📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

haha no worries, while checking I spotted some other free stuff that looked interesting so I still managed to add to my ridiculous to read list :stuck_out_tongue:

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:house:

Day 10: Read pages 143-148 of Kiki today. I feel like I get the most reading done in the late hours of the night/early hours of the morning :thinking:. Not good for my sleep schedule lol

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Today’s article was 快進撃が続いた町田啓太「最近よく『言霊ってあるんだな』と思うんです」 because my news aggregator recommended it to me last night and it looked easy. Also 言霊 (power of words) caught my eye since I recently finished watching the spooky TV series 言霊荘.

Some words I looked up

快進撃 - steady progression
大河ドラマ - type of long running NHK period drama
土方歳三 - Hijikata Toshizou, a historical figure, 1835-1869
流鏑馬 - horseback archery
並大抵 - ordinary; run of the mill
先駆け - leading the charge

Pretty easy breezy read, as expected for a 2-page promo interview. He seems like a nice guy, very positive.

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Home post
ok so late up date. I’ve still been reading most of the days but I missed one day when I kinda just felt a lil sad.

  • day 4 - よつばと!pages 54 -74 / added 2 cards
  • day 5 - よつばと!pages 74 - 88 / added ? cards (chapter 2 finished)
  • day 6 - NHK easy news one article / added 0 cards
  • day 7 - missed day
  • day 8 - よつばと! pages 89 - 96
  • day 9 - よつばと! pages 97 - 102

After day 5 I kind of forgot to keep track of how many cards I was adding to my anki deck (I know that every time I read よつばと that I definitely added cards). I’ll try to keep a closer count on that as I progress as it feels kind of important to me.

I can see I’ve slowed down a little but hopefully once I get in to a better routine it’ll be a little bit easier
to do more.

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I’ve just been catching up on the forums and realised we’re reading the same book! I didn’t put it into my home post because I consider this a separate challenge for myself - I’m trying to read the appropriate entry every day throughout the whole year, but then wanted to make sure I didn’t read just that so I’m still reading novels/manga on top for this challenge.

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:tiger2: :books: Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220110 :books: :raccoon:


Tanuki Scroll X: 雪女 :snowflake:

Read today’s Hyakumonogatari [百物語], about two hunters in the snowy mountains encountering yuki-onna.

Today is 成人の日!

Coming of age day, were you celebrate becoming an adult… and then wish you could go back. The age of becoming an adult has been 20 in Japan (says here it’s been that way for the past 140 years), but it was changed to 18 in 2018, and fully coming into effect this April.

Not exactly sure why it’s being changed, and it seems I’m not the only one confused from a quick search. Further reading (in English I’m sorry, searching for it in Japanese killed my brain) states that a few laws are being changed so you can legally do more at 18, festival holders are in chaos, and kimono rentals/sellers are rolling in the profits.

☆ Learnings ☆

New Words

鉄砲「てっぽう」ー Gun
(I looked this one up further as it felt like the meaning would be more specific than just “gun”. It can be used to mean guns in general but seems that it connotates more to the Tanegashima (matchlock) type of guns; the olde rifle-like ones you see in all the samurai stuff.)

吹雪「ふぶき」ー Snow storm; Blizzard
チロチロ ー Flicker (light) - in this case the flickering of a fire.
フッ ー Huff / Puff (the noise of something disappearing; here it’s used as the fire is extinguished by the wind)
「まま」ー Condition / State (I don’t think the kanji is used much but I added it anyway)
針仕事「はりしごと」ー Needlework / Sewing

Forgotten Readings

包むつつむ」(to wrap up; to bundle)
(Though in this story it’s used to mean “to cover”, as in ‘the mountain is completely covered in snow’, I didn’t know it could be used like this, so new meaning too!)
覆うおおう」(also means “to cover”)

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Summary Post

January 10
君の名は , 8 pages.

