📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

[NicoleRauch]

Yesterday and today I read this week’s assignment of 笑わない数学者 - it’s somehow really good to read another book of that series. Everything seems somehow familiar, even the vocab does not feel that unknown or hard. Plus, we are starting some interesting speculations in the reading thread, which is big fun!

I also started another project A Japanese friend of mine moved to Germany almost a year ago, and he is interested in European culture and churches and stuff. So I suggested that we could read one of my favorite books together - Ken Follet’s The Pillars of the Earth, which is the book from which I got most of my knowledge about churches and architecture. My idea was that we could read it together in Japanese, but he suggested he could read it in English instead. So now we are doing a Japanese-English study tandem I’m super curious how this goes, and I have no idea of his level of English.
Today I started to read the prologue (which is the part we agreed on for this week), and boi this is haaard! A ton of unknown variables that are waiting for me… and the English is not better, I just checked the page or so I read today. We will probably be slowly chugging away at this monster of a book for the next two years or so Although I hope that it will get a bit better once we move on from the prologue to the action part.

[CyberSlam]

Main Post

January 4th
Page 10 of the Naruto Manga has a lot of dialogue, so I just went through panel 1. I noticed “上” in the sentences. They were talking about the graduation test and one of the characters mentioned something about losing weight I believe.

Question about reading manga

I have a question, but let me know if I should make a separate thread for this instead. I’ve been noticing weird formatting in the speech bubbles in which there is a lot of blank space sometimes.

For example, there is a huge blank space between the が and 何 that this character says. Should I interpret this as a period, comma, or just a pause in their speech?

Extra Question: Does he start his second speech bubble with a small っ before using a big つ later in the sentence?

[anon33985902]

I’m going to be reading よつばと! later (of course), but I already have a success for the day to report! I just read my first full sentence by parsing out the grammar on my own! I had to look up the kanji/vocab still, but it felt so good to apply some super basic grammar stuff to a random sentence!

			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

Shenmue Tree (a Journal / Study Log!)

Natively.com - Shenmue
I have started よつばと！over the past few days, and it’s my first manga ever!. I’d also be super appreciative of any interested soul that wants to stop by and join the fun in my Journal / Study log. I always need guidance as I post what I’ve been attempting to read each day!

[Natsuha]

Today I read 80 pages and finished the first volume of Candy and Cigarettes 1 my first manga volume this year. It was full of words I didn’t know, thus not that easy to read.

Tomorrow I will probably read 本陣殺人事件 to not fall behind in the book club.

[Natsuha]

@CyberSlam

Does he start his second speech bubble with a small っ before using a big つ later in the sentence?

Yes you are right.

[Redglare]

Summary post

January 4
・かがみの孤城. I read the third week (it was shorter than the previous weeks), and a tiny bit of week four. I might have added too many new words to my srs today

Progress: (15% → 21%)

So, from looking at the last few days that I’ve been reading this book, I can say it’s not that hard in terms of vocab or grammar or too crazy sentences or anything like that. What seems to slow me down is… losing focus and going off to do something else (). Hopefully, I can improve that somehow.

---

@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…

Yay! More people reading the kagami book

I highly recommend using koohi to learn the words in the book, either by srsing them before you read or as you come across them. I do a mix of the two. The vocab list for the book can be found here.

If you’re not familiar with koohi, I would also recommend limiting the frequency to whatever suits you at your current level. In other words, if learning all the words is too much work, try learning the words that appear with high frequency first, for example at least 10 times in the book, and then 9 times, and so forth.

Just ask if you have any questions

[pocketcat]

@CyberSlam

I’ve been noticing weird formatting in the speech bubbles in which there is a lot of blank space sometimes.

For example, there is a huge blank space between the が and 何 that this character says. Should I interpret this as a period, comma, or just a pause in their speech?

Extra Question: Does he start his second speech bubble with a small っ before using a big つ later in the sentence?

To add to @Natsuha 's answer - the って is pronounced a bit differently than just て. It’s also a grammar construct, see Maggie Sensei article here.

Also I don’t know this channel aside from bumping into it while browsing youtube, but it seems read-aloud manga is a thing. Any video starting with 漫画 will be one of those I believe. I can’t vouch for…literally anything about that channel so it may all be terrible stories, no idea. BUT! Listening to how native speakers would read it could be helpful internalizing patterns of speech. I do this with books sometimes by listening to audiobooks while reading the text.

