Day 16. Read pages 178–181 of Kiki; two pages in the morning and one just before going to sleep.
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Weekly check in for January 16th:
Read this week:
魔女の宅急便 - Chapters 1 and 2
Thoughts:
Put the graded readers down for a bit and decided to pick Kiki back up after trying to read this in late 2020/early 2021. What a difference a year makes. I feel like its much much easier to read now and I’m seeing a lot of grammar points that I’ve studied from Tobira/Bunpro N3 crop up in the wild. I’m also not worried about reading a set number of pages a day etc as I want to get into the habit of just reading for fun, like I would in English.
27 Likes
１月16日 ~ Day 16 / Back to Home
The first time in a looong time that I get to post on the same day that I read! Should really get back to reading なぜ？どうして？ but reading Pokemon Special is still reading.
Pocket Monsters Special Volume 1 - page 90 of 200 (15 pages total - chapter 6)
Red finds Kasumi fighting off a Gyarados and assists her and catches it. He soon finds out it’s her Pokemon that was forced into its raging state thanks to Okido-hakase’s information. He believes Rocket-dan are the ones behind all the wrongdoings. When Red and Kasumi learn more about them, they decide they must defeat them at all costs to defend the Pokemon.
I like the way they introduce Kasumi as this badass trying to fend off this raging Gyarados that has clearly injured her. Again, Red happens to be in the right place and the right time. Apparently the Gyarados was originally Kasumi’s, but it was stolen and released to conduct an experiment on Pokemon evolution. I wonder if Red will return it to Kasumi at one point?
Vocab for Reference - New words are bolded
避ける・よける・to avoid (physical contact with)
助太刀する・すけだちする・assistance (in a fight)
水系・すいけい・read as みずけい・water system or maybe water type
効く・きく・to be effective
宿り木・やどりぎ・mistletoe; parasitic plant → やどりぎのタネ・leech seed
今のうち・いまのうち・now while one still can
自己再生・じこさいせい・self-regeneration
傷・きず・injury
治る・なおる・to heal
釣る・つる・to catch
鞭・むち・whip
光線・こうせん・beam; light ray
仕上げ・しあげ・finish; finishing; finishing touches
生息する・せいそくする・inhabiting; living
盗まれる・ぬすまれる・to be stolen
強暴化・きょうぼうか・become violent
暴走・ぼうそう・running wildly
食い止める・くいとめる・to keep at bay
取っちめる・とっちめる・to take to task
世界的権威・せかいてきけんい・worldwide authority
進化形態・しんかけいたい・evolved form
凶暴・きょうぼう・ferocious
性格・せいかく・nature
破壊光線・はかいこうせん・destructive beam
焼き尽くす・やきつくす・to burn completely
超・ちょう・super-
自動的・じどうてき・automatic
揃える・そろえる・to complete (a collection)
自身・じしん・oneself
数日・すうじつ・few days
悪どい・あくどい・crooked; vicious; wicked
商売・しょうばい・trade; business; commerce
遣らかす・やらかす・to do (something negative); to make (a blunder); to commit (an error)
秘密結社・ひみつけっしゃ・secret society
生体実験・せいたいじっけん・medical experiment on a living person or animal
情報・じょうほう・information; news; report; intelligence
強化・きょうか・enhancement
重要・じゅうよう・important
狙う・ねらう・to be after (something or someone)
ぶっ飛ばす・ぶっとばす・to knock (someone) to their feet; to knock down
黙り込む・だまりこむ・to say no more; to sink into silence
方向・ほうこう・direction
入手・にゅうしゅ・acquisition; obtaining
洞窟・どうくつ・cavern; cave
付近・ふきん・neighborhood; vicinity
現在・げんざい・present
探索中・たんさくちゅう・in the middle of searching
万一・まんいち・in the unlikely event that
抜ける・ぬける・to go through
22 Likes
Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220116 
Tanuki Scroll XVI: 竹から生まれた女の子 
Read today’s folktale from Tottori Prefecture!
It’s the rather well-known story about a girl born from bamboo, I don’t think I’ve heard the whole thing before, so it nice to read the full story.
If I get the time later tonight I might try and game a bit in Japanese.
☆ Learnings ☆
New Words
大喜び「おおよろこび」ー Great joy; Overjoyed
やがて ー Before long; Eventually; Shortly. (Rare kanji usage: 軈て)
機織り「はたおり」ー Weaving; Weaver
Forgotten Meanings
違いない ー (for sure; certain; no mistaking it)
22 Likes
Today’s reading was 12時間で家が建つ？米国で3Dプリンターを利用した家が建設される - about a 3D printed house in America.
Some words I looked up
非営利団体 - nonprofit org
中央値 - median
返済 - refund/reimbursement
擁する - to have/possess assets (there seem to be a bunch of definitions for this word, but that was the one which fit the context)
平米 - square meters
素材 - raw material
断熱材 - insulation
Also, I have to travel next week and traveling is usually when my daily routines fall to pieces. I suspect the weak point with this challenge for me is the finding of articles each day. So, if any of you have short/medium length articles that caught your eye, please feel free to send my way and I will take a crack at them next week. I don’t mind the topic (new things are good for expanding my 語彙力 (ごいりょく/vocab skills)! - but do ask it not be newspaper-y articles (ie, NHK, ANN) as I’ve had oodles of practice with those already. 
