📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

Summary post

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 :grin: 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 :joy:

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Main Post

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?

Chapter 1

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 :bear:

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オイオイ. Man I’m lying on the floor laughing. Flashbacks to my first arrival in Japan :joy:. Is a melon really a vegetable and not a fruit? Solid reasoning either way for sure XD.

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Home post

Thanks for everyones reassurances on 時をかける少女 haha :smiley: I’m glad I’m not the only one with the impression :wink:

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. :sheep: :person_shrugging:

But I’m somewhat relieved to be reading something else tomorrow :sweat_drops: 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! :heart:

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Summary post

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.

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Summary post :bookmark:

February 15

笑わない数学者
Progress: 46% → 52%

I finished chapter 5! I don’t have time right now, but must remember to read book club thread later.

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Days like these happen :woman_shrugging: 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 :blush:

Those are my nemesis as well :joy_cat: 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.

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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:
image
It helped! But sometimes nothing does, so then I suspend without remorse

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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 :smile:. Obviously it made much more sense once I started reading!

(Home Post)

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Home post :house:

Day 39:

I read five pages of よつばと! today :four_leaf_clover::muscle::four_leaf_clover:

finished at 1am tho

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Summary post

Day 46: February 15th

365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 17 min
Today’s color: 山葵色 (わさびいろ) - exactly what it sounds like, wasabi green

Today I learned that the word 薬味 has nothing to do with medicine :sweat_smile: Whoops

Good words
  • サビ - how the cool kids say “wasabi” (jk lol, idk if it’s cool or not)
  • 多年草 (たねんそう) - perennial plant
  • 根茎 (こんけい) - rhizome; rootstalk
  • すりおろす - to grate; to scrape off
  • 山間 (さんかん) - among the mountains
  • 原産 (げんさん) - place of origin; habitat
  • 一般化 (いっぱんか) - generalization; popularization
  • 薬味 (やくみ) - condiment (e.g. grated or chopped topping such as daikon, wasabi, ginger, green onion, red pepper); spice
  • 浄瑠璃 (じょうるり) - type of dramatic recitation accompanied by a shamisen (associated with Japanese puppet theater)
  • 義理人情 (ぎりにんじょう) - duty and humanity; (a sense of) moral obligation and humane feelings​
  • 機微 (きび) - subtleties; niceties; fine points; inner workings; secrets
  • 訴えかける (うったえかける) - to make an appeal; to urge
  • 比肩 (ひけん) - ranking equal with; comparing favourably with; comparing favorably with
  • ツンと - pungently (of a smell); acridly; sharply

まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 14 min

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 :grimacing:

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

Polar bear time~

Today I learned that polar bears have black skin :o

Some good words

Creatures:

  • ホッキョクグマ - polar bear
  • オキゴンドウ - false killer whale I guess they’re friendly, but their teeth are low-key terrifying lol
  • ハナゴンドウ - Risso’s dolphin they’re so cute :pleading_face: lil scratched-up babies :heart:

Words:

  • 生態系 (せいたいけい) - ecosystem
  • 食物連鎖 (しょくもつれんさ) - food chain
  • ポツポツ - here and there; scattered; dotted
  • 種族 (しゅぞく) - species; genus; family
  • 死骸 (しがい) - (dead) body; corpse; carcass; remains
  • 互角 (ごかく) - equal (in ability); even; evenly matched; well-matched; on par (with)
  • 温暖化 (おんだんか) - (global) warming​ (a cousin of our friend 地球温暖化 lol)
  • 体つき (からだつき) - body build; figure
  • すらっと - slender; slim
  • 引っかき傷 (ひっかききず) - scratch; scratch mark
  • うろうろ - to loiter; to drift; to hang about doing nothing; to wander aimlessly; to be restless​
  • 活発 (かっぱつ) - lively; active; vigorous; animated; brisk

This sounds adorable :laughing: Might have to add this to my list

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I read thirteen pages from ちゃお. A couple new words I learnt today are:

北斗(ほくと) ーthe Big Dipper (asterism)

不思議(ふしぎ) ーwonderful; marvelous; strange

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February 15 :snowflake: Home Post

So I lied when I said I’d read more today :joy: 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.

Obligatory screenshots

サンタ’s messing with dangerous territory lmao:

He said that and I was like “bro she’s gonna kill you” and well:

So all in all a fun interaction :joy:

I actually should have more time to read tomorrow so looking forward to that!

Words!

褒美(ほうび) - reward, prize (definitely have heard this word before but absolutely did not know the kanji :joy:)
調理台(ちょうりだい) - kitchen table, kitchen counter
()らず(ぐち) - 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 :joy:

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 :muscle: (also yeah onomatopoeia rough, glad that’s like the universal experience :joy: it all comes with time yeah?)

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Update February 15

  • 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.”
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Could you spin up a Windows VM or would that just be too far? :joy:
But maybe you can watch on mobile if you don’t mind a tiny screen? Or watch on mobile but cast to another device?

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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.

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Summary Post

Days 45 and 46 because I forgot to post yesterday: 1 chapter read aloud of ハイキュー!!yesterday and 2 pages of よつば&!today :0

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Home Post

Day 4 - February 15
Yotsubato vol.2 pg. 41-56

Not a lot of pages today, but I did finished chapter 9.

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I feel like Kanji is what you think is going to be the boss battle of Japanese and then onomatopoeia is the real Boss.

I’ve put audio on to my onomatopoeia flashcards, which has helped a bit. If I don’t know, I guess that the answer is ‘with a feeling of relief’ and I’m right about 50% of the time.

I also do 文章読解 workbooks for elementary school kids and they teach onomatopoeia words, which has been interesting to see. Like, that kids actually have to learn how to use them grammatically and it’s not just something they pick up.

Ultimately I get them wrong fairly frequently as flashcards but then I usually understand them when I see them in context, which is the main thing right? I’ve been consciously trying to use some in my conversation classes too, although I feel weirdly embarrased doing so.

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It’s this that has led me to just not adding onomatopoeia to SRS in general at the moment. I expect this may well change in the future but at the moment I have more than enough other vocab I don’t know, and I just always get onomatopoeia wrong when trying to SRS it so doesn’t seem worth it at the moment.
I would also recommend the onomappu videos that were linked before, and Nihongo con teppei has been doing a few podcasts on them too recently which are very accessible as they are in his beginners podcast. I’m kind of just hoping that I get more of a feel for them with time and then at least get to the stage where putting SRSing them doesn’t feel pointless/too dispiriting. Fingers crossed :crossed_fingers:

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