Just got back from my vacation, just on time to start this challenge! This time I want to make more of an effort, because the last few times I kept putting it off and missing days. In retrospect, those days could have been improved with a fun little story!
Here’s some stuff I will be reading:
: A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar (ADoBJG) : Tileworld Chronicles (TC) : Kiki’s Delivery Service (Kiki) : Tadoku books / graded readers
= read the minimum of 10 minutes
= read more than the minimum
Goal is to hopefully finish コーヒー冷めないうちに (currently at 13%) within a month hopefully?? and reading コンビニ人間 with the currently running book club :). Will be concurrently reading light novels but I tend to ditch these halfway through oops
List of things read
コーヒー冷めないうちに (10%)
コンビニ人間 (14%)
七月
月
火
水
木
金
土
日
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
July Log
July 21 - Finished コーヒー . On pace with book club for コンビニ
First day of the challenge, here we gooo!
In today’s reading, our protag went exploring at a local market, so quite a few words with unusual kanji, mostly foods. I usually say “funny furigana”, but I think it is the kanji that are funny this time.
麦稈 = wheat straw, because how else would you drink from the coconut in ye Chinese olden days
菴摩羅 = mango
茘枝 = litchi / lychee
芝麻球 = fried dango with sesame seeds (ごま団子) [1]
大麻花 = fried twisted bread snacc? [2]
According to Seasons, today is the halfway through summer day.
I just had 2 chapters left of JoJo, so I finished that up quick. I’m thinking of trying to read a min 2 chapters of JoJo per day. It seems like a lot of the weekly published chapters are only 20 pages, so it would probably boost my speed a lot to try for it.
I also tried to finish up this volume of Nausicaa since I’m a little behind in club, but no dice. I was falling sleep and pushing my glasses into my face painfully.
I’ve got major plans today, but we’ll see if I can get studying done after.
Also will come back and edit my correct start page for JoJo lol
Today I finished the first volume of ロジカとラッカせい - I’m not sure whether there is an offshoot club planned for this series, but I really enjoyed the first volume so I’m planning to keep reading it either way.
NatsuYuu’s getting a s7!! lol and this is the one series that’s longer than 2 seasons that I’m planning on buying the BDs for. It’s definitely gonna run me over $1k, isn’t it. There’s a reason I only get single-season anime (aside from the complete box set of Oofuri).
Anyway, I have a feeling I’m gonna start reading this this month. I’ve got the first several volumes of the manga, plus the three novels.
アオのハコ ch 9
月刊少女野崎くん issue 37-38
あん ch 3-4, which was about 11 pages
22 pages of あの空はキミの中 〜Play ball, never cry!〜 reading the prologue, 人物紹介, and ch 1, and leaving off on pg 30. This book has the prologue, もくじ, and 人物紹介 printed on that smooth, full-color paper. And the title page is printed in blue and grey on tracing paper or similar with the full-color bg on the page behind it. It’s so pretty. Also, it’s pretty clearly written for a somewhat younger audience (middle schoolers, like the characters), but it’s not annoying or a pain or anything to read like some are when you’re no longer school-age. I like it so far. (Actually, now that I think of it, maybe it is just not MS-age; I don’t remember if I read any of my EN MS-level books in HS, just that some of the ones I tried rereading recently I was still fine to read but some I was like “Nope” bc the way they’re written isn’t exactly friendly to readers older than the intended age group.)
Some vocab of note:
河川敷 (かせんじき) [n.] flood plain; river terrace; riverside area; area between river and riverbank
After two hours of reading, I finished the first volume of Crystal Hunter (Natural). The story somehow sucked me in a lot more than I ever thought it could, and I couldn’t put it down until I reached the end. Beyond enjoying it, I learned a lot more casual speech patterns and grammar that are not taught in beginner textbooks.
I am excited to begin the second volume but will be limiting myself to a chapter a day because I still have other tools and lessons that need to be used as well.
