squuuueee
O. M. G. It’s so cute it should be illegal!
I’m loving the consistent supply of cute manga recommendations, although my reading pace is so slow that at current projections I’ll soon be drowning in things I want to read.
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I wasn’t able to be online much yesterday as I was traveling from sunrise to sundown, so apologies for late replies. I also missed my first day of this challenge, but I knew I would at some point so oh well. Back on the horse.
Today was 「毎日がエブリデイ」の意味とは？元ネタ、使い方や例文を紹介！ | Meaning-Book
There are 2 meanings:
- a regular, nothing special day
- reference to the life of a NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training). Ie, theirs weekends and their weekdays are all the same
It makes the most sense in a sentence:
そんな営業時間の店なんて、毎日がエブリデイじゃないと行けないだろ
Killin’ it 
I’m so sorry to hear that. I wouldn’t be able to focus at all either in your situation. 
I see Gilda was a grey cat and grey cats are the best.
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Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220128 
Tanuki Scroll XXVIII: 若返りの水 
Read today’s folktale, this one doesn’t say were it’s from.
About an old couple who are tired of being old and everything hurting. One day おじいさん is out in the mountains and finds a spring of water, he has a drink and heads home feeling much better. おばあさん thinks she’s dreaming because her husband has returned as his much younger self. He tells her about the spring and she rushes off the next day to drink some to become young again.
But she doesn’t return. Worried, he heads into the mountains to find her but she’s nowhere to be seen. Then he hears a baby crying, he follows the noise and finds a baby in his wife’s kimono, she drank way too much.
☆ Learnings ☆
New Words
若返り「わかがえり」ー Rejuvenation; Restoration of Youth
炭焼き「すみやき」ー Charcoal making/maker; charcoal-roasted/grilled
ヨタヨタ ー Walking unsteadily; Staggering; Waddling
カラカラ ー Parched; dried-up
ふと「不図」ー Suddenly; Unexpectedly (Very rare kanji use)
チョロチョロ ー Trickling of water
オギャー ー Baby crying noise
Japandeutsch
シャン ー Schön; beautiful, nice
Grammar-ish things
目はしょぼしょぼ ＝ (my) eyes are weak; sight is blurry; sight is getting worse
Forgotten Words
ふもと 「麓」ー Bottom; Base; Foot (of a mountain, hill)
俵「たわら」ー Straw bag; Sack; Bale
ビックリ「吃驚」ー To be surprised; to be amazed (rare kanji usage)
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What a cutie! 
Those are some really good pics. You’re fortunate to have some nice ones to remember her by. Her slightly disgruntled air in the office chair is quite charming.
I honestly don’t know what I’d do if I found my partner as a baby. Okay, I guess I’d know what I’d do (take care of them), but how would I feel raising my former lover? I probably would think, “well, that’s the end of our romantic relationship.”
I do realize I’m going deeper than necessary on this. I don’t know why. Lesson is: don’t be greedy?
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That’s a good point… do you raise them until they reach their “normal” age, then rush off to go drink a teensy bit of magic water so you both become around your preferred ages again? And then never, ever, speak of the baby incident ever again.
I guess it’d be a very big test of your love for each other… though, an extremely awkward test. 
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Same! I want to read them so much that I keep picking them up and carrying them around with me for some reason
I’m going to try to read 君の名は once I’ve finished what I’m currently reading even though I KNOW it is too difficult for me. I’m thinking maybe I can slowly make my way through it if I read it in short bursts…
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January 28 update:
Read 4 pages of 時をかける少女 (chapter 20). This was the penultimate chapter, and it set some very specific expectations as to what is about to happen, so even though there’s still a longish chapter left, I almost feel like the story is over.
I also just realized that I still need to finish this week’s assignment of Death Note, of which I have only read about a half. I guess I’ll do it tomorrow (and probably do the next week’s? I think the discussion thread starts tomorrow, but I haven’t checked the current one for a few days…), and save the last chapter of 時をかける少女 for Sunday. And then I’ll need a plan 
That is actually a very sound idea! I used to read multiple things of varying difficulty and mood on different days before I started this challenge, and I think it worked great – at least I never felt that I didn’t want to read on any particular day, even if sometimes I didn’t want to read something specific.
