📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

[MaraVos]

Today I read one (4 page) story from 10分で読めるお話１年生. It wasn’t exactly easy, but it wasn’t exactly hard, either. I used to read 10分で読める books every morning over coffee, and it was such a struggle. Somehow I feel like maybe the struggle made the experience better. Or maybe it was the coffee. I want to go back to that, but at the moment that’s the time I use to do WK. So then when do I do WK?

Basically I’m having big internal struggles over how to use my Japanese study time, which unfortunately is not infinite. And I’m glad I finally put it to words, because now I have an idea, and I’m going to give it a try.

Anyway, besides that I also finished よつば volume 5, which has been a really fun one!

@Shinpachi

(Amazon Japan is a great place to order from as well, if you haven’t already. Those are delivered by Fedex here, not sure about the States).

This order actually was from Amazon Japan, so that’s partly why I was so surprised. I guess I’ll call DHL in the morning if the status still hasn’t changed and see if they can give me any additional information.

@sycamore

And then I kind of ignored most of that today and picked 鏡の孤城 somewhat on a whim.

I also feel like doing this! I realized that the reading level isn’t quite as unapproachable as I originally thought it would be, and then after my manga got stopped in customs I went and impulse bought it…

[pocketcat]

@MaraVos

@sycamore

And then I kind of ignored most of that today and picked 鏡の孤城 somewhat on a whim.

I also feel like doing this! I realized that the reading level isn’t quite as unapproachable as I originally thought it would be, and then after my manga got stopped in customs I went and impulse bought it…

I loved that book. Highly recommend - you can also check the ongoing book club threads and post questions in them if you don’t understand something. AND the audiobook is so incredibly well done. Listening while reading along definitely helps!

[MaraVos]

oh man oh man oh man …

[windupbird]

Summary post

Day 3: January 3rd

365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 30 min
Today’s color: 常磐色 (ときわいろ) - evergreen

I love the way that this color is described - the color that never changes So comforting somehow…

One thing I really liked learning from this today was the suffix み, which is basically like “-ness” (in this case it was “brownness” but can also be for other sensory/subjective adjectives and for things like “deepness/depth”).

Some more words I liked learning

• 不滅 (ふめつ) - immortal; undying; indestructible (what an intense word lol, I love it)
• 不変 (ふへん) - eternal; everlasting; unchangeable; immutable; immovable; constant; permanent; indestructible​
• ものともせず - in the face of; in defiance of​
• 常緑樹 (じょうりょくじゅ) - evergreen tree
• 常磐木 (ときわぎ) - evergreen tree (from a brief google investigation, I think this is an older/more traditional way of referring to it maybe?)

まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 29 min

Today I learned about a bunch of traditional New Year’s activities/games, such as:

• 羽根つき (はねつき) - similar to badminton idk why this is an emoji but I’m gonna use it
• 凧あげ (たこあげ) - kite flying I’m not sure how I went so long without seeing the kanji for kite? Is this not in WK? Anyway, I like it, I’m a fan, it looks like a kite on the wind
• 双六 (すごろく) - can refer to two different types of board game but I’m guessing they meant the one that’s supposedly similar to snakes and ladders (絵双六) since (per Wikipedia) that’s the one mostly played today
• 福笑い (ふくわらい) - game in which blindfolded players place cutouts of facial features onto the outline of a face (because the western equivalent is Pin the Tail on the Donkey, my mind now thinks of this as “Pin the Mouth on the Face” and that’s going to be its name in my mind forever now)
• 坊主めくり (ぼうずめくり) - a game played with hyakunin isshu decks I tried to look up the rules - basically what happens is you flip cards over and depending on the picture on the card you drew, you either get more cards or lose cards. The winner is the one with the most cards at the end.

Also, I think I learned a grammar? ならでは - distinctive of; characteristic of; uniquely applying to; special to

What else did I read?
Nothinggg, I went back to work today so I’m a bit tired

Remember when I said I was going to make my update posts less extensive? Yeah me neither, apparently

[MaraVos]

Thank you for sharing! I loved reading about the color evergreen. And now I know at least three words on the spectrum of immortal/eternal.

