I read one page of よつばと! again. Today I could have done more but I wound up playing chess with my flat mates for three hours instead and I’ve been prioritizing Japanese over socializing a bit too often maybe I also listened to a podcast for a bit over an hour while doing chores and noticed some progress in terms of comprehension so it’s been a relaxing but productive day all in all
聲の形 30 pages. Random freebie. No clue what this one might be about anymore as I picked it up when I first learned of @curiousjp’s bookwalker freebies thread months ago.
掻き混ぜる (かきまぜる) - to mix; to stir; to scramble; to churn
いずれにしても - anyhow; at all events; in any case; either way; anyway
由緒正しい (ゆいしょただしい) - having an ancient and honorable origin
雑炊 (ぞうすい) - rice gruel containing vegetables, fish, etc., and seasoned with miso or soy sauce
そそる - to excite; to incite; to stimulate; to arouse; to tempt; to stir up
まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 11 min
Today’s reading was about 初午 (はつうま) - the first “horse day” in the second month. It did not explain what a “horse day” is, I had to google that, but basically the days cycle through the 12 zodiac signs in a preset sequence throughout the entire year. Anyway, 初午 is also a day to worship Inari, because the first horse day of the second month is supposedly the day that Inari came down to Mt. Inari in the year 711.
I learned a grammar from this today: とされる - … is considered to …
What else did I read?
海のどうぶつが可愛すぎて!
Amount read: 8 pages
Time spent: 30 min
Read more about penguins today
My favorite part was the description of how king penguin chicks look:
This morning I read some ラストゲーム (totally forgot I did that until just now ) and it was super fun as always! Very classic “person A is sick and person B has to take care of them” sort of situation. Also 相馬 met 柳's sister and like… I’m so sorry 柳, they’re gonna ruin your life
Also read some more 風つよ and finished up chapter 2, though I got kinda rushed at the end so I’ll probably reread some of it. But man, it’s wild being this far! I’m officially over 100 pages in The 箱根駅伝 awaits!
(I meant to play more 999 too but I’m very sleepy lmao, I just played for a little bit and 八代 was explaining some hidden image experiment, so I’ll get back to it tomorrow!)
Some words
見透かす - to see through, to see the true nature of something
気に食わない - unable to stomach, displeased with
砦 - fortress, stronghold
なじる - to rebuke, to scold
意気地 - self-respect, guts, backbone
造反 - rebellion
I know very rude of me to ignore its existence like that, how could I ふにゃりんぱ please have mercy
Oh man was it a trip lmao. I definitely immediately frantically searched dictionaries and was like ??? and then tried googling it which really just brought up stuff about Zero Escape which prompted me to be like “ah. this is a nonsense word” so naturally I picked it And of course 八代 was like “what in the world are you talking about” so that was a good time. Overall I’d say my process was about the same as it would’ve been in English
I downloaded the free Joysound app from the japanese nintendo eshop, bought a cheap wired usb microphone and connected it to my switch. It seems pretty much most wired usb microphones work with it.
There are only 50 songs to choose from in the base app and you can only sing 99 times. If you want a much bigger collection you need to buy a ticket from the japanese eshop. The prices are something like this 3 hours 300円, 24 hours 500円, 1 month 1500円 and 3 months 3000円. I bought the one month one. Then you can choose from over 100000 songs included are japanese songs, korean songs and some popular western songs. Pretty much all anime opening and ending songs are available even from older anime.
It’s pretty hard to search for songs using the switch there is a phone app but I didn’t figured out how to use it yet.
I’m not sure but I think singing will improve my listening skills. Lol singing Only My Railgun is pretty hard.
The colours end up bringing their problem of the “monster” panda-cat to the policeman, Saitou. He tells them that this isn’t a monster, and that instead of pretending to be superheroes, they should simply rely on the police. They get upset and tell him he knows nothing, and that they aren’t playing games here.
He utterly flips out on them, calling them stupid brats and wasting his time. Pretty funny ngl. Yui, the sweet one, then apologies and he caves, telling them he’ll help them out if he finds out any information.
This tl;dr of today is that あたおか is a reduction of あたまがおかしい. Apparently it comes off as less serious and more jokey when used in this fashion. Derived from a comedy duo’s sketch.
Most interesting to me was this part:
[…] ツイッター上で話題になり多くの鵜ユーザーに使われる様になりました。
Interesting kanji bolded. There are actually 3 articles on meaning book about 鵜 so I suppose I found weekday reading.
About a guy who feels sorry for a demon after throwing beans at him during Setsubun and invites him in for a drink and some food to apologise. Come rice-planting season the demon pays him back by planting all the rice in the fields.
今日はニットの日!
Knit(ted fabric; clothing) day, because 2(に) & 10(と) = ニット!
