📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

Summary post

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 :thinking: 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.

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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” :laughing: (link is in my user card) :slight_smile: :four_leaf_clover:

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Summary post

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 :sweat:

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 :partying_face:

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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?? :rofl:

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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

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Day 14 complete.
2 weeks already! Feels good :slight_smile:
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.

(Home Post)

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Summary post :bookmark:

January 14
・かがみの孤城.

Progress: (79% → 86%)

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Main Post

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.

Question

What do the どーだ 's mean in the picture below? I assume it’s onomatopoeia.

doda

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Is this the same book that you’re reading?

Because I also saw this and now I am wondering if there are two books with the same title? Or is it like the YA books in English which would come out with their own covers and then have a movie tie-in when the movie’s released?

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The first one is the original 1960s novel by 筒井康隆.

The second is an illustrated adaptation (apparently from a line of アニメ絵本) of the 2006 anime of the same name that’s loosely based on the novel, so in that listing it credits the director (監督) of the anime along with the author of the work it was based on (原作) rather than crediting him more straightforwardly as the author (著者). It’s probably a simple walkthrough of the plot of the movie intended for kids who enjoyed it in movie form. The listening advertises it as having furigana and being perfect for reading out loud to children.
I believe also that the anime doesn’t follow the original’s plot, but goes in its own direction with the premise, so being based on the anime rather than the novel likely means a significant difference storywise as well.

Hope that helps!

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Summary post

Day 14: January 14th

365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 19 min
Today’s color: 璃寛茶 (りかんちゃ) - I would characterize this as sort of an olive khaki color

I can’t say that this is my most favorite color, but apparently it was popular in the 文化文政 period among kabuki actors? It is, in fact, named for a kabuki actor who liked it and used it all the time xD

Some words
  • 高じる (こうじる) - to grow in intensity; to be aggravated; to get worse; to develop​
  • 持てはやす (もてはやす) - to praise extravagantly; to lionize; to make much of​
  • 再認識 (さいにんしき) - recognizing anew; seeing something in a new light

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

Today’s reading was about water that you drink on 寒九 (かんく) - the ninth day of the cold season. Apparently it’s like…the best water :woman_shrugging: Also learned about 寒仕込み (かんじこみ) - cold preparation of sake (or soy sauce, or miso). I guess the cold slows the fermentation and makes it mellower/smoother (for sake) or gives it more umami (for soy sauce/miso).

What else did I read?
じじ猫くらし
Amount read: 23 pages
Time spent: 17 min

Those cute animals are coming back :eyes:
I started reading this manga in the last challenge and have not yet finished it - basically the premise is Man Living with Cat while Cat does Cat Things :tm:

This is The Cat :sparkles:

Today, the man took the cat out for a walk, which I always think is an adorable thing to do :3

This is my favorite panel

And here are some good words!
  • 風の子 (かぜのこ) - outdoor creatures (I love this word so much)
  • 目一杯 (めいっぱい) - to the limit; to the full; as much as possible; with all one’s might
  • くねくね - winding; meandering; wriggling; wiggling; waving; swaying; twisting and turning
  • ほかほか - comfortably warm; steaming hot (food); piping hot; glowing (with warmth)​

Oooo I’m curious

Mine is...

ビオラ!

花言葉:ゆるぎない魂
I like that one a lot, actually :blush:
At first I read 魂 as 塊 and I was like…well, you’re not wrong there :rofl:

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Answer?

Hard to tell without more context, but could it just be どうだ (どう + だ) repeated?

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January 14 :snowflake: Home Post

Today is a very sleepy day (after driving for like 8 hours lmao) so not a whole lot of reading; I absolutely did not have the mental energy for 錆喰(さびく)いビスコ so I read like half a chapter of ラストゲーム and tapped out :joy: It’d been a while, I missed their shenanigans! Man it’s a WORLD of difference going back to ラストゲーム after wading through like heavy prose, it feels so much easier in comparison, even with tired brain so that feels good! Just a bit of a fun read today; I’ll get back in more depth tomorrow :+1:

Audiobook digression

I did listen to Japanese audiobooks for a bit on the way! I tried 魔法少女育成計画(まほうしょうじょいくせいけいかく) (thank you @pocketcat for the rec!) and from what I could grasp of it it seems really interesting, but I definitely need to try it when I’m like not driving and can look things up and such :joy: one day though!

I also attempted (とき)をかける少女(しょうじょ) and it was certainly easier to understand, but man I got mentally exhausted fast. All of this is just calling out my lack of listening skills lmao… more things to work on :sweat_smile:

Fun words!

しけこむ - to shack up with (this is a peak romcom making fun of your friends word lmao)
(まん)(いち) - just in case, worst case scenario
ためらい - faltering, hesitation

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Home post

Day 13:

日本語: I read some of 伯爵と妖精 30.
Read-aloud: We read a chapter of ふしぎの国のバード.

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.

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Mine is this one:

ケイトウ

I like the meaning :slight_smile:

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Summary Post

Day 14: Today I read 7 pages of よつば&!

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Day 15: January 15

  • 君の名は。page 110-114
  • Ouran high school host club vol.1 page 1-20
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Home post

I read two interviews with my favorite singer. One from the latest fan club pamphlet. And one from three bands back, in a magazine I bought years ago when I was maybe N5 or N4 level and could only read the short phrases in the member profile and not the interview itself. The last time I looked at that old band interview, I could struggle through, but it took like two days of effort to read a page and a half. And today I just read the whole thing.

The books I’ve been reading in the past year keep getting harder, so at times I feel discouraged because it seems like it just stays hard forever. But taking out that old magazine interview that’s been sitting on my shelf for years, getting less impossible little by little, and finally seeing that I could read it today… It was nice to see that my work did make a difference.

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:house:

Day 15! I was almost going to skip today, since it’s so late (again) and I’m tired, but thanks to this challenge I did read in the end lol. Upon starting I thought since there were only a few pages until the end of the chapter might as well read up to that, so I read pages 172-177 of Kiki in about 10-15 minutes, and now I’m up to Chapter 8! The end of Chapter 7 was so wholesome :relaxed:
Those pages were also easy, and I was able to speedread in some sections. Probably just this chapter in general haha

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This is sooooo beautiful, I’ve never seen this flower, but if it’s 椿類 I bet it must smell incredibly nice!

I loved the meaning as well! And I didn’t know the expression, so thanks for that!

Sooooo beautiful, and that colour is just mesmerising! :heart_eyes:

I think I really need something like a 誕生花366 in print format now :joy:

お帰りなさい to all the cute animals aaaaah, I still need to read second volume of tanuki too, and I’m in desperate need of a cute animals series to read, so hit me with suggestions please.
Also, I have been meaning to ask you, what is the colours book you are reading from? :eyes:

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