is all I can provide without changing the reading level.
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September 9th!
I started reading Volume 2 of Shadows House today, and the story is starting to get really interesting! I’m looking forward to reading more with the club next week!
I was planning to do more reading tonight, but I had a tough day at work and I’m super tired and keep falling asleep at my desk, so I should probably accept that I need to go to bed instead 
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Sep 10, Sat of Week 11 of Summer 
2022
I read a little less this week, so half of HUNTER x HUNTER Vol.5, and a chapter of Death Note Vol.4.
However, I got my hands on making JP sub attached to video, so I now study more from subs.
Additionally, I added vocab and Kanji to Anki with Yomichan, and tagged appropriately. They are added first in “suspended” mode, until I create the front of the cards, and letting them be in quiz.
Anyway, I’ll have to set the goals of Anki straight. Eventually, I want to be able to really listen. I don’t think hearing the sound of vocabularies are enough – I will need sentence audio snippets, inside Anki, or listening outside (which will be then, not quizzed).
On a side note, I am able to watch Death Note anime with JP sub quite well, without looking up; but it is hard to listen to audio alone sometimes.
Additionally, I now have a lot of images on Notion.
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September 9 
Home Post
Not a whole lot to report, just snuck in a page or so of 跡を消す like I’ve been doing. I spent a good part of today watching haikyuu with my roommate which was fun and study-adjacent so there’s that 
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I finished HQ vol 21 and read 4 chapters of vol 22. Will a day come this month where I finish two in a day…? Well, we’ve still got two-thirds of it left, so there’s still time.
lmaooooo I usually call 2.43’s Haijima Kimichika “Chika” in my internal monologue even when what I just read called him Haijima/灰島, and when my eyes skimmed over the “current rotation” chart at the beginning of the second set in the Fukuroudani × Nekoma match and registered the 灰 in 灰羽, my brain automatically supplied “Chika.” (Ah, Chika’s starting in the front this set.) Nope, it’s Lev.
音駒部員：山本よく〝牽制〟なんて言葉知ってたな！
山本：漢字は書けないっスけど!!
Same.
Some vocab of note:
手がない [expression, い-adj.] having nothing one can do about something; having no options
喉から手が出る (のどからてがでる) [expression, 一] to want something desperately; to want something (so badly one can taste it)
何らか (なんらか) [の-adj., adv.] some; any; in any way; of some kind; of some sort
器用貧乏 (きようびんぼう) [四字熟語, noun] jack of all trades, master of none
Somewhat off-topic, but a tumblr mutual found a “Haikyuu Sexiest Man Battle” (post-time-skip, not HS) poll on twitter and decided to play it himself. I did too, especially since I can’t fathom some of twitter’s choices, and for some reason I decided it would be easier to write their names in kanji since y’know it takes up less space. I cannot write on my laptop, I had to draw it into the entry field in Google Translate on my phone and send the screenshots to myself. I shoulda done initials. Still probably less annoying than entering text in PaintShop Pro though.
Anyway, so you can see my handwriting if ya want. And/or how I rank the guys whom twitter user Mira kaashifuls chose:
(Especially the way some people will draw mid-20s Tsukki? He’s so pretty. Akaashi too though… Some of these were very difficult choices.)
I definitely gotta work on balance, though; the 影 and 瀬 took about a million times each to get right lmao. And my 見s always look weird. I really like how the 岩 turned out, though. It’s pretty.
For shits and giggles, these are the twitter poll results:
Akaashi actually won against Semisemi by a huge margin, which I don’t get. They’re both so pretty! They shoulda been nearly tied! I nearly had to flip a coin to choose between them. How he then lost against Kuroo (and by a lot) is another of those things I can’t fathom, but okay. Iwa winning the whole thing is fair though. Though it’s a crime Daichi ain’t included. I had a crush on him (and his thighs) in 2016 which is still definitely there when I see 20s+ Daichi art, and I know a lot of other people did/do too. I wonder if he woulda won against Iwaizumi…
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Day 71: September 9th 
It’s Friday again, which means that after work I jump right into book club reading Splatoon 3!
からかい上手の高木さん Volume 8 (34% ➨ 44%)
キラキラ100％ Volume 3 (87% ➨ 95%)
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The Tanuki Falling Leaf Party: Date 20220910
吾輩は狸である progress: 21.42% 
Happy お月見!
Japanese found within the acorns
Meowords
無雑作「むぞうさ」ー Simple; easy; casual; easy-going (also: 無造作)
御世話「おせわ」ー Help; aid; assistance
気転「きてん」ー Tact; quick-wit (also: 機転)
喧嘩腰「けんかごし」ー Belligerent
八卦「はっけ」ー Eight trigrams; divination signs; fortune-telling
奏す「こうす」ー To report to the Emperor; to play (music instrument); to accomplish
金剛石「こんごうせき」ー Diamond
(though the furigana given here is just ダイヤ, like ダイヤモンド)
異彩「いさい」ー Conspicuousness (usually for colour); prominence; distinctiveness
驚愕「きょうがく」ー Astonishment; amazement; surprise; shock
箍「たが」ー Barrel hoop (sure I’ve seen this before)
憚る「はばかる」ー To hesitate; to be afraid of what others may think
御門違い「おかどちがい」ー Calling at the wrong house; barking up the wrong tree
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