📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

[liveunderwater]

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

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.

@kesher

I had no idea that store was in Chicago!

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.

[lucylavelle]

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.

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

(Home Post)

[NicoleRauch]

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 )
Tomorrow I will continue my journey through The Pillars of the Earth; let’s see how many vocab I can collect this time around…

[natarin]

January 8 Home Post

One more day down 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

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

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

[BlueberryPear]

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.

[Redglare]

Summary post

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

Progress: (22% → 31%)

Was travelling all day and night, am so tired.

[tiny_river_otter]

Summary Post

Day 8: Today I finished chapter 19 of よつば＆！I love the zoo chapter a lot, also it made me realize a lot of the animal related vocabulary I learned early on with Japanese stuck with me lol

[Natsuha]

Finally I changed my username on this forum I hope it won’t confuse people too much.

Today I read 10 pages from a manga about an orc who works as a manga editor but I didn’t like it so I deleted it. Furthermore I deleted some more manga I didn’t like from the bookwalker app.

Maybe I will have more time for reading tomorrow.

[MaraVos]

I have continued with my 1st grade reader, and got to a fun story about あまんじゃく! あまんじゃく is a kind of ghost which the writer claims is totally not scary even though it is a disembodied mouth that creeps in at night and possesses children who are sleeping with their mouths open? Then it makes them say the opposite of whatever they were going to say.

Then at night I usually read a little manga, although I’ve been very tired this week, and also can’t really decide between reading Yotuba and reading Flying Witch …

@lucylavelle

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to face 極主夫道

I partially filled out the vocab sheet, hope it helps!

[BadWeather]

Summary post

January 8 update:
Read a little over a page of 時をかける少女. This one was a bit easier than the one I read yesterday (or maybe I was just less tired), but overall it feels like I’m scaling a mountain, and I’m still at the very bottom… I’m thinking of switching up my approach: perhaps I should try reading it with minimal lookups, trying to get a basic understanding of what’s happening without much details. Finishing an actual book this way would still be an achievement of sorts, and I’ll probably get more out of it than if I plough through a few more pages in my current thorough manner, and then burn out and give up.

@Natsuha

Finally I changed my username on this forum I hope it won’t confuse people too much.

I was a bit confused, but you kept the profile pic, which helped a lot Lovely username! Have you considered how you’d spell it in Japanese? My best guess would be 夏花 or 夏葉, but Jisho suggests a dozen options.

[NihongoLearner19]

Today I read ティアムーン帝国物語２ chapter 29. It was a bit of a slog, as it was from one of the villain’s POVs again and there was lots of military and politics-related vocabulary, a change from the usual cake or guillotine-related vocab that ends up in the Mia-focused chapters. I think I looked up 100 words in 8 or so pages Even so, onwards I go! (But I sure am glad that I’ve read this before in English.)

[Daisoujou]

Summary post

Another day down! I haven’t read Zoo 1 yet today, but I might sneak in a little tonight. I didn’t mention it before, but I also have 3 manga book clubs I’m in (and increasingly becoming a distant silent member of, oops ). I go back and forth on wanting to continue those, because they are quite nice, but also wanting to focus more time on the stuff I’m choosing to read. There’s never enough time. So today I slotted in a manga instead, for now.

Ace Attorney: The final investigation phase of case 4. Today was mostly the character backstory dump where the full story starts coming together. Couldn’t help myself and kept going a bit, mining 25 words today. I’m still managing fine, so I keep pushing myself Among them, I rather like キュン, an onomatopeia for feeling strong emotions of the sort that make you get choked up or feel chest tightening. I encountered a few new grammar points today as well. Silly as it is, I always get amused to see something is “N2” or whatever – I don’t intend to take the test so it means nothing, but I have a small voice in my head that will celebrate every time I learn one of those, like encountering that one point makes me now an advanced learner or something silly like that, haha.

I’ve played the game before so I know I enjoy the story, but today was the day that they really hone in one big thing the whole series is about, which I rather like. It’s nothing too deep, but I like how earnest the series is. See, Ace Attorney is ultimately all about believing in and being at someone’s side when they have absolutely no one at all. It’s sweet, and nice when put in the context of a trial system where successful defense almost never happens. This about sums it up:

Plus, look at “きゅうきょくのこどく”. I love the sound of this language.

