📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

I hope we get to see pictures! Wonder if the どんぶり is on the “easier” side? With it being at the very beginning of the story arc is all. Actually, they get pretty technical right away now that I think of it.
Happened to come across this manga series at Kinokuniya yesterday. I’d love to read it but when I saw volume 34 I thought about how much physical space those would take up. yikes.
Would really like to hear your thoughts on the cookbook though, I always make space for those, and following recipes in Japanese has been tons of fun.
頑張って

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Hey, I’m people! Not sure I’m usual tho. Anyway, I make one translation pass without help, then I start looking up words and grammar through Jisho and Google, and for whatever I can’t figure out through those (usually contractions, colloquialisms etc.) I look them up in the vocab list where they are usually explained and listed together with the standard expression (at least in the よつばと! one). As for grammar I’m not able to figure out I ask about that in my study log when I post my translation attempts. I find this to be an effective and enjoyable study method even though it makes me a rather slow reader. I definitely feel like I’ve improved in these last 20 days :slightly_smiling_face:

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I have created new dictionaries. The WK dictionary should now update itself every week (not your installed version, the file that you can download will update). However, to make it easier to maintain I have switched the type of tags to these seen below. One benefit is that you don’t need to install a whole new dictionary, just the tags.

Download JLPT Tags
Download WK Tags

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Today’s article was ローソン、「ゴーストレストラン」の実証実験--Uber Eats活用、宅配調理事業に参入 - CNET Japan which is about ghost restaurants. I actually walk by a suspected ghost restaurant on the regular (not in Japan) so it piqued my interest.

Some words I looked up

実証実験 - proof of concept
店舗 - another word for store - I looked into it and this is more of a written-use word whereas 店 is spoken-use (文語 vs 口語)
屋号 - trade name
数ある - numerous
ニーズ - needs/requests

Weirdly I learned 城 from a non-fantasy movie (恋の罪/Guilty of Romance) and 塔 from a crime drama (桜の塔).
Which goes to show that even the seemingly ‘unlikely’ words will still pop up all over the place :smiley:

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:tiger2: :books: Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220130 :books: :raccoon:


Tanuki Scroll XXX: 赤ずきんちゃん :wolf:

Read today’s world folktale, which is Little Red Riding Hood!
Amusing to read this in Japanese, it was a little bit easier reading too since I knew how the story goes, so could second-guess some of the sentences.

Since Nioh 2 was a little too kanji heavy for me I tried Resident Evil VII out in Japanese last night, while it was easier it kinda has the opposite problem in that almost everything is in katakana. I didn’t feel completely lost though, but it took awhile to work out what English words some of the katakana even meant.

☆ Learnings ☆

New Words

ビロード / びろうど「天鵞絨」ー Velvet
たった一人「たったひとり」ー Only One; Just one person
ジョキジョキ ー The sound of cutting with scissors
よっこらしょ ー Heave-ho! ; Alley-oop!

Forgotten Readings

似合うにあう」ー (To suit)

Forgotten Words

上等じょうとう」ー First-Class; Superior; Excellent


頑張って! :raccoon:

Hope to see how it turns out too! I’ve found following the recipes in Japanese fun, just hope to find one that I actually have the stuff to make it with.

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I am super late, my first appearance was around week ago, but today I finally think I am able to properly tackle this reading challenge. I noticed people use here some sort of calendars, so I copied one. I’ll probably reply to post if I find a really interesting article, but for now I am reading Satori and easy new, so it is not very fun to discuss. Anyway, yomichan with all kinds of dicts is installed, so I am looking forward reading like a pro, lol. :durtle_officer:
:durtle_officer: :durtle_officer: Winter 2022 Reading Challenge :durtle_officer: :durtle_officer:

Jan
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
Feb
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
Status: READING HARD
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So, I’ve installed it, and it’s working great for whole words! That said, when I click on an individual kanji as you’re describing, I seem to only be taken to a page that says “no results found.” Perhaps you have something installed that I don’t, or my settings are a bit off?

Nonetheless, thank you very much for creating this, updating it, and bringing it to our attention right here @Kumirei :slight_smile:

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The thing is that you need to have at least one result for the tags to show up with the new version. Do you have KANJIDIC installed as well?

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Summary post

January 30 update:
Today I finished reading 時をかける少女. Overall, I quite liked the book, and had a fun time reading it, even though it wasn’t exactly easy. I guess I really caught the flow a few chapters in, after I stopped looking up every unknown word – before that it was more tedious than enjoyable.

From what I heard, in terms of language complexity this is one of the easiest Japanese books known to humanity that isn’t aimed at elementary school kids, and as such providing some entertainment value. Considering that it was still quite challenging for me, I’m wondering if there’s anything else I can read that’s around this level. One plausible option seems to be また、同じ夢を見ていた (it’s actually rated a bit easier than 時をかける少女 on both Natively and jpdb), but from some reviews I’ve seen I’m not convinced that I would like the story and/or style… :thinking:

Anyways, I think I’ll first read some manga for a change of pace, and research my options in the meantime.

