Today’s article was 玉木宏、俳優業の心構えとは?「ときには音楽家に」「難しいことばかり」 which is another interview with an actor. This guy I recognize from 桜の塔 where he had an excellent performance.
たたずむ - to stand around
着こなす - to dress fashionably
称賛 - praise
合成 - composition
費やす - to use time/money/effort
体得 - understanding/learning via experience
Maybe I’m just extra tired this morning but I feel like I just read a whole lot of nothing. 
Oooooh those all sound really interesting 
I’ll definitely have to check them all out more! Right now I’m trying to use up some audible credits I have lying around and it looks like the only one they have is 謎解きはディナーのあとで, so we’ll see how that goes, but I may have to reevaluate my audiobook shopping avenues so I can check out some of the others in the future 
Thank you so much for the suggestions, I really appreciate it! 
Have just finished reading through the little sidechapter and therefore finishing Spy x Family vol 5. The last two chapters in the main story were a bit more difficult to read than the others. I think that’s only fair as they were mission based, new characters and took place in a hospital. Was very tired on wednesday and it got late as well, so that didn’t go as smooth as I wanted. It also took a while for me to extract Fiona’s codename. とばり is how it’s pronounced and it is written as 夜帷. Neither of these immediately made sense to me, until I looked up how they translated it as Nightfall. That was kinda the missing step I needed to piece it together. Then using later I found the sentence 夜のとばりが下りつつある and the circle was complete… until I pieced together this post and had to retrace my steps to find it and also found an idiomatic expression related to it. Either way what should have been obvious, because I have read this manga in English before and all the codenames have a similar theme, wasn’t really that obvious in the moment and that led to this rabbit hole. 
Anyway, my general impression of volume 5 is that is pretty good. It has a bit of everything you’d expect after a big event in volume 4 and also hinting at a new one. I feel I gotten closer to understanding the series and that the cold war setting is part of its difficulty. The sidechapter (see pics below) was very cute and that’s kinda where I leave it at.
I’ll be taking a pause from Spy x Family for a bit to read something different, starting with Tatsuki Fujimoto’s one-shot Look Back. I have read it before through mangaplus and it’s really good so I was looking forward to the volume release, which I almost immediately bought. Was not a big fan of Chainsawman, but Look Back was the work that made me appreciate Fujimoto as the real deal. It looked a bit daunting to me when I flipped through it last year. Now that I feel like I made a lot of progress, it seems like the perfect time to go back to it and actually read it for the challenge. I’m not entirely sure how long it will take me.
Ah, Audible. Are you in America? Their selection varies by country so far as I know, but these were on my Wishlist before I cancelled my subscription.
魔法少女育成計画 - Young adult; fantasy
有頂天家族 - fantasy; anthromorphism
下流の宴 - parents bothered by their son’s low tastes in ladies
夏へのトンネル、さよならの出口 - I bought this on a different platform so I have listened to it. It’s a light novel about time travel basically.
Also a bunch of super long crime novels (I’m predictable) and some random stuff friends’ recommended me.
Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220114 
Tanuki Scroll XIV: 鹿児島県 
Today I read about Kagoshima Prefecture!
Rodan explained about the really cool prefecture symbol (thanks again @rodan !) :
The prefecture tree is the クス, or くすのき [樟] which is a camphor tree:
)
It’s often been planted in shrines and temples since ancient times, and because of its hardy wood and beautiful grain its often been used to build the temples and shrines too.
The prefecture flower is the ミヤマキリシマ [深山霧島] - a type of Azalea:
The prefecture bird is the ルリカケス [瑠璃懸巣] which is a Lidth’s Jay:
It is endemic to Japan and can only be found on the Amami islands. It was critically endangered due to hunting and habitat destruction but has been showing signs of improvement due to re-forestation and conservation efforts. It is now protected by Japanese law.
100% cute bird
This post got kinda big
☆ Learnings ☆
世界自然遺産「せかいしぜんいさん」ー World Heritage Site
珊瑚礁「さんごしょう」ー Coral Reef. More commonly written as: サンゴ礁.
亜熱帯「あねったい」ー Subtropics / Subtropical
集積回路「しゅうせきかいろ」ー Integrated-Circuit.
