📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

[Daisoujou]

@natarin

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.

Yeah, I get you! The fact this VN (at least now while it’s still not approached anything sad yet) leans into comedy doesn’t help, both because that veers into odd topics or, you know, thrives on being a little absurd and unexpected. Checking comprehension gets harder if the intended statement is meant to be silly.

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Summary post

Entering the home stretch! If there’s a bit of a break between threads, I’m going to miss this!

Took me a long time today, but I did make it ~3100 characters and 295 lines in. Part of that was me falling down a grammar rabbithole with the fantastically helpful grammar questions thread. One of those lines that I understood but it was weird to figure out how that piece of grammar was meant to exactly get me there. I can’t be alone in feeling like everything I do in Japanese in shrouded with a bit of haziness even when I’m getting it, heh.

Good times though, no complaints. Today was particularly frivolous, but I find it light and amusing. This time, we have a story in two panels:

The story

The appearance and subsequent chasing of a mosquito made the protagonist launch into some really far gone chuuni stuff…

But after about two lines of the VN treating it seriously down to the music and visuals, the small child in the room made him cut it out. Thank you, Umi.

Most interesting new word for me is 最期 (さいご), because it’s like the さいご (最後) I already know, but exclusively refers to one’s last moments/death. It would be nice if 期 used the reading I know (in 12 words WK only ever teaches this as き) but that is a problem basically every single day so we deal with these things

Also, I believe I’ve been reading it for 8 days, and I’m on page 78 of Zoo 2, 48% in. That is wild to me.

[tiny_river_otter]

Summary Post

Day 51: Today I read 4 pages of よつば＆！

[valkow]

Home post

Day 50:

日本語: I read a lot of ミステリークロック (finished story 2 of 4 and started story 3, which looks to be the longest one).

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. The anti-streak of not doing my 孩子最爱读的中国民间故事 continues.

And one of the few remaining weeks has been knocked off!

				F	E	B
日	月	火	水	木	金	土

[Daisoujou]

Sorry this is off topic from reading but I keep forgetting I wanted to follow up on something that came up earlier with @pocketcat

On migraines

My fiancée found me some (annoyingly expensive, heh) glasses for migraines that I’ve been trying, since my problem is so clearly linked with light. I was already in the habit of regularly wearing some cheaper blue light glasses when at the PC, but that wasn’t quite doing it anymore. And thus far, I have to say, it’s been a real marked improvement! It’s the kind of thing I don’t want to overuse to the point of getting more sensitive, but I’ve been wearing them frequently just when at the computer, especially in the morning since that time was often worst for me, and I’ve had very few issues. Previously this was becoming almost a daily problem, so hopefully I’ve found what I need for my particular type

[saidahgilbert]

Thanks. I did google the card and its English name is supposed to be “The Watery” and the katakana reading is supposed to be 「ウォータリー」。However, so far in volume 1, I’ve only seen 「ウオーティ」。Now I am wondering if maybe the mangaka changed the name later on in the series?
By the way, 「ウォータリー」is pronounced “uo-tari” and 「ウオーティ」is pronounced “uo-ti”, right? I guess this is what I originally meant to ask in my previous post, how the word was actually pronounced and not its meaning.

[windupbird]

Summary post

Day 51: February 20th

365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 14 min
Today’s color: 桑色 (くわいろ) - light yellow though it looks brown in the book

Named for the mulberry tree (桑) - it’s a color you get from the roots and bark (vs. the berries, which is a different color)

Good words

• 質感 (しつかん) - feel (of a material); texture
• 黄褐色 (おうかっしょく) - yellowish-brown
• 煎じる (せんじる) - to boil; to decoct; to infuse
• 総称 (そうしょう) - general term; generic name
• 甘酸っぱい (あまずっぱい) - sweet and sour; bittersweet
• 根付く (ねづく) - to take root; to strike

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 蕗の薹, an edible flower bud that you have to eat before it gets too big (as it gets bigger, it started to get more bitter).