When Will Ayumu Make His Move: For the aforementioned manga, I finished up volume 3 of this, with 2 chapters and a bonus. It’s as cute and light as ever. I’ll spare this thread most of my thoughts (and try to find the chance to post them in the actual club thread…). That said, just from a reading perspective, it was pretty relaxed, and as this club was how I started, and back then I pretty much couldn’t successfully read one panel, that feels very good. This volume was loaded with more Shogi terms than usual (shogi words in a shogi manga, crazy right?), so I had to look some stuff up, but it’s increasingly easy to just see the bits I don’t know and either contextually get it or at least see what the rest of the line is doing. In the past, every unfamiliar word would’ve derailed everything and taxed my brain.

[valkow]

Home post

Day 7:

日本語: I read a fair amount of 伯爵と妖精 30.

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.

[tinywagashi]

I feel like I’ve been in a weird rut with Japanese for a while, so I reset my WK and restarted Duolingo. This challenge is just what I need to find some motivation—I feel like this challenge is the new approach and accountability I’ve been looking for! Thank you!

• Joined challenge: Jan 8, 2022
• Last updated: Jan 26, 2022

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28☐

What I'm reading

I’ll be reading articles and other things online:

• Graded readers and other books on Natively
• Articles from Easy NHK/TOKAI
• Posts on my Japanese Twitter feed, blogs I follow
• Signs in Google Maps Street View and GeoGuessr
• Articles I’m using for research our future move to Japan
• Translations of the documentation I produce at work
• Slowly working through よつばと! Dropped because I can’t read the font that Yotsuba speaks in and I was getting frustrated…

One day I want to be able to read:

• Naruto (manga)
• No. 6 (novels and manga)
• Novels by Shion Miura (I highly suggest the Great Passage if you haven’t read it yet!)
• しまなみ誰そ彼 (manga)
• High Speed! (novel)

But I’m definitely not there yet

My progress so far

January 8, 2022

• 10 news posts in my Japanese Twitter feed
• Several apartment rental listings, including research on new apartment rental sites with pet-friendly and LGBT-friendly search options
• Choya Yuzu soda can (lol)
• Information on the packaging of various items in my Bokksu
• I’ve just started reading よつばと！ After browsing through this thread, I decided to try it out. It’s so cute!! – Vol 1, Chapter 1, pages 1-7
  • もうすぐだぞー ----- We’re almost there…

January 9, 2022

• よつばと！ – Vol 1, Chapter 1, pages 8-9 (I wish there were more kanji; meaning would be clearer)
• Twitter – posts about the Sapporo bear attack last year, other posts about life in Hokkaido (current hyperfocus)
• Duolingo Stories – Completed the story “The Passport”
• Graded reader on Natively – カラスと水さし, Level 0.
• Not purely reading, but I’m having a duel for first place in my league on Duolingo, so I’m reading lots of new vocabulary today

January 10, 2022

• Graded reader on Natively – シュモーハウス, Level 1 — pages 1-7 {Recommended here by sosanlx}. Vocab and notes:
  • 原子爆弾 - げんしばくだん - Atomic Bomb
  • 広島 - Hiroshima
  • 長崎 - Nagasaki
  • どうしてでしょうか。- Could I ask the reason? / What is the reason? / Why do you think that is?
  • 落としました - おとしました - dropped
  • 死にました - しにました - died
  • 何もありません。- There is nothing. / Nothing was there.
  • 顔 - かお - face
  • になりました - had/became (had dark faces or faces became dark) [from ash and also grief]
  • ごめんなさいと言(い)いたい。- I want to say I’m sorry.
  • いります - need
  • 出しました - to give/put out (in context of sending money to someone’s effort)
  • や particle - and/or connecting particle ---- It is very similar to the grammar と (to), which also means “and”. The main difference being と only lists the actual items listed, and や implies the listed items are not complete.
  • など - etc./and such, can add at the end of a list
  • 重い - おもい - heavy
  • 置きました - おきました - put something somewhere (past tense)
  • から - after a phrase can mean “because of X, Y happened”
  • 大きく開けて - おおきくあけて - to open it wide (example: mouth - 口を大きく開けて)

January 11, 2022

• Graded reader on Natively – シュモーハウス, Level 1 — page 8 {Recommended here by sosanlx}. Vocab and notes:
  • 新しい家を見て言いました - Looked at the new house and said… - Question: Why is there no connection between the two verbs? [見て(ました) and 言いました] They’re side-by-side without a connection particle and it’s unclear it’s supposed to be “X and X”. To research later.
  • 住みたい - want to live

