I’m actually over in infra land so not really in-the-know about the C/C++ world, but I did find this from a casual google: C++ コミュニティ - C++ の歩き方 | cppmap - the Slack and the subreddit seem to be English but the rest are Japanese communities so far as I can tell.
6 Likes
@sycamore I don’t have much to add, but I just want to say I adore the updates and screenshots. Loved reading it, and it’s great how much you’re enjoying it.
Feedback was much appreciated from everyone (since you didn’t get a direct response, thanks for addding your thoughts @fustian_garb). You all helped me settle my thoughts and get a little more excited about something new rather than just frustrated at dropping something.
I know visual novels are a bit niche, so the quick sell here is this is a VN made by Key, who are most famous for Little Busters and Clannad (probably the anime based on them, more so). Their games tend to fall into a category of VNs known as 泣きゲー, or “crying games.” So I’ll let you all know when the crying comes. Still, if this is anything like a usual Key game, I’m in for dozens of hours of slice of life chilling before the crying starts. It’s the bittersweet sort of tragedy that hits you late, not full on misery.
Anyway, I’m doing it! In some ways frustration at the Reflection Blue edition possible never releasing in English was one of the things that pushed me into “fine, I’ll finally go learn this language,” so as underprepared and relying on help as I am, it’s wild to be already doing this. Big goal accomplished, assuming this works out.
It wasn’t without its technical issues… I had loads of them, from getting a a game that demands every single thing about your computer be Japanese to run, to having a hard time with the texthooker on this particular game, but I’ve got it settled for now. Or at least mostly. The texthooker freaks out on occasion but overall it’s workable.
It’s also readable, so far! Sentences are dense with words I don’t know, and it’s obvious how different narration is after 80+ hours of a game that’s practically all dialog, but I played for about an hour, mined a solid set of words, and felt like with some lookups, I could tell what was up. Today I just arrived on a boat and started walking through the island; at my slow pace I haven’t really encountered characters yet. Still, the vibes are just what I was dreaming of. Lovely descriptive writing of the environment, beautiful backgrounds, and already some surprisingly moving music. I’m hooked and nothing has happened.
Oh yeah, cool new words? I’ll go with ボストンバッグ, only because this is an instance of Japanese teaching me English. I didn’t even know “Boston bag” was a term.
19 Likes
Very nice resource(s), again thank you! That’s a bag full of goodies to start pulling from.
5 Likes
This comes up so often in murder stories it’s practically a trope. 
Conveniently large yet unsuspicious bags.
泣き虫ですか？…私も
Always happy to help where I can 
6 Likes
同じ
泣き虫 is a big time favorite of mine. Last year my in-laws dog was whining in my face so I called her 泣き虫. I didn’t even have to explain what it meant. They immediately started calling her 泣き虫 whenever she whines.
6 Likes
Day 20: January 20th
365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 22 min
Today’s color: 薄鈍色 (うすにびいろ) - a light bluish grey
I like this color a lot. …It was a color of mourning in the Heian period so I’m not exactly sure what that says about me 
But it feels like a very calm, introspective color.
A nice sentence from today: 独特の静けさは、人を悼むのみならず、自分の心と向き合うこととも親しいでしょう。
Some good words
- 僧服 (そうふく) - priest’s garb
- 僧侶 (そうりょ) - priest, monk
- 静けさ (しずけさ) - stillness; silence; quiet; hush; calm; serenity
- 悼む (いたむ) - to grieve over; to mourn; to lament
- のみならず - a grammary thing meaning not only; besides; as well as
まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 9 min
Today is 大寒, the coldest day of the year 
Seems about right It’s also the first day of 款冬華 (ふきのはなさく), another one of the 72 microseasons - this is when the フキノトウ (edible flower buds of the fuki (Petasites japonicus) plant) start to sprout from beneath the snow.
What else did I read?
お前、タヌキにならねーか? Vol 1
Amount read: 8 pages
Time spent: 22 min
ahem 
So, I’ve only read the first chapter so far, is that a bit premature to dub this the best manga ever
I really love it already xD This is kind of a dream scenario for me, tbh - like, you don’t want to live as a human anymore, do you want to come be a tanuki instead? Heck yes I do, take me away to frolic in the mountains of Japan, cute tanuki man 
I am kind of upset that this is not a real-life option
Perhaps one of the best perks of tanuki life
Like…I’m supposed to get fat? Sign me up, man. Sign me the heck up!
This is really cute and I love this
Please share screenshots of pink haired fashion model guy if/when you meet him, I am intrigued
21 Likes
Oh! You know, yeah, I think I know what you mean conceptually but I haven’t actually read those enough to see the exact term used. My knowledge (besides cultural osmosis) would be more from films and the like.
ううん…実はあまりない
It’s actually really rare for stuff to make me outright cry, almost to the bad opposite extreme, so my tears might be a little figurative, but I welcome the game to try.
(I literally don’t output ever yet so I don’t feel confident that even those couple words aren’t unnatural haha)
7 Likes
We’re all learners here. 
I’m rarely confident in my output sounding totally natural but I just try to roll with it in the hopes it will get better with time and practice.