So good luck with this approach, I hope it works for you! And thanks for reminding me, I’ll probably start doing this again, too 
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I’m happily judging a book by its cover, and to join in with what everyone else has been saying, those look phenomenal!
Absolutely gorgeous, and so photogenic!
A very nice day of relaxed reading on my side. Reaching the point where I can put this into practical use this way has been extremely satisfying. And I love the community in this topic so, doubly so since I get to ramble about my thoughts each day and read the interesting stuff you all post 
At this rate I’m basically finishing up one character’s introduction and getting partway through the next each day; they seem pretty evenly paced. Today’s certainly took a turn for the even more absurd… but I have to admit, I had fun with it. This kinda speaks for itself:
Sure, someone is pointing a gun (of sorts 
) at our protagonist, but also, the background is very pretty! There are pros and cons to island life.
I believe I’ve actually sped up a little in reading? I think I’m starting to notice it from how I used to be. Which is nice, but it means I hit the unfamiliar words even quicker. I don’t think I even played for an hour today before mining 22 and deciding to cut it off. For now I’m content to shift my attention elsewhere, but I might want to start playing past that and not mining if I can resist the urge later on, so that I don’t drag this already long game out forever.
By far, my favorite word today is 仁王立ち (におうだち), “imposing stance,” which comes from the 仁王 statues. I came across this word somewhere in the past, but only had the opportunity to mine it today. It’s based on the way the statues stand, which is really evocative. The wiki page in case anyone needs a primer. Nioh, the videogame series, is named after the guardians as well, same kanji in the title.
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So, I accidentally started reading yet another thing haha. I have a problem.
I started 世界から猫が消えたなら (which I think someone might have mentioned here before but not sure quite who) and am loving it so far. I started reading yesterday and am 17% through already, which while it isn’t a long book (221 pages) is definitely the most quickly I’ve read prose in japanese so far. It’s a really nice level for me vocab wise, and it’s been quite unexpectedly (given the blurb/concept I expected it to be really sad) funny so far, I really like the balance of humour and seriousness and the general tone. It also has a great audiobook so I am in new book heaven right now 
Now I just need to make sure I finish it before I get distracted by something else shiny…
awww, I love the sound of this tanuki manga! One day I am just going to have to make a big list of all the cute manga you have mentioned and do a mega haul. But until then I shall enjoy the updates 
Ooooh, interested to hear how you find it! It sounds like it has some interesting changes. Furigana is really handy on the switch too as it’s a pain to look up things from.
This story is making me think of the film Womb Womb (2010) - IMDb - which I saw the trailer of when I was younger (because it stars Matt Smith and I was really into Dr Who at the time) and was like 'uh…okay that’s weird." The description is: After her lover ( Matt Smith ) dies prematurely, a woman (Eva Green) makes the controversial decision to bring him back to life by giving birth to his clone . Maybe they were inspired by the story @Zakarius read haha.
aww, such a gorgeous cat, love that photo on the chair. My own little old lady cat passed away late last year and it’s such a sad thing, hope that you are treating yourself kindly and taking it as easy as you can.
I don’t think I can read for more than about 10-15 minutes without finding more than 22 unknown words most of the time so playing for almost an hour before getting to 22 sounds pretty impressive to me lol.
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Oh it takes so much of my willpower to hold off a bunch of things until I have actually finished any of the stuff I am in the middle of. The hardest part of learning Japanese is not overwhelming myself with the stuff I want to try to do haha.
To be fair, I’m not mining every single unknown word! Between (often) disqualifying something if WK is going to teach the kanji to me a little later, and mining sentences so I’m looking for some without too many unknowns, lots of stuff get passed up too! Plus, while I’m getting happier with my actual reading speed, when I’m in the specific thing I’m mining, tasks slow me down too between having to clean up my Anki cards a bit, maybe search some stuff online, search some kanji to see if it’s on WK at all, etc.
