📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

Update

  • Spent 45 minutes on three pages of Chainsaw Man. Couldn’t tell where the dialogue was coming from. I think one of the characters was meant to be an apparition maybe? Had to put it down for another time.
  • Read chapter 6 of 三星カラーズ. Much easier.
  • Animal Crossing chores.
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Yeah nesquik is definitely the chocolate milk thing I associate nestle with (ah childhood), maybe it’s a regional thing? I’ve certainly never seen it but it could be more known in other parts of the US, idk. Also very relatable, I only ever drank milk if it had nesquik in it haha

Yeah that’s true, I guess maybe it’s being interpreted more like romaji? Idk :man_shrugging:

Very jealous, I’ve been wanting to read it for a while but whenever I put together mandarake orders they never have the first volume :sob: one day!! Maybe eventually I’ll get impatient and just buy it digitally lmao

Oh man that’s so relatable, idk what it is about back covers :joy: somehow they’re always so rough

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January 21 :snowflake: Home Post

Another pretty sleepy day; I really need to start reading earlier, but I keep having things to do :sweat_smile: the struggles of being back in school I suppose. I read five pages though so not so bad, especially since they felt pretty heavy. Lots of extensive background information talking about like charcoal and mines and such, which I’m not knowledgable about in English either :joy: There was some fun though; love アクタガワ showing back up and IMMEDIATELY bucking ミロ off, poor sweetheart :joy: he was so upset about it, he’s so dramatic and ビスコ just thinks it’s absolutely hilarious

Tomorrow’s the weekend so I should hopefully :crossed_fingers: be able to read a bit more! Either way I’m glad I’m managing to stick with it (actually kind of wild that I’m at a point where I feel like five pages isn’t that much :sweat_smile: oh how times have changed)

Obligatory cool words

(どく)づく - to curse (at someone), to speak bitterly
話半分(はなしはんぶん) - taking a story with a grain of salt, hearing only half of a story/what someone is saying
小突(こづ)く - to poke (love that it’s just a small stab lmao)
放物線(ほうぶつせん) - parabola
ふて(くさ)れる - to become sulky

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:snowflake: Main Tracking Hub :snowflake:

1月19日〜21日

Materials:
:red_square: きのう何食べた?1
:red_square: 地球星人

I’m slowly but surely getting back into reading. :blush: Not much to say about きのう何食べた. I stopped with one of the characters talking to his mother on the phone. She thinks he should come out to his co-workers. Mama, it’s not your place to say! I guess I should be happy that he at least felt comfortable enough to tell her that he’s gay, but still.

I muscled through today and finished week 2 of 地球星人. According to my calculations, in order to catch up with the book club by week 12, I’d need to read two weeks’ worth of pages every week. :skull: I want to give it a try, though that seems like quite the challenge. That said, I read 9 pages today, and the most I’d have to read is 7 pages a day for one or two of those catch-up weeks. :thinking: Content-wise, I felt quite sorry for 奈月ちゃん during this reading session. As you can see from the later sentences in the vocab section, her mother needlessly chews her out. I get that she’s at her in-laws and apparently doesn’t like going there (so she’s likely stressed), but still.

Question regarding tense changes

This has been bothering me for a while. Something I notice in a lot of the books I’ve read thus far is that the writing sometimes switches between past and present tense, sometimes within the same paragraph. One of my theories is that, if something about a character is still true about them, then the present tense is used. Here’s an example from 地球星人:

由宇は大人しいけれど意志が強い。由宇はすぐにどこかへと消えてしまう気がする。私は、自分も宇宙人になりたくて、帰る場所がある由宇がうらやましくてしかたがなかった

That’s how Yu seemed then, and I assume that’s how the narrator still sees him. However, this theory doesn’t seem to work as a complete explanation. Here’s another example from 地球星人:

てるよしおじさんが玄関で声を張り上げている。「ほら、きた。奈月ちゃん、こっちはいいから行っておいで」「はい!」 私はしゃもじをおばさんに渡して立ち上がった。外からは虫の声がする。もうすっかり、夜が訪れて、台所の窓の外は普通の色に染まっていった

I just can’t figure it out. This is a real puzzle for me.

