📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

Summary post :bookmark:

January 17

かがみの孤城 (下)
Progress: (2% → 16%)

I did a read yesterday :slight_smile: Just didn’t log on to post.

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Today’s article was 太ったかも……と気付く瞬間あるある9選 because I’m very tired and just clicked the first article on the first page I had loaded in my tabs of articles.

Some words I looked up

突如 - suddenly. I’m not sure how this differs from 突然, will look up nuance later
かんがみて - to bear in mind
引力 - gravitational pull
遠心力 - centrifugal force
臨月 - final month of pregnancy

The title is like “Have I gotten fat?..9 moments that make you realize it”. Can’t say I found it terribly interesting or engaging, I have but the cold comfort of new vocab, and this creepy avatar the writer used:
image

I need to search for more articles this evening.

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:house:

Day 18! Today I only read page 185 and 186 of Kiki, although I’m still very confused by what the lady is saying, so I’ll need to go through page 186 again tomorrow. I was going to read more, but I think I’ll leave puzzling things out when I’ve slept, haha.

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Day 17: January 17

  • 君の名は。page 125-126

Day 18: January 18

  • 君の名は。page 127-130

Yesterday was not my day… Stil managed to read two pages and today as well. Will rest for the rest of the day :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

The part about the meteorite was really hard… Glad I’m past it now xD

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:four_leaf_clover:

Here's my よつばと! attempt for today! Pages 25, 26, 27, 28

Page 25 - 1/18/22

あははは!

Ahahaha!

かわった子だなあ…

An unusual child…

ベランコれめくなのかあ (I don’t even know if I identified all the kana right… I could not figure this out at all!)

あそういえばうちの隣の空き家に

Ah, now that I think of it, there’s a vacant house next to ours.

新しい人がくるつて

New people are moving in…

もしかして

Possibly…

くる

Could it come to be?

Page 26 - 1/18/22

うあつ

Ah, hey!

うあーっ!!

Ah!!

手!手!

Hands! Hands!

手はなしちゃだメよ!!

Release your hands!!

て?

Hands?

ぽっ (some sort of happy sound??)

Page 27 - 1/18/22

(No text - Yotsuba goes flying off the swing!)

Page 28 - 1/18/22

(could not figure out the sound of her landing on her feet)

ぺた

(?) Kind of like her saying “oi” ?

だ大丈夫!?

Are you okay!?

大丈夫だった!?

Are you okay!? (couldn’t figure out the difference between this sentence and the sentence above?)

:slight_smile:

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:tiger2: :books: Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220118 :books: :raccoon:


Tanuki Scroll XVIII: ニンジンの始まり :carrot:

Read today’s Hyakumonogatari from Miyagi Prefecture!

About a man who keeps getting his bags of rice stolen by a ghost. One day he follows the ghost to confront it and find out exactly why does a ghost need so much rice? Because the ghost likes to takes baths in the rice. He traps the ghost and boils it in the bath into ghost-stew. All that’s left in the morning is a little floating muddy thing which he throws outside.

Problem sorted, no more ghost, he can now travel the road safely. But after a few days his horse runs back to the ghost house and starts munching on some weird plants that have grown there. It’s that little thing he threw into the grass! The horse seems to really like the vegetable so he tries one too and feels all energised, so he takes some back to grow them in his fields.

And this is where carrots come from. Magical ghost vegetable.

Carroti

☆ Learnings ☆

New Words

馬引「うまひき」ー Horse driver, the person who’s in charge of leading the horses (for carrying cargo and goods for example).
ものの ー Although; Though; Despite that (feels like I should have come across this before but don’t recognise it)
グツグツ ー Simmering; Boiling gently (onomatopoeia)
ドロドロ「泥々」ー Muddy

Forgotten Readings

真っ青まっさお」 (Deep Blue; Bright Blue)

Forgotten Meanings

うちわ団扇」(Traditional Handheld fan)
I had no idea what this was until I looked it up and saw the kanji, it’s on WK!


Rikai Reply (it got long)

Sorry it took me awhile to get back to you, I went to do so last night but ran out of time. :sweat_smile:

Me going on about Nioh

Nioh is pretty similar to Soulsbourne (Soulsekirobourne?) - you die a lot, you leave your XP at a grave - but it’s very different at the same time. I prefer Nioh gameplay over Souls but I recommended Nioh to my friend who’s a big Souls fan and he prefers Souls gameplay. I guess it’s what you’re used to, I played Nioh before Souls. I do feel Nioh offers more variety in playstyle though.