January 12, 2022

• Graded reader on Natively – シュモーハウス, Level 1 — page 9-13 {Recommended here by sosanlx}. Vocab and notes:
  • The sentence introducing dialog ends with a period, not a comma or other punctuation. Example: 私たちは言いました。「やった！」
  • [家 versus 住宅 (HiNative thread)] (What is the difference between "住宅" and "家" ? "住宅" vs "家" ? | HiNative). My understanding:
    • 家 = いえ - A house, such as the house you live in, a single home
    • 住宅 = じゅうたく - A residential area, a set of hinges, a housing complex, a place where multiple people’s homes are together
  • いつも - Always, everytime (in all my years of learning Japanese, I have NEVER been able to remember this word! It must be fossilized weirdly.
  • 戦争で - せんそうで - In the war/During the war
  • すると - Then…
  • それからもう - Then there was/There was already
  • また戦争 - another war
  • 井戸 - いど - a well
  • その時 - そのとき - at that time
  • 願っていました - ねがっていました - hoped for, such as “平和をねがていました” - hoped for peace
  • 亡くなりました - なくなりました - died

January 13, 2022

• Tweets from LGBT Japanese people and organizations about same-sex marriage and the new same-sex partnership system coming to Tokyo.
• Japanese subtitles for Asagi’s video “My Experience of the Japan Earthquake 2011” (Japanese voiceover and subtitles)
• Duolingo Stories – Completed the story “Doctor Eddy”
  • べつの - different - example: “べつの{noun}”
  • とても具合が悪そう - とてもぐあいがわるそう - looks very sick
  • むこうに - over there, send best to use when something is on the opposite side of something, for example, the opposite side of the school; HiNative thread
  • 病気の人 - びょうきのひと - sick person
  • うりば - section, like a section or aisle in a grocery store
  • 近く- ちかく - near

January 14, 2022

• “Obey Me!” anime end-credit group chat messages
• Tweets from LGBT Japanese people and organizations about same-sex marriage and marriage equality in Japan

January 15, 2022

• Tweets - NHK headlines about national college entrance exams
• Graded reader on Natively – チワワの花すけ~影とお散歩, Level 0. Vocab and notes:
  • 紹介 - しょうかい - Introduction
  • ご - your - before a noun like “parents” or “master” is possessive; ご主人
  • これから - from now, starting now
  • 2匹 - にひき (GoogTrans says “にびき”?) - 2 animals; 匹 is the counter for animals
  • 笑いました - わらいました - laughed
  • 門 - もん - gate
  • シマウマ - しまうま - zebra
  • 葉っぱ - はつぱ - leaves
  • 服 - ふく - clothes
  • マリアの服は、葉っぱの服ね - マリアのふくは、はっぱのふくね - This sentence structure is interesting. There’s no indicator at the end like “-imasu”; I assume this is a casual structure where you leave off bits because the meaning is clear - “Maria’s clothes are leaf clothes” literally or “Maria is wearing clothes with leaves on them.”
  • 建物 - たてもの - building; often see this replaced by ビル instead
  • 寺 - てら - temple (IIRC, this will show up in WK soon)
  • いた - “is there” or similar - At the end of a sentence, seems to take the place of more formal wording, followed format of “{noun}いた” meaning “{noun} is here/there”.
  • 夕方 - ゆうがた - evening
• “No. 6” manga (Vol 1, Chap 1, Page 1) on Bookwalker (made an account!) — the next pages get considerably harder and Natively rates it at Level 29, so not quite there yet. Vocab and notes from first page:
  • 寒い - さむい - cold; I know the word, but didn’t recognize the kanji in the wild
  • 眠い - ねむい - sleepy; I know the word, but didn’t recognize the kanji in the wild
  • 痛い - いたい - pain/it hurts; I know the word, but didn’t recognize the kanji in the wild
  • 動けない - うごけない - can’t move
  • それでも - nevertheless, even so
  • 進む - すすむ - move, move onward
  • しかない - there is only, the only option is to, there is no choice other than to - example: “{verb}しかない” meaning “no choice but to {verb}”

January 16, 2022

• Graded reader on Natively – どっち？, Level 0. Vocab and notes:
  • どっちが いい？- Which one do you like/Which one is good?
  • こっちのほうがいい。- This is better. / This one is better.
  • こっちのほうが{adjective}。- This is {adjective}. / This one is {adjective}.
  • 骨 - ほね - bone
  • どっちも {adjective}. - They are both {adjective}.