Vocab 地球星人

豆電球 [まめでんきゅう]: miniature light bulb

豆電球のあかりに微かに照らされて、由宇がそこに立っていた。

どころか: far from; anything but; not at all​

由宇の身体は成長が止まっているどころか、小さくなったようにすら感じられた。

線香花火 [せんこうはなび]: sparkler (“incense” + “firework”)

「わあ、うれしい!線香花火やりたい!」

羊羹 [ようかん]: jellied dessert made from red bean paste, agar, and sugar

私の苦手な、海草を固めた生臭い羊羹みたいな「えご」を切りながらおばあちゃんがこちらを向く。

みそっかす: good for nothing

「いいええ、本当にあの子はみそっかすで、何やらせても下手くそなでね、見てるほうが疲れるんで嫌になっちゃうんですよう。」

出来損ない [できそこない]: good-for-nothing; worthless person

実際に私は出来損ないで、よそったご飯もうまく丸くふっくらせず、ぺったりしてしまっていた。

おべっか: flattery

母がため息をつき、おばさんが「そんなことないわよお。上手よー!」とおべっかを言ってくれた。

迎え火 [むかえび]: welcoming fire for the returning spirits (the story so far takes place during お盆)

「暗くなっちゃったわねえ。そろそろお迎えに行かないとねえ」「今日は迎え火だからね」

Pics of some vocab words

豆電球: I was curious about the size of these light bulbs, so I popped the word into search. Such cute little bulbs! I guess they can be as small as Christmas lights as well as ones that are roughly proportional to the part that you’d screw in. So long as they’re smaller than the standard bulb, they fit into this category.

羊羹: I like me some red bean paste, so I had to search for a pic. In the book the narrator says their grandma is making えご (on the right). The two dishes look very similar, though I don’t know if they taste the same.

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Here’s a quick update from my side:
hmmm, when was my last update anyway? … :thinking:

Last Saturday I read the week’s assignment of 笑わない数学者 - this is just soooo good, and we’re speculating a lot in our little reading club about how this all came about, which is big fun on top of the reading. From Sunday to Wednesday I read 大聖堂 - this week’s assignment was a bit longer than last week’s, and I was busier than last week, so I decided to take it slowly. But on top of that, I read a bit of Demon Slayer 3 each day (almost done!). On Friday was sauna day so I also read a chapter of The Little Prince. It was a bit more abstract and philosophical this time and took me somewhat longer than expected, but it still fit into my break :blush:

Plans for this week:

  • 笑わない数学者 (this week’s assignment)
  • 大聖堂 (this week’s assignment)
  • Finish off Demon Slayer 3
  • Death Note (with the Beginner Book Club)
  • If there is still time, I should have a look at my started-but-not-finished pile and see what I can do about it (not decided yet which one to pick…)
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Summary post :bookmark:

January 21

笑わない数学者 (31% → 32%)
Just a tiny bit, the plan is to catch up now that I’m one week behind.

Also read a bit about 視力 (visual acuity) and 近視 (myopia / near-sightedness) on wikipedia. :mag: :eyes:

Some new words, eye-related stuff
Kanji Reading Meaning
屈折異常 くっせついじょう refractive error
老視 ろうし presbyopia
深視力 しんしりょく binocular vision / 3D vision
遠近感 えんきんかん depth perception
黄斑 おうはん macula / yellow spot (quite literally)
裸眼視力 らがんしりょく uncorrected visual acuity / naked eye
乱視 らんし astigmatism
遮眼子 しゃがんし occluder
調節力 ちょうせつりょく accommodation
視神経 ししんけい optic nerve / nervus opticus / CN II
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Oooh!! Thank you so much for that, that makes way more sense now :smiley:

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Summary Post

Day 21: Today I only read two pages of よつば&!

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:house:

Day 22: Read pages 189-190 of Kiki. Page 189 was confusing for me and I spent longer there, but page 190 was fairly easy.
Although I didn’t read as much as I hoped to read, I’m still on track to be at page 200 before February!

I hadn’t heard of Nesquik until recently, but I’m very familiar with Milo. It’s extremely popular in Malaysia and loads of Australians love it as well.

