📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

[windupbird]

Summary post

Day 18: January 18th

365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 17 min
Today’s color: 枯色 (かれいろ) - the color of dried grasses/fields

Fun fact for today: apparently in the Edo period, it was a thing to go dried-up field viewing (枯れ野見), a similar concept to 花見 but in the fall.

Some good words

• 荒涼 (こうりょう) - desolate; dreary; bleak
• 襲の色目 (かさねのいろめ) - combination of colors created by layering of garments
• 待望 (たいぼう) - waiting expectantly; waiting eagerly; looking forward to
• しのぶ - to imagine; to guess; to infer​

まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 7 min

Today’s reading talked about 御神渡り (おみわたり) - ridged cracks of ice forming on lakes (most famously on Lake Suwa in Nagano). These look pretty cool, not gonna lie

What else did I read?
タヌキとキツネ
Amount read: 45 pages - finished
Time spent: 30 min

Well, I finished this already xD I enjoyed adorable pictures of tanuki and fox, but reading this felt a little like cheating, because there was not much text in this book at all

Despite the lack of text, I did learn some good words

• しめしめ - all right!; that’s it!; thank God!; good!; I’ve got it!; I’ve done it!; bingo!​ (said quietly to oneself when things work out as one hoped)
• 模索 (もさく) - groping (for); fumbling around (for); searching (for an answer, solution, etc.); trying to find
• 前方不注意 (ぜんぽうふちゅうい) - not watching where one is driving; not keeping one’s eyes on the road
• 一発芸 (いっぱつげい) - one-liner; funny joke; gag; quick trick
• 九尾の狐 (きゅうびのきつね) - nine-tailed fox; old, golden-furred fox with nine tails and shapeshifting powers used to fool humans; orig. a Chinese mystical beast whose appearance was considered auspicious
• 雨乞い (あまごい) - praying for rain
• 雨宿り (あまやどり) - taking shelter from rain

My favorite word today was 団子虫 (だんごむし) - roly-polies! Also known as pill bugs These bugs were my childhood xD I used to find them around my yard/on the playground at school all the time and take them home with me to be my buddies. Best bugs And their Japanese name is so cute lol, just like them.

Some tanuki pictures to soothe your soul

Chillin’ with a watermelon - you know, as one does (why does this image feel like a whole mood)

Nine-tailed fox looks very soft and comfy xD

Sleepy babies <3

Be like tanuki, stand tall and take on the day

[natarin]

January 18 Home Post

Achievement get: I read a whole chapter of 錆喰(さびく)いビスコ in one sitting! I’m almost a fourth of the way through now which is absolutely wild; at this rate I might actually finish it by the end of the challenge I’m definitely noticing an increase in my reading stamina which helps a lot. I’m learning

I’m curious how other books will feel after this - maybe 風(かぜ)が強(つよ)く吹(ふ)いている won’t feel so unattainable It doesn’t have furigana though so kanji lookups would still be more of a barrier, but we shall see

Also chapter 4 was iconic, ビスコ and パウー are both just so powerful, that fight scene?? Absolutely wild, ビスコ really picked up her motorcycle like a baseball bat

Cool words!

煮(に)え滾(たぎ)る - to boil
寝覚(ねざ)めが悪(わる)い - to have an uneasy conscience
煙(けむ)に巻(ま)く - to confuse someone, to throw up a smokescreen
かち割(わ)る - to hit and break open (it was talking about cracking someone’s head open like a watermelon (it didn’t actually happen though) lmao rough)
忍(しの)びない - cannot bring oneself (to do)

I ran into a couple phrases that took some digging, particularly this: 「白く飛んでゆく」. It was in the context of someone passing out from like blinding pain, and I think it’s derived from/inspired by/whatever from 白飛(しろと)び. From what I understood, it’s when you’re taking a picture and it’s super bright so part of the photo just gets blown out with white light, which makes total sense as a description in that context! These are the sort of puzzles I end up with in 錆喰(さびく)いビスコ That’s part of the fun though!