Nioh does have a high learning curve, there’s just so much stuff, it’s a bit of a time investment :sweat_smile: There’s an insane amount of things to keep track of it’s rather overwhelming at first, but if you put the time in the game does reward you. The combat is really satisfying once you get it down and it’s fun slowly getting better perks on your armour and weapons until you are an unstoppable force of destruction.

(Currently I’ve put most points in Strength and Dexterity with fists as weapons, RP’ing as a monk sent by Buddha to destroy the demon invasion, so I’m basically pummelling demons into pulp with my fists of divine retribution :rofl:)

Nioh 2 feels like Nioh but with everything that wasn’t so good improved upon and generally the whole package improved tenfold. It really feels like it’s the game they wanted to release first but didn’t have the know-how or funds. It’s nice to see the story intertwine with the first game but if you don’t want to invest heavily in time to both games Nioh 2 is by far the better game. Also the story, since it’s a alt-reality history makes sense without needing the first game.

Sorry, this was only supposed to be a few sentences recommending the game :joy:

I feel the difficultly with learning anything, especially now, is just how much info is out there. There’s so many things telling you “this is the wrong way” “this is the right way” “you don’t learn like this” “this is the proper way to learn” - it’s all pretty hard to know exactly how to go about learning anything when there’s so much contradicting information.

Especially with time. It’s hard not to feel you’re doing something wrong when you see people advance miles ahead of you in really short spaces of time. The key (to me anyway) is perseverance, it’s not a race, go about it at your own pace - be the turtle and not the rabbit kinda thing. But really, be the tanuki, because tanuki is best, the tanuki can choose to be the rabbit or the turtle when it sees fit. :raccoon:

Honestly, WK is such a great tool. I find it hard to learn from textbooks and basically anything telling you about how language works, I have to be actively doing it to learn it. I could read how は works no end of times but it just doesn’t sink in, I have to use it. I really wish there was something for grammar like WK because everything I’ve looked into just doesn’t seem to work for me (even similar SRS stuff). I’ve found taking these hukumusume stories and rewriting them myself helps a lot, but it’s pretty time consuming so I don’t always get chance to do it.

It took me just over two years (literally by like a day or 2) to get to lv. 60 on here, I feel I learnt a lot but was at a loss of what to do next, since I couldn’t find anything that’d help with my grammar. My average review accuracy is at about 65-75% so not greatly high and I started to wonder if I’d just wasted two years to get nowhere, then these challenge threads came along and suddenly everything I learnt on here started clicking. Feel like I’ve learnt more in the six months of these threads than those two whole years. Which…

Yes! This! I think sometimes it’s not you that isn’t learning it’s the approach that isn’t working anymore, sometimes it’s important to change your perspective and suddenly everything makes much more sense.

I try not to think too much about how I could of done things better, otherwise I beat myself up too much :rofl: Thinking back on things it’s always obvious how you could have done things better, but that just shows that you have learnt. It feels too that sometimes you just need to do something else and pause the studying, get other life lessons and skills from things that are irrelevant to what you’re studying, it helps give you a new outlook.

I was pretty anxious about coming to the community part of WK at first, I was worried it’d be full of gatekeepers and people one-upping each other all the time. But it’s like the exact opposite, it’s really supportive here, it feels like being in a huge university group or something, everyone is doing their own thing but helping each other along the way.

I’m sure I had more to say but it’s gone (probably for the best before this gets even longer, but I really appreciate your reply, thank you!).

I suppose there’s just one last thing, and that’s a Tanukiganbarre!

:raccoon: ≪ ☆ 頑張って!!☆ ≫ :raccoon:

Oh yeah, thanks for the video! I’ll stick it in my ‘Watch Later’, always looking for stuff to listen to while doing all the chores.

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An earl grey tea cake. You actually mix the tea leaves into the cake batter, which is a new one on me but it gives it a really strong flavour.

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Whoa, I’ve never heard of that, but now I really want one. Sounds great.

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Last night I read ten pages of ちゃお, and this morning another fourteen. I came across a few words I always hear in anime that sound similar.

格好いい------かっこいい------attractive; good-looking; stylish; cool

可愛い------かわいい------cute; adorable; charming

怖い------こわい------scary; frightening; eerie

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Home Post
I read chapter 5 of 時をかける少女 today. (A chapter always sounds so grande, but it’s usually like 6-7 pages) Honestly it feels weird how smooth it’s been so far, considering how little Japanese I touched during the last 3 years (and actually, the 2 years before that as well). Granted, the plot so far is super easy to follow along as well.