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So I’m terrible at translating but roughly,

Yuu is quiet/subdued, but their will is strong. It feels like they’ll disappear soon. For myself, I wanted to be like them, with a place to return to.

is how I interpret it if I try to keep tenses consistent with how I’d parse it in English. Maybe someone with more formal grammar study will do a better job at explaining :sweat_smile:

Also, I’m currently at the airport but still doing my daily reading! :pray: Something quite short, though: 「たくあん」と「たくわん」の違いは? | 1分で読める!! [ 違いは? ]
I think 違い articles might be my staple while I travel…

Words

糠床 - salted rice bran, for use in pickling
発祥 - origin
天日干し - sun drying
米糠 - rice bran
発酵 - fermentation
黄褐色 - yellowish brown (is this word in your color book @windupbird? :sweat_smile:
僧侶 - priest/monk
表音式仮名遣い - “phonetic kana usage”

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So the dictionary of intermediate japanese grammar has a whole section on this topic: Tense switching.
I took some important excerpts from there:

DOIJG
"Usually a series of past events are narrated in the past tenses. But primarily in written Japanese discourse that narrates a past event, past tenses often switch to nonpast tenses. […] Logically speaking, the author could have written every sentence in the past tense. Nevertheless, the author sometimes used the past tense and sometimes the nonpast tense. […] [The nonpast tense] sentences describe a circumstance that surrounds Shigo, the main character of the story. The rest of the sentences [in the past tense] describe […] whatever Shigo did or felt in the given circumstances. To put it in general terms, tense switching is a strategy available to the writer to differentiate a stage and a set of chronological events that occur in that stage. […] . So, important, dramatic information is described in the past tense, whereas relatively unimportant circumstantial information is described in the nonpast tense. The use of such nonpast tenses has an effect of creating a vivid sense of immediateness for the reader.

Principle of Tense switching:
A part of a past event (often a state rather than an action) can be described using the nonpast tense, if the writer perceives it to be relatively unimportant circumstantial information that has no dircet bearing upon the major story line."

I edited it down a bit but that is the basic gist explained there. Hope this helps your understanding.

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:tiger2: :books: Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220122 :books: :raccoon:


Tanuki Scroll XXII: じゃあじゃ山の大蛇 :snake:

Read today’s Hyakumonogatari from Hyogo Prefecture!

About a man who goes into the mountains to hunt for a monstrous snake, and the snake’s wife who turns up to get revenge.

☆ Learnings ☆

New Words

力自慢「ちからじまん」ー Boasting of one’s strength
一仕事「ひとしごと」ー Task; doing a bit of work; Hard work
グーグー ー Snoring (onomatopoeia)
いびき「鼾」ー Snoring (the act of snoring)
くわ「鍬」ー Garden hoe
仇討ち「あだうち」ー Vengeance; Revenge
ペロペロ ー Licking; Lapping up (onomatopoeia)
ミシミシ ー Groaning; Creaking (under physical stress) (onomatopoeia)

Forgotten Readings

大蛇だいじゃ」(Big Boss Snake)

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Summary Post

January 22
君の名は , 9 pages.


I’ve been reading a bit more relaxed these last couple of days, not trying to comprehend absolutely everything. I was starting to feel just a tiny bit burnt out recently, working on the text quite thoroughly, and I needed a little break for my brain I think. Which is funny because I still work quite a bit looking up words and grammar here and there, but without the pressure of having to add things to the SRS. I think I’ve been feeling the pressure of having to add new words everyday, as a way of perhaps measuring my progress. I need to be careful not to fall into the SRS trap, to mindlessly add words for the sake of it and forget them in the future.

But anyways, I’ve been pretty happy with my progress so far. I’ve only felt this way very few days, and normally I think I’m learning a lot. I think it gets very overwhelming for me when the text gets significantly harder, and it has become harder again. I always do my lookups in a J-J dictionary first, and bilingual second. Sometimes the JP definition is easy to understand, and the bilingual dictionary helps reinforce it with a (many times somewhat inaccurate) translation; sometimes the JP definition is awfully hard and the bilingual dictionary is there to hold my hand and whisper words of love into my ears. The whole process gets very tiring when the text gets harder and there are many unknown words to look up and/or add to the SRS. But otherwise, when the level is just right, it’s honestly a pleasure and I love it.

