📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

Japanese Language Reading
#354

Weekly check in for January 8th:

Read this week:

  1. 五兵衛と津波 (Taishukan Graded Reader - Level 3) 100%
  2. 海幸山幸 (Taishukan Graded Reader - Level 3) 100%
  3. よだかの星 (Taishukan Graded Reader - Level 3) 100%
  4. 梨とり兄弟 (Taishukan Graded Reader - Level 3) 100%
  5. 天狗の鼻 (Taishukan Graded Reader - Level 3) 100%

Thoughts:
This got off to a much stronger start than the previous Read Every Day Challenge, mainly because I’m keeping things simple rather than expecting myself to finish a chapter of a literary novel every night. I’m two books away from finishing the Taishukan Graded Reader volume 3 (which comes with 7 books around N3 level) and found that my reading speed has picked up a lot since I last tried to read these books a year or so ago. That’s exactly the kind of progress I want to see as these were taking me 2/3 sessions, now I’ve blasted through most in as little as 15/20 mins.

One day in the week I was extremely busy so didn’t get to pick up a graded reader and instead read the lyrics to an unfamiliar song I was listening to on the train. Must remember to do little things like this when I’m busy as it all counts as reading practice in the end.

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#355

I read the last two pages of an Animal Crossing manga in the maganize ぴこぷり, and six pages out of the magazine, ちゃお.

博物館-----はくぶつかん------museum

寄贈-----きぞう------donation

うわー (also うわっ、うわあ、うわ)-------yikes; oops; eep; wow; aargh

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#356

Of course I remember you! (that you didn’t change your avatar helps of course XD)
Thank you, it’s nice to see people I “know” here again.
Here’s to hoping I’ll stick around this time XD Third time’s the charm, right?

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#357

I’m not familiar with the manga but that wouldn’t surprise me! I’ve seen it a few times in anime/manga were a character with a plant (or animal etc.) name has characteristics of it.

It happened again :joy:

I had to look up a few of the English ones too, never heard of a few of them.

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#358

Sorry for the late update :disappointed_relieved: The last 3 days were really busy and I could only afford a little of my reading time. Settling into school and managing my Japanese is a little hard so I’m a bit lost :frowning:
I read my first NHK news article without using any other help so yay :blush:
I also finished reading Komi CANT communicate but I need to analyse it

Good luck everyone!
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#359

Home post

First day done, I read a couple pages of よつばと！ and posted my interpretation/translation attempt in my study log.

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#360

:house:

Day 8 — Read pages 137-139 of Kiki. I, uh, wasted a lot of my time at home today doing nothing useful, or I could have read more :pensive:

To motivate myself a little more, I’m going to set myself a goal of getting to page 200 in Kiki before February. Perhaps I’ll even be able to finish it by the end of this challenge if I succeed in that, but I’m not sure I’ll have enough time in February. I’ll see.

Mini goal for tomorrow: read five pages of Kiki!

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#361

Be careful about setting your goal too high (although 3 pages every day still seems doable). When I’m not satisfied with what I’m accomplishing, and try to accomplish something by setting a (higher) goal, it works really bad when I am not able to accomplish my goal. I don’t know if it is the same for you, but maybe it is something to think about.

If you are doing less useful things and want to read more, maybe it’s a good idea to have you book/kindle/reading device with you to the place that you usually don’t do useful things. I have my book with me on the couch all day, so when I want to read, I don’t have to stand up to search for it (yes I’m lazy xD). That and consistent morning routine really helps me read a lot more.

I don’t know if this is helpful for you though :sweat_smile:

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#362

Summary Post

January 8
君の名は , 9 pages.

Random words
  • 修繕 = しゅうぜん repair, mending.
  • 戦友 = せんゆう comrade in arms.
  • 感心 = かんしん admiration.
  • 無関心 = むかんしん indifference, apathy.
  • 仕業 = しわざ deed, act.
  • 塞ぐ = ふさぐ to block the way, to stand in the way, to stop up.
  • 涙ぐむ = なみだぐむ to have tears in one’s eyes.
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#363

Today’s reading was a blog post from 昼寝ネコの雑記帳 titled とってもお利口なSiriちゃんだ.

Some words I looked up

放電 - to lose battery charge
桁数 - number of digits/chars
稚内 - Wakkanai, a city in Hokkaido.
閲覧 - reading for information
容量 - volume/capacity
重宝 - handy/convenient
不可欠 - indespensible
視野に入れる - to keep an eye out for; to consider

This started out talking about how the author’s Fitbit battery kept losing charge too quickly, they got a replacement from Fitbit, same issue happened and Fitbit declined to send another replacement. From there it turned into fawning over the Apple ecosystem (after getting an Apple Watch to replace their Fitbit) which didn’t interest me much, but did give me some good vocab and examples of expressing opinions naturally, so really nothing to complain about I suppose.

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#364

This is awesome! I like the flow! lets try it

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#365

:tiger2: :books: Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220108 :books: :raccoon:

1 week (+1 day) of reading! :books:
I was too preoccupied with the healthy plants yesterday that I didn’t even notice it’s been a week already

Tanuki Scroll VIII: おいしいおかゆ :bowl_with_spoon: & キツネの恩返し :fox_face:

First is a world folk tale (a Grimm’s tale) about porridge! so much porridge

I think this one’s aimed at smaller kids than the usual stories on here since I found it rather easy. Which is a nice reminder that my reading has actually improved!

Small reflection that ended up not being so small

I enjoyed the Summer and Autumn challenges (a lot) but I’m enjoying this one even more as it feels my reading has improved quite a bit (big thanks to these reading challenges!! :grinning:). It doesn’t take me as long anymore, so the stories are making a lot more sense, since I don’t have to keep checking and rechecking the same words all the time, and I’m catching on to some of the puns and nuances a bit more.