不死身 ふじみ
不滅 ふめつ
不変 ふへん

If you say them one after another they kind of sound like a magic spell …

Edit to add: I got very little sleep last night.

[Neba]

4th January
Continue reading 嫌われる勇気

Page: 31-34
Time: 15 mins

Book content (Warning: Spoiler)

Today’s topic is about how people “fabricate” the feeling of anger.

In order to prove that people’s action is controlled by the cause and not by the purpose, the young man told a story about when he was in a cafe and a waiter spilled coffee on his clothes. He got so angry that he started shouting. He argued that this behaviour (shouting) is caused by the cause (getting angry at the waiter spilling coffee on his clothes).

The philosopher argued that his behaviour is driven by a purpose. The purpose is to shout at the waiter. Then, he “fabricated” his anger as a mean to achieve this purpose.

“Nonsense!”, the young man said. Anger is an emotion that appears in a blink. He doesn’t have the time to stop and think that he wants to get angry so that he can shout to the waiter.

The philosopher then gave an example of a mother who is fighting with her daughter. The mother was very angry, but then there’s a phone call from the school teacher and the mother spent 5 minutes talking to the teacher in a polite tone. After the phone call, she went back to shouting at her daughter. From this example, he argued that even though anger comes in a blink, it is still a tool to achieve your purpose. The young man can calmly talk it out with the waiter and get a compensation or something, but he decided to use the “anger” as a tool to achieve his purpose (shouting at the waiter).

---

I don’t really agree with the term “fabricating anger” because the feeling of anger comes naturally and you can’t really help getting angry. The question is then, what do you do with that feeling? We naturally want the feeling to subside, and the easiest way to relieve that anger is by shouting at people, breaking things around, or doing something violent. Or we can try to find another way, e.g. by meditating, taking a deep breath, etc.

I somewhat agree that you can’t really say “I can’t help but to shout at him because I was driven by my anger”. I agree that he set “shouting” as his purpose and used “anger” as the tool to achieve it.

Notable word for today’s reading is:
不可抗力 irresistible force; inevitability; act of God

哲人 つまり、あなたは怒りの感情に突き動かされて、怒鳴ってしまった。普段は温厚な性格なのに、怒りの感情に抗することができなかった。自分にはどうすることもできない不可抗力だった。そうおっしゃるわけですね？

I remember this 不可抗力 appeared when watching a Vtuber clip last time. She was like, “Oh no, I can’t make anymore excuse! This is an inevitable event!”

[basilsauce]

I’m de-lurking to join the winter reading challenge. Hi everyone!

What I'm reading

七世物語 (finished vol 2)
怪盗探偵山猫 (finished)
窓際のトットちゃん
わたしの幸せな結婚 vol. 2 (Manga)
伊豆の踊り子
旅猫リポート

On my shelf

七世物語 vol 3
ビブリア古書堂の事件手帖 (vol 1)
鹿の王 (vol 1)
少年H (not sure if I’m ready for this)

I’m also hoping to get further through my So-Matome N1 grammar book.

			Jan
月	火	水	木	金	土	日
					01	02
03	04	05	06	07	08	09
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

			Feb
月	火	水	木	金	土	日
	01	02	03	04	05	06
07	08	09	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28

[pocketcat]

@basilsauce

I’m de-lurking

too late, totally snoop your reviews on Natively already

[tiny_river_otter]

Summary Post

Day 3: Today I read aloud chapter 17 of ハイキュー!! and nothing else because I was very sleepy

[vonnutje]

Day 4: January 4

• 君の名は。page 20-21
• Queen’s Quality page 135-195 (end of volume 1)

In the last chapter Queen’s Quality became really dark… The MC’s other personality was using her power to command someone to not close their eyes again as torture and later tried to make her stab out her own eyes ^^" I love how this series can be so dark and at other times really funny and lighthearted! It’s also full of kanji and words I have not encountered before so that was really nice! I won’t be able to read the other 4 volumes before the end of tomorrow so I will continue it later on when some volumes become free for limited time again on Bookwalker.

Now I have to make a hard choice: do I read more of Kimi no na wa or start reading nana since the first three volumes are free on Bookwalker until January 15…

@MaraVos

I want to go back to that, but at the moment that’s the time I use to do WK. So then when do I do WK?