I’ve been so excited to start this series for weeks! It has a tidy 8 volumes and an anime companion, I’m just so jazzed to read a good summer manga this year.
I’m focusing a bit more on mining vocabulary than I have while previously reading. It definitely slows down my pace but, as you may imagine, my understanding of the dialogue has filled out more. I’ve always been a big reader of sci-fi/fantasy novels in English, which are usually full to the brim with nonsense names and locations and magic powers and planets, so I’m generally very good at skimming unknown vocab and gaining a decent comprehension of the overall chapter. But I need to stop giving in to that habit while reading Japanese fiction since the words I’m skimming are a bit more necessary than fantasy magics
Anyway, I loved this particular phrase + expression lol
Read chapter 82 of よつばと, which wraps up volume 12 nicely. I’ll probably be spacing out these chapters more, now that I’m getting close to the end of what’s out.
I’m excited for everyone who’s excited about starting new series! Some of them are ones I’m definitely interested in reading sometime too, so maybe I’ll be able to live vicariously a little through everyone’s updates. I’m trying not to start anything new in the near future since I’m already in the middle of several series (plus a few other ones on the shelf).
Ok, let’s try this again and see how many days before something interrupts me. No calendar, but I’ll let day 1 serve as my home post. I loved this little community when I could consistently manage it. I’ll definitely be aiming to keep my reading daily while I work through a variety of native media. Best of luck to everyone to hit your goals and find some stuff you enjoy.
Today was 9-Nine day with the spinoff visual novel club! Pretty chill day language-wise, finished out the week’s reading with 9000 or so characters read today. I’m sitting down now to relax with a little bit of the Ghost Trick videogame, which is easy reading mostly for me at this level, especially thanks to its short line length:
[Ok no no no we’re editing this initial post because BREAKING NEWS this game lets you talk to a dog. Learning this language was all worth it]
Thank you! I’m super early in it, but I am liking it! I didn’t know that about Missile, but I recall them featuring in the first Ace Attorney as well. That’s even cuter.
I’m only in the first chapter right now but the grammar seems N4-ish so far, so about Genki II-adjacent. However, the Natively score says it should reach the lower end of N3 throughout the series, which leads me to believe that the grammar will eventually become slightly more difficult but not by too much.
Mostly my hiccups are in the school-specific terms that they use, like I had never heard of 生徒会 (student council) 部活 (club activities) or 情報網 (information network??) before lol I’m doing lots of vocabulary look-ups as I read but they stick easily from being used a lot.
I’ve only heard good things about this series so I hope you give it a chance!
I’m sooo excited for this challenge! I’ve been an avid follower of these challenges for a long time now but last challenge a lot of things were going on in my life and I had to drop it, so I’ve really missed it! Maybe I really needed a break, but now I’m looking forward to getting back into that reading habit.
I got into probably too many bookclubs and have some unfinished things in my list, so hopefully I can finish those and move on to new things so I don’t have this feeling of being stuck anymore. As I finish those I’ll see about adding some more specific goals for the challenge.
To be finished:
BU$TAFELLOWS (VN club)
僕が愛したすべての君へ (IBC club)
わたしの幸せな結婚
Today I finished two chapter from ふらいんぐうぃっち! But to be fair, they are not that long also did some light reading with a novel I bought recently called また、同じ夢を見ていた. I also listen to the audiobook since this is my first real novel and voice acting makes the whole thing a lot less intimidating
My Study Log
My home post in the Listen every day challenge
: A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar (ADoBJG)
: Tileworld Chronicles (TC)
: Kiki’s Delivery Service (Kiki)
: Tadoku books / graded readers
Back to my 
for mo_ji ~
taiyousea’s reading challenge 
you can stop saying so much (about the situation)…
アオのハコ Volume 2 (13% ➨ 23%)
What would you say the difficulty of Bloom Into You is? I’d love to read it at some point when I get further.
lol I’m doing lots of vocabulary look-ups as I read but they stick easily from being used a lot.
Spring 2023
Winter 2023
Autumn 2022