📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

Day 75!

Chapter 32 of Yotsuba today. Yotsuba was so cute in her raincoat :blush:
I actually read a little bit in to the next chapter too, since there were a few pages between the end of chapter 32 page and the chapter 33 splash page!

(Home Post)

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March 16 :snowflake: Home Post

Played some more 999! I’m most of the way through another route, though it seems like the ending might be on the longer side? Idk, we shall see :blush:

999 things

Yayyy 四葉(よつば)'s been less angsty this playthrough which is good for my heart; it seems like my instincts about the background with her and ニルス and サンタ were mostly right, but that raises a lot of questions. I’m not super good with ages but instinctively I thought ニルス and サンタ were probably a little younger than 淳平(じゅんぺい) and (むらさき), but it seems like that’s not the case?? I mean if they were both involved with the nonary game 9 years ago I would think they’d need to be a bit older, especially considering サンタ’s little sister was also theoretically involved. So… idk :joy:

Also very concerned about them not showing what サンタ’s sister looked like or saying what her name was yet, feels like that’s gonna be really important :eyes: My crackpot theory is that (むらさき) is his little sister for some reasons that make sense in my brain at least, but I don’t know if it’s gonna go there :joy: It’s 999 though, wouldn’t be surprised. But like 四葉(よつば) got cut off before she could say the name of the girl who died (who is theoretically サンタ’s sister in my mind), and I feel like the only way that would make sense is if she was gonna say (あかね)? Like he doesn’t know anyone else’s names so :man_shrugging:

I’m still having tons of fun with it, my goal is in sight :muscle:

Wordsss

からかう - to ridicule, to tease (ah like the manga girl)
()せかける - to pretend, to feign
威風堂々(いふうどうどう) - being majestic, with great pomp and circumstance

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I’m too excited to wait for the intermediate book club to start, and for the next round of read everyday Spring…

So I started reading 透明カメレオン!

It’s really weird to be able to read 90% of the words, but not understand what’s being said. My husband said it’s because there are a lot of expressions. For example: 背中越せなかごし which literally translates to “beyond (one’s) back”, but in context reads more like “without having to look” or “with (one’s) back turned”. It doesn’t come up in the dictionary either, which didn’t help!

The full context for those that care

「ありがとうございました」ました、の部分だけ声が遠いのは、言い切る前にそっぽを向いたからに違いない。僕ほどの経験者になると、背中越しでもわかる。

Ah yes, the love and pain of reading :smiling_face_with_tear:

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Day 76!

Chapter 33 of Yotsuba today - cute and fun as always!
I really want to get back to player Pokemon Legends Arceus - but the evening keeps disappearing somehow…
Hopefully I’ll get a bit of time over the weekend!

(Home Post)

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March 17 :snowflake: Home Post

It’s late so not a long post, but surprise surprise I played more 999! This route is definitely long, but man a lot is happening. Can’t wait to continue tomorrow :eyes:

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Main Post

Finished the last chapter of Gal & Dino volume 1. Cute, funny and wholesome. Took lots of screenshots and sharing some more today.

Volume 1 ch10-15

The extra stuff in the back was also pretty nice to read. In the end it is a pretty low effort manga I could read without worry. For the next manga I think it would have to be tanuki vol 3.

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Day 77!

I read Chapter 34 of Yotsuba today, which means I finished Volume 5. It was a lovely chapter to end the volume on I think, especially with the final page being everyone falling asleep on the train.

I learned the word for Hermit Crab - やどかり - which also means “renting a house” which I think is kind of cute!

(Home Post)

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March 18 :snowflake: Home Post

I keep posting so late :joy: but my reading has been far more consistent than my posts so that’s something! 999 continues to be a truly wild ride, though I’m not sure I’ll actually finish by the end of spring break since the endings just seem to keep getting longer :joy: but that’s okay!

999 thoughts

This ending has been real information-heavy, but man I still have so many questions. It turns out my crackpot theory might not be so crackpot actually :joy: The girl who died in the first nonary game was in fact named (あかね), which super can’t be a coincidence. Especially considering whatever like freezing-sickness she has going on, it definitely seems like something’s up.

There’s also been a lot of talk about サンタ potentially being ゼロ and certain people’s numbers being different than we thought, which would explain some things but wow it would have so many ramifications, I’m not sure they could all be accounted for. And honestly my primary suspect at this point was サンタ, but people talking about it when it seems like there’s so much game left makes me think that might not be the case. So idk :man_shrugging:

Regardless I am completely fascinated and like all I wanna do is play so I can find out what’s going on :joy: Zero Escape is powerful

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Day 78!

I’m taking advantage of having some free time today to do extra reading :slight_smile:
So today I read the first half of Chapter 2 of Happiness, as thats the ABBC assignment for this week, and then also read Chapter 6 of Volume 5 of Teasing Master Takagi-san.

