📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

January 1 :heavy_check_mark:

Read this week’s section of 地球星人 for the IBC.
Heavy stuff, so I felt like switching to something lighter afterwards. Was also in the mood to read a novel on the easier side for some extensive reading (sort of) before getting started on the next NO. 6 volume, which still feels pretty difficult to me in terms of vocab. I’ve had my eye on the manga orange for a while, but then I happened to see that the novelization has a pretty low difficulty rating on jpdb, so I decided to go with that instead. I’m thinking I might skip the manga & watch the anime afterwards instead, if I end up liking the story.

January 2 :heavy_check_mark:

Continued orange. Help so many names :laughing:

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Nice catch! You are absolutely right! Thanks for that. :blush:

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Completed Day 1 and 2, reading from 君たちはどう生きるか which I’m about 2/3rds through. I started this as a fun Christmas reading project and had calculated that there were as many chapters as days of holiday so I could read one a day…hmmm… Although it’s a manga version of the book, the point of view alternates between a young boy (told in manga) and his uncle (who sends letters to the boy which are in prose). The manga is difficult for me bcause it’s so casual, the prose is difficult because it has looooong rhetorical sentences and uses lots of kanji (actually saw りんご in kanji for the first time!). The uncle is advising the boy on how to become a good man and it’s so far taken in meditations on the supply chain of powdered milk, newtonian physics and today we’re now into a 20 page prose section on Napoleon (!). There was A LOT of military vocabulary that I didn’t know (and, if I’m honest, only vaguely comprehend in English) so I’ve decided to split it into manageable sections and just try to read two pages of the prose each day.

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:house:

Today I read 5 pages of 銭天堂! I’m currently at page 17. I like it so far — it keeps me intrigued about happens next, and I’m still on the first chapter.

I would keep reading but it’s half past 2 in the morning lol. It’s funny how I find it so hard to pick up books (in Japanese) but once I’ve read for a bit I want to keep going.

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I think you mean 考える :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Summary Post

January 2
君の名は , 6 pages.

Random words
  • 鎖骨 = さこつ collarbone, clavicle.
  • 区切る = くぎる to demarcate, to delimit, to divide.
  • 設置 = せっち instalation, establishment
  • 肉眼 = にくがん naked eye.
  • 途切れる = とぎれる to pause, to be interrupted.

I think you mean カンガルー :kangaroo:

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:tiger2: :books: Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220102 :books: :raccoon:


Tanuki Scroll II: 初夢 (Hukumusume) & 初夢 (ウィキペディア) :mount_fuji:

Today is 初夢! : はつゆめ - first dream of the year. Supposedly, whatever you dream of on the first night of the year** foretells how your year will be. Annoyingly, I hardly slept last night so didn’t really dream of anything… damn, that means my year is going to be a blank void of no-sleep :sob:

**Seems a little confusing on the exact date, since the night of December 31st would often be seen without sleeping so the night of January the 1st would be your first dream of the year… butttt, there’s complications with the Gregorian calendar and the traditional Japanese calendar.

But I think generally nowadays January 2nd is the day of reflection on your dream of the night before, but also on the night of the 2nd because… to make it further complicated there’s: New Year’s eve to the morning dream, the January 1st-2nd dream and the dream of January 2nd-3rd… which can all be considered as the “first dream of the year” so I may not be doomed to a year worth of sleepless nights if I have them good dreams tonight. Well, better have a stack of cheese before bedtime. :cheese:

Anyway, the magical things to dream about that are supposed to bring you the best luck are: Mt. Fuji, a hawk and… eggplant (???).

There’s supposed to be a larger list but they aren’t as well know or fully agreed upon, but these are the certified top three best things to dream about… for reasons not fully known but many put it down to that they were our good friend Tokugawa Ieyasu’s / 徳川 家康 favourite things.

So if you dreamt (or will dream tonight) about Fuji, a hawk or eggplant (or all three combined into some form of Fujihawkplant monstrosity) then good news, you’ll have a great year!

(I told myself that I didn’t have time to read much today so I would keep it short… but I have not, I have fallen down that infinite rabbit-hole of Japanese history.)

☆ Learnings ☆

I’m sorry, I got too interested in learning all about this that I forgot to make note of what words are new and what readings/meanings I forgot and needed to lookup again. I suppose that’s a good sign?

I know that 初夢 is a new word. So erm… happy 初夢!

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I love seeing the random words since I’ve read about the same pages of the same novel today xD Nice to see that we picked the same novel, although I will be at a lower pace :blush:

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Why does this not surprise me in the least :joy:

That’s interesting! I had no idea, thanks for enlightening us. Unfortunately, I have not dreamt of Mt. Fuji, a hawk, nor an eggplant. Looking forward to our year of doom and void :+1: .