Random words
  • うぬぼれる = to be conceited.
  • 背負う = せおう to carry on one’s back.
  • 繋げる = つなげる to connect, to tie.
  • せせらぎ = the sound of water running.
  • 捻じる = ねじる to twist, to screw.
  • 顎 = あご chin (found it with no kanji but might as well learn it).
  • 木陰 = こかげ shade of a tree.
  • 水筒 = すいとう water bottle, canteen (I didn’t know this word in English).
  • 窪地 = くぼち a pit, a depression, a terrain that is lower than its surroundings.

The SRS is starting to take off. I haven’t had a proper SRS routine since I finished WK in March of last year. Currently doing around 20 new words a day, which was also my WaniKani pace, and it’s reaching about 70 words per day right now. I expect it to go up to around 150-200 a day like WK, which normally I have no problem with. But I hope I’m ready for it when it comes D: I can always just stop adding words if I feel overwhelmed.

I’ve also started listening to podcasts again, finally c: But I’m not using SRS at all for these. I do check some words that come up to see what they mean or how they’re written, but that’s about it. I think I’ll go with a much more relaxed route with listening, and not worry as much if I don’t understand something. But so far it’s been really good and enjoyable, and I generally don’t get overwhelmed since it’s not as straining as reading is sometimes. Also I just listen for as long as I feel like, some days it’s nothing, the other day was 2h :eyes: . But this is only because I found one that is absolutely perfect for my level and I understand the majority of it. It wouldn’t be possible otherwise.

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I can say it was free a little while back, like a month before the club started, because I snatched up volumes 1-3 then. Unfortunately I dunno enough about how Bookwalker chooses its free manga to know if that means there’s a good chance of it coming up again in a little while, or if it might be a very long time, or what :sweat_smile:

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:house:

Yesterday’s Reading Summary

  • Finished それでも歩は寄せてくる vol 4. Reread the last two chapters and the recommends. Got into the deep stuff trying to figure Shogi terminology. This was all in Japanese too though. I’ve really started to like this series a lot. The next two will be physical copies for me. I reread for deeper analysis more frequently with books that I own physically.
  • First pass on よつばと!chapter 6. Definitely sped through this one. I’ll come back to it. I just really wanted to get to:
  • Started Eastward on the Switch!
    • Retro style graphics are pleasing but it travels over to the text. I’ve had to infer some kanji already. Thanks to a decent amount of experience on the Super Famicom JRPGs it isn’t too slow. This was in the intro story, which had an old time feel to it, but when you open up to characters and dialogue for the first time I noticed a much cleaner, but still retro-looking font. The game menus are modern crisp fonts, so there’s that.
    • Got my spreadsheet format all setup and filled in for the intro so far.
    • I forgot 塩 again… I hand wrote that kanji everyday for more than a year when I was learning to make sourdough bread and keeping a baking journal in Japanese. Yet, here I am looking at 塩水, scratching my head. Luckily, its memory lapses like these that help really solidify items sometimes.
  • Animal Crossing chores.

Today’s Reading Goals

  • Eastward
    Yeah, just the one. I forget, these take a decent amount of time for me to really get into at first.
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We’ve been watching the anime of March Comes In Like a Lion which is shogi themed and I’ve bought the first couple of volumes to read in japanese. Toying with the idea of a buying a shogi game on the Switch to try to help me learn the vocabulary (and the game!) in context once I get stuck into reading them.

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Summary post

January 10 update:
Read 4 pages of 時をかける少女 today! After I switched to the “extensive” reading mode (I guess?), reading became just so much more fun that I’d probably keep reading for a few hours if I had them… At this pace, things are actually happening (maybe getting past the introductory scene also helped :grin:), and even though I’m certainly missing some details (hopefully, nothing super important), I finally feel like I’m actually reading a story rather than deciphering a code.

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Yup ofc I may be a slowwwwwwww reader but I’ll try ! Currently reading


I cant even read the kanji on the frontttt let’s see how this goes……

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Home Post

Today I spent three reading sessions reading a (longer than normal) chapter of ティアムーン帝国物語2, which was around 16 pages! It was pretty easy, which was nice after the last couple of chapters, and very fun.