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Ooh, I read that! I enjoyed it and the audiobook is quite nice. It’s sad, but with bittersweet happiness as I’m sure you’ve already encountered some of as it’s laced throughout the book.
I didn’t really care for the movie though. 
They changed too much and I’m honestly not sure how it’d even make sense to people who hadn’t read the book.
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Day 28
Chapter 19 of レンタルおにいちゃん today. Only 6 unknown words in the whole chapter, so that felt good!
I usually prioritise my book club reading on Saturdays… but since I only have one chapter left of this series I might finish it tomorrow and leave my book club reading stuff until afterward
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To be honest, even as early as I am with it, it seems like a really hard book to try and turn into a film. Can’t really imagine how they would do it without it just being entirely voiceover or something and that doesn’t sound great. I will probably watch it at some point out of curiousity though!
This 100%! I have such a massive list of things that I want to read/play/watch etc. But they aren’t going anywhere I guess and by the time we get to them we will be that little bit better at Japanese which is a nice side effect!
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Have you seen Kumirei’s Yomichan add-ons that add WK level/JLPT tags to Yomichan lookups? It took me a bit to find that info for kanji, but if you click on a kanji in a word in Yomichan and scroll down, it’ll tell you its WK level if it’s on here. WK has made some additions and such since then, so the add-on isn’t perfectly reliable, but I’ve gotten excellent use out of it so far.
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I haven’t, thank you so much! I do tend to manually search some of this stuff, so this looks like exactly what I need.
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I’ll consider updating it
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Day 28: January 28th
365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 14 min
Today’s color: 藍鼠 (あいねず) - indigo gray
Learned some good new stuff from this today
- 間 (あいだ) - obviously I knew this word, but I did not know that it could be used to mean “among a group” (for example, this color was popular among the common people in the Edo period)
- いなせ - gallant; dashing; smart (the kanji are 鯔背)
- め - used as a suffix to adjectives to mean “somewhat; -ish”
- 度重なる (たびかさなる) - to repeat; to be frequent
- 奢侈 (しゃし) - luxury; extravagance
- 大人びる (おとなびる) - to look (sound, behave) grown-up; to be adult-like; to mature
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’s reading was all about ice floes - 流氷 (りゅうひょう). A cool word I learned today from this was 風物詩 (ふうぶつし) - feature of the season; something characteristic of a particular season.
What else did I read?
お前、タヌキにならねーか? Vol 1
Amount read: 22 pages
Time spent: 50 min
An extra long tanuki chapter today - a bully and her victim are forced to get to know each other better when こがね丸 casts a spell on them that causes them to turn into tanukis if they get too far away from each other. I think my favorite part of the chapter was near the end when こがね丸 comes out of the bushes again and he’s like “oh, they’re still hanging out together? the magic wore off a while ago” And then they finally try to show their parents what’s going on, only to find that it’s not happening anymore
Good words
- 目障り (めざわり) - eyesore; unpleasant sight; obstructing a view
- ガリ勉 (がりべん) - person who studies very hard (at school); grind; swot; drudge
- 変質者 (へんしつしゃ) - degenerate; pervert; deviant
- 一睡 (いっすい) - wink of sleep; snooze; doze; nap
- 無断外泊 (むだんがいはく) - staying out overnight without giving notice; spending night(s) away from home without permission (leave)
- 決定権 (けっていけん) - right to decide; having say (in a decision)
- ボロい - worn-out; crumbling
- 植え込み (うえこみ) - thick growth of plants; plantation; shrubbery; thicket
- 不審者 (ふしんしゃ) - suspicious person
- 隠し通す (かくしとおす) - to keep (something) a secret; to keep hidden (for ever); to continue to conceal
They’re really gorgeous books! All the illustrations are in color - from a quick glance-through, the しろくまにっき one seems to be mostly made up of single page “entries in the diary” without much-to-anything of an overarching storyline, while the やさしいしろくま one seems to have more of a story - kind of reminds me of a picture book. Will definitely update when I actually read them 
The author appears to have a Twitter too!
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