I’m done with Chapter 7 of 極主夫道, took 4 days about 30 minute each day.
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Oh, that seems cool but I would hate doing something like that. Too much interruption while reading.
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Today I read a bunch of example sentences in my verb handbook, so that’s my reading for the day as I wait for my よつばと! reading pal to catch up to me 
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Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it! Since I’m currently on holiday, I have a lot of time — it’s just lack of motivation and a bit of a mental block towards reading in Japanese that’s holding me back 
. So it’s definitely doable at the moment, I just need to push myself a bit. But that’s some good advice I’ll keep in mind for the future 
I do tend to set high standards for myself.
Oh man, my phone (I use Bookwalker on it) is almost always near me, and my physical Kiki copy isn’t far away, but I get horribly distracted and sidetracked before finally beginning to read 
but for sure a consistent morning routine is a great way to set habits. I need to work on that!
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I feel the same way, although The Half-Blood Prince was the first HP volume I read in English (just couldn’t wait for the translation) and then I immediately reread the rest of the series in English as well before the last book came out:)
Currently I’m just reading よつばと！ tho🙃
Good luck! 
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I had been somewhat intrigued by 呪術廻戦 but something about it ‘looks harder’, it might just be the funky kanji font on the front cover - but I do know 3 of them if I look close enough.
I thankfully have a LOT of Demon Slayer still to go, and I don’t yet feel I’ve learned all I can from it as I still have to look a lot of things up (including grammar!) and I’m not as fast as I’d like to get.
If 呪術廻戦 is actually only a little bit harder than I’ll keep that in mind for when I’m looking for a next series =D Thanks!
Thanks, there is still hope, but it appears that the previous surgery only fixed an issue (nerve being crushed by extra tissue that shouldn’t be there), and now they’ve found another (fluid in my wrists where it shouldn’t be) - off to see a different specialist to get their opinion on what next.
I’m definitely feeling a bit drained, hence why I’ve been making slower progress often only reading a single page a day - hoping I’ll be able to pick up the pace at some point.
What? no, no no no no no! no!
You have not in any possible way let me down, I never expected you to keep reading with me or anything! I’m happy if you’re reading things you enjoy =D
I still thoroughly appreciate all the encouragement and support you gave, and I know I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that - that was more than I could have asked for.
Ohhh glad to hear that, I picked up a copy a while back as it is something I’ve always wanted to read but never got around to.
One issue I had, presumably because it is a translation, is there are many versions of it all with slightly different phrasings and levels of furigana - I wanted to try find a version with a matching audiobook while having a matching physical book with furigana.
In the end I wasn’t able to, I have an audiobook and matching kindle version but with no/low furigana, and a different physical book with lots of furigana (at least one first instance of a word, it is the same as the version you shared).
The first few lines from the matching kindle/audiobook version
六歳のとき、ぼくは、『本当の話』というタイトルの、熱帯雨林に関する本の中で、とても素敵な絵を見たことがありました。
それは、大きなヘビが、一匹の動物を 呑み込もうとしているところでした。
ここにその絵の写しを 掲げておきましょう。
My physical version matches yours
I also have a physical copy of カラフル and a matching audiobook of that, so I can hopefully do that “one day”.
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Day 8: January 8th
365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 30 min
Today’s color: 羊羹色 (ようかんいろ) - “rusty color produced when black or purple clothes fade” (I can’t say I really get this description of this color tbh…since when do black and purple fade to brown?)
Named for 羊羹, a jellied dessert made from red bean paste, agar, and sugar
Here’s a fun fact I learned: apparently, ようかん was originally (like a long time ago) 羊肝, a soup with sheep meat and liver - but then, Buddhism happened and meat became no bueno, so they replaced those meat ingredients with adzuki beans. Then it…somehow went from being a soup to being this jelly thing. So…it’s really not the same thing, like at all xD
Some words I learned
- 褪せる (あせる) - to fade; to discolor
- 退色 (たいしょく) - fading; faded color
- 吸い物 (すいもの) - clear broth soup, with ingredients and garnish floating in and on it
- 伝来 (でんらい) - imported (can also mean ancestral; hereditary; transmitted; handed down)
- 敬遠 (けいえん) - in this case, I believe it was meaning “avoiding (something unpleasant); shying away from” but I like that it can also mean “pretending to respect (someone) while in fact staying distant; keeping at arm’s length; giving a wide berth”
- 対照的 (たいしょうてき) - contrastive
まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 14 min
Today’s reading was about どんど焼き, a festival where you get to burn things 
(namely New Year’s decorations and 書き初め). Depending on the region, it can take place just after the New Year’s Week festivities (ie, today) or, in a lot of places, it takes place on the 15th. Another name for this occasion is 左義長 (さぎちょう). Eating mochi and dango cooked over this burning fire is supposed to give you 無病息災 (むびょうそくさい - sound health).
What else did I read?
囀る鳥は羽ばたかない Vol 1
Amount read: 16 pages
Time spent: 47 min
I can’t believe it took me that long to read that little? It didn’t feel like a long time while I was reading though - now I feel like I’m really starting to get pulled in. I learned an interesting concept from this reading today (that really doesn’t have much to do with the story at all, lol, it was just mentioned in passing and I thought it was interesting) - 対人恐怖症 (たいじんきょうふしょう), which is a social anxiety centered on the fear of offending/embarrassing other people with one’s presence (versus the Western concept of social anxiety, which is more about wanting to avoid embarrassing oneself). I feel like I might have heard of this before but never really knew the word for it.
