📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

[pocketcat]

Today’s article was 『笑わない、絶対に笑わない』 and I felt like I only understood about half of it despite having very few words to look up. I might show this one to my tutor to check if it’s actually a good choice for reading practice or not. I suspect the blog’s author just writes in a more roundabout way that’s hard for me to grasp right now in Japanese.

It also made me think that if there’s a spring challenge (I hope there is!) I will switch gears into reading about business and politics. I’ve watched 3 shows recently where I’ve missed a lot in scenes where those topics are brought up, sometimes to the point where I miss major plot points. Just far too many missing words or words that are too vaguely known to be part of my listening vocabulary. Today’s article had a smattering of politics and while I don’t think that’s why I felt puzzled, it did bring the topic to mind.

[Zakarius]

Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220219

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Tanuki Scroll L: トラのあぶら

Read today’s folktale, from Kochi Prefecture!

Today’s moral: If you want to dry your clothes on a fire but the fire is too small and the fire master is too stingy with it, then tell them that you eat the big bits of bamboo so you need more fire, then, when the fire is roaring and you’re drying nicely be like “but we need tiger oil to eat it! えええなに？ you don’t have tiger oil? I best go then” and escape - you have now managed to dry your clothes successfully

☆ Learnings ☆

New Words

とんち「頓知」ー Quick-Wit (usually only written in kana)
ビショビショ ー Soaked; Drenched
初耳「はつみみ」ー Hearing something for the first time

New Forms
ちょいと ＝ ちょっと
Though I think ちょいと is seen as a little old-fashioned, and if you ever wondered if ちょっと can be written in kanji like me then it’s: 一寸.

Names
是市「これいち」ー Koreichi

Old Places
土佐の国「とさのくに」ー An old province Japan, now part of Kochi prefecture.

[fustian_garb]

Read a couple of pages before breakfast again…and then read a whole chapter this afternoon because it was raining and I wanted to know what happened next.

@Coyoteclaw11

Is anyone else surprised by how much they have to read out loud in Japanese compared to English or their native language?

Yep had to do this all the time when I started reading. Now I read silently but deliberately pronouncing each word in my head if that makes sense? Particularly with kanji to confirm to myself that I know the reading.

[NicoleRauch]

I read しあわせのパン all week. I’m almost done with it, I should be able to finish it tomorrow (if not today ^^). That means I’ve read the whole book (200 pages) in two weeks. Not mind-boggling, but it’s okay, I’m happy about it. (Plus, I can finally watch the movie next week )

Next up is 笑わない数学者 (read the first two sub-chapters yesterday, will continue today) and then 大聖堂 (my reading partner is a bit behind so there is no rush for me, luckily ).
Finally I will be able to continue with ifの悲劇 (which I deferred to focus on しあわせのパン).

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@fustian_garb

Yep had to do this all the time when I started reading. Now I read silently but deliberately pronouncing each word in my head if that makes sense? Particularly with kanji to confirm to myself that I know the reading.

Yes, that’s how I do it as well.

[lucylavelle]

Day 50!
That feels like a cool milestone

I read chapter 15 of 極主夫道 today. I find this manga pretty difficult to read, but I really love it so I keep pushing through even though its tough! I’m glad the chapters are pretty short, because it means that I can usually read them in one sitting even though I always need to look a lot of stuff up!

I also started playing Pokemon Legends Arceus in Japanese yesterday. Pretty sure that counts as reading, but its a bit hard to measure how much I read so I’m not sure how include that in these daily logs! Going to play a bit more today though

(Home Post)

[Redglare]

Summary post

February 19

笑わない数学者
Progress: 61% → 63%

Yet another tiny read
Kpop (especially dance videos) is not good for reading I didn’t choose a new bias, bias choose me.

[Beyond_Sleepy]

Home post

Day 43

I read three pages of よつばと！ today

[Daisoujou]

@natarin

Admittedly this is still the same like branch section so I haven’t had the chance to do otherwise but like… you’re not wrong

Oh ok, I forget how often the branches happen haha. It’s been a long time! I know what you mean though, making those sub-groups creates its own little dynamics.