Yeah likewise! I was glad to know you were reading it too :slight_smile: . I’m adding some of the words, but I’m also leaving others out just so the posts don’t become a long list of words ^^ . But I’m encountering a lot of them that I don’t know, and it’s a tiny bit discouraging but also a nice chance to learn.

About the pace, I’m reading an hour a day. That was 8 pages yesterday, but 6 today. It feels so slow :turtle: . But I’m also trying to comprehend intensively while adding words to the SRS, so it was expected c:

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January
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

After slacking in December I need this.
Goals:
At least 5 books this year, read at least one article each day.

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I think you mean 勘ぐる …

suspicious kangaroo

:eyes:

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I’m reading two pages a day right now, which takes me around 20 minutes I think? It’s my first novel so I’m taking it slow and steady :ok_hand:t3: Maybe I’ll read a bit more later on but for now I also want to focus on reading manga that are available until the 6th of January xD

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Day 2 complete! Today’s article was 「モラハラ夫」の恐怖体験。モラハラにありがちな10の言動も紹介〈弁護士アドバイスあり〉 which I read to understand what モラハラ was because I’d seen/heard it a few times and still wasn’t sure.
tl;dr the article is about psychologically abusive romantic relationships.

General details here

So モラハラ seems to just be verbal abuse that takes place within a family (or just generally non-hierarchical) structure? I actually remember hearing this first in a TV show when a coworker was bad mouthing his colleague. Something along the lines of “Ah! That was パワハラ! Oh, that was モラハラ!” and so on. I don’t remember the exact relationship between those two characters, but I guess they must have been on relatively equal footing?
Generally seemed like a decent article for someone to identify if behavior they were experiencing from their romantic partner was normal or abusive. Had a section with advice from a lawyer about how to collect evidence to support a divorce case.

Some of the words I looked up

恩着せがましい - acting like you’re doing someone a favor; being patronizing/condescending
常態化 - normalization of a problematic situation
萎縮 - withering; shrinking
日常茶飯事 - everyday occurrence (this is a handy phrase to have!)
泣き寝入り - literally means to cry oneself to sleep but seems to more broadly mean to accept something unhappily

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I’d like to join. I’ve been reading the graded readers, both yesterday and today. After that I may attempt a manga. Also does reading in textbooks count? I’m using Minna no Nihongo.

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Why not? Whatever you classify as “reading”, that’s what counts :blush:

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Day 2 complete!

Today I read Chapter 4 of Volume 4 of からかい上手の高木さん.
I’m having such a lot of fun with this series, its really sweet.
I’m also enjoying being able to see how much easier I find it to read than I did when I started the first volume.

I need to think about what to read for the rest of this week, because thats all of my bookclub reading done!

(Home Post)

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January 2 :snowflake: Home Post

Day 2! I read another chapter of ラストゲーム today; it’s wild being able to actually read any kind of complete story in one sitting (as time-consuming as it definitely still is haha). It felt like a whole lot happened this chapter :joy: whole character introductions and arcs and everything; it’s still lots of fun!

(maybe some 錆喰いビスコ later? we’ll see :eyes:)

Some fun words

高嶺(たかね)(はな) - unattainable goal, out of one’s league
物好(ものず)き - idle curiosity, whimsy
下心(したごころ) - ulterior motive :eyes:

Also ran into お(たが)い (mutual, reciprocal) and didn’t know what it meant but for some reason instinctively knew the reading? I must’ve seen it before somewhere but I truly have no idea :joy: cool feeling though

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金田一耕助ファイル2
First I read two pages from this novel for the Advance Book Club. People reading this don’t get the wrong idea here the book club is only called that I am actually only lower intermediate at best. Yeah the book is pretty hard but I will finish it somehow.

Candy & Cigarettes volume 1 manga
Over forty pages read. This is about a grandpa, who to pay the health bills for his very sick grandson, joins a company which promises him lots of money. His job is to protect a girl around his grandson’s age, who works as a killer.

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I forgot how short the chapters are in おじさまと猫。I reread the first three yestersay to get to where I last stopped and put it down, and today I read chapters 4 and 5(only about 8 pages) in ~10 minutes, including look up time. I’ve mostly been able to read the kanji with only a few new ones (爪) and some new vocab (待ちきれない)。

The cat speech isn’t that bad after learning to translate all the にゃ to な。

Since I don’t want it to take all month I think I’ll up this one to 3 or 4 chapters a day. There’s 22 chapters and 126 pages total, so that’ll have me finishing by EOWish.

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Summary post :bookmark:

January 2
・かがみの孤城. I finished the first week. It was kind of tough, narration went all over the place. But I guess it’ll smooth out later. My experience is that the beginning of any given book is usually tougher than the other parts.

Progress: (5% → 8%)

General feel of the theme/plot: Seems like this book isn’t a particularly happy one, at least not in the beginning. Social anxiety, staying home from school, guilt, solitude… it’s heartbreaking ;-;


My post is like plant, it grow :seedling: :eyes:

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