I do my WK reviews in the morning, now followed by 2 pages of reading. If I want to read more, I do it later on the day. I don’t know if that is an option for you?

[basilsauce]

I’ve been reading your reviews too I think we might have similar tastes. I’ll probably raid your book list when I get a bit better.

[foxabell]

Home Post!

How is everyone doing with their reading?

<-time spent on また、同じ夢を見てた (again!)

I haven’t been touching my SPYXFAMILY, which is something I really regret but I think I may have to put it on hold (again ) due to private reasons :,(

Also, I find that it’s a teensy bit too hard for me

Good luck everyone!

I may post a motivational picture everyday so I hope you don’t mind

[TheGreywolfMunch]

Day 4 — Read pages 29-32 of 銭天堂. It took me about 15 minutes, and I finished the first story. (For those not familiar with the book, it’s comprised of a few stories, each with its own adventure brought on by a sweet from the mysterious candy shop.)

I was supposed to start reading Kiki today, but I ran out of time, so I just read 銭天堂 instead lol. Oh well, I can read Kiki tomorrow.

Also, for some reason, I was expecting 銭天堂 to be slightly creepy with negative endings (for the protagonist) but it’s quite lighthearted, actually.

[pocketcat]

Day 4 complete! Today’s article was pretty short, 「こんな友達とは縁を切る」結婚式をドタキャンした友人から連絡が…！？→「コロナ禍の結婚式で友人と絶縁した話」作者インタビュー. Very modern topic but probably not something I would normally choose for myself. Google News has been chucking lots of Japanese articles at me again now that I’m reading them again. It’s…hit or miss.

Edit: I just realized there’s an awful lot of kanji in that title and we have a scattering of levels in this thread. Basically it’s an interview with the creator of a comic made on the topic of Corona-era weddings and the social troubles it brings.

Some words I looked up

寄り添う - to get close; to snuggle up (was used in a metaphorical sense)
新郎新婦 - bride and groom
執筆 - writing as a profession

[fustian_garb]

Well yesterday I had a big acheivement as I finished the Crayon Shinchan game on the Switch I said I would count as reading time! (so no more gaming-as-reading for me because I really don’t think this Rilakkuma game I’m playing counts…). It’s the first game I’ve played all the way through in japanese and I had a fairly good idea of what was going on…some of the time? so I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself. It seems designed to be played multiple times, because at the end it said that if you play again you keep the in-game currency you’ve acquired and any of the challenges you completed won’t need to be completed again, so presumably they’re expecting that you’ll focus on different aspects next time. Excited to go back to it in the summer when I have a few more months of grammar and vocabulary under my belt and give it another go.

@windupbird

常磐木 (ときわぎ) - evergreen tree (from a brief google investigation, I think this is an older/more traditional way of referring to it maybe?)

Oh I had this in my reading today! It was a piece about traditional kimono dyes so that would make sense.

[lucylavelle]

Day 4 complete
I started Volume 2 of レンタルお兄ちゃん. I was planning to read the first half of the first chapter since they are quite long chapters, but I was enjoying it too much to stop so I read the whole chapter!

Thats probably a good thing though, since its my birthday tomorrow so I’ll probably only be able to squeeze in a little bit of reading time because I’m going to be out all day.
I’m going to a cat cafe for lunch as a birthday treat

(Home Post)

[fustian_garb]

Happy birthday for tomorrow and cuddle all the kitties!

[Zakarius]

Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220104

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Tanuki Scroll IV: 鬼の腕

Read today’s Hyakumonogatari [百物語] about a stingy rich guy making people work for little rice, employing a guy who has super massive biceps that drink sake (not the guy, the arms drink it) to replace them, and then the rich guy cutting of these arms to make them work for him (and giving these severed arms sake).