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I also plan to read The Little Prince. I bought a copy after seeing it referenced so much in Japanese I felt like I was missing something culturally by never having read it in any language.
BTW if you like reading along with audiobooks there are sooooo many good ones but also check out 朗読 on Youtube for Aozora Bunko stories. A lot of them will be heavy reads (classic authors, old grammar, archaic kanji usage, etc) but stuff like ゴン狐, 手袋を買いに, and other stuff aimed more at kids should be pretty approachable.
…though I read @basilsauce’s review of やまなし and realized perhaps my idea of approachable vocab is tainted by binge reading old books, so take that with a grain of salt.
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I finished volume six of 花野井くんと恋の病. I haven’t read it in such a long time I didn’t remember what was going on but it’s shoujo so it was pretty light and fluffy and sparkling smiles so it was pretty fun.
I read about 100 pages of the 6th volume of the manga of 乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった… I’m almoooosttttt done. I started it a couple days ago but I don’t know if I should read more after this volume? I feel like the plot is vague and the character development is so slow. ARGH 
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Today I read four pages out of the magazine, キャラぱふぇ. There were two mini manga stories, one Sario, and the other Pokemon, which made for a lot of fun vocabulary.
寝癖-----ねぐせ------bed hair
ぶるぶる-----trembling, shaking (onomatopoeic or mimetic word)
ぷにぷに-----squishy; springy; bouncy
けろけろ------croak; ribbit; sound of frogs (onomatopoeic or mimetic word)
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January 8th:
Feel a little bad about missing yesterday, but I’ll try not to let it get to me too much. Today I read a conversation on the Discord channel VR Nihongo. They get together to do language exchanges and lessons in VRChat. I’ve actually never gone to either of those because social anxiety, but I’d like to attend one someday.
Anyway the conversation started with normal greetings then they talked about what they’ve doing. I believe one of them was playing a card game (カードゲーム). I couldn’t follow too much afterword, but I did see フランス語 which I assume is the French language.
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Day 9: January 9
- 君の名は。page 50-51
- からかい上手の高木さん vol 1 page 121-161 (end of Volume 1!)
- 彼女、お借りします vol 1 page 1-59
Kimi no na wa is really bad at transitions to new scenes… One moment someone is looking at the scenery from home, the next paragraph he’s at school (without even mentioning how he got to school)??? Maybe my Japanese just sucks but this makes it not easier and I saw no one else in the book club even mentioning this xD
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Yeah, I had some trouble with that story, and I was surprised you had given it such a low level grading. I think you tend to underestimate how good you’ve become at reading material which is hard for other people.
I’m going to end my day with some 怪盗探偵山猫. Fast-paced, fluffy, and easy to read.
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Those books look gorgeous! Now I want to buy Japanese picture books myself ^^
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They’re a lot of fun! If you have the space, I definitely recommend picking up a few! I found most of these by searching for 大人絵本 on google and then browsing recommendation lists that other people put together of picture books that also appeal to adults, haha! The tweet I saw promoting 新宿御苑の木語り referred to it as an “大人絵本” and that’s how I found out that genre exists 
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I read the first 2 books in German and then decided I wanted to read the original version (and be able to read the next books earlier, because you couldn’t get away from spoilers at the time). 
Yeah, I started that one before my break and it probably would be good for me to continue with that as well XD
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This works beautifully in the film (and other films; Shinkai specifically tends to make these scene transitions timely and meaningful). But in a literary form it sure doesn’t sound like this makes for a comfortable reading experience. I’m wondering if this is typical for novelizations?.. I haven’t really read any so far, in Japanese or otherwise, even though I’m looking forward to reading 君の名は at some point.
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Thanks for the tip!I’ll give it a look
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Day 9! Today I read pages 140-142 of Kiki. Not quite five pages, but better than nothing
I think I’ll keep aiming for five pages a day. My concentration wasn’t too good today, but I should be fine tomorrow.
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That sounds pretty painful 
Hope they can figure out how to help you!
Awww 
I think the only thing I did was nudge you a little bit at the right moment in the right direction - and everything else was your own work! (You didn’t even ask a single language or grammar question, you know?)
It is definitely really worthwhile!
The “different levels of furigana” is certainly a Japanese thing and applies to native books as well. Especially for children’s books one can usually find editions with many or all furigana, and editions with fewer furigana. The all-furigana books are often recognizable by a green border around the cover like this:
(totally unrelated, but this is a very heartwarming story about coming-of-age, with a beautiful anime)
Sometimes the all-furigana book is somewhat different from the “regular” edition (e.g. in Kino no Tabi they left out a full chapter iirc). Also of course the contents per page usually varies across different editions (which is a nightmare to keep track of in bookclubs 
).
But having different phrasings indeed seems to indicate different translations. According to the book’s Wikipedia page 星の王子さま - Wikipedia there’s indeed a gazillion of them, but only very few audio recordings, as it seems.
Yes, the cover on mine looks identical.
I recently read a short story that is also available on Youtube where it is being read by a voice-actor. The story is about 40 pages and the video is about 50 minutes. 
He reads the story so fast that I cannot even follow with my eyes 
let alone read and understand anything… So, still way to go, for me as well.
I think I’m generally less affected by task switches than many other people I know. It even occasionally happens that I stop reading in the middle of a sentence (especially when reading harder books), and I can usually get back to it the next day without issues.
Also, for my sauna reading it turns out that I can read one of those 4-5 page chapters pretty much exactly in the 20 minutes that I usually take to rest between sauna rounds, so that’s a really good fit as well.
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