📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

Day 48!

Chapters 13 and 14 of Yotsuba today - so I’ve finished Volume 2! I found a few bits of chapter 14 a little confusing, but luckily all of my questions had been answered in the old bookclub thread :slight_smile:

I’m off work until Tuesday, so I’m looking forward to having some extra reading time for the next few days!

(Home Thread)

Edit: Accidentally managed to post this as a reply, and can’t work out how to undo that… Sorry for any disruption pocketcat :grimacing:

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Oof that’s wild, the only thing I guessed was 軍 to :joy: 会社が父さんしてしまった is pretty funny lmao

Oooh that’s super exciting, congrats!! It’s always nice when these things become more fun than work :tada:

Niceee, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for your thoughts! I watched the anime a while back and really enjoyed it, and those look so pretty omg :sparkling_heart: I’ve never heard of バスタフェロウズ but it sounds like my brand of nonsense too lmao, add it to the list

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I thought that this time I would get an unbroken streak but yesterday, I had no choice but to break the streak. Yesterday, there was an island-wide blackout just before one in the afternoon. The blackout took out water and Internet connections as well. It was almost 12 hours before electricity was restored. Unfortunately, I had not downloaded the manga I was reading. I was using the Bookwalker web reader to read Cardcaptor Sakura. So even though I’d serendipitously charged my tablet the morning before the blackout, I couldn’t continue my Japanese reading practice.

(Here is where my policy of relying on electronic methods of reading failed me. It’s only convenient when the current pace of technology is maintained.)

I was quite disappointed to break the streak but I have no choice but to swallow the loss and move on. I have no intention of putting extra work on myself to ‘make up’ the deficit. I am too lazy for that. Fortunately, the problem with the electricity supply was not too severe and it was fixed before I got up this morning. So now my schedule can continue as normal. Just to avoid any other breaks in the reading streaks, I have made sure to download the manga that I am currently reading to my tablet and I am writing this to remind myself to do the same for all manga going forward.

This is one onomatopoeia I will never forget. Boa Hancock from One Piece has this as her power and she is one of my favourite characters, partly because she has the same birthday as I do.

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Summary post

Day 48: February 17th

365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 10 min
Today’s color: 浅緑 (あさみどり) - light green

So, funny story - today’s color was actually 山葵色, but apparently I must have skipped a page because I definitely read about that color on Tuesday xD Whoops. This is what I get for not using a bookmark, I guess. Honestly, the colors are pretty similar though :rofl:

Good words
  • 霞 (かすみ) - haze (esp. in spring); mist​
  • 含み (ふくみ) - implication; hidden meaning; latitude; atmosphere; tone; sentiment; inclusion
  • 新鮮味 (しんせんみ) - freshness; novelty
  • 芽吹く (めぶく) - to bud
  • すっくと - straight; upright; erect​
  • どちらかと言えば - if anything; if pushed I’d say; if I had to say
  • 官位 (かんい) - office and rank; an official rank

まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 6 min

Today’s reading was about 祈年祭 (きねんさい or としごいのまつり) - prayer service for a 五穀豊穣 (ごこくほうじょう) - huge harvest or abundant crops. It usually takes place today!

What else did I read?
Nothing because busy D:

Ah yes, another series I’ve been meaning to start for a long time but haven’t for completely inexplicable reasons xD I bought the first volume a while ago and it’s still sitting in my TBR pile…would be interested to hear your review/how difficult you find it ^^

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I read four pages of Dragon Ball. There were a couple of fun words.

ケチ------stinginess; miserliness; penny-pinching

うふふ ------tee-hee-​Female term or language, Onomatopoeic or mimetic word[

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February 17 :snowflake: Home Post

More Zero Escape! :tada: I was able to play for a good amount of time today, so that was nice. It’s still generally feeling really manageable, though I’m looking up plenty of stuff. I’m definitely able to follow what’s happening (and even get some puns and such!) so it’s been a lot of fun!