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Summary post

It took a real push today, but ~3000 characters and ~255 lines again. I feel slightly aggravated at just how often I have to run off for help, but that’s life for a long time I guess. I don’t mean it’s seriously bothering me, but, you know. I think it’s less indicative of a problem and more just the inevitable result of how much work there is to do. I’m still enjoying myself, just, super long way to go. The book was meant to be my harder material I stretch for while the VN was more comfortable, but I’m not sure what I think about that now. Like, the VN setup is so easy for lookups that smooths it more, and I’d say Zoo’s sentences are regularly longer and slightly more complex. But when difficulty spikes happen… Otsuichi almost never uses super specific obscure looking words, my problems there are usually just new verbs I haven’t learned and stuff. This VN loves to dip into all sorts of weird topics and language though.

And while I don’t think anything in this sentence is THAT odd, here’s an example of how things pile up:

いかつい漁師さん達が、うさんくさそうにこちらを一瞥した。

4 unknowns in a sentence of that size doesn’t happen too often! 漁師 is kinda borderline cause the VN has used it a lot today especially, but yeah. Wide vocabulary in this VN.

Today was all side events cause 紬 hasn’t been available for a bit, but I had fun because they started playing around with ミニ四駆 (those little motorized cars) from their childhood. I have only a few personal memories of that as a kid, but it also brought to mind Yakuza’s pocket circuit, so that amused me a lot.

Check out those SPEED LINES! They were animated in the game lol.

The coolest new word today is 五十肩 (ごじゅうかた), stiff shoulders especially from age. The kanji is 50 shoulder. The age part is implied I suppose. I love it.

[BadWeather]

Summary post

February 19 update:
Read the fourth story of きまぐれロボット today. This one was not a sci-fi story like the previous three, but rather a fable about greed. Not especially exciting, but still a decent read. Not sure whether it’s due to the author’s style or just my imagination filling the gaps, but these stories seem to have character. Even if the plot isn’t too complex, the atmosphere and the characters are quite interesting. I especially appreciate how this all comes through within just a few pages of text.

[saidahgilbert]

Could someone help me read the katakana in the panel above, please? I thought that「ウオ」is read as a ‘w’ sound and 「ティ」is read as ‘ti’ but the kanji means water, right? So is that word supposed to be the Japanese pronunciation of ‘water’?

[natarin]

Not sure what the context is but based on googling it seems like that’s just a name of a character in Cardcaptor Sakura, I’d guess it’s just somewhat inspired from the English pronunciation of water but with some flair to make it a fun name (though there could be some other pun going on as well, I’m not super familiar with Cardcaptor Sakura to say)

[valkow]

Home post

Day 49:

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.

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.

[windupbird]

Summary post

Day 50: February 19th

365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 13 min
Today’s color: 鬱金色 (うこんいろ) - saffron yellow

Named for 鬱金 - turmeric (more commonly called ターメリック). Interesting tidbit I learned today - apparently when you’re dyeing things with turmeric, the color is different depending on whether you use an acidic or basic medium. Acid = more yellow, and base = more red.

Good words

• 漢方 (かんぽう) - traditional Chinese medicine
• あらゆる - all; every
• 際 (さい) - on the occasion of; circumstances; juncture
• 灰汁 (あく) - lye
• 酸性 (さんせい) - acidity
• 媒剤 (ばいざい) - medium (had to break out the J-J dictionary for this one)

まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 8 min

Today’s reading was about 雨水 (うすい), a new period on the solar calendar. The first part of 雨水 is 獺祭魚, otters offering fish. The word 獺祭 (だっさい) can refer to:

1. otters lining a catch of fish on a river bank cute
2. people making offerings (esp. of fish)​
3. arraying a number of reference books in order to compose poetry; literary composition crammed with maxims, ancient episodes, legends, etc.​