It feels like each chapter so far had one very specific idea that could be summed up in one sentence and the whole chapter is dedicated to reinforce that idea (usually with multiple situations). E.g. chapter 3 was the chapter where shit hits the fan, with lots of awful stuff that could kill you happening. This chapter is the chapter where she basically found out she’s repeating the day before… but it takes 4 or so little situations reinforcing that idea until she finally asks a classmate for the date

I’m curious if the whole book is kind of structured like this, because the chapters so far seem mostly like this. (I was actually a bit irritated about this in chapter 1, but I’m getting used to it) But we will see :sheep:

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Summary post

January 18 update:
Read 8 pages of 時をかける少女 today. I managed to squeeze my reading time right after the lunch, and it made all the difference! I’ll definitely try to keep reading during the day rather than late at night as I usually did. Thanks for the (belatedly implemented) advice, @rikaiwisdom!

What I read today seems to have wrapped up a major part of the story (while setting up a huge cliffhanger), so I decided it’s a good point to reflect on it, and there was one specific observation that I particularly wanted to discuss. Trying to present my point, I ended up writing basically a short version of the first half of the story :sweat_smile:

Reflections on the plot so far (major spoilers!)

I find the story quite fun and engaging, but Fukushima-sensei sure has some funny ideas :joy:

The other characters are high school kids, so they’re bound to be a bit naïve and come up with far-fetched explanations. But the teacher? He’s supposedly the most reliable teacher to discuss such matters with, which is why they chose to talk to him. And so he listens to their story, which, I guess, goes roughly like this:

Kazuko has been feeling weird after happening to smell some unknown chemical in the school science lab. Four days later, she goes through her day as usual, and then a bunch of events happen at night – an earthquake, then a fire at a neighbor’s, and then in the morning she and said neighbor are crossing the street and nearly get run over by a truck. Once the truck is dangerously close, Kazuko finds herself awakened in her bed early in the morning (of the previous day, as is soon revealed). She goes to school, finds out that she somehow “leaped” to yesterday, and goes to discuss this with her neighbors-classmates. They’re skeptical of her story, but decide to see what happens at night, and at night the earthquake and the fire happen just as she “predicted.” Then she saves one of them from the truck, and they decide that the best explanation of this whole thing as that she has some superpower of time leaping.

(Granted, their version of the story is not presented to us as they speak to the teacher, so whatever they actually tell has probably been processed and interpreted twice before getting to him – first by Kazuko, then by Kazuo who does the talking.)

And so they tell all this to Fukushima-sensei, who seems to agree with the superpower theory, and concludes that smelling something four days ago is the most likely explanation of the power’s origin. Kazuko confirms that she doesn’t want to have a superpower, and the teacher goes on to suggest that she time leaps again – this time, four days back. Her ability to time leap more or less at will is pretty much not debatable at this point (sure, hasn’t she already done it once?). Having leaped, Kazuko is supposed to meet the culprit behind her chemical intoxication and prevent them from doing their deed.

Sounds fairly reasonable for a sensei, right? :rofl: At least I hope that passing by a construction site after this conversation is not intentional on Fukushima’s side – that would’ve been a cruel way to test a theory, as exciting as that theory may sound.

By they way (beware: mild Steins;Gate spoilers to follow), this time leaping ability seems to have had a major influence on the Time Leap Machine in Steins;Gate (or was the similarity accidental?). Although, this only applies to the ability as seen from the reader’s perspective, which presents it as being moved into your past self’s body while retaining the present self’s memories and, arguably, consciousness. The characters seem to interpret it differently, suggesting that it’s a combo of time travel and teleportation, – an explanation that doesn’t really fit, since there would be two independent Kazukos waking up in the same bed existing in the same physical world, which apparently was not the case.

@sumsum Oh hey, I’m glad to see we’re reading the same book! Yeah, the chapters do seem to carry a single simplistic message, but that’s understandable given that they are short, and the book is not exactly action-driven. I also find that this quality helps me follow the story without excessive dictionary look-ups (because vocab is probably my weakest point :caught_durtling:).