23 Likes
Day 9: I read another two pages of よつばと！
Today there wasn’t much text, but it felt nice being able to read two pages without spending 1-2 hours looking things up😛
24 Likes
January 16
君の名は , 6 pages.
Beware, for the harbingers of cuteness have arrived, searching ceaselessly for our wallets. And they won’t stop until they have collected a couple of our souls. Heed my call, my brethren! Stay strong! 
Yeah, same! I’m making sure I still put in the effort in trying to understand everything, but it’s a nice help nonetheless. I’m glad that you too find it a bit more difficult though, it’s reassuring! 
24 Likes
Hopefully, it’s time to turn my recent struggles around
So today, maybe just because recent issues made me want to shake things up, I got in the mood to experiment. I’ve never been able to decide just how much I should value monolingual dictionaries or when to go for them, since more often than not they contain so many words I don’t know and balloon out my time spent looking up any given word. But today, on a whim, I re-enabled what I have on Yomichan, just to play around with trying to read them. It slowed me down considerably between setting it back up, spending more time trying to read them, and then having to fix Anki cards I make to just have what I want… but I did find that, occasionally, they worked for me.
More to the point, I had one instance in which they saved me. 青息吐息 (あおいきといき). This 4 kanji compound, on Jisho, is defined as “deep distress.” And perhaps if you know the kanji, you can guess further because there’s “breath” and the sort of “emit from the mouth” type one. But the definition is only deep distress, and that doesn’t really make any sense in the context I read it in! The Japanese dictionaries I was using define it more precisely as the sigh that you breathe in a time of such difficulty/distress. That one makes sense. So… I made my first monolingual Anki card too, on a whim. Made a few of them, when the definition seemed simple enough. Good idea for better definitions and a bit more nested reading practice? Bad waste of time to balloon out Anki time and require me to not have a memory slip on the Japanese in the definitions? Who knows! We’ll find out maybe eventually! Most of my cards were English today still, but not all.
The reading itself didn’t go too far, but I did do it for ~90 minutes, and the characters today were thankfully easier to talk to. What I want to share today is a kanji joke:
You need a bit of context, but they talked about that chessboard with the single pawn surrounded by enemies, describing the pawns as 歩兵 (ほへい, footsoldiers), and I apologize for not remembering the exact wording, but the knights have swords, 剣. They color coded those as the two characters (成歩堂 and 御剣) to make a joke about their relationship that isn’t actually written in the text at all, just implied through the coloring. Kinda neat! If my memory doesn’t fail me, in the English translation they had to just directly go “that’s kind of like you two, huh?” but it felt a little more out of place and random without the kanji connection.
27 Likes
Yay! I also have most of my anki cards with Japanese definitions now…with some exceptions Sometimes it’s a long winded explanation in the Japanese dictionary and I think “this is exactly what the English word means, just save myself some reading time” and other times it’s stuff like 鰯（いわし)(sardine) where the English word and a picture seem more apt than “ニシン目のうちイワシ類の海魚の総称。また，マイワシ・ウルメイワシ・カタクチイワシの総称。全長15～30センチメートル。水産上重要な魚類で，多獲され食用のほか，飼料・肥料ともする。” 
12 Likes
Very cool! Yeah that’s totally understandable, I came across a few words already that were such easy concrete things that I just didn’t bother trying much with the Japanese.
I need to add pictures more. I’ve almost never done it, except when I came across テングザル , almost certainly not an important word, but I absolutely had to make a card for it both because I think it’s really cool that it’s “tengu monkey,” and because I now have a card whose back is just this picture, and it makes me laugh every time:
Hidden for impact
14 Likes
January 16 update:
Read 10 pages of 時をかける少女 today. Halfway through there was a scene (lasting about 2 pages) that I could barely follow, to the point that I tried returning to looking up every word – which didn’t help much, so after a dozen or so words I just gave up. I think I got the general idea right, judging by the ensuing discussion between the characters, but I feel like this particular bit was wasted for me in terms of both educational value and entertainment.
As a general observation on my experience so far, I think this book is really too much above my level, at least vocabulary-wise. I’m still enjoying the story, so I’m going to finish it, but once I’m done, I’ll either try reading something a lot easier, or maybe play with the idea of pre-learning vocab with Koohi.
Oh, and there’s also an upcoming book club on Death Note, which I’m looking forward to. Not sure yet how participating in a book club feels, but from what I’ve so far, clubs seem to aim for the middle ground between the two reading approaches that I’ve tried with 時をかける少女, i.e. thorough analysis vs just reading lightly without trying to understand details that are not immediately clear. Since these two are pretty much the extremes, I bet there’s a lot to try in the middle of the spectrum.