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Yeah that would be what I’m lacking; I’ll go grab that. Thanks!

Edit, works perfectly, and has been very convenient already! And KANJIDIC is nice to have too. Much appreciated.

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Oh that’s good to hear! When we read it in the book club ages ago, the participants did not like it as much, if I recall exactly, mainly for the storytelling which was a bit unbalanced (sometimes nothing would happen for ages, and then all of a sudden everything felt a bit rushed, and of course also a bit far-fetched and wrong, as always when talking about time travel). So I’m happy to hear that you were happy with it.

(In the hope that I mis-quoted you correctly here :wink:) One of the easiest books that I know of that is geared towards adults would be コンビニ人間, I guess? We read it twice already in the Intermediate Book Club, so you can get a lot of support from the threads if you like.
Also, I’m currently reading The Little Prince (this version, to be precise). It may look like a children’s book, but in fact it is very deep. (In case you don’t know it yet.) Still, the language is not complicated (I posted a few screenshots a while back in this thread).
I also thought that Night Market (from the Intermediate Book Club) was not that difficult. It’s classified as “fantasy horror” or something, but it was not a scary shocker story where you are afraid to go to the toilet at night after you read it (I would have dropped it in that case, that’s for sure!). The two stories that are contained in the book are told in a quite detached style, which I found very nice to read but others found it disengaging. All depends on what you like :woman_shrugging:
(Speaking of which, are you interested in certain genres or types of book?)

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Home post

Day 29:

日本語: I reread a few pages of 伯爵と妖精 31 to keep myself in the flow, because I think today (day 30) is the day!! And then I read some of DEATH NOTE 1 and からかい上手の高木さん 17. Also I feel like a page of きみの名は, because I was trying to find where I left off in that many months ago. I was not as far along in it as I thought. :sweat_smile:

中国語

中国語: I read an intermediate entry on Mandarin Bean, one page of 擅长捉弄的高木同学, and a bit of 孩子最爱读的中国民间故事.

Also, another week completed, hooray!

J A N
:books:
:clinking_glasses:
:woman_cartwheeling:
:roller_skate:
:parachute:
:dog2:
:green_circle:
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Summary post :bookmark:

January 30

本好きの下剋上 8
Progress: (36% → 40%)

I fear for my (lack of) progress in the Saikawa & Moe book club :durtle_durtverted_lvl1: I hope uni stuff will get less busy soon.

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Updated my last post with a vocabulary list for ドメスティックな彼女 vol.2 some words are probably NSFW but if somebody sees you browsing the list by accident and asks dumb questions. Just tell them you need to learn the vocabulary for the JLPT.

Okay well, today I continued reading the third volume of the Eden’s Cage manga 90 pages. But it’s just a generic action manga. I will drop it once I finish the third volume. Next I read some texts in the Kanzen Master N3 Reading book.

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Home post :house:

Day 23:

I read one :expressionless: page of よつばと! today…

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So, I haven’t read that (as I’ve said, I haven’t read much of anything!), but I’ll mention as a first book, I’ve been having an overall reasonable time with Zoo 1, and it sounds like all of Otsuichi’s work is probably written on a similar level. That said, this is some stuff deep in fairly dark horror territory so… if you don’t want to deal with unpleasant and violent topics, steer clear. Beyond that, most of what I have any (secondhand) idea about are all visual novels, though.


Summary post

It’s too cold in my poorly insulated apartment to believe in the summer vibes as hard as I try, haha. Most of today was fine; I had a few frustrating instances of missing a little bit of a sentence that changed everything, or in the time spent working out a sentence or doing my Anki mining, getting a little lost from the thread of the conversation such that I thought the subject was the opposite, and had to read back later when I realized the people were doing the reverse of what I thought each said they would. Proof that I have a long way to go, but I’m understanding on the whole.

That is, until I made a mistake. This VN has presented me with a lot of little choices that I think are mostly for flavor (I’ve heard in general it’s not hard to get the routes you want so I figured the arbitrary looking choices aren’t accumulating unintuitive points on me behind the scenes or anything). Today, while the protagonist was wondering what to do in downtime, I could choose between homework, strength training, or writing a song. Out of curiosity how that would go, I chose the song. So, he started coming up with lyrics:

I’m being slightly overdramatic for impact, but lines like this certainly had more unknown fancy words than usual (shoutout to 七色, (なないろ), the seven colors of the rainbow). I was coming up on the end of my reading time anyway so I suspended midway and I’ll fight through the rest of the lyrics tomorrow, haha.

