About a samurai who helps the spirit of a body he stumbles upon to find peace, and the spirit pays him back.
今日はお菓子の日！
Today is treat day! It says that every 15th of the month is treat day, I will now have to partake in this sacred day of treating, for spiritual enlightenment purposes of course. But February 15th is the most important of all the treat days, that it’s: “一番重要視” …that’s what I’m talking about, discount choko day.
The 15th is the most important because this was the day of the festival dedicated to the お菓子の神様 - deity of the holy, tasty, snacking glory. Best deity. It gives some shrines that I will take dutiful notes of.
☆ Learnings ☆
New Words
おぼれる「溺れる」ー To struggle in water; to go under the surface of water and be in danger; to nearly drown 羽織「はおり」ー A formal coat (the ones that you sometimes see people wear on top of kimono, especially in old samurai stuff) お気の毒「おきのどく」ー A pity; I am sorry to… hear/say etc; my sympathies/condolences (when followed by に) 門構え「もんがまえ」ー In the style of a gate; (a house eg.) equipped with a gate すうーっと ー Suddenly; to move unhindered (as in “to slip out (of a room eg.)”) - this one was kinda awkward to find a definite meaning for. 我が身「わがみ」ー Myself; Oneself 末永い「すえながい」ー Permanent; Everlasting
Pillow was the first thing I thought of for ひんやり too. The word is all over the packaging for cooling products for summer, like pillows and mattress pads filled with cooling blue gel, or cooling spray in a can. It’s really used a lot in advertising, so I feel like it must be a nice sort of cool. I don’t know if we have such a word in English.
February 15 update:
While I kept postponing starting また、同じ夢を見ていた (apparently I’m not as keen to read it as I thought I was?..), a new batch of books arrived, and now I have quite a few interesting options to pick from. I’ve glanced through some, and decided to go with きまぐれロボット (thanks @basilsauce for the recommendation!). It’s a collection of short stories, seemingly with sci-fi elements, mostly 5-8 pages each. I read the first story today, and it was pretty good. It was about sleep-learning, inducing some 時かけ flashbacks The level is probably about the same as 時かけ or maybe even easier due to less academic-sounding terms (at least in the first story).
After reading your explanation, that was my first association as well
Found something to read for a bit, Kuma Miko: Girl Meets Bear. I had downloaded it yesterday from my kindle library and thought I would read that as I didn’t feel like reading anything else lol. It’s about a shrine maiden stuck in the mountains of rural Japan, who wants to get out, but the problem is that she knows nothing about life outside the countryside and her only friend is a bear. Apparently he does know about city life…
It’s a pretty strange premise, but pretty cute and funny. That said, it was a bit of a rough start for me to read as usual. Some things don’t easily change, do they?
Anyway thought I would share that and some of the screenshots I took of chapter 1. Will be reading the rest of volume 1 over the coming days and then look for something else to read. Look forward to the next update
オイオイ. Man I’m lying on the floor laughing. Flashbacks to my first arrival in Japan . Is a melon really a vegetable and not a fruit? Solid reasoning either way for sure XD.
Thanks for everyones reassurances on 時をかける少女 haha I’m glad I’m not the only one with the impression
I caught up with the Book Club for デスノート today! I actually thought I was still a chapter behind but I just checked and apparently I finished this weeks task! Tbh I’m just ignoring a lot of stuff I don’t fully get (which is way more than in 時をかける少女) else catching up would have taken much longer. But especially the whole police language stuff feels like this is not something I currently really want to learn, so whatever.
But I’m somewhat relieved to be reading something else tomorrow It’s probably going to be another kid’s book. I’m getting more comfy with those, but I’m still learning a ton, so that’s just fine!
Some other things just haven’t been going well, but I’m feeling particularly aggravated about failing to remember a bunch of stuff today, so I haven’t really been in the mood. Some of that is still onomatopoeia, which make up like half of my auto-suspended cards, so good timing on that mention, heh. It’s some combination of having a terribly hard time differentiating almost identical words (say, そっと vs ぞっと) or so many being abstract or weird. Like “dying suddenly” (and even then ぽっくり has tons of words right next to it like ぱっくり).
Anyway, when it came time for reading, dragged through ~740 characters and 55 lines and I’m just stopping there for the moment. Which is the opposite of what will make me remember stuff better heh. I can’t do it right now, but, I didn’t miss a day. Maybe I’ll get the chance and feel more like it later.