[pocketcat]

@natarin

I’m curious how other books will feel after this - maybe 風(かぜ)が強(つよ)く吹(ふ)いている won’t feel so unattainable It doesn’t have furigana though so kanji lookups would still be more of a barrier, but we shall see

Rando's opinion

I checked Natively and no one has rated it yet so I did a 立ち読み on Honto and skipped a handful of pages because it seemed to be setting up a scene/atmosphere and IMO those scenes are always the hardest because they tend to be more poetic than the rest of the book (in most cases).
My opinion from skimming:
The book you’re currently reading has been rated harder than I personally would rate this (although I haven’t read 錆喰いビスコ). The spread of vocabulary might challenge you but they’re all everyday words which will prove useful in reading other books after it. I would compare it to 君の名は in difficulty, minus the dialect challenge of that particular book. I think low 30s or high 20s (let’s say 28-32) would be appropriate with my understanding of the ranking system and mentally comparing it to other books I’ve read.

So all this to say - yeah kanji look ups will suck but you totally got this.

Minor aside on kanji lookups

also btw KanjiTomo totally works on the Honto app so you can use OCR to do quick checks and the app also allows you to highlight bits of text and search via Google.
Like so:

ebookjapan also allows Google lookups but their app blocks OCR.

[TheGreywolfMunch]

Day 19. I reread page 186 then also read 187 of Kiki. Going super slow on these pages because I’m finding it harder to understand what the old lady says, and need more time to figure it out and use DeepL for small parts I’m really stuck on.

[pocketcat]

Today’s article was 綾瀬はるか：“月9”初主演で初の弁護士役 「このミス」大賞作「元彼の遺言状」実写化で - it’s an interview with an actress whose performance I liked in 天国と地獄.

Some words I looked up

実写化 - adaption into a live action show or film (from manga or anime)
容姿端麗 - looking attractive
抜群 - top notch
敏腕 - skillful
緻密 - small details
貪欲 - greed
痛快 - thrilling (胸がすっとして，非常に愉快に感じる)

It’s a promo for a new show she’s doing where she will be acting as a lawyer. I’m on the fence as to whether I’m interested in watching it. I do love a mystery, but the “wow, this lawyer/cop/scientist/etc is good at their job and they’re hot” trope doesn’t do much for me.

[natarin]

@pocketcat

it seemed to be setting up a scene/atmosphere and IMO those scenes are always the hardest

Ah yeah, from my (super limited lmao) experience I definitely feel that; I don’t think I ever really got beyond that part of 風(かぜ)つよ before so that probably didn’t make it seem any easier I briefly checked out the first page or so to see and maybe I’m partially biased since I’ve technically read it before, but it feels much simpler than 錆喰(さびく)いビスコ, so that’s really encouraging! I’m sure the vocab is a totally different beast than the weird stuff 錆喰(さびく)いビスコ’s always up to haha, definitely more generally applicable

@pocketcat

yeah kanji look ups will suck but you totally got this.

Ahh thank you! It’s definitely seeming more feasible than I would’ve imagined at this point, so maybe the time to make decent progress on one of my longer-term goals is approaching… exciting

[Shinpachi]

I read fourteen pages of Death Note this morning.

いたずら者------いたずらもの------mischief-maker; trickster; prankster

可笑しい------おかしい------funny; amusing; comical

[Zakarius]

Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220119

---

Tanuki Scroll XIX: 猫神(ねこがみ)

Read today’s folktale, from Nagasaki Prefecture!

About a samurai and his pregnant wife and their beloved cat, タマ. The samurai is tasked with hunting a boar on the night his wife expects the baby to be born. The cat transforms into their maid to warn the samurai, but he mistakes the cat for a tanuki and shoots it with his bow and arrow. The cat runs back to the house and he chases it to find that his wife has gone into labour. He helps deliver the child and forgets about the tanuki. In the morning he finds that he’s killed his cat who was trying to warn him of the birth.