I did keep up with my reading after the Autumn challenge but didn’t read anything during the Christmas-New Year period and it feels like my Japanese ability has magical incubated itself in the downtime (that or it’s the magic power of the sake I had at new year). Well, my reading has improved at least, I’m still bombing the reviews I have left on WaniKani but I think that’s more due to the words left are ones I never come across and just, you know, those words that for some reason your brain refuses to learn because reasons.

It actually feels like I’m making headway on this whole Japanese thing.

ANYWAY back to the reading!

The second story was another short one, a folktale from Yamagata Prefecture, about a fox who tricks people but ends up getting caught and sees the errors of its way (after getting threated to become fox soup).

☆ Learnings ☆

New Words

騙す「だます」ー To deceive, to trick. (I feel I should have seen this by now with all the fox stories I’ve read, but if I have I really don’t remember it)
村はずれ「むらはずれ」ー Outskirts of a village / the edge of town

Names
次助「じすけ」
善作「ぜんさく」

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#366

Sometimes you just need time for your brain to make the connections happen I think. I hit ‘walls’ every few months where I’m like “wow, my understanding of Japanese is going nowhere despite daily practice. What gives.” and then a bit (days/weeks) later I’ll suddenly feel like floodgates of understanding opened and I can suddenly grasp things that frustrated me before. Brains are weird. :brain:

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#367

And super stubborn, learning anything feels like a constant battle with the brain.

Please brain, just learn this little thing
:brain: NO

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#368

:house:
Having struggled and failed many(all of the) times to write reading summaries at the end of my day I decided to summarize on the following day. Before I do any further reading.

Yesterday’s Reading Summary

三星カラーズ・第５話・13 pgs
極主夫道・re-read chapter 9, because it’s awesome, and finished the three bonus mini-chapters to finish the manga・33 pgs
Daily Animal Crossing chores.
Followed by some Biohazard 4. Almost finished with my second play through on normal. ~100000 ptas until unlimited rocket launcher.
Briefly picked up Chainsaw Man. 4 pages of chapter 5. Establishment of a new character there has me a bit lost.

Clunky at best… I’ll figure out my format along the way.

Had a tea and senbei break while drafting this and read Chapter 5 of Yotsuba&!, 27 pages. Loved this chapter, I was laughing so hard I thought I might crack a rib :roll_eyes:

Today, my goal is to read this weeks book club assignment for それでも歩は寄せてくる（３）. Also, if I have time, setup a spreadsheet for Eastward and see where I stand with its dialogue.

Not in Chicago, Chicago-land, still in Cook county. This Kinokuniya is actually inside a Mitsuwa Marketplace in Arlington Heights so you can stock up on Japanese groceries, get a Ramen and a mochi treat, and then go Book shopping among other things.

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#369

Day 8!
My original plan was to finish 極主夫道 volume 1, but I had my covid booster shot yesterday, and also my flu shot at the same time, so I’m a bit under the weather today and I didn’t think I had enough brain power to manage 極主夫道 without the vocab sheet being filled out already, since its quite a tough read for me.
So what actually happened was I finished off the whole chapter of 三ツ星カラーズ, though I only needed to read the first half for the ABBC this week, and filled in the vocab sheet so its ready for other readers in advance of next week. :slight_smile:

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to face 極主夫道, because I’m really excited about finishing it!

(Home Post)

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#370

Today I read this week’s assignment of 笑わない数学者 (a bit more than 40 pages). I timed myself and consistently managed to read 10 pages per hour.
(Now I wish that pace would work for all books :sweat_smile:)
Tomorrow I will continue my journey through The Pillars of the Earth; let’s see how many vocab I can collect this time around…

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#371

January 8 :snowflake: Home Post

One more day down :+1: I read 錆喰(さびく)いビスコ again and oof it was a little rough today, it started out with some pretty dense descriptive background info but I made it through! That bit took some doing but afterward it was back to the adventures of ビスコ and ジャビ so that’s always fun. I’m starting to get a sense of some future angst with ジャビ being rusted and probably dying and ビスコ being real concerned about that, not the father figure mentor :’( so good to know that’ll probably wreck me eventually :joy:

I’m aiming to get through at least chapter one before school starts back up in a little over a week, which should be totally doable! It’s only like ten more pages, so I’ll probably start on the next volume of ラストゲーム before then too; I miss those idiots :sparkling_heart:

Cool words!

結晶(けっしょう) - crystallization, fruits (of labor)
舐(な)め尽(つ)くす - to engulf, consume, completely destroy
根負(こんま)け - being beaten by opponent’s persistence/outlasted, giving in
老(お)い先(さき) - remaining years (of one’s life)
蝕(むしば)む - to be worm-eaten, to eat into, destroy
くたばる - to kick the bucket, drop dead

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#372

Day 2, January 8th:

I’ve actually started reading ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石.

That was the first English book I’ve ever read and I always thought it would be nice if it was also the first “real” book I’ve read in Japanese (not counting short stories and such).

I know the story pretty well, so I hope that is going to help.

That said, it’s VERY slow going for me, but since I haven’t really gotten any Japanese practice in like 2 years and wasn’t on that high a level before, that doesn’t surprise me. Let’s see how this works out.

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#373

Summary post :bookmark:

January 8
・Like @NicoleRauch, I also read 笑わない数学者. (Is this where I should insert @Windupbird’s spiderman meme? :joy_cat: )

Progress: (22% → 31%)

Was travelling all day and night, am so tired.

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