Days like these happen Don’t stress out about it too much, I guess your brain might need some rest after all the heavy reading you did every day
Those are my nemesis as well To give you maybe a little ray of hope: Sometimes these onomatopoeia are derived from a “proper” word, and once you learned that “proper” word, then the onomatopoeia falls out of it automatically, and all of a sudden it becomes very clear. But so far these happen (for me) on rare occasions only :-/
Another thing you might want to keep in mind that generally sounds with a dakuten seem to have a negative feel to them (e.g. one of my Japanese teachers did not even want to use her last name because it contained a dakuten character) so this can also hint to the general feeling of an onomatopoeia word.
And lastly, there is a Tofugu article about it which might also contain helpful information.
So, grain of salt, as everyone has different learning preferences but as someone who has realized over time that their SRS tolerance is much lower than most peoples’:
Don’t be afraid to suspend cards that are driving you nuts.
Like yeah, you can add pictures. You can add context sentences. You can add mnemonics. Try those, see how they fare - but if the word isn’t sticking and it’s just dragging on you, suspend it. It ain’t going anywhere. You’ll probably see it again one day in the wild, or maybe many times, and eventually it’s gonna click. Or in a month of two you can revive it. Whatever makes you happy. Usually it’s only a handful of words that just won’t connect so the overall impact of this on your studies should be minimal, but the overall impact on the enjoyment of your studies can be huge.
Edit to add example
そわそわ - restlessly, nervously, uneasily, in a fidget
wasn’t sticking ages ago so I added this pic:
It helped! But sometimes nothing does, so then I suspend without remorse
Day 46!
Chapter 9 and 10 of Yotsuba today. I really enjoyed it, though when I first opened the book to today, I was a little confused by the chapter 9 image being Yotsuba holding a gun . Obviously it made much more sense once I started reading!
Today’s reading was about 春一番 (はるいちばん) - the first storm of spring/strong winds during the change from winter to spring. Apparently it often causes disasters, so that’s…not great
What else did I read?
海のどうぶつが可愛すぎて!
Amount read: 8 pages
Time spent: 31 min
So I lied when I said I’d read more today just busy and tired again so not a whole bunch, but I did play a little 999! I didn’t have the mental energy to do very much, but I enjoyed it regardless.
I actually should have more time to read tomorrow so looking forward to that!
Words!
ご褒美 - reward, prize (definitely have heard this word before but absolutely did not know the kanji )
調理台 - kitchen table, kitchen counter
減らず口 - impudent talk, speaking without thinking
Ooooh this is all very helpful, thank you! I’m definitely too sleepy to wade through the hinative stuff again but I’ll have to try to parse it out with your guidance (hopefully with awake brain tomorrow lmao)
Frequency bias hits hard, definitely know the feeling
Hey you gave it an effort regardless, that says a lot! Reading every day like that is a lot of work, definitely something to be proud of even in the rough times (also yeah onomatopoeia rough, glad that’s like the universal experience it all comes with time yeah?)
Jazz Up Your Japanese with Onomatopoeia - A Business Lunch + Quiz section. I would not be attempting this book had I not started reading manga in book clubs here. The conversations and example sentences so far have both been an unexpected and welcome challenge. The book seems to be as advertised. “Natural Spoken Japanese.” Today’s scenario involved a businessman from Tokyo and another from Osaka. The man from Osaka uses heavy 大阪弁 and the book goes into the specifics with the dialect difference. Apparently this book has hidden learning opportunities I hadn’t expected.
Mr. Driller
Animal Crossing. mr driller
Terrace House Aloha State subs. I’d rather be watching something from the film festival but their player doesn’t agree with machines that identify as “linux.”
Could you spin up a Windows VM or would that just be too far?
But maybe you can watch on mobile if you don’t mind a tiny screen? Or watch on mobile but cast to another device?
I could just actually boot into windows. If I didn’t have a 120 day uptime right now.
Creating a VM on this machine, I think, would be more work than repairing the laptop I just received a replacement screen for. Making time for breakdown and rebuild has me procrastinating. The film festival may be the motivating factor that gets me into repairing that machine.
Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220215 
The level is probably about the same as 時かけ or maybe even easier due to less academic-sounding terms (at least in the first story).
I’m glad I’m not the only one with the impression 
It’s probably going to be another kid’s book. I’m getting more comfy with those, but I’m still learning a ton, so that’s just fine! 
Don’t stress out about it too much, I guess your brain might need some rest after all the heavy reading you did every day 
To give you maybe a little ray of hope: Sometimes these onomatopoeia are derived from a “proper” word, and once you learned that “proper” word, then the onomatopoeia falls out of it automatically, and all of a sudden it becomes very clear. But so far these happen (for me) on rare occasions only :-/
finished at 1am tho
Whoops
lil scratched-up babies 
Might have to add this to my list