What else did I read?
海のどうぶつが可愛すぎて!
Amount read: 6 pages
Time spent: 30 min

Lots of fun and interesting sharks today! (I’m gonna put some more info on them in the spoilers, they’re all really cool ) But I do have to highlight my favorite shark…
WHALE SHARK AKA ジンベエザメ

I actually knew the name of this creature already, because of this cutie pie character

(I don’t remember how I stumbled onto him, actually…I just love him )

Here's some more neat sharkos

• ニシオンデンザメ - the Greenland shark, aka the oldest shark/oldest vertebrate ever. Apparently there is one that might be as old as 512 years old?? If you, like me, were wondering how they tell the age of these sharks, here’s an article about it xD
• ウバザメ - basking shark, aka the shark with the big mouth xD Though perhaps not quite as big as…
• メガマウス - the megamouth shark A very weird and rare creature

The megamouth shark, the basking shark, and the whale shark are the only sharks that feed exclusively on plankton!

Good words

• 脊椎動物 (せきついどうぶつ) - vertebrate
• 話の腰を折る (はなしのこしをおる) - to interfere; to butt in; to interrupt someone
• 爬虫類 (はちゅうるい) - reptiles
• 北極圏 (ほっきょくけん) - Arctic Circle
• 少なくとも (すくなくとも) - at least
• 最高齢 (さいこうれい) - oldest; most advanced age
• のろま - blockhead; dunce; dimwit; dolt; slowcoach; slowpoke
• あくせく - busily; sedulously; laboriously; feverishly; fussily; worrying (about little things) (I love the kanji for this word - 齷齪)
• 貪欲 (どんよく) - avarice; greed; covetousness
• エラ - gills
• 濾す (こす) - to filter; to strain
• 目撃 (もくげき) - witnessing; observing; sighting
• からと言って - just because; even if; even though
• コバンザメ - remora (so…not actually a shark at all lol)
• 吸盤 (きゅうばん) - suction cup; suction pad; sucker
• 空白 (くうはく) - vacuum; blank; void
• 微笑ましい (ほほえましい) - pleasant; charming
• シロワニ - sand tiger shark (fun fact! 鰐 [ワニ] is an archaic term for shark, as well as the word for alligator) What if the Crabigator was actually…the CRABSHARK o::::

@Redglare

Kpop (especially dance videos) is not good for reading

Well I certainly have no idea what you mean by that
Now I’m curious who your new bias is

[tiny_river_otter]

Summary Post

Day 50: Today I read 9 pages of よつば＆！and finished chapter 28!

[natarin]

February 19 Home Post

Oh I went absolutely wild with 999 today, love weekends It was really good! There were a number of times I kinda forgot I was reading Japanese until I ran into a word I didn’t know and was like “oh yeah I need to look that up” which is always a pretty cool feeling. I feel like a lot happened today, so…

~999 things~

Right off the bat there were some pretty good goofs:

八代(やしろ) absolutely WRECKED 淳平(じゅんぺい) for that, dude about died very funny though, 八代(やしろ)'s grown on me a lot (though I don’t exactly trust her but that’s a different problem entirely)

Then サンタ was サンタ as always:

I was so innocent like “what’s ヘルペス? …oh, of course he would” lmao

Then we ended up in this big room that freaked everyone out, and there was some cool wordplay!

Apparently 開放感(かいほうかん) is an irregular spelling of 解放感(かいほうかん) which means like a sense of freedom, but 開放感(かいほうかん) also means spaciousness, so it’s a cool sort of double meaning in this case. Especially with 心細(こころぼそ)さ there too there’s a lot of playing the spacial sorts of implications in these words, very fun

At some point I came across うんともすんとも言(い)わない and was like “what are うん and すん???” so I ended up on whole tangent reading about that, pretty interesting: 「うんともすんともいわない」の、「うん」と「すん」ってなんですか？？ - ... - Yahoo!知恵袋

The last little bit I played had some fun one-on-one type conversations with different characters which was nice, in a not at all shocking twist I ended up with a screenshot from my conversation with サンタ:

I just love the energy of this lmao, 淳平(じゅんぺい) just like “wow I thought he was an entire idiot this whole time but maybe he actually does have some brain cells, who knew”

I’m glad I impulsively decided to play Zero Escape, it’s been a lot of fun! If you’d told me like beginning of January I’d be doing this I probably wouldn’t have believed you lmao, it’s wild how much has changed since then. Progress

Words!