I have my cardigan and I am ready to celebrate being warm in style
☆ Learnings ☆
New Words
打付ける「ぶつける」ー To hit (your head for example); to strike; to crash into ながら「乍ら」ー While; During (Rare kanji usage) 青あざ「あおあざ」ー Bruise; or can be specifically a blue bruise (Full Kanji: 青痣) すっかり ー Completely; Totally; Entirely
Again news reading day. I’m actually enjoying this more than I thought I would xD
Article one was about commerces starting to use vending machines to sell their goods because of corona. It was a very short article, but it comes with a pretty cool 5 minute video. Apparently half of Japan’s vending machines are made in Mie prefecture, that’s crazy.
Article two was again about vending machines, but this time in Iida city in Nagano prefecture, where they’re using them to sell different kinds of 焼き肉 that people can take home and cook. It mentioned that the vendors cook the meat close to the vending machines to promote it. You walk by, smell the nice thing, and then spot the awesome vending machine selling it. Of course.
Article three was about a robotic sofa that can move in all directions with a controller. It was made in Fukuoka prefecture by about 200 furniture makers from the city of Okawa (which is apparently very famous for its furniture) in cooperation with robot makers from the city of Fukuoka. The video shows how it moves, it’s pretty cool. Not on sale yet, sorry guys. The guy chilling is also not included.
This time, in my excitement, I’m posting before I’ve read Summer Pockets for the day. Because today is all about Zoo 1!
I finished it! It’s over! My first real Japanese book down. Joining that major milestone club with you all . I started this right after Christmas, though my reading amounts have been irregular and it’s hard to glean too much from the time taken since I’m juggling reading projects. That said, even if it’s kind of a relatively quick read, I’m pretty happy to be done already. I mean, when I got the Kindle, I thought I’d have to wait a little while before being ready to tackle books. I intended to give one my best shot to gauge where I was, but I didn’t expect today to be coming so soon.
JPDB has stats for the book, which I think properly only applies to Zoo 1? It’s a little confusing because there’s an English edition simply called Zoo that combines them both (I think), so sometimes people don’t make the distinction, whereas to my knowledge they are always 2 books in Japanese. The JPDB page simply labels it “Zoo” but has the cover of Zoo 1 and links to its Amazon page. Anyway, doesn’t mean a whole lot, but those numbers excite me
The stories in there were overall quite enjoyable! I’ve written a little review on Natively to give my more detailed thoughts. There were so many unfamiliar words, but I think if you’re into horror and generally… dark tales, this isn’t a bad early path, because the grammar was largely stuff I’ve encountered already by this point. I fully intend to pick up Zoo 2 and continue from here, but for now, off to read Summer Pockets
I might be very bad at updating. it’s been like 20 days
I also missed one day of reading. Not even for a good reason, I just kind of… forgot. Better luck next time, I guess
On the bright side, I finished orange today!
Final verdict: I liked it, but… also not that much? The second half dragged on a bit and there were definitely a few ‘frustrated sigh/eye roll’ moments for me
I definitely still wanna know how it all ends (the volume I read was the first out of three), but I’m probably going to consider switching to the anime - I have other things I’d like to read that I feel like I might enjoy more.
I also somehow fell horribly behind on book club / 地球星人 how has it been 4 weeks already, that can’t be right??, so I’m currently in the process of catching up on that. schedules are difficult
I’m looking forward to finally getting to read all those spoiler tagged comments I did my best not to click on yet
Monobeno
Today I went all out and finished the second chapter in Monobeno just 26 more chapters but I think I can still finish it this year. I pretty much understood every sentence.
Prison School Vol.1
I just read 30 more pages I should finish it tomorrow.
February 10 update:
Read chapter 17 of よつばと! today. This one finally reveals some of Jumbo’s background, and also introduces his father, who’s just as fun as he himself is
Sorry, I haven’t been very good at congratulating everyone for finishing their major reading projects, even though I feel like it’s an important overarching theme of this thread. And now I feel awkward trying to join in But better late than never, so… Congratulations to y’all! I won’t tag everyone, but I’ve been enjoying reading about all your successes, and it’s been quite motivating as well! Keep it up!
Day 41
I finished the first volume of よつばと! I really enjoyed it, so I’m planning to move straight on to Volume 2 as the next book I start.
I’m really glad I waited to read this until it was quite a comfortable thing for me to read, since I think I would have missed a lot of the sweetness and the humour if I was struggling to work out what was being said.
How difficult is Kino’s for you? I wanted to start reading that at some point, and I’m really excited if it’s not too bad at your level since I’ll hopefully be there within a few months.
A bit of a bleh few days of reading for me Feel like after finding 世界から猫が消えたなら to be such a perfect difficulty level for me I’ve found it hard to go back to 鏡の孤城 which I’m finding a bit more tricky. I think because of the longer sentences which I still find difficult to parse sometimes. I feel like with 世界から猫 it felt more like reading for fun and less like hard work and now we are back to hard work time lol.
I’m on the fence between pushing on and seeing if I get used to it, or swapping to an easier pick for now and coming back later
On the other hand, persona 4 continues to be great fun!
Woohoo! Congrats! It sounds like an intruiging book too - though maybe too scary for me haha