What else did I read?
海のどうぶつが可愛すぎて!
Amount read: 6 pages
Time spent: 23 min

OMG it’s rays today, I love rays So glidey~

Here’s a shark and a ray high-fiving because they’re both cartilaginous why is it so cute D:

Apparently what separates sharks from rays is that rays have their gills on the bottom, while sharks have gills on their sides

Good words and good rays

Rays:

• エイ - ray (any kind)
• シノノメサカタザメ - bowmouth guitarfish (I see these dudes in aquariums all the time, but I didn’t know that they are technically rays - they look like sharks with ray heads lol)
• カスザメ - Japanese angel shark
• ノコギリザメ - saw shark - rated 7/10 for cuteness by this website
• ノコギリエイ - sawfish, which is like a saw shark but…not a shark xD (It has bottom gills, while the saw shark has side gills)
• ポルカドットスティングレイ - polka-dot stingray (it’s so cute DDDD: So much polka dots)
• オニイトマキエイ - oceanic manta ray (so big “pandas of the sea” )
• ナンヨウマンタ - reef manta ray

Words:

• 癒し系 (いやしけい) - therapy; healing; rejuvenating; refreshing; soothing
• 板鰓亜綱 (ばんさいあこう) - Elasmobranchii (basically, the subclass of cartilaginous fish that includes both sharks and rays)
• 激痛 (げきつう) - sharp pain; acute pain; intense pain
• アナフィラキシーショック - anaphylactic shock
• 大群 (たいぐん) - large crowd; large herd; large flock; large school; large shoal; swarm
• 分かりにくい (わかりにくい) - hard to understand; incomprehensible; unintelligible

[NihongoLearner19]

Home Post

I just started ティアムーン帝国 book 3! I’ve just read the prologue so far, so I’m only page 16, but wow did it hit me in the feels! I just love this series so much, and it’s so fun to be rereading it in Japanese (in part because I know the characters well from the English version and so things are hitting more deeply than they did the first time around. Is this just an excuse for me to reread Tearmoon for the third time? Yes, yes it is ) Anyway, good stuff!

[natarin]

February 20 Home Post

Today was a bare minimum kind of day (except for the multiple random tangents I went on looking up words and things here? hey that’s reading too I guess, chaos mode)

Not much to say really, I played a super tiny bit of 999 and that’s really all. On to tomorrow!

@saidahgilbert

Now I am wondering if maybe the mangaka changed the name later on in the series?

Accidental deep dive

Soooo I tried reading more about it and it’s really unclear honestly? Most stuff in Japanese seems to refer to the card as ウォーティー, but while also talking about how it’s “The Watery” which is adjacent at best.

I found a couple things that at least mentioned both ウォーティ and ウォータリー but only super briefly. The first was this クロウカード(CCさくら) - アニヲタWiki(仮) - atwiki（アットウィキ） which says ファイヤリー can be pronounced ファイアリー to be more accurate, and also that the same thing happens with ウォーティ and it can also be read ウォータリー.

I also found カードキャプターさくら | Anipedia | Fandom which says that ウォータリー was originally the correct pronunciation, so honestly jury’s still out. My best guess is the pronunciation varies a bit with different people interpreting the names (classic katakana), especially since they’re being associated with kanji.

But yes to answer your question it should be like a quick sort of う お sound, basically approximating a w.

[basilsauce]

@windupbird

• 分かりにくい (わかりにくい) - hard to understand; incomprehensible; unintelligible
  [/details]

In case you didn’t know, verb stem + にくい is a grammar point, and you can use it with other verbs to mean “hard to ~~~”
There’s also the opposite: verb stem + やすい (easy to ~~~)

〜にくい

[lucylavelle]

Day 52!

Chapter 15 of Yotsuba today, it was very cute.
Not got any time to read more today though, since its my wedding anniversary so we are going out for the day

(Home Post)

[pocketcat]

Today’s article was 耳障りが悪い？ – 出版レッスン帳 which ended up being rather rambley. It started out talking about Murakami not winning literary prizes and then went into people making mistakes using words. The example one in the title 耳障りが悪い being one that is redundant and 耳障りがよい being one that makes no sense and is a result of 耳障り（みみざわり - s.t. unpleasant to listen to）sounding similar to 歯ざわり（はざわり - mouth feel）, 手触り（てざわり - feel [with hands]) and so on. Note the kanji difference - 触り vs 障り, both read as さわり, but with different meanings.

[rikaiwisdom]

Summary Post

February 12 ー February 20
Tobira lessons 1 to 5.
An NHK article I´m too lazy to find about gear-shaped valentine’s day chocolate.

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Okay I haven’t read today yet, but I keep postponing the update and it’s getting much harder to track so might as well .

So, I’m alive!! ;-; What a chaotic week. I haven’t actually been too busy, but I’ve been taking care of something these days that moved my usual reading times to the regular “eh I’ll read later”. And that meant, of course, that I read last moment before going to bed, as the great procrastinator in me will forever try to do. My reading amount and quality have taken a big hit, but I still forced myself to keep reading even if just a little bit.

