📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

Japanese Language Reading
#302
Jan 月 火 水 木 金 土 日
Week 52
Week 01
Week 02
Week 03
Week 04
Week 05
Feb 月 火 水 木 金 土 日
Week 05
Week 06
Week 07
Week 08
Week 09

Alright, I’ll join in late too. I have been reading every day up to this point, and plan to for the foreseeable future – might as well hop in with the community and check out what you all are up to here and there.

My current reading tends to be somewhere between an hour and a half or two hours per day on the first Ace Attorney game, basically however long I spend before mining ~20 sentences. No hard schedule for this, but in the remaining time, I throw in a few pages of Zoo 1 by Otsuichi here and there. It’s my first real native Japanese book. I can handle it (with a lot of lookups), but I’m at that level where after 3 or 4 pages, I get pretty exhausted. Happy to be reading though, and this is perfect milestone timing, as just yesterday, I finished the first of the book’s short stories (roughly 40 pages in this edition). The first story was decently interesting, though certainly upsetting at times, with a lot more real serious depressing topics and not exactly the sort of “horror” I was expecting. I also wonder how much the excitement of reading a Japanese book is going to cloud my judgment for a bit, haha.

Today I started a little on the second story, Seven Rooms, which appears to be starting from two people mysteriously awakening in an (I assume locked, but we’re taking it slow) unfamiliar room…

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#303

Well, I could only make it through 1 page of よつばと! tonight - but it was a long page! Happy with my progress. Although I have the vol. 1 grammar guide, I only use it after trying to parse the sentences myself, and I usually have it already!

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#304

Summary post

Day 6: January 6th

365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 22 min
Today’s color: 鉄紺 (てつこん) - kind of a navy blue with a hint of green?

This is my favorite color, it’s so pretty :star_struck: The resoluteness of iron and the calm quiet of indigo come together to make this beautiful dignified color I think is sort of what the book said :sweat_smile: Words do be hard to translate

Some good stuff I learned
  • くろがね - an old word for iron (the kanji are 黒金, so it’s literally black gold)
  • 帯びる (おびる) - to have a trace of; to be tinged with​
  • 藍染 (あいぞめ) - indigo dye
  • がかる - to have a trace of; to be tinged with​ (this book is into synonyms)
  • たくましい - indomitable; indefatigable; strong-willed; resolute; bold​
  • 物静か (ものしずか) - quiet; still; calm
  • 重厚 (じゅうこう) - profound; deep; grave; solid; dignified; stately; solemn; massive; composed
  • 色合い (いろあい) - coloring; shade (of color); hue; tone; tinge; tint​; flavor; nuance; feel; sense; look

まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 10 min

Today’s reading felt extremely appropriate: it was about today being 小寒 (しょうかん), which is basically the beginning of midwinter (寒の入り かんのいり). Supposedly, it’s when the winter cold starts to get intense…that was definitely the case where I am, I believe this was the first day this winter that the temperature has been in the single digits (Fahrenheit). It definitely dropped like 15 degrees since yesterday. :cold_face:

What else did I read?
囀る鳥は羽ばたかない Vol 1
Amount read: 22 pages
Time spent: 1 hour 8 min

I really didn’t intend to read that long but it kind of got away from me xD I feel like something just clicked today because I was very intrigued. Seriously, it was like some switch flipped in my brain and I didn’t want to stop. Yashiro freaking kills me lol

Oh he’s so soft :pleading_face: Thank you for blessing us with this cat

:astonished::exclamation: My color book failed to mention this!

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#305

Let me try to summarize the reading I did for the first six days of the challenge. I started off with the usual Animal Crossing and book club books. On the 3rd I visited the Chicago-land Kinokuniya. I decided to purchase City because I like 日常(Same Mangaka). I also decided to get a copy of よつばと！ based on how often I see it mentioned here. And I took note of how popular Chain-saw Man appeared to be at the store. I had picked up a copy of the first Chain-saw Man when I visited Kinokuniya in July but never opened it.

泣き虫

The night before going to Kinokuniya I was navigating the house in the dark and walked into the edge of a half opened door, falling back onto a radiator. It felt pretty bad the next day, but manageable. Then, while driving back from Kinokuniya, I sneezed and a rib snapped. Haven’t been very mobile since, and sitting at my “translation station” is very uncomfortable. I’m going to blame this for lack of updates for now.