5 Likes
January 20 
Home Post
Today’s a very sleepy day; I didn’t get to sit down to read until I was already pretty much dead so I didn’t get very far I struggled through like a page of 錆喰いビスコ (and processed probably none of it lmao) then swapped over to ラストゲーム which was marginally easier for my tired brain, so I read like 8 pages there too. No worries, today was just a long day, so I’m gonna try to read a lot more tomorrow! Weekend But for now, off to bed for sure.
Random tangent about ミロ's name
So yesterday in 錆喰いビスコ, ビスコ asked if ミロ’s name came from “that cocoa thing” and it turned out yeah it does, 「強い子のミロ」, and I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about So I looked it up and Milo is a Nestle thing apparently?
I’ve very much never seen this in my life Not a thing in America apparently, but an interesting cultural thing to come across in the middle of 錆喰いビスコ.
BUT because life is super weird, I went to walmart today and randomly found Milo, so of course I bought some I think maybe not the standard kind, I just got like a can? Idk but I had to follow through on this series of events, it was too perfect.
A couple words for funsies
入道雲 - cumulonimbus, giant columns of clouds (in summer)
千切れ雲 - scattered clouds
高原 - plateau (love that a plateau is just a tall plain?? you’re so right japanese)
歯ざわり - texture of food
22 Likes
Day 20: Today I read all of chapter 22 of よつば＆！Only thing that confused me in this chapter is that I think Jumbo called Miura-chan a Lamborghini?? …I feel like I must have missed something
21 Likes
I was super confused by this, too! Luckily, in the book club thread, @windupbird posted the answer. I had certainly never heard of the car.
7 Likes
Day 19:
日本語: I read a bit of 伯爵と妖精 31.
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.
21 Likes
I feel like you should remind yourself of this regularly whenever the frustration starts! It sounds great but I cry over everything so probably should go anywhere near an actual crying game.
7 Likes
ooooooh, this sounds so lovely. Excited to hear more about it! I feel like it will probably end up on my ‘want to play list’ at some point lol.
I feel like your super power is finding cute manga! Which works out well for the rest of us
Will do! I’m not sure I will meet him on this playthrough but further play throughs are inevitable at this point haha.
8 Likes
Day 21! I didn’t read, nor post yesterday… because of both busyness and bad time management. But I’m not being too harsh on myself since this month has been a big improvement in terms of reading consistently and progression.
Today I read page 188 of Kiki. I’ll be working half the day tomorrow but should be able to read a fair amount in the afternoon.
19 Likes
Today’s article was 誰も助けてはくれない――雪道で動けなくなった1人の教師は投げやりになり「それなら、皆困ればいい」(全文表示)｜Jタウンネット - it’s a woman’s story about her car being stuck on a snowy road and her gratitude towards a young man who helped her. Honestly this was probably the easiest article I’ve read so far in this challenge. I didn’t have much to look up and all I did was largely guessable. A nice change of pace from yesterday where I ended up giving up on the history paragraph. I tried again at night but it was still absolutely exhausting to read and not even interesting…
Some words I looked up
連なる - to stretch out in a row
ヘトヘト - totally exhausted
降雪 - this means snow fall but I did not expect the reading
四輪駆動 - 4WD
21 Likes
Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220121
Tanuki Scroll XXI: タヌキ憑(つ)き
Read today’s 百物語 from Kyoto Prefecture!
About the ghost of a tanuki that possess an おばあちゃん. She starts to develop the qualities of a tanuki (mostly the eating everything part) and they have to get the priest in the exorcise the spirit with the power of ワンワンちゃん. Moral of the story - if you find a dead animal you should bury it, otherwise the spirit may latch onto you!
Also, the other day’s reading was about Kagoshima prefecture and the volcano Sakurajima, well the google hivemind’s obviously been watching because it suggested a video to me today of it erupting (in 2019!), thought I’d share because it’s pretty insane:
☆ Learnings ☆
New Words
山里「やまざと」ー Mountain Village (I could work this one out, but I don’t think I’ve seen it before)
柴刈り「しばかり」ー Firewood gathering
ミイラー Mummy (as in, a preserved corpse)
エサ「餌」ー Bait; Animal Feed; Fodder; Lure
四つん這い「よつんばい」ー On all fours; On your hands and knees
バリバリー Crunching; Munching; Tearing; Ripping (onomatopoeia)
わんわんー Doggy (It’s also the noise a dog makes which I’ve seen a lot before, I didn’t know it could mean dog as well though)
19 Likes
Started reading a new book today - コーヒーの絵本. I’m a bit of a coffee nerd and I bought this book hoping it would give me the vocabulary to start being able to talk about coffee more fluently in Japanese. I’d put it to one side intending to read it before we go next time but then got chatting to someone on HelloTalk who works as a barista so it’s time to level up my coffee chat.
23 Likes
Help I think I am also possessed by a tanuki.
10 Likes
That’s super cool! I’ll be curious to hear how the book is.
I'll hide coffee talk
Mind if I ask about your coffee? The beans I use aren’t TOO fancy since I’m still trying to manage price, but I do order some whole to grind myself. That said, I think I get some nice coffee with the grinder and how I make it. Used to use a chemex pourover for a while and that was nice, but once I tried an aeropress, that’s probably my favorite at home coffee I’ve had. Simple but really nice.
8 Likes