So I mostly resumed Tobira. I haven’t worked on it for a long time and I know at this rate I probably would never have anyways. I just can’t bring myself to do the exercises; I know they’re really beneficial, but following a script bores me a lot. BUT, I have decided that I still want to go through all the texts because they introduce a lot of grammar, and I want to check that I know all the grammar in Tobira, which is apparently around N3-N2, so it should cover a fair bit.

Now, I didn’t rush the lessons or anything. I actually had already done lessons 1 to 4, but it had been such a long time that I wanted to go through them anyways, see if I comprehend everything. And to my surprise, my comprehension level must have risen, because I had the impression I now got everything from the texts as opposed to back then, when I still comprehended the vast majority of it, but was still just a tiny bit of work. That was nice to discover, I’m apparently doing something that is working over time. Since I’m only reading though, and also listening afterwards, it will probably still take very little time to go through one lesson, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I finish it very quickly.

I hope I can resume a proper schedule again very soon, if not today, and to keep posting like I used to ;-; . I think I will most likely keep going after the challenge is done, though, I don’t feel particularly exhausted because honestly I had a chance to chill a lot these days, so I’m back with energy again.

[Zakarius]

Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220221

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Tanuki Scroll LII: 上の字さま

Read today’s folktale, from Tokyo!

About a giant frog who loves まんじゅう and helps out a samurai lord to pay back for stealing all that delicious まんじゅう.

☆ Learnings ☆

New Words

たらい「盥」ー Washbasin; Washbowl (That kanji is really cool, the 水 is contained!)
ひきがえる「蟇」ー Toad, especially the Japanese toad (Bufo Japonicus), this big frogge boi:

(The story, since it’s from Edo times, uses「かま」as the word for toad, but this is outdated, it also uses 「がまがえる」which is another way to say toad, there’s a lot of ways it seems.)

ポチャン ー Splash! Plop! (Onomatopoeia)
せめて ー At least; At most; Even just

Kanji Form
まんじゅう ー 饅頭

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@rikaiwisdom おかえり！

[Thud]

Main Post

Finished reading through Kuma Miko vol 1 yesterday. It’s mostly a wholesome experience when it’s just Machi and Nuts (the bear). My problem is whenever her cousin Yoshio is involved (introduced in chapter 2) it kinda shifts into making Machi or other girls as uncomfortable as possible. I have really outgrown this type of “humor” in anime and manga. I’m not surprised, but it’s something I can never get used to. That said it’s possible they were still trying to figure out the identity of this manga while making it, something that early Yotsuba also struggles with.

Anyway I found to be surprisingly difficult at times and had pages were I had to look up nearly everything on a page. Guessing it’s because of the countryside life and the vocabulary that comes with it. That said I feel the next volume would probably be a lot easier to read and it’s something I would consider returning to later on when I read through more of my kindle library.

Volume 1

I added some pics above of volume 1 of Kuma Miko. I’ll be reading What Did You Eat Yesterday? volume 1 from my kindle library. I haven’t tried a cooking manga before, so kinda excited

[NihongoLearner19]

Today I read ティアムーン帝国物語 3 chapter 1, which was fun! I also paid attention to my reading time and realized that since starting this challenge, my reading speed has gone from about 12.5 pages per hour to 18 pages per hour, so I’m feeling pretty accomplished! Consistency is key, it seems.

[Sunstorm]

I’m joining late, but I’ve been reading this last week an article from News Web Easy every day, and I’ll try to keep it up. I never really get anything, but it doesn’t really matter, it’s fun.

Today, I read something something about pollen in Tokyo from the Japanese Cedar, and something something about Corona. I guess it’s that they mistake corona for this allergy, or vice-versa? And that they should keep their masks on, I believe.

[Beyond_Sleepy]

Home post

Day 45:

I read one page of よつばと！ again. Would read more but there’s a party

[Natsuha]

Once again I forgot to post the last few days. In that time I finished reading Yamada kun and the Seven Vol.3, started and read the whole first volume of Rental Girlfriend.
Rental Girlfriend is probably one of the funniest manga I ever read.

I read every day a little bit of the Monobeno visual novel. Some parts were a little harder the ones they talk about gods and shintoism but it’s still manageable. Somehow I already reached chapter five, so there is a good chance I will finish it this year. Someone asked for pictures?

[Burnannator]

Today, I read about these things, Tarigerades. Very cute.

[BadWeather]

Summary post

February 21 update:
Read just a couple pages of きまぐれロボット today. This story is promising to be quite fun, but I barely managed to squeeze in even this much reading, so the rest will have to wait until tomorrow