January 17, 2022

• Graded reader on Natively – あんこちゃん, pages 1-7. Vocab and notes:
  • お菓子 - おかし - snack

January 19, 2022

Graded reader on Natively – あんこちゃん, pages 8-14. Vocab and notes:

• 冷たい。- つめたい - cold (applies to objects/food?)
• 栗蒸し - くりむし - steamed chestnuts
• 羊羹 - ようかん - youkan
• 栗がいっぱい。- くりがいっぱい - A lot of chestnuts.

January 21, 2022

• Duolingo Stories – Completed the story “A New Coat”
  • 手伝ってくれませんか? - てつだってくれませんか？- Can you help me?
  • {noun}どうですか？- How about a {noun}?
  • それか - or; example: それか、{noun}はどうですか？
  • ぴったりですよ！- It’s perfect!

January 26, 2022

Lost some days because of RL stress/sick. So I picked a really cute Level 0 (L4) book to ease back in.

• Graded reader on Natively – いっぱい, pages 1-18.

[fallynleaf]

Summary post

This is technically from yesterday, but I didn’t have time to post about them, so here’s a post today. A couple months ago, I ordered a few picture books from Japan, and they finally arrived!

I read all four of them, albeit extensively and not intensively, haha! I didn’t look up any unknown vocabulary or grammar. I figure I’ll get more enjoyment out of them if I reread them ever so often and gradually understand more.

I realized after ordering these that I bought a lot of books with a blue/water theme. Maybe reading 大海原と大海原 was subconsciously affecting me?

あおのじかん

I really enjoyed these pages. How many of these colors can you read? I think I could figure out 12 (and could partially read many of the others). My favorite was たいせつなボタンのいろ, haha.

This book has no kanji at all, which made it the hardest! The art is absolutely gorgeous, though, and it's a delight just simply flipping through it.

終わらない夜

This one was a lot easier. Lots of kanji, all with furigana, and relatively simple grammar. I bought this one because the surreal art appealed to me.

海とそらがであうばしょ

This book had very little kanji (the only three I remember seeing are 海, 魚, and 日), but I had an easier time with it than あおのじかん because I knew more of the vocabulary, and it also used a lot of the ます form, which I have more practice reading. The art is gorgeous, and the story is cute.

新宿御苑の木語り

This is the only one of the four books that was actually made for adults! Ironically, it was also the easiest. There's no furigana, but I knew most of the kanji, and there's also English text accompanying the Japanese! It's also very light on grammar. I bought this book because it was written and illustrated by the hairdresser for many wrestlers from Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling and DDT Pro-Wrestling, and Chris Brookes, one of the wrestlers, actually proofread the English for her. The author made this book after three months of rehab after she had a stroke that took away her ability to use her right hand or right leg. Now she likes to take photographs of the trees at Shinjuku Gyoen and paint them.

[sansarret]

I’m done with Chapter 7 of 極主夫道, took 4 days about 30 minute each day.

Home post

[saidahgilbert]

Oh, that seems cool but I would hate doing something like that. Too much interruption while reading.

[anon33985902]

Today I read a bunch of example sentences in my verb handbook, so that’s my reading for the day as I wait for my よつばと! reading pal to catch up to me

[eoame]

Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it! Since I’m currently on holiday, I have a lot of time — it’s just lack of motivation and a bit of a mental block towards reading in Japanese that’s holding me back . So it’s definitely doable at the moment, I just need to push myself a bit. But that’s some good advice I’ll keep in mind for the future I do tend to set high standards for myself.

@vonnutje

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.

Oh man, my phone (I use Bookwalker on it) is almost always near me, and my physical Kiki copy isn’t far away, but I get horribly distracted and sidetracked before finally beginning to read but for sure a consistent morning routine is a great way to set habits. I need to work on that!

[Beyond_Sleepy]

@BlueberryPear

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

I feel the same way, although The Half-Blood Prince was the first HP volume I read in English (just couldn’t wait for the translation) and then I immediately reread the rest of the series in English as well before the last book came out:)

Currently I’m just reading よつばと！ tho🙃

Good luck!