[Redglare]

@CyberSlam

For example, there is a huge blank space between the が and 何 that this character says. Should I interpret this as a period, comma, or just a pause in their speech?

I think the main reason the blank spaces are there, is because they want to divide the sentence in the most “natural” way, i.e. after a particle like those you mentioned. It’s not necessarily a pause or comma.

(Sometimes there’s not proper punctuation and a sentence can continue across bubbles, so it can get confusing at times too. It’s usually context dependent.)

[BadWeather]

Summary post

January 4 update:
Read chapter 6 of よつばと! 1. This one was especially heavy on slang/kana-only phrases, to the point that a couple of them I failed to dissect into intelligible chunks (I don’t really mind, though – the general idea seemed to be clear enough). One chapter left to go! After that I think I’ll take a short break from よつば and read something else for a change – probably 時をかける少女.

@Redglare, thanks for mentioning Koohi! Looks like it has vocab lists for quite a few books, and the idea of SRSing the most frequent words from specific books to ease reading them sounds very attractive.

[meagstudies]

Jan 4 update summary post

I haven’t done as much reading today (2 parts of Kona’s Big Adventure), but a little is still something, right? I got distracted by the sudden urge to start using Anki again for vocab I find when reading that’s not on WK. But of course then I was spending more time messing with Anki than actually reading! I’ll update this post if I end up reading any more

Edit: I ended up reading more 亜人, which I started back in December. It’s harder than anything else I’ve read but not so difficult I can’t get through it

[sycamore]

Summary post

I ended up not starting reading today until pretty late, so only 呪術廻戦 for me today (I say this because I should really sleep soon as I am back at work tomorrow…but knowing me I will probably read some 鏡の孤城 in bed and stay up too late as I have no self control). Anyway, I finished up volume 7 and read the first few chapters from volume 8 (I think 5 chapters in total). Two of the chapters were fairly dense with a fair bit of monologuing/exposition, but then the chapters following that have been mainly light hijinks and fun so it has all balanced out lol.

@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…

Woohoo! nice Hope you enjoy it, I’m very excited to keep reading! And @pocketcat - I downloaded the audiobook and it is indeed so good - almost more like an audiodrama or radio production with the sound effects etc. I’ve actually listened a little bit ahead of where I’ve read to so I need to catch up!(I read so much slower than the audiobook)

@Redglare

Yay! More people reading the kagami book

I highly recommend using koohi to learn the words in the book, either by srsing them before you read or as you come across them. I do a mix of the two. The vocab list for the book can be found here.

Nice! Good to know that it’s on koohi I very easily fall victim to ‘death by too many SRS’ so I probably won’t go for it right now but I might change my mind if vocab seems like an issue so good to know that it’s there as an option. Seems fairly okay so far though but I expect that may well change once the plot gets going. It’s actually the first novel I’ve read on my kindle since I managed to get a bunch of monolingual (J-J) dictionaries on it so I’ve been quite enjoying trying to use those as much as possible for lookups. My understanding of monolingual definitions is still certainly more fuzzy than just looking it up in english but so far having the option of a few different definitions to check + the context means it is fairly okay, and the novelty of having all the dictionaries there at a click is fun (I mean, if you are a person like me who apparently thinks such things are fun lol).

[saidahgilbert]

Wow! I can’t imagine reading The Pillars of the Earth in Japanese. I read it in English and I don’t see myself re-reading it. I dropped the series after the second book came out.

[basilsauce]

Summary post

I finished volume 2 of 七世物語 last night, and since it ended at a nice point, I thought I’d take a break to read something else before going on to volume 3. What I grabbed was 伊豆の踊り子, by Kawabata, sort of just to see if it was even doable, and also because it’s only 70 pages and I haven’t yet read a romantic story in Japanese. I managed 5 pages before becoming exhausted. The grammar is fine but the level of new vocabulary and names is much higher than I’m used to. However, I don’t think reading other books will make this any easier, so I think I will try to push through.