I will probably continue to read this way until it gets easier again.

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Day 22!
I read the first half of Chapter 6 of 三ツ星カラーズ today. The ABBC has been reading this together at a rate of half a chapter per week. I usually end up reading the whole chapter in one go anyway, but I’ve not got a huge amount of free time today so the half-chapter was just the right amount of reading for me to squeeze in today!

(Home Post)

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Thank you so much for this! It’s fascinating how different this would be perceived if you did it in English (where anything in the past stays in the past tense, and everything present stays in present tense, and NEVER shall the two meet, lest others judge you as a poor writer). I’ve thought about trying to write simple, short stories in Japanese as practice, and this is the element that’s really been preventing me from giving it a go. I’ll have to write this down somewhere for reference until it’s something I naturally get the hang of.

Doraemon Arigatou

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Day 20 + 21

  • 君の名は。page 134-136

I’ve had a rough week feeling a bit ill and having a harder time at work. Instead of forcing myself to read, on the 20th of January I did not read and on the 21st I read only half a page. Today I read three more pages. Sometimes is choosing rest over pushing yourself is a bigger win in itself, it definitely felt like that :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

I still read more than half a novel and it is not even the end of January! I hope I can finish the book before the end of this challenge, but we will see :blush:

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Interesting, I didn’t realize nestle chocolate milk products were such a varied experience :joy: now THIS is what I’m learning Japanese for huh, it all comes down to learning what Milo is, thank you 錆喰(さびく)いビスコ

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Since I have been lurking here for about a week, I finally decided to make my calender post. Sadly my ordered stuff did not arrive before the 07.01 so I started a bit late on the 08.

Jan
:x: :x:
:x: :x: :x: :x: :x: :o: :o:
:o: :o: :o: :o: :o: :o: :o:
:o: :o: :o: :o: :o: :o: :o:
:o: :o: :o: :o: :o: :o: :o:
:o:
Feb
:o: :o: :o: :o: :x: :o:
:o: :o: :o: :o: :o: :o: :o:
:o: :o: :o: :o: :o: :o: :o:
:o: :o: :o: :o: :o: :o: :o:
:o:

Feels good to be doing something with japanese again after being inactive for 1 1/2 years with it.

The things I read/read(past tense ^^):
First I started with よつばと vol 14 as a refresher before jumping into the new volume 15 that came with the order. Yotsuba was a breeze to read through, like always. Such a good manga.

I also ordered しろくまカフェ todays special 1-3. Currently I read a chapter every morning. The manga is suprisingly hard for me. So much special vocabulary that I didn’t know and too low context to infer much :confused: . The new years chapter 旧正月 or the coffe making chapter…

In the evening, if I find time, I work my way through ソラニン. It’s a good read but I have to look up quite a bit of vocabulary there too. In addition the vocabulary I forgot during my time away from japanese is haunting me in the extreme. I often have a lingering feeling that I SHOULD KNOW a word. Learning useful vocabulary though: マグロ 性交のときに自らは体を動かさず、ただ寝転がっている相手 who knew…

The last item in the haul was the complete Slam Dunk new editions (20 volumes instead of 32 but normal size). As soon as the other mangas are done I’m really looking forward to binging the series in 2 weeks or so. After that we will see. I have still some unread novels/lns and probably finally finsh kino no tabi 1. Or maybe a game in japanese?

I will not post every day but probably update my status once a week.
So よろしくね。

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I got the first three volumes of Yamada kun and the Seven Witches free digitally on bookwalker. They may offer them again for free in the future.

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Summary post :bookmark:

January 22

笑わない数学者 (32% → 41%)
Yay, read through the previous week’s assignment. I feel like I spent most of the day just reading, went kinda slow. Was a bit confused about some of the characters, and while rereading isn’t my favorite thing to do, it was worth it. I’m happy I completed this chapter today, now I’m not behind anymore :sparkles:


@downtimes ようこそ! :durtle_hello:

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