To honour the cat he makes a shrine, and people who love cats now go to worship the cat god there. It says that the shrine is still there today in くろかみちょう [黒髪町] but I can’t really find much about it. But there is a place nearby called “猫山ダム”

☆ Learnings ☆

New Words

身重「みおも」ー Pregnant
イノシシ「猪」ー Wild Boar (I think I remember the kanji from the Zodiac, but I don’t remember the reading)
心細い「こころぼそい」ー Helpless; Forlorn; Lonely
祠「ほこら」ー A small shrine

Places
佐世保 「させぼ」ー Sasebo

---

Return of the Rikai Reply

@rikaiwisdom

I’ve always been very perfectionist, I think I actually talked about it in the other challenge threads, about how much pressure I put on myself when missing days

I’m like half-perfectionist, half-just roll with it… it gets a bit awkward sometimes
(I’ve never noticed this emoji before and I wanted to use it)

But yeah, it’s hard weighing up what resource will be best for you, with both your time and money, since they all get pretty pricey (worth the money though), and sometimes it’s hard to wager how good a resource is just from the free trial. I say this, but then I bought WK on a whim when I didn’t really have the money… soooo…

@rikaiwisdom

I don’t even know if what I’m doing is working most of the time, I just keep doing it and at some point I’ll notice that yeah, I’m improving.

You’re doing great though! You’ve been in each of these threads so far, and that’s a lot of reading. Even if it doesn’t feel it at times, just turning up and reading a short bit is progress in itself, and like you said, it’s not always noticeable just how much you’ve learnt until you get that poof moment and you’re like… waittttt, I can read this!
There’s been a few times I’ve read a paragraph without thinking, and have to stop to be like, I understood that! Then go back to read it again because I don’t believe it. But now brain is conscious that I am in fact reading Japanese and can no longer read it… thanks brain why must you be this way?

@rikaiwisdom

I would say that even the worst methods still make you improve over time regardless, even if not in the most efficient way.:

We all learn different anyways, any learning is still learning! Even if you learn wrong at the start - which really, especially with self-study, we’re gonna probably be learning a lot in weird ways - using other resources to learn and relearn the same things just cements it further. It’s hard to be consistently efficient with your learnings, even if we want them to be, I think it’d do more harm than good if we were always 100% on it with no chill.

@rikaiwisdom

I wasn’t worried personally, I just thought it would be your average Japanese learning community. I think I was already spoiled by /r/learnjapanese and didn’t expect much .

Suppose I’ve just got wary of the internet being the internet, where some guy declares all out war because some other guy dares to say he prefers the green balls over the yellow ones when playing in the ball pit.
But here’s definitely a welcome change, yeah there’s some threads here that go way overboard, but they don’t happen that often.

@Zakarius

be the tanuki

@rikaiwisdom

Be the tanuki

Be the tanuki, the 100% official bestest way to Japanese:

THE TANUKI METHOD
Transform yourself into a Japanese master

Step One of the Tanuki Method:

@windupbird

Be like tanuki, stand tall and take on the day

This fox and tanuki are way too cute I don’t even know what to do with myself anymore

[chamellow]

Update post for 16/1 - 19/1 | Home post here!

This has been a bit more of a varied few days! Spent the weekend and Monday powering through レンタルおにいちゃん Vol. 4… and then I got a rather large gap filled in on my arm yesterday. So! Today’s reading was something new that I haven’t seen pop up in this thread yet - a smartwatch app! This is the the first tattoo I’ve gotten since buying a fitness watch that tracks my body stress levels and merges a lot of data to give me a ‘body battery’ rating. I’ve found it fascinating to see the parallels of my bodies reaction to how it reacted to my covid jabs. Here, the screenshot of my body battery level upon waking up this morning, where I had high stress points whilst sleeping (!!!) and the app is shaming me into having a restful day because I only recovered 15 points whilst sleeping.

Spoiler: didn’t really have a restful day as it’s my week off work so I’d arranged to meet some friends for lunch. But tomorrow I will. Normally I’d restore my body battery levels back to 100 overnight, so fingers crossed for tomorrow.

I’ve dotted some Animal Crossing throughout the week, and this evening I watched this week’s episode of Book of Boba Fett with a friend, with Japanese subtitles. Which is something that we’ve actually been doing every week but for some reason I hadn’t considered it as reading until today. Coincidentally, I learnt 同盟 in my WK lessons this morning, and it came up in this week’s episode which was some nice instant reinforcement.

Here's some words from this week that I've picked up!