999 adventures

サンタ was not happy about being in the freezer :joy: We finished up our whole states of matter tangent and

Amazing :ok_hand:

But yeah we got out using a bomb made from a water bottle and dry ice we smashed with a frozen chicken?? wild and now we’re bringing base 16 into the mix and really it’s just a wild ride all around.

(There was one point where I was like “…is this innuendo” (spoiler: yes it was) where
we were talking about how frozen the chicken was and just:
(むらさき): wow it’s super hard!
淳平(じゅんぺい): …say that again
(むらさき) …it’s super hard?
淳平(じゅんぺい): one more time please
(むらさき): …it’s super hard
淳平(じゅんぺい): thank you
サンタ: dude your face is so red

Like 淳平(じゅんぺい) we have bigger problems :joy:

Some words!

後回(あとまわ)し - putting off, postponing
物色(ぶっしょく) - looking for a particular person or thing, rummaging
ずっしり - heavily, profoundly
コント - tale, skit
(わめ)()らす - to rant and rave, to raise hell (it said サンタ was doing this as always lmao)
()ちくたびれる - to get tired of waiting
未必(みひつ)故意(こい) - willful negligence
うろたえる - to be flustered, to lose one’s presence of mind

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Summary Post

Day 48: Today I read 2 pages of よつば&!Didn’t have the braincells for more lol

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Home post

Day 47:

日本語: I read some of ミステリークロック and some of 機動強襲型令嬢アリシア物語1.
Read-aloud: We read two chapters of 7SEEDS.

中国語

中国語: I read an intermediate entry on Mandarin Bean and one page of 擅长捉弄的高木同学.

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Oooh, all of these word facts are interesting but this one especially so! Actually wondering if there might actually be a pun at work here or even if it is meant to be refering to gender dysphoria because the gimmick that the main character has in this game is that (marking as spoiler but it’s revealed very early)she can travel back in time, but she ends up in some random other person’s body. So at the time of this scene she is in the body of this other guy, trying to convince someone else that she is a reporter that he met earlier that day (although you have none of this context when you first see the scene haha)

Nice! Yeah I just recently watched the anime without subs (prefer to have Japanese subs but crunchyroll doesn’t have them :disappointed:) and it was in general pretty okay but I certainly missed some stuff so should be nice to read it and fill in some gaps! I also have a quite alarming to be read pile on bookwalker but I’m justifying it by being like ‘I want to look at screens less, need the pretty paper books’

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Yeees! I felt the same just recently! I was so glad to go back to a novel. It’s aimed at kids, which means yeah the language isn’t too hard. It has a fair amount of casual speech though, but there is so much more redundancy that I feel like I can handle it much better.

It’s a bit funny to me how so many people prefer to start out with manga but I got all stressed out by them :sweat_drops:

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Lately I’ve been getting up at 6am to read before breakfast which is working quite well for me. I have medication that I need to take 30 minutes before I eat so it’s good way of passing the time. It’s very cosy, reading by a lamp when it’s dark and quiet outside, especially if I can convince the cat to sit on my lap for a bit and not yell for her breakfast. The book I’m reading at the moment is a ghost story but I’m only in the first few chapters so there’s just a general sense of unease pervading at the moment and nothing actually spooky has happened yet. Might be glad of the lighter mornings when it does get spooky though.

In the last thread we had a tanuki indulgence day for when things happened outside of your control, and I would say this definitely counts! We’ve got a big storm here in the UK today so I’ve been busy charging everything just in case.

Yes same - novels aimed at 7-8 year olds seem to be the sweet spot for me at the moment in terms of comprehensible input. I’m still having to look up a LOT of words but everything is very spelt out in terms of the plot so I can follow it even if I am a bit fuzzy on the direct speech. Glad to find someone else who feels the same way!

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Ohhhh, Out of interest, how do you find novels by target audience age?