途方(とほう)に暮(く)れる - to be at a loss
だだっ広(ぴろ)い - excessively spacious, sprawling
茫漠(ぼうばく) - vast, vague
薄(うす)っぺらい - very thin, flimsy
腐(くさ)るほど - more than one can possibly use
いたるところ - everywhere, all over
二度手間(にどてま) - double effort
名答(めいとう) - correct answer
ぎこちない - awkward, clumsy

@lucylavelle

I also started playing Pokemon Legends Arceus in Japanese yesterday

Oooh nice, that sounds super fun! Yeah I’m always like “uhhh I played… some? a lot? how do I quantify this” lmao

@Daisoujou

This VN loves to dip into all sorts of weird topics and language though

You know I’m starting to get the sense that slice-of-life-type things can be deceptively difficult like yes theoretically it’s more “normal” language people use regularly, but considering the amount of weird references and subjects that come up in day-to-day life? Kinda makes sense.

(Honestly even in 999 it’s not usually the sciencey-puzzley sort of stuff that gets weird, it’s when they keep talking about like the Titanic )

[eoame]

@eoame

I’m hoping to finish off Chapter 3 either tomorrow, or before Monday.

Didn’t manage to finish Chapter 3 I’m about halfway through. Maybe I should allot a certain amount of time each day to reading, because otherwise I just barely fit it in. Fifteen minutes, perhaps?
I read pages 161-162 of 銭天堂 yesterday, and page 164 today.

[pocketcat]

Today’s reading was a film review of another film I haven’t seen: “境界”が次第に曖昧なものへ　永瀬正敏×奥原浩志監督『ホテルアイリス』の幻惑的な味わい｜Real Sound｜リアルサウンド 映画部

After reading the review and watching the trailer I don’t think I’ll be adding it to my watchlist.
I wrote out a whole rant and deleted it, but will leave it at I think unhealthy relationships can have a place in film, but glamorizing them is not that place.

[Zakarius]

Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220220

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Tanuki Scroll LI: 火事の知らせ方

☆ Learnings ☆

New Words

かわや「厠」ー Toilet; Privy
かみしも「裃」ー Old ceremonial costume; Samurai costume
丸太「まるた」ー Log

[Beyond_Sleepy]

Home post

Day 44:

I read two pages of よつばと！today

[downtimes]

And another week down. Beginning of the last week Homepost (43)

So this time around I read a little less.
Still working my way through Slam Dunk and am currently in the middle of volume 4. It’s still good but I have a long way to go till I’m done with all 20 .
Other than that I did work through Tobira like I said and tackled the first 3 Chapters in the last week. Was a bit strange to return to textbook Japanese after all the manga reading I had done in the last while. Like I suspected it is a nice change of pace. It also keept reminding me of the propar grammar forms, should I ever feel like taking the JLPT at the end of the year. It’s interesting though to not have to look up nearly anything compared to when I’m reading random native material…
Doing the excercises from the Workbook also reminded me how rusty my Japanese writing had become. So I’m definitely glad to refresh it a little bit with Tobira over the coming weeks.
I’m also still reading 1-2 news articles (mostly NHK easy atm) every day to keep up with what are hot topics in Japan at the moment.

Other than reading I did a lot of listening this week. I’m obsessed with QuizKnock currently and it’s a hybrid of listening and reading for me. Currently there is also the Japanese Film Festival running in which I still want to watch another 3-4 of the films. So dividing my time between all these activities while living a normal live isn’t as easy anymore ^^.

So overall I think I’m currently striking a nice balance of refreshing some grammar, refreshing my writing, working on my listening and doing some lighter reading on the side. (30 min of Anki every day is a given)

I still like it to read all of your updates (especially the ones with the nice VN pictures) so please keep them coming. I will update next weekend again after the last full week is done.