Moral of the story: don’t be stingy. And definitely don’t cut off people’s sake-drinking-demon-arms and make them work for weak, diluted sake, they will get their revenge, they need their sake.
《酒を飲ませろ！ 酒を飲ませろ！》
I love this stuff, it’s mad

It’s also 石の日! Stone day! Because い(1) and し(4) makes 石.
Yes, it’s return of the day-puns
Stones are supposed to have mystical powers so if you make a wish while holding a stone today it may come true!
(Or better, visit a shrine and touch a stone statue like a 狛犬 [こまいぬ] - legendary lion-dogs)

☆ Learnings ☆

New Words (there are a lot today)

なにわ 「難波」 ー An old name for the Osaka region
けち／ケチ ー Stingyness
小僧 「こぞう」 ー Youngster; boy. Brat.
ぞうり 「草履」 ー Traditional Japanese sandals. (I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this before, but I don’t feel I recognise it)
名案 「めいあん」 ー Good idea.
大番頭 「おおばんとう」 ー Head clerk
一人一人 「ひとりひとり」 ー One by one (for people); each (person).
うっかり ー Carelessly; Thoughtlessly
くの字 「くのじ」 ー The hiragana く, but here it’s used to be “to bend over (while sitting) in a く shape”, so, to be bent double.
おかず 「お菜」 ー A side dish (to accompany rice for example)
塩鮭 「しおざけ」 ー Salted salmon
ニッコリ ー Smiling broadly
力こぶ 「ちからこぶ」 ー Big biceps
チョロチョロ ー Trickling (of water)

Forgotten Meanings

なにしろ (at any rate; anyway)

Forgotten Readings

大工 「だいく」(Carpenter)

[rikaiwisdom]

Summary Post

January 4
君の名は , 10 pages.

Random words

• 神主 = かんぬし (chief) Shinto priest.
• 電動 = でんどう electric (as in a vehicle).
• 抗議 = こうぎ protest, objection.
• 盛大 = せいだい magnificent, prosperous.
• 巫女 = みこ Miko, shrine maiden. (I really like this word and its kanji.)
• ひたすら = doing nothing but, earnest, determined (works as an adverb and adjective).
• 老若男女 = ろうにゃくなんにょ men and women of all ages (I also love this word).
• 唾液 = だえき saliva.
• 放置 = ほうち leave as is, leave alone (the word is a noun and する動詞).

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@fustian_garb

I had this when I started reading the manga of March Comes in Like a Lion…it’s one of the reasons why I prefer to read things that I don’t already know the story of before I start.

Indeed . At the same time, so far it’s proven to be very nice to bind the memory with the Japanese descriptions of the scenes. Of course I know what is happening, but as long as I still put the effort into reading it all and looking up what I don’t understand, it’s good to be exposed to how it’s described in Japanese, regardless. I’m honestly enjoying it a lot .

@BadWeather

On the other hand, my experience with having furigana for every kanji is ambivalent: my eyes tend to automatically look at it even before seeing the kanji because it’s much easier, and then I only look at kanji to confirm or disambiguate the meaning. I’m a bit worried that this hinders my progress with internalizing kanji vocab by not getting me to apply the effort to actually recognize the kanji/words first. I do try to consciously stop myself from doing that, but that doesn’t always work, and it takes away some focus from what I’m reading.

This is literally me. I can’t help it; if there’s furigana, I’ll read it, no matter what. My eyes just drift there. Many people love furigana and find it really beneficial, but in my case I prefer to completely get rid of it because it didn’t feel super useful to me (other than your usual occasional furigana for specific words). Of course this might very well be because I already had a decent grasp on most kanji you encounter when reading, and knowing most of the readings makes the lookups much quicker and less tedious. But I also had concerns of not internalising kanji so I preferred the no-furigana route. I would say experiment! It depends on how frequently you look up things; if you do constant lookups, it can get extremely boring very quick, and in this case I’d rather have furigana than quit whatever I’m reading.

I’m also a fan of doing handwritten lookups when I encounter kanji I don’t recognise. Sometimes it’s kanji I’ve forgotten, and other times kanji I don’t know. It’s fun, and the Japanese IME on PC has a really accurate handwriting function.

Having said that it’s worth noting that I don’t know a ton of vocabulary, I just know a lot of the kanji readings so it’s often easy to look up things. But I still look up so many things, I have so much vocabulary to learn.

[CyberSlam]

Thanks for the write-up, I definitely wouldn’t have gotten that from the title. I can see “Corona”, “Interview” and I recognize some of the kanji, but that’s it. I’m surprised by the varied levels in this thread as well. It’s very encouraging.