補強 - ほきょう - reinforcement
脆い - もろ - brittle, fragile
下敷き - したじ - being trapped under (and also, apparently, a desk pad)

[Redglare]

Summary post

January 19

かがみの孤城 (下)
Progress: (24% → 26%)

Smol read today

[Daisoujou]

Summary post

Ehh…

Ok, so I read an hour and a half, and that’s neat. However, there’s a part of me debating if it’s time to leave Ace Attorney and head for something else, because case 5 truly is a jump in difficulty all around. The level of quirky writing they’re going for leads to an overload of words labelled obscure, and otherwise clearly not particularly high value words clogging up everything. I can’t expect writers to write totally literally and without references all the time (and the writing would be no fun if they did), but basically every day I’ve read led to some internet searches to figure out what could possibly be going on, and I have to imagine there’s something I could be reading and getting more out of, for the moment. I love the game, but at 83 hours and up against these struggles, it’s wearing on me. A small part of me, while I know this doesn’t really matter, is disappointed I can’t be like “I finished a full game!” if I do go with this, but so be it, heh.

All the same, I don’t mean to sound TOO beaten up about it. Jumping to Ace Attorney was something I did as an experiment earlier than I had planned to because screenshots looked easy, and it’s gone better than I anticipated. It got me into really committing to just learning from native material. I was already doing manga and the like on the side, but I used it to make the big step and drop Satori Reader for basically no more “constructed learner materials”

Still, let me share one of today’s many struggles:

Phoenix accused her of possibly having ulterior motives (again this is VERY early case stuff I promise no spoilers), she responded with a few stern words about false accusations and the like, and then… this. I think I’ve found a site that explains it? And I’m probably able to fake my way through it well enough with Yomichan, but this was at the tail end of the reading and I’m just too tired right now. I’ll give it a shot later.

I know these sort of struggles are inevitable, but I want to think they’re a little higher volume than normal here? I have to imagine I’d be better served hitting my head against a grammar wall or something a little for now, rather than a cultural/reference one.

[sumsum]

Home Post
I read two more chapters of 時をかける少女 today (I think that’s chapter 6 and 7)
I did not expect Gorou to want to call the hospital right away But Kazuo’s reaction was hilarious as well.
There were a few more difficult sentences today, but overall it was still understandable I think I’ll read a bit in the book club, maybe I’ll learn a thing or two

[NicoleRauch]

@Daisoujou

there’s a part of me debating if it’s time to leave Ace Attorney and head for something else, because case 5 truly is a jump in difficulty all around. The level of quirky writing they’re going for leads to an overload of words labelled obscure, and otherwise clearly not particularly high value words clogging up everything. I can’t expect writers to write totally literally and without references all the time (and the writing would be no fun if they did), but basically every day I’ve read led to some internet searches to figure out what could possibly be going on, and I have to imagine there’s something I could be reading and getting more out of, for the moment.

I was at a similar point last week with one of the books I was reading (although I hadn’t put nearly as much time into it), and I basically had the same thoughts of “could I get more out of a different book at this point in time?” Long story short, I dropped the book and am happy about it right now.

If you’re looking for more approachable material, there’s currently a whole lot of book clubs going on with books that are not too hard to read, e.g. かがみの孤城 or 地球星人 or 笑わない数学者 - I guess if you’re devoted to it you could manage to catch up on any of them if you are interested. (Unless I’m highly overestimating your book reading abilities, that is…)

[BadWeather]

Summary post

January 19 update:
Read 5 pages of 時をかける少女 today. Apparently I misinterpreted how things are supposed to work in this story, or perhaps they were a bit misleading in the beginning, whether intentionally or not.

Spoilers

@BadWeather

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.

So this chapter I read today started with a time leap, as was expected from how the previous chapter ended, but the mechanics of it were different. Kazuko ended up in the same place she was before the leap, and it surely wasn’t the same place she was supposed to be at in her past where she “landed.” She even thought that there is indeed a second Kazuko sleeping in her bed, and went on to check – only to find that there’s none (well, actually, this was in the second line of the next chapter, which I didn’t intend to read, but I couldn’t resist peeking, even though this was kind of expected from other circumstances, such as her having her schoolbag with her).