[anon33985902]

Just an update after my previous success in parsing out the grammar of a sentence for the first time today

Two more pages of よつばと! down! I’m now at page 16 and, although Yotsuba is nowhere to be found and Jumbo is out looking for her, her father is thinking about throwing some trash away and a new cute female has entered the scene on a bicycle! CLIFF HANGER!

[MaraVos]

I read today. But I’m so sleepy, I can’t say anything else.

[valkow]

Home post

Day 3:

日本語: I read some of 伯爵と妖精 29.
Read-aloud: We read a chapter of ハイキュー.

中国語

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

[CyberSlam]

I see, thank you. That helps a lot.
Thanks to @Natsuha and @pocketcat as well.

@pocketcat I’ll check those resources out too, they look pretty good.

[windupbird]

Summary post

Day 4: January 4th

365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 28 min
Today’s color: 墨 (すみ) - a warmer black, the color of ink

Today I learned the phrase “墨に五彩あり,” meaning there are 5 “colors” of ink (although it seems like maybe the book got them mixed up a bit, because the book said 濃 was the darkest but the internet seems to say it’s 焦?). Anyway, this is what they look like:

After googling that, I accidentally started google image searching 墨絵 and ummm I wasted all my reading time, but look what I found
Pretty mountains~

Cute animal 墨絵 from the internet

Images are linked to the artist pages when I could find them
Participants of the Fall Challenge might recognize this tiny friend

Kittiesssss

Penguinnnnn Why is it so small and soft This one is actually appears to be for sale, if you have 700,000 yen lying around and want a small fluffy penguin for your own

Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be learning a language

• 先史時代 (せんしじだい) - prehistoric era; prehistoric times; prehistory (what a delightfully logical word)
• 洞窟 (どうくつ) - cavern; cave; cave system; grotto
• 壁画 (へきが) - fresco; mural; wall painting
• 原始的 (げんしてき) - primitive; original
• 煤 (すす) - soot (this is like the cutest word to me)
• 濃淡 (のうたん) - light and shade; shade (of color) (can actually also refer to depth/complexity of flavor)
• ぼかす - to blur; to shade off; to gradate
• あわせ持つ (あわせもつ) - to have two things (at the same time) (e.g. good and bad points); to also have something (in addition to something else)

まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 11 min

Lucky it was a short one today Today I learned about 仕事始め (しごとはじめ), which refers to resuming work after the New Year’s vacation or the first time that one works in the year. Traditionally, it’s January 4th mine was yesterday though lol. Also learned the word 御用始め (ごようはじめ) - re-opening of offices in New Year (usu. January 4). I love that there are specific words for these things xD

What else did I read?
Nothing because I got distracted by 墨絵 Oops

@Zakarius

I love this stuff, it’s mad

Literally what is this story “not the guy, the arms drink it” I cannot
Thank you for the most amusing thing I’ve read today

[natarin]

January 4 Home Post

Whew, another day down! I’ve been keeping a decent pace with ラストゲーム; I read another chapter today, so that makes one more this volume plus whatever random stuff it ends off with. Still absolutely loving it; I learned from the little author’s notes today that when (mild spoilers ig?) 相馬(そうま) breaks character he actually uses 東北弁(とうほくべん) sooo that explains some of my struggles now I have two characters in it where if I don’t really get what they’re saying I’m just kinda like “whatever they’re probably saying something weird again” lmao. 九条(くじょう) trying so hard to put herself out there and make friends is so she’s such a sweetheart and deserves the world honestly, 頑張(がんば)って九条(くじょう)！

I read a little more 錆喰いビスコ too; I actually read about two more pages last night after I posted and then today I finished off the little introduction section? It’s still really difficult of course, so much wild vocabulary from all angles but it’s interesting to see such a variety! It’s all a learning experience anyway, so as long as I can muster up the energy to push through why not.

All in all it feels really good to be reading more Japanese, so here’s to keeping it up!

Fun words!!

交流(こうりゅう) - interaction, mingling; aka 九条(くじょう) doing her best!!
横暴(おうぼう) - oppression, tyranny; aka 藤本(ふじもと) lmao
素早(すばや)い - quick, agile
凄(すさ)まじい - terrific, tremendous, dreadful
亀裂(きれつ) - crack, crevice, fissure (ビスコ really did a number on that little shack)

[tiny_river_otter]

Summary Post

Day 4: Today I read a page of よつば＆！