先端技術「せんたんぎじゅつ」ー High-Technology
融和「ゆうわ」ー Harmony; Reconciliation
光沢「こうたく」ー Glossy; Brilliance; Lustre
雄大「ゆうだい」ー Grand; Magnificent; Majestic
楕円形「だえんけい」ー Elliptical Shape
欄間「らんま」ー Transom (Architecture - horizontal ornate wooden pieces above a door that hold a window - usually ornate)
木魚「もくぎょ」ー A wooden fish gong or fish-shaped woodblock (found in temples)
樟脳油「しょうのうゆ」ー Camphor Oil
消臭剤「しょうしゅうざい」ー Deodorant
固有種「こゆうしゅ」ーEndemic (species)
Places
薩南諸島「さつなんしょとう」ー Satsunan Islands
奄美諸島「あまみぐんとう」ー Amami Islands
I’ve no idea of the context of this, but this is so amusing.
January 14
君の名は , 6 pages.
Today is one of those days when you can’t understand much of what’s going on. Perhaps also because lately I’m with less energy than usual but god, do these days feel so disappointing. I’ve moved on and decided not to give it much thought, it’s unreasonable to think I’ll understand everything of what I read, and nothing could be further from the truth. But I still hold the general idea of what’s going on so I hope that’s enough for now.
Day 7: I read three more pages of 
よつばと！ I documented my attempts at understanding them in my study log.
I think this is (together with the beginning since it’s a new book, new author etc) the most difficult part to understand based on the fact that I am only a few pages behind now. Since the setting has changed a bit, I expect more new vocab and scenes that I can’t understand right away. I’m really glad I watched the movie a few years back so I sort-of know where the story is heading xD
Wednesday was a late day at the office and I visited my mother, so I only read another short story on duolingo.
Yesterday wasn’t all that productive either, but I managed to get some reading in (some more Level 0 books on Tadoku)!
広島・宮島に行きましょう
カラスと水さし ～イソップ物語より～
お茶をいれましょう！
原爆 - げんばく - atomic bomb
カラス (烏) - crow
水さし - pitcher / water jug
急須 - きゅうす - small teapot
湯のみ - ゆのみ - teacup
茶托 - ちゃたく - teacup saucer
順 - じゅん - turn, order
I’m only now on my way home after work (I actually wrote this post yesterday evening at home, but it seems I’ve forgotten to actually post it ^^. But thankfully the post got saved and I just had to change the days at the beginning). Let’s see if I can fit in some more reading today or if I’ll be too tired when I get home.
I missed a day on the 11th 
I fell asleep on the sofa earlier than usual that day and I didn’t get t do my nighttime reading I was so mad at myself for it lol but it’s okay, it probably means I needed the sleep
12/1 : 日本の歴史366, 20 min
since @fustian_garb mentioned this,
13/1: I got curious and looked for the app, and this is so interesting?? Thank you so much! I read through the intro for current season today🤩 but it took me so loooong there were many things to look up… I think I need the English version to double-check stuff
edit: also read some 30min of 歴史366
晩冬 ばんとう late winter
名残, 名残り なごり remains; traces | the sorrow of parting
途次 とじ on one’s way
白芥子 しらげし white mustard ?? some other sites give me it’s a poppy type of plant, i am confused…
形見 かたみ memento, keepsake
詠む よむ to compose (a Japanese poem)
寵愛 ちょうあい favor, favour, affection
空米 くうまい imaginary/ gamble rice ？？？
Bruuuh, this got my brain all messed up because I just couldn’t grasp what this was about. Weblio and other sites had it as ‘rice that doesn’t exist’ and I was just lost. The opposite is ‘real rice’ 正米. Basically it’s all about rice that has been harvested (exists) and hasn’t been harvested yet (doesn’t exist). The whole concept involves forward selling/buying, with merchants promising in advance to clients a certain amount of rice for a cheaper price than the estimated in the market, when the rice would be available. Best example I found was here the whole thing called 空米取引, or generally 先物取引.
悲嘆 ひたん grief, sorrow
尾張(國) Owari Province why did I forget this reading, I see it often in the history book…
Also, when looking for the plant, I came across a
誕生花 site with listed flowers for every bday here for anyone curious
ベニバナトキワマンサク
「紅花常盤満作」
Chinese fringe-flower
Keep them coming, I especially love the prefecture-related posts! 