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For books targeted at late elementary schoolers, I’ve been looking at books by the publisher “Aotori Bunko”. They come with furigana and so far have worked pretty well for me. “kadokawa tsubasa bunko” seems to be similar as well. There are also some grades readers that target elementary students by school grade (e.g. the 10分で読める series). I also found the 10歳までに読みたい世界名作 series (Stories from around the world you want to read before you are ten) (that publisher also seem to have some other books aimed at elementary to middle schoolers as well). There’s probably a plethora more (I guess I mostly only cover modern stuff) but at that point I thought I have that age group covered and stopped searching :joy:

I don’t yet know to what I will graduate from here. I kinda want to at least partially drop some furigana, but “normal” books are still a little much I recon. I’ll probably google for something like 中学生向けの本 and then browse through some rankings and then see what I’ll find from there? :woman_shrugging:

(edit: coming from the elementary school stuff: My tip would be: after you found one that seems to be around the right difficulty and/or age group, look if the publisher has more books for a similar target audience)

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:house:

Whew, finally it’s the weekend! I read pages 155-160 of 銭天堂 today, which isn’t quite ten pages, but isn’t a bad amount either! I’m hoping to finish off Chapter 3 either tomorrow, or before Monday.

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Today’s article was 本の厚さ
which brought me the word 目安 which means criterion/reference. I would never have guessed that. :exploding_head:

Ahhh I wish it was that interesting (I love puns!) but it’s actually just the pitfall of parsing multiple kanji compounds incorrectly. I’m very used to leaning heavily on kanji knowledge to pull me along and I had no idea 解離性 was a word on it’s own! It doesn’t actually have an entry in my JP dict, but I found it online. Anyways, I double checked and the Japanese definition for 解離性同一性障害 has nothing to do with gender and actually lists 多重人格 as a synonym.

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If you google 小学生に読んでほしい ( or 中学生に読んでほしい etc) you can find lists of recommended books organised by age range/school year. I kind of stumbled into all this by accident after buying some books on ebay thinking they were going to be manga and then panicking when they arrived and they had very few pictures!

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Sorry all, I haven’t really had time/energy to keep up with everyone’s posts recently… I hope your various readings have been going well!

I just wanted to drop in and say that 霧のむこうのふしぎな町 is going well, sometimes I can just fly through ten pages in one day. (It feels like flying, but in reality I’m pretty sure it takes hours.) Today though I got totally stumped on the first sentence, halfway stumped on the second sentence, and the third sentence had four names of flowers and trees that I had to look up and two words for fall leaves (which I also had to look up). So that’s all I’ve read today, three sentences. :joy:

(I did appreciate the third sentence, as the only words I add to my flashcards these days are names of plants, animals, and foods, and I always enjoy collecting new ones!)

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:tiger2: :books: Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220218 :books: :raccoon:


Tanuki Scroll XLIX: 嫁になった雪女 :snowflake:

Read today’s Hyakyumonogatari, from Yamagata Prefecture. It’s another story involving Yuki-Onna.

☆ Learnings ☆

New Word

置き手紙「おきてがみ」ー Farewell letter; A letter left by someone who has departed
お世話「おせわ」ー Help; Aid; Assistance

Forgotten Meanings

遠慮えんりょ」ー Restraint; Reserve; Constraint
きっと屹度 (rarely used)」ー Surely; Almost certainly; Most likely

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Day 49!

I finished the first volume of 三ツ星カラーズ today. I haven’t decided if I’m going to carry on reading this series yet. I probably will if there is an offshoot club for it, but because of the slightly random behaviour of the characters, I think it may be tougher to read alone. I spend a fair bit of time double checking whether I read things correctly because what I understood something to mean seems a bit weird :sweat_smile:

Also read the next chapter of からかい上手の高木さん. As always, it was a cute fun read :slight_smile:

(Home Post)

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I forgot to say earlier but I have read and have access to that volume so am happy (to the best of my limited abilities lol) to help out with whatever questions at any point :slight_smile:

Aww, well, still a cool word haha. That was me just assuming that the ‘japanese people love their puns’ rule might be applying haha

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