I started flying through よつばと！ and Chain-saw Man with just the Kodansha Kanji Learners Dictionary at my side for emergencies. Maybe at some point I’ll find my way of detailing progress but for now I’ll just say I’m already 4 chapters (142 pgs) into よつばと！and 4 chapters (131 pgs) into Chain-saw Man. I opened City but quickly realized its more complicated than just having a Kanji Dictionary with you. I’d need to be at my Translation Station. I’ll save that one for later, maybe it will get voted into a book club one day.
Also today, re-read for clarity, chunks of 極主夫道 and picked up the first four volumes of Teasing Master Tagaki-San because they’re free on Bookwalker right now

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#306

Oh no that sounds awful, I hope you’re not feeling too terrible, and you recover quickly.

Hope you enjoy よつばと！ I know tons of people have read it here since it’s the standard beginner thing, but I found it quite lovely all the same. I appreciate you mentioning Takagi, too, going to go pick that up myself!

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#307

仕方がない(probably incorrectly) keeps coming to mind.

993 messages in the volume 1 thread. I figure, finish the volume once on easy, tread through the thread, re-read on hard mode.

Took a quick ~3 page look at Tagaki. Is that also Urushi? Author has their type I suppose.

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#308

Home post

Day 5:

日本語: I read a lot of 伯爵と妖精 29.
Read-aloud: We read three (!) chapters of 7SEEDS.

中国語

中国語: I read a beginner entry on Mandarin Bean and one page of 擅长捉弄的高木同学.

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#309

Main Post

January 6th:
Read pages 12 to 13 of Naruto.
Learned ポテチ (potato chip)
It’s interesting that the character’s first names are in katakana, but their last names are in kanji or hiragana. Almost didn’t recognize Uchiha うちは because I was expecting it to be in kanji. Also, I had a laugh over realizing a character is named Salad (サラダ).

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#310

great idea about reading out loud, I’m going to try tonight. Thank you for the idea.

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#311

Summary Post

Day 6: Today I read 4 pages of 極主夫道. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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#312

Jan 6 update :snowflake: summary post

This morning I read Akiko’s American Foreign Exchange, and I met my goal I mentioned yesterday!

I’m thinking I’m going to read the rest this weekend so I can be completely caught up

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#313

I just claimed the 4 volumes and took the briefest glance to get a peek at the writing and yeah, you’re right. I’ve heard the whole style of the story is not too different either – the author definitely knows what they want to do, heh. I’ve been eying the anime so that might come first for me though. I assume it’ll be relatively easy listening practice, and that’s what I really need.

Ooh, I did Satori Reader as well, and I think it helped a lot for me to transition into a visual novel and book like I’m doing now. That’s one of the few series I skipped over though, since it was so long. Anyway, good work!

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#314

No pooh-poohing 5000 pages! That’s fantastic! :metal:

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#315

I had no idea that store was in Chicago! Last time I was there my wife and I ate at a fantastic Ramen restaurant right across the street from the Market. Looks like I now have an excuse to go back… :smiley:

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#316

I agree! Satori’s been super helpful for transitioning from graded readers to actual books!

I almost skipped it too for the same reason, but I’m so glad I decided to read it because it’s got some really good moments (I actually teared up when reading it today). It definitely has taken me a long time to get through though, I started it back in August (read it off and on)

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#317

I read another four pages of ちゃお, which completed a second story. Then, I read two pages of an Animal Crossing manga from a magazine called ぴこぷり.

無人島-----むじんとう-----uninhabited island; desert island

メーデー ------Mayday (call for help)------(quoting Gulliver)

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#318

Today’s article was 霧が晴れるのが怖い. It’s a blog I found and have been meaning to read. I needed something short today as I have less time than usual this morning.

Some words I looked up

古き良き時代 - the good ol’ days
文壇 - literary world
克明 - diligent; detailed
スラヴ - Slavic
秘訣 - secret (to success); key (to something)
反体制派 - rebels; dissidents

The tl;dr is it’s about famous authors and Russian thoughts/perspectives on death.

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#319

6th and 7th January

Continued reading かげきしょうじょ！！because I’m obsessed. One of my favourite characters just met a tragedy and I’m now drowning in feels.

This is a really good manga. Like all good literatures, we can make character analysis, identify the foreshadowing and the significance of particular scenes, etc. I think it might be a good material for the book club. Would be fun to discuss it with other people.

Some words I remember today:
I just learned it in WK, 由緒正しい : venerable / good lineage.
The context is that one of the new students is the daughter of a great family, Iga group.

伊賀グループは由緒正しい元日本財閥の一つ

Another one is あみだくじ, which is the ladder lottery you often see used by the Japanese.
main_20190101

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#320

:house:

Day 7 today! I’m tired so I only read two pages of 銭天堂。Took me around five minutes.
I’m spending the whole day at home tomorrow so I’ll see if I can read at least five pages of Kiki then.

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#321

Day 7: January 7

  • 君の名は。page 33-45
  • からかい上手の高木さん page 25-49
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