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@BadWeather Hey! Yep, I noticed that as well :smiley: But I think you are quite a bit ahead of me (so I will not read your reflections yet, sorry!) :heart:

Definitely! I don’t really like if I need to look up too much, but this has felt quite relaxed so far. I looked up a few words, but that was more a case of “might wanna learn this” instead of “I need this to get what’s going on”. But we’ll see how it goes in the later chapters, I think I’m not really in the meat of the story yet :slight_smile:

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By the way @BadWeather and @sumsum do you know that we have a reading club for your book? 時をかける少女 Home Thread (Beginner Book Club)

And @anon33985902 there is also a reading club for your book! よつばと! Reading club

You can find lots of comments, questions and answers and also vocab sheets in there, and you can even still ask questions (there are still a few lurkers around that are happy to answer) :blush:

(sorry if you knew this already!)

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Oh yes, I’ve explored it! But thank you for making sure I knew!!! A few of us are all around the same page and sharing in our study logs each day, so we kind of have a mini book club going :laughing: It’s been fun so far!

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Summary post :bookmark:

January 18

かがみの孤城 (下)
Progress: (16% → 24%)

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Thanks! I’ve seen it and had actually considered going through the thread (and perhaps the vocab sheet – the most valuable resource for me :sob:) in the first couple days I was reading the book, when I was a bit overwhelmed with the amount of lookups. But then I sped up by starting to ignore (or trying to guess) any unimportant words that I didn’t know. This turned deciphering into reading, even if I’m missing out on some details, and I’m finding this way more enjoyable so far. I guess it also made my current approach not very compatible with the book club format, which, as far as I understand, is slower-paced and perhaps more detail-oriented?

However, I really like the ideas behind book clubs, and looking forward to joining the upcoming BBC on Death Note. And thank you and everyone who made this a thing! :durtle_love: Book clubs were actually the primary factor that drove me to WaniKani :blush:

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Ah perfect! Just wanted to make sure you know about the vocab sheets and the option to ask more detailed questions. But I see you took care of that yourself already! :+1:

Sounds great! (And I’m not planning to keep you from continuing with this approach ofc :rofl:)

Not necessarily so. Everybody has their own approach to reading during a book club. People can go into details and ask questions, and many do, but it doesn’t mean they have to. If you want to keep your “extensive reading” method during a book club, that’s totally fine.
Of course if you were to read together with the club, then the pace would be the way of syncing the participants, (which in all honesty doesn’t always work as things happen and people may get drawn into the book and speed up which of course never happens to me :innocent: ) but as you are reading on your own pace you need not care about it at all (you just need to find the right threads or starting points for each week’s assignment).

Yay! :tada: Reading together and discussing stuff is even more fun :slight_smile:

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I also mostly read that way, but I looked through a few of the book club threads after I read the corresponding chapters. It was still interesting to see a few of the sentences picked apart (and it feels more leisure if you don’t do it yourself :sheep:) I think it’s still kind of useful, though I do not feel competent to really contribute myself :smiley: (I was tempted to write on the chapter 3 thread, but more to the extent of “what was that cliffhanger at the end dokidoki” and not really language questions - but it feels weird to resurrect such an old thread for that, so I refrained from doing that ;))

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Actually we managed to convince the WK team to extend the closure period for book club threads to 10 years (instead of the standard 1 year) so people could exactly do that and ask questions or discuss stuff way after the book club was finished :rofl:
But it’s of course fine if you don’t feel like it. Just to let you know that nobody takes issue if you do!

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Summary post

I read Ace Attorney for about 100 minutes today, which I’m considering quite a victory for how much it felt like the difficulty shot right back up. I don’t think I even expected 開拓精神 (かいたくせいしん), “frontier spirit,” to have a word in Japanese, but there it is. Along with many other obtuse cowboy references I didn’t mine or take note of like bullfighting and spittoon and whatnot. It’s been that kind of day! But the top one that sent me on a bit of an internet search journey, was this:

Something about the feeling of… taking a spin on a giant mud boat…

I found this link where, if I’m reading the response right, someone replies that it’s a parody of sorts of a phrase about riding an 大船. Like, you have feelings of peace of mind and reassurance, on your large boat. But with the 泥船, mud transport boat, you feel the opposite, expecting a bad situation (I think they mention it going into the water itself… not quite sure of the mechanics here). EDIT WAIT I just realized the second definition says “fictional boat made of dried mud,” dunno why my brain blocked it out when I was in the midst of confusion. That makes much more sense.

I’m doing my best, but these cultural references that just look like gibberish through my eyes are going to be the death of me, haha.

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