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inside here to hide giant preview

富江 - Wikipedia

Found the wiki if you’d like a jumping off point for looking up character names and whatnot! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Thank you so much! I appreciate it!

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home post :house_with_garden:
hi friends!
late weekly update from here. Didn’t manage to get much reading done, not in terms of quantity, but at least I sticked to daily reading in one form or another! Honestly, I wasn’t home most of day this past week, so that makes it hard to stick to a routine… :no_mouth:

week 1 updates

1/4 : 日本の歴史366、15min
1/5: 暁のヨナ、chapter 58, ~1hour in order to look up words, and then again, read again with bookclub.
1/6: 日本の歴史366、10min
1/7: 日本の歴史366、5 min (only the daily page that night lol )
1/8: 暁のヨナ、chapter 59 with bookclub
日本の歴史366、38 min (guilt took over me and I mass read some backlog stories too haha)
1/9: 日本の歴史366、15min
1/10: y’all got me curious over all this colour talk and so I went to that site windupbirb has been linking, and somehow my eye has always a liking for the ‘your lucky this’, ‘your birthday that’, and ended up reading about 紅梅色! I love it!
also, 日本の歴史366, 10 min.

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Oh also guys there’s a website called bookwalker.jp that has Japanese books online such as 人間失格to 鬼滅の刃 some books are 1~10 pounds mostly! Hope I could help… butttt I forgot to mention that I’m not exactly sure how reliable it is as I haven’t heard anyone talk about it

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I was lazy or rather spend too much time reading books in english, so just 15 pages ofドメスティックな彼女 manga volume 1.

But once I have finished reading the whole Lovecraft book collection I will have more time for reading in japanese.

同志 どうし like-mindedness; (being of the) same mind; shared sentiment N1
軽薄 けいはくfrivolous
抜け出すぬけだす to sneak away
合コン ごうコン joint party female and male students, mixer

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Read and finished 大聖堂 (The Pillars of the Earth). Chapter 1.1. It was almost twice as much as last week, but I finished it in two days as well.
Seems like the general rule of „prologue is the hardest part“ strikes here as well :wink: I collected most of the unknown words but not all as I was reading the very last part in bed and I was too lazy to capture any words from that part. Altogether I‘m probably at about 600 new words from these two weeks so it’s not as if I‘ll be running out of words to study any time soon :joy_cat:

Now I have 4 days to make progress on 本陣 which sounds amazing. Would be great if I could catch up on the bookclub :blush:

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Absolutely love to hear it.


Summary post

Ace Attorney: Another hour and a half; the words I want to mine have been coming pretty quickly recently. Today I hit the 70 hour mark on a game that howlongtobeat lists between 17.5-22 hours, haha. When I think about it, first opening Zoo 1 on the Kindle gave me an average time people take to read the book, but then as you read it seems to adjust to how quickly you’re moving. Currently I have more time left on this chapter I’m partway through than the average person takes for the whole book. I’m sure people can relate, haha. Today was fun because right when it was time to quit, I reached the best witness, and for that, can only give a spoiler image:

Ace Attorney 1 Case 4 spoilers

That’s Phoenix calling the parrot to the stand. What a good series.

Favorite new word is undoubtedly 火花 (ひばな), meaning spark. It’s fire flower! Sometimes kanji is wonderfully evocative.

Zoo 1: Moved slowly through a few a more pages of this. In a spoiler free way, suffice to say, this seems really dark and I’m worried for people! I thought slowly deciphering Japanese would stifle the impact for a while, but honestly, it feels like the exact opposite is true for me. Having to take the book so slowly stops me from flying past things too quickly and really gives each individual bit time to sink in. I find that I’m more bothered by this than I think I would be an equivalent sort of disturbing story in English. I’m really getting invested in seeing where this one is going, but limited by my reading stamina still. There are quite a few unknown words to juggle.

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