Your posts on the series has gotten me really curious about it, and I’m not gonna lie, I 
have been considering
January 14 update:
Read 4 pages of 時をかける少女, which is probably the most I’ve read in a day so far. I wouldn’t say it’s getting easier to understand what’s going on, but I’m probably getting used to reading this book, or just reading prose in Japanese, because it’s getting less tiring, and although I haven’t been tracking time in any reliable manner, I also feel like I’m speeding up. Although now that I it put that way, I see another possible explanation: perhaps it’s less tiring precisely because I’m moving faster, and the speed might be coming from having no mental energy to pause and try to process what I read better Not sure if this approach is good in the long run, but since my work has been getting busier by the day after the lazy beginning of the year, I guess I won’t be able to change it much any time soon.
I can’t even remember if I posted about yesterday! But today was great because my よつばと! reading pal caught up and we read pages 17-19! I don’t think I did very well in a grammatical sense, but it was great to start up again, and we have another reading pal catching up too! Feel free to check my work in my “study lounge” 
(link is in my user card) 
Ace Attorney: I tapped out after 65 minutes. This may be the most difficult Ace Attorney has been. The lines are so short in this game it’s still not TERRIBLE; sentences can’t get that lengthy or complex. But man are the unknowns piling up, felt like nearly every sentence had 1 unknown, but many had 2 or more. Here’s why:
Akane loves to go on wild flights of fantasy every time we look at a piece of evidence, so her comments are pretty random. I mean, today 相対性理論 (そうたいせいりろん) came up. That’s the theory of relativity. I’ve mined some pretty questionable things in the past, but I decided to let that one slide. I can’t imagine I’ll be hearing about it again for quite a while. It was mentioned because we were discussing if a door was an entrance or exit 
One new character is a cowboy and I wondered how that would work in Japanese. Turns out the English translation didn’t punch up his dialog at all, he just calls everyone wild horses and refers to stuff as saloons and whatnot. Too much new vocab coming out of him.
The other new character again speaks in very polite forms (she’s a food delivery person), and uses greetings and other words for things I thought I knew that I have never yet seen before! I got a bit outright lost talking to her, especially when her nickname came up. See… (from the Ace Attorney wiki):
- In Japanese, her nickname (the Japanese version’s equivalent of “Cough-Up Queen”) is " Gero-mamire-no-Okyou " (ゲロまみれのおキョウ), with “ゲロまみれ” meaning “covering in spew”. " Gero " can mean both “spew” and “confession”, likely meant as an indication towards her talent while she was a detective for extricating confessions from suspects.
I got to this and was like… “vomit covered… what?” And got both very grossed out and entirely unsure what I was reading anymore. Turns out on Jisho they tell you ゲロ can mean “confession,” but the version I have on Yomichan differs and doesn’t list that. It’s been an experience.
Zoo 1: Weird how this continues to shift to being my easier reading material as I settle into this short story’s vocab and Ace Attorney does the things it’s doing to me. I’m 32% in, almost 1/3 of the way through my first real Japanese book!
Big related achievement: today I mined my 2000th word in Anki 
That’s a really cool looking flower!
I got: ナツツバキ [夏椿] - Japanese Stewartia, which is quite nice looking:
I really like the frilly petals, and that it’s a flowering tree.
But my flower meaning is a bit… off - 花言葉：愛らしい人
I um, really 365日の誕生花さん, really?? 
Yesterday I didn’t have time to post in this thread but I still read 30
pages ドメスティックな彼女 and some Demonbane but didn’t see anything N1 worthy yet.
Today I read 25 more pages of ドメスティックな彼女.
特訓 とっくん special training; intensive training; crash course
何卒 なにとぞ by all means; without fail N1
遣らかす やらかす to make (a blunder); to commit (an error)
極秘 ごくひ absolute secrecy
寝癖 ねぐせ bed hair; hair disarranged during sleep
Day 14 complete.
2 weeks already! Feels good
I read this weeks chapter of からかい上手の高木さん, which was super cute as always.
I learned a few interesting words, including 負け惜しみ, which means Poor Loser.
January 14th:
Today finished chapter 3 of それでも歩は寄せてくる. Felt pretty good about recognizing 生. This chapter was funny as usual.
What do the どーだ 's mean in the picture below? I assume it’s onomatopoeia.