Today I found that I was able to read a lot of stuff quite smoothly, with only a few cases of needing to look things up, or stop to decode a bit of grammar.
Its nice to have these moments of really feeling like I’ve made progress.

Though now I’m going to go and play some Pokemon Legends: Arceus.
…which will definitely involve plenty of vocab lookups and failing to understand grammar :sweat_smile:

(Home Post)

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March 19 :snowflake: Home Post

Whew, I don’t know what to do with myself :joy: I finished what I think is actually the main ending to 999? There’s still an ending I haven’t done so I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with that, but… man, that was a ride.

999 made my brain mush

I like don’t even know what to say :joy: it got so wild?? The whole point was to save (あかね) in the past?? Still can’t believe I was right about her and サンタ (whose name is (あおい), and then her code name is (むらさき) and I’m :pleading_face:), what an absolutely wild dynamic.

I still feel like I have more questions than answers?? Like I know things but I still don’t feel like I do, I’m a whole mess lmao. Like what about 八代(やしろ), it super looked like she was there at the first nonary game but I have absolutely no idea how to reconcile that, it really doesn’t seem like ages would work for that but what do I know?? Time and space are a construct here :joy: and who else was in the first nonary game, why were specifically these people brought back, were there people at the ship too? Did (あかね) seriously somehow set this all up from nine years ago?? Wow yeah I have a lot of questions :joy: maybe some of them will still be answered in the last route (or in future games perhaps?), but knowing danganronpa I wouldn’t be shocked if a lot was left open. We shall see!

Anyway there’s a lot to process, but language-wise it’s a really cool experience to be absoutely losing my mind over content in Japanese! Time to go wallow in it :joy:

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Day 79!

Chapters 11 and 12 of Mitsuboshi Colours today. I found both of these chapters much easier to follow than Chapter 10 was. Chapter 11 was very cute.

(Home Post)

Ooh, congratulations!
Seeing how much you’ve been enjoying 999 has encouraged me to add it to my “to play once I can read better” list. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Congrats!! :tada:
I recently came across a youtube video that described these zero escape games as really good for language learners, and I found out I apparently have access to them via a friend’s shared steam library. So because of that and your comments I’m now very :eyes: tempted.
You definitely made 999 sound really fun!

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@natarin Congrats on finishing! So glad you liked it!

Heavy spoiler thing I want to mention for natarin

So for this version of the game they have two displays you sort of switch between somehow for the dialog and stuff, right? With the original being a DS game, they made great use of the double screens – essentially the idea is that one screen was what Junpei sees and the other is what Akane sees, while transmitting hints and like leading him to the end. I’ve seen people kind of miss that distinction in the remake because unfortunately there wasn’t a great way to recreate it. And the final sudoku was upside down and required flipping your DS itself, heh.

I’m so happy seeing all the Zero Escape / 999 love in this thread. It’s a great series. The sequel is even wilder and I think it prefer it over 999, but both are great. Zero Time Dilemma is… kind of a mess? But it’s a mess that I find hilarious, almost like the closest re-enactment I’ve seen of a videogame being a cheesy funny B movie. Not sure how much of that effect will be lost without the wonky English voices though.


Was just feeling the urge to check in again! I’ve missed a few days of doing anything beyond SRS because I had to travel a bit, but overall, it’s going well. I keep making it to 5000 characters minimum read, often 6 or 7k even. I think I’m entering the late stages of Shizuku’s route, which has been nice.

Tiny spoilers and an image

I guess every story is going to briefly touch on supernatural content, which I’m all here for. It’s been enhancing the drama and all in service of the greater thematic points both routes have been touching on. Tsumugi’s was pure bittersweet parting and struggling against impermanence, but Shizuku’s is looking like it might get a little complex, and I love how it’s touching on sort of self-worth issues, as you can see:

I’ll have 6 more routes to do after this so this game isn’t going away any time soon. I’ve also been steadily, often even just a page or less at night, pushing through Zoo 2, and I made it through that story I was struggling with, at least following enough to get the point, even if I think the enjoyment was hampered somewhat. The following story has been closer to the usual difficulty level, so I’m getting back into it bit by bit, and I’m 77% through!

I’m very much looking forward to the return of this challenge :slight_smile:

Since I've already brought it up here, a small digression on health, fairly positive for once, for anyone interested

It’s too early to say with any confidence, but I’ve been experimenting with a few things, and I want to say some of my ailments have lessened for longer than usual. It’s really just Pepcid and CBD – I know I have some GERD issues, quite possibly exacerbated by covid, and that can mess with your heart and all sorts of other things. And CBD sounds great for inflammation, which is the obvious candidate for most things I’ve been dealing with. It’s a gradual lessening of issues, no magic cure, and I’m not confident at all that they aren’t just abating for the moment to come back worse later, but at this exact moment I feel the best I have in probably more than a month, so I’ll take it.