Besides that one, the interesting word of the day is 煙たがる (けむたがる), which can mean both “to be sensitive to smoke” and “to dislike the company of someone / to consider someone a nuisance.”

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Updating for today and yesterday. It was the weekend and the weather was pretty miserable so plenty of time to read!

I read more 世界から猫が消えたなら 17%-42% - still really loving it. I think the style is also very helpful for a beginner reader too as it is quite introspective and so there are quite often times where an idea will be presented and then the narrator will be like ‘in other words [describes it in a slightly different way]’ or will give some kind of example to illustrate what is meant. Today’s reading included a quote from that great philosophical text ‘The Matrix’, and yesterday’s reading involved the MC imagining three different scenarios which were presented like 梅 [scenario A] 竹 [scenario B] 松 [scenario C].

This isn’t something I’d seen before and it felt like some kind of cultural reference that I wasn’t getting, so I did some googling today and read this article: 松竹梅」のランクの意味は?順番付けの背景も解説 - which cleared things up a little bit? Mainly just seems like it’s a common way to present 3 choices in Japanese. A fairly easy (well, had to look up a lot of vocab but that’s fine) and alright article to read! Articles/blogs etc still scare me a little bit haha.

I also read two chapters of よつばと today as it was bookclub day (we were only reading the first but I enjoyed it so much I couldn’t help but read another). Both chapters were so cute and funny, I love よつばと :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

I love your daily Yotsuba pictures, they are so cute! :slight_smile:

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IMO the reason why また、同じ夢を見ていた is rated easier than 時をかける少女 is because few people have read both. It looks to me like there’s a general trend to read only one children’s novel before leaping straight into コンビニ人間 or some other intermediate-rated grownup book or light novel. Those two, plus Kiki’s Delivery Service, are the most popular, but very few people have read even two of them, never mind all three. So each book is existing in its own little independent grading universe, without a base of relative comparisons. If you look at the book difficulty comparisons at the bottom of the review page you’ll see that only 3 people have read both books, and each one of them had a different opinion on the relative difficulty.

I’m one of the people who left a review of また、同じ夢を見ていた on Natively, and although I haven’t finished 時をかける少女 I did spend a few days reading the first few chapters on Bookwalker using their “whole book available for 10 minutes per day” feature. I think また、同じ夢を見ていた is harder than 時をかける少女, and less enjoyable too. The sentences are long and there’s full kanji with no help, and if you decide that you’re up for dealing with a book with these aspects, then IMO you might as well just go straight to コンビニ人間 or one of the other easier grownup books rather than putting in that effort for a story about an elementary school student.

Personally, my favorite book around that level is the one I’m currently re-reading, ゆっくりおやすみ、樹の下で。 There’s no book club or vocabulary list, but after 時をかける少女, it’s likely you can read it on your own with just a dictionary. But it’s definitely a children’s book, and you may not be interested in that.

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Day 30 :slight_smile:
I read this weeks assignment of デスノート. There was tonnes of vocabulary I didn’t know, and I struggled a bit with the grammar in a number of places. But I feel like I got the jist of everything in this second half of the chapter more easily than I did when I read the first half last week. Perhaps I was tired when I read last weeks part? Who knows.
Its still going to be very challenging for me to read, but I’m glad that I didn’t quit after doing last weeks reading, because after today it doesn’t feel borderline impossible like it did last week!

I also read the final chapter of レンタルおにいちゃん today. The ending felt a little rushed, but overall I really enjoyed this series. I’m a little sad its over though! This is the first series I’ve finished that felt more like reading than deciphering, which feels like an accomplishment! (…there WAS still a fair bit of deciphering though :sweat_smile:)

(Home Post)

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This is an interesting point that I hadn’t considered! Just to add, it does seem to depend a lot on the person reading and what you find difficult. I’m reading Kiki’s Delivery Service with a book club and for me at least, I think it’s a really bad pick for a first novel to read (the pace we are going at /because we only meet once every 2 weeks means that while we still aren’t finished, I’ve started and finished the first harry potter(japanese translation) and the first NO.6 light novel(I would say that this was pretty hard to read but I was interested enough to make it through looking up every second word) in the time we’ve been reading it).

Kikis I think is a really nice story and I’m enjoying it, but it’s written in a very descriptive way, uses very little kanji (which means parsing long strings of hiragana), and generally the plot moves at a pretty leisurely pace. This can mean that early on when I could only manage to read a few pages in one reading session I would quite often feel like nothing had happened, which I found pretty demotivating. One of the people in our reading group actually dropped Kikis and switched to また、同じ夢を見ていた and seems to be enjoying it a lot more. But then again, I’ve seen loads of people highly rate Kikis as a first novel to read in Japanese so I think it really does depend on what you find motivating and what you find challenging.

Giving recommendations about difficulty is always so hard in general though, because sometimes you don’t really realise that the reason you find something more easy is because you’ve got better at reading!

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