So this looks like a weird hybrid between the two options I described above: the consciousness stays in the same body, just at an earlier time; …and the body teleports? Sounds weird to me, but let’s see how they explain this – if there’s any explanation at all. Or maybe my interpretation is wrong again

[Daisoujou]

@NicoleRauch

Long story short, I dropped the book and am happy about it right now.

Thanks for the help, and I’m glad to hear that worked for you! Ace Attorney isn’t going anywhere anyway so it’s probably the right call. Once some of this reading is a little more comfortable at its base, it’d be a better time to tackle some of this stuff that’s tripping me up.

@NicoleRauch

If you’re looking for more approachable material, there’s currently a whole lot of book clubs going on with books that are not too hard to read, e.g. かがみの孤城 or 地球星人 or 笑わない数学者 - I guess if you’re devoted to it you could manage to catch up on any of them if you are interested.

I very much appreciate the suggestion, and I’ve had a great time with some of the low level book clubs for manga, but I think my plan for now is to head out into another visual novel. I’ve always kind of planned to make that where I get the majority of my sentence mining from since you can easily get some very nice setups for it, and reading VNs was a part of what made me want to learn Japanese from the beginning. And I’m looking forward to probably having part of it voiced, since I keep neglecting listening (relatively, anyway).

All the same, I might consider doing some of those late, after I get through Zoo 1 (and maybe 2 after, because I’m enjoying 1). Some of the excitement people here seem to have around かがみの孤城 has gotten me really interested, and I do really want to check out Sayaka Murata, whether through that or good old コンビニ人間 .

@NicoleRauch

(Unless I’m highly overestimating your book reading abilities, that is…)

You know, it’s really hard for me myself to pin down because after I wrapped up Genki 2 I basically just read, like ~30 volumes of relatively easy manga while reading the majority of things on Satori Reader, and going to books at all always felt like a distant dream, but both Ace Attorney and Zoo 1 have been doable enough to stick them out this long. I’m still in that period where it’s hard to know how real it is yet, like, “did I just stumble onto the two unusually easiest things to read?” It’ll take a little more time to really feel like I know where I am, haha.

[NicoleRauch]

@Daisoujou

Ace Attorney isn’t going anywhere anyway so it’s probably the right call. Once some of this reading is a little more comfortable at its base, it’d be a better time to tackle some of this stuff that’s tripping me up.

Yep, that’s the same reasoning that I followed with my book as well. Maybe in a year or five we will laugh about all the headaches they gave us

@Daisoujou

my plan for now is to head out into another visual novel

Ah, understood! I heard that some VN’s can be really hard, if only for the sheer mass of text (and subsequently vocabulary) they contain. But this is just a little heads up and not meant to discourage you! By all means go for it if you like to read them

@Daisoujou

reading VNs was a part of what made me want to learn Japanese from the beginning

I see - I should better shut up about books and difficulties and let you do your thing already

@Daisoujou

it’s really hard for me myself to pin down because after I wrapped up Genki 2 I basically just read, like ~30 volumes of relatively easy manga while reading the majority of things on Satori Reader

Genki 2 should give you a solid grammar foundation, and manga definitely should give you a good foundation in reading practice, at least when it comes to spoken Japanese. Satori Reader is more like texts, is it? (Because reading long sentences is a very different story from reading conversations in manga.)
Taking these three together I think you should be good to read any of the previous or current Intermediate Book Club picks tbh

[Daisoujou]

@NicoleRauch

Yep, that’s the same reasoning that I followed with my book as well. Maybe in a year or five we will laugh about all the headaches they gave us

Can’t wait

@NicoleRauch

Ah, understood! I heard that some VN’s can be really hard, if only for the sheer mass of text (and subsequently vocabulary) they contain. But this is just a little heads up and not meant to discourage you! By all means go for it if you like to read them

Yeah to my understanding there is a pretty massive variety in how difficult they can be, with the usual rule of thumb about going closer to slice of life for an easier time still being in play. This is automated so it’s definitely flawed, but I also have jpdb as a vague estimator of difficulty. I’ll certainly be choosing one from a subset that seem easier.