Cardiologist confirmed there’s not a whole lot he can do for me and most of my palpitations are basically upper chamber extra beats… normal occurrence, but it happens like 5 times more for me than the average person. It’s not so uncomfortable I want to risk the side effects of the medication so that’s about all I’ve got right now. Could be worse. And hey, today in my visual novel I learned 動悸 (どうき), palpitation or throbbing of the heart :stuck_out_tongue:

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March 20 :snowflake: Home Post

Ahhhh I’m almost finished with the last ending but I need to go to bed :joy: I finished the main plot before spring break ended so I’ll count it as a win anyway, especially considering how much longer some parts were than I expected.

999 things as always

Alright, I actually am getting some more answers! I understand why I thought 八代(やしろ) was in the first nonary game, it was one of her daughters :pensive: still finding out more about that but it makes way more sense.

This route is a rough one, I felt so mean :joy: just leaving 四葉(よつば) and 八代(やしろ) behind, man 淳平(じゅんぺい) that’s cold :sweat_smile: super valid of 八代(やしろ) to slap him when we reunited lmao

I ran into some slang I had to decipher:

チャカ and ヤク were fairly straightforward to figure out with yomichan, but マルB?? Definitely had to google that, and it turns out it’s another term for 暴力団(ぼうりょくだん). And of course as soon as I figured out, the other characters were like “what are you talking about, what’s マルB” :joy: It’s police jargon apparently, so that hits differently knowing about セブン :eyes:

I’m really gonna miss these characters once I finish huh, it’s been quite a ride :') Tomorrow perhaps!

Oooh yay, that’s awesome!! It’s honestly pretty approachable for what it is, especially having an ocr or something :laughing: I hope you have tons of fun with it whenever you do!

Oh nice, you should totally give it a go! I think it’s a really good balance of feeling like a more challenging piece of media just by nature of the complexity of the story, but a lot of the writing is relatively straightforward once you pick up on the vocabulary it tends to use. There’s also a lot of times where it’ll use the same word or concept or whatever multiple times but a little spaced out, so it’s kind of a mini SRS haha, very nice actually! And ofc most of the dialogue is voiced, so that helps out too. I’m glad to tempt :joy:

Ohhhh interesting, that makes a lot of sense! Yeah it doesn’t come across that way as much; it’s basically either in dialogue-only format or novel format, and you really don’t see anything through (あかね)'s eyes until pretty close to the end when it swaps back and forth a few times. They might’ve just had to change the last puzzle entirely, it wasn’t an upside-down thing but I still overthought it for way too long :joy: it broke my brain way more than reading it ever did haha.

Oh? :eyes: Very exciting, I look forward to it!

Thank you all for the congratulations :blush: it’s been a great time sharing this with you guys!

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Yeah so the thing is, one screen was used for third person narration and puzzle solving while the other was first person and dialogue, and the idea was that the entirety of the narration and puzzle work was always Akane. Here someone explains it a bit more. But yeah, neat stuff. All the same, the original didn’t have voice acting or the convenient flow chart thing (you had to outright replay the game which was kinda tedious) so you get a lot of improvements despite how the twist can’t quite work as elegantly.

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what OCR have you been using for it? I might have just given in and bought it hahaha. You should be getting some kind of advertising cut :smile:

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isnt it spring now? is there a new thread?

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It will come on April 1st. These usually go for two months starting from the first day until the last day of the second month, and then we rest for a month until the new thread even if the season already changed. Currently some people are continuing the Winter challenge while the rest of us are resting until the Spring one :slightly_smiling_face: .

Edit: Actually, giving it a bit more thought, I guess it would be positive to have the thread going a few days earlier like we did with this one so it gains exposure. Something like next Monday seems fine to me, to give potential participants a bit more time to prepare ^^ . @windupbird don’t feel forced to make it yourself, you’ve been doing it for a while and we are super grateful for it :heart: but at the same time I think I speak for everyone if I say that you don’t have to feel forced to make them yourself. It’s still perfectly fine if you do, but also perfectly fine if you don’t feel like doing the next one <3 . You’ve more than earned a rest should you need it! :slightly_smiling_face:

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ok! thanks. i think i’m going to start in the spring one.

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Main Post

Have read some :raccoon: over the weekend, it’s still so cute and wholesome. Actually reading multiple chapters per day, because some are just so short and I need more. I think the first chapter alone already has so many great panels, but I have only made a few photos this time. Still I like to share something.

volume 3

It’s not just cute. I also learn stuff from it. Like they mention the kanji for duck (鴨) in the first story. 手品 for a magic trick. Some more flower related stuff like 椿 for a certain type of camilla. I’ll make another post when I’m finished with this volume, stay tuned. :eyes:

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