Congrats! That sounds like an important milestone. I’m nowhere near the level to effectively use monolingual cards yet, but I think they must crank the immersion level up a few notches 
21 Likes
Good luck! I’m pretty new to proper books myself but in the easier mediums, still, I feel like usually after you drag yourself through something that’s above your level, it makes the stuff below it feel so much more approachable, as that struggle becomes a little more “default.” Hopefully, if nothing else, by the end of this you’ll find that your brain has reframed where the levels of tolerable challenge and comfort are for you, at least. Rooting for you.
Thank you! It’s totally an experiment on my side, but it is something I’ve been wanting to try to take the plunge into (almost definitely a bit earlier than I should, but I’m always trying to keep moving forward as quickly as I can tolerate). I think it’ll hurt in the short term but I need to give it space and consider it as an investment for me in a few months, or further, and see where that gets me then.
10 Likes
January 16
かがみの孤城 (上).
Progress: (96% → 100%) Finished the book 
Very good book
かがみの孤城 (下).
Progress: (0% → 2%) I was going to read more, but due to busybusy there was no time for more.
28 Likes
I bounced back health-wise today! I read 2 (much shorter) pages of よつばと! and understood things to a an acceptable degree (although I still am learning the intricacies of manga bubbles ) All in all I compared notes with my study buddy, got some help in my study lounge, and I’m excited for 2 more pages tomorrow! 
22 Likes
Day 16.
I read Chapter 12 of レンタルおにいちゃん. This was really sweet chapter, I think its my favourite chapter from the series so far 
26 Likes
ゴールデンゴールド
Started reading this manga I don’t even know what this manga is about but it was free on bookwalker last year. It’s not that hard therefore I just sit down and read 40 pages.
I also started another manga but it was boring so I just dropped it after reading 5 pages.
Demonbane
Only read some lines from it but I saw nothing even coming near N1. But who knows it may become super hard soon but regardless it has some awesome writing.
Sorry no vocabulary list this time but I updated my last post with lots of useful words.
22 Likes
January 11 - January 16
I’m terrible at updating but I did read every day so far! (more NO. 6 and Orange)
Very different difficulty levels, those two.
Orange feels pretty comfortable even when I’m tired and reading before bed, and I can get by with relatively few look ups. Meanwhile I’m still yomichan’ing my way through NO. 6 which still has so many words I don’t know & I’m progressing much more slowly because of it 
That’s pretty much what I was aiming for though so it’s all good. I’m enjoying both a lot, in different ways!
I was already reading regulary at the end of last year, but not every day - this challenge is a nice extra push for consistency. It’s working pretty well for me right now I think 
25 Likes
Day 16: January 16th
365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 20 min
Today’s color: 鳶色 (とびいろ) - another reddish brown
Named for the black kite (鳶) - yet another pretty bird. It is apparently a Manly color for Men.
Some good words
- 悠然 (ゆうぜん) - calm; composed; leisurely
- 甲高い (かんだかい) - high-pitched; shrill
- 生息 (せいそく) - inhabiting; living
- 中型 (ちゅうがた) - medium size
- 鷹 (たか) - hawk; falcon
- 人気ぶり (にんきぶり) - level of popularity
- 男前 (おとこまえ) - manliness
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 talked about the clear winter sky and some stars you can see in the constellation Orion. It was trying to explain the position of each of the stars, and I learned an interesting expression: 向かって左 - on the left as one faces (it) (there is, correspondingly, 向かって右 as well).
What else did I read?
タヌキとキツネ
Amount read: 23 pages
Time spent: 35 min
Tanuki Cuteness Brigade alert!
Started a new book about a tanuki and a fox today. In terms of the format, it reminds me a lot of the shark books and the Koupen-chan book (for anyone that remembers those) - it’s kind of halfway between a manga and a picture book? I wish I knew what that type of book was called. I guess maybe it’s still manga but it doesn’t really have much of an overarching story and a lot of pages are just one illustration. Anyway, I keep picking up these kinds of books for some reason because they’re cute all the time and this is another one like that xD
Today I learned about what seems to be a rather messed-up Japanese folktale if the synopsis on Wikipedia is accurate - かちかち山 (the versions I found on Youtube seem to be a bit milder but I still think the rabbit is a bit of a sadist )
And here are some words I learned
- 行き来 (ゆきき) - coming and going; keeping in touch; visiting each other
- とっぴんぱらりのぷう - a story-ending phrase (for folktales and such) used in Akita prefecture
- おののく - to shake (from fear, cold, excitement, etc.); to shudder; to tremble
- 持て余す (もてあます) - to be too much for one; to find unmanageable; to be beyond one’s control; to not know what to do with
- だらける - to be lazy; to be slack; to feel dull; to feel languid; to feel listless
27 Likes
Day 15:
日本語: I read a lot of 伯爵と妖精 30 and finished it! I poked at a few other things (while knowing I’d start 伯爵と妖精 31 the next day): perhaps 4 pages of 機動強襲型令嬢アリシア物語１, perhaps 3 pages of 冷たい密室と博士たち, the character information and the first page of 獣の奏者 4.
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.
Another week successfully completed!
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January 16th:
Tried reading some random stuff while I was online today.
キャラデザ Character Design.
20 Likes