That said, one of the many things that tipped me over the edge to wanting to learn Japanese was that Summer Pockets might never get its expanded version released in English, and that is, relative to VNs, on the easier side, so I’m strongly considering picking it up soon!

@NicoleRauch

I see - I should better shut up about books and difficulties and let you do your thing already

Aww nah, haha, I do need to be cognizant of what I’m getting myself into, and books are great too. I’m just kind of reading them on the side at the moment because there are far, far too much things in Japanese that I want to read. On one hand all that matters to me is how cool it is at all that I can sort of read this stuff – but the desire to read everything puts reading speed on my mind too often, haha.

@NicoleRauch

Taking these three together I think you should be good to read any of the previous or current Intermediate Book Club picks tbh

Very glad to hear it! And yeah, Satori Reader is, most of the time, longer form writing the way a book would be. Just with a lot of handholding explanations and, of course, a bit of a step down in difficulty from most any native material.

[rikaiwisdom]

Summary Post

January 19
君の名は , 9 pages.

---

Crazy how I’m still adding from 10 to 20 new words everyday. I like it a lot though, there’s so much to learn, and of course not everything that I add is suuuper important but I still like to learn some cool words nonetheless! I’ve also learned quite a few new kanji already, which is also great.

@Zakarius all read! Nothing more to add from my part

Well actually, have another tanuki

[NicoleRauch]

@Daisoujou

there are far, far too much things in Japanese that I want to read

Riiiight?

@Daisoujou

Very glad to hear it! And yeah, Satori Reader is, most of the time, longer form writing the way a book would be. Just with a lot of handholding explanations and, of course, a bit of a step down in difficulty from most any native material.

That sounds like a very good preparatory step. Of course native material will have its rough edges no matter what, but I guess you are already somewhat used to that from reading manga. Also, with Genki 2 under your belt I think you are aware that reading your first real book will not be smooth sailing all the time, but at least you have already seen most of the conjugations and similar things, and the remaining grammar points are mainly just combinations of words, which I think is much easier to google (or even to understand at face-value, which might be enough to start with).

[sycamore]

…and once again I very quickly got out of the habit of updating daily lol. My boyfriend was visiting for a few days so that cut down a bit on my japanese time, but I did still manage snatches of ときめき GS4 and/or 鏡の孤城 every day

This evening, because I have my iTalki lesson tomorrow where we are going to be talking about this article that I posted previously about the film フタリノセカイ - I decided to try to browse twitter and find and read some more articles and reviews about it. I started with this review: 随所に監督の優しさがにじみ出る - 『フタリノセカイ』の映画短評(くれい響)｜シネマトゥデイ
…which even though it is only like a paragraph long, I had to look up pretty much every second word, so was pretty tough. It really made me want to watch the film though! I particularly love the title of the article

Then, because that article felt like a bit of a failure I also read the ‘introduction’ section on the films website, and that was way more manageable. Thanks to that, I learned that the director of this made another film previously that is also autobiographical and won a film award at the time of release- and a little bit of googling led me to the entire film available to watch on youtube! (僕らの未来) Which makes the fact that I now really really want to watch a film that has only just been released in japanese cinemas a little more tolerable as I can watch this one in the meantime (there are no subs of any kind so it will be a test of my listening abilities lol)

@Daisoujou

Ace Attorney isn’t going anywhere anyway so it’s probably the right call.

I feel like Ace Attorney is a particularly great game for dipping in and out of given that it’s broken into the different cases. So hopefully even if you need to replay a bit of that case when you come back to it - it should be easier than picking up a book midway or something

@Daisoujou

Phoenix accused her of possibly having ulterior motives (again this is VERY early case stuff I promise no spoilers), she responded with a few stern words about false accusations and the like, and then… this. I think I’ve found a site that explains it? And I’m probably able to fake my way through it well enough with Yomichan, but this was at the tail end of the reading and I’m just too tired right now.

Also…I am playing on Switch (no Yomichan ) so this makes me scared of this case lol. But yeah, worst thing that happens is that is gets paused for a bit and that’s not too terrible. I feel like some of my favourite experiences with japanese so far have been when I’ve tried something and then dropped it because it’s been too hard and then come back a while later and found that it’s way more readable/comprehensible, it feels like magic