I’m slowing down in reading カードキャプターさくら 1. I keep seeing crazy fonts. For example:
I can barely make out what’s written on those two panels so I’ve stopped.
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Day 27:
日本語: I read a fair amount of 伯爵と妖精 31, then realized I need to do the rest in one sitting (probably about 1.5 hours of reading). I didn’t have time for it yesterday (or today, sigh), so I switched to manga and read some of ダンジョン飯 1, some of DEATH NOTE 1, and a bit of からかい上手の高木さん 17.
Read-aloud: We read a chapter of ふしぎの国のバード.
中国語
中国語: I read an intermediate entry on Mandarin Bean, one page of 擅长捉弄的高木同学, and a bit of 孩子最爱读的中国民间故事.
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Update January 28
- Chapters 43 and 44 それでも歩は寄せてくる 17 pages.
- Terrace House Aloha State. 1 episode subtitles.
- Animal Crossing. Made the rounds
biohazard 0 HD Remaster is on sale on the Switch. Picked that up. One of the few RE/biohazard I haven’t played yet and I’m going in Japanese first. Should be interesting.
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Today I read ten pages from ちゃお. I found a couple fun words, but I also did something different, and made a list of a bunch of boring (functional?) words and expressions that appear over and over again. I’ve already learnt a bunch of these words, but I thought it would be good to start to a list because it’s easy to mix them up. First, for the fun words:
こそこそ------sneakily; secretly; stealthily (onomatopoeic or mimetic word)
戛戛------かつかつ------clicking; clopping; clacking (onomatopoeic or mimetic word)
second, for the functional words/expressions:
Summary
だから------so; therefore
でも------but; however
なら------if; in case
じゃ無い------じゃない------is not; am not; are not
じゃん------isn’t it?; don’t you think?
ちょっと------a little; a bit; slightly
えっと------let me see; well; errr
ん------yes; yeah; uh huh
みたい-------like; sort of; similar to
けど------but; however
ても------even if; even though
あんな------that sort of; that kind of
だったら------if it’s the case
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You make me want to continue Air sometime soon xD I started it but never got further than just a few screens in, so maybe that will be my next read after Kimi no Na Wa!
Day 24: January 27
- 魔女の宅急便 - 0,5 page
Only read half a page the day before yesterday, did not read yesterday (Persona 5 Royal is taking away all of my free time…)
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January 28 
Home Post
A bit of a late post, but I read four more pages of 風つよ today! I didn’t have as much time as I would’ve liked but 
(honestly I spent a lot of time making myself not buy the new pokemon game but we’ll see how long that actually lasts)
Some things aren’t happening quite as I expected, and I’m really not sure whether it’s actually different or if I’ve just forgotten 
like these pages talked about ハイジ’s knee injury and we haven’t even brought up the hakone ekiden yet, and we still haven’t met 王子!! I really didn’t think these things were so separated but who knows
Anyway I’m still liking it a lot! Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have time to read more 
Cool words
誘導尋問 - leading question
ぶっ飛ばす - to knock down, to send flying, to drive away
暗黙 - tacit, implicit
指標 - index, indicator
Thank you :') you were right, it’s been pretty manageable! Even the absence of furigana isn’t so bad most of the time 
This is very relatable tbh I think a lot of my greatest progress has come with fighting through things that are definitely way above my level that I’m super interested in, something about it just hits different so whatever works!
I haven’t read a whole lot of manga yet to be fair, so maybe there’s some truly absurd fonts out there, but I have to say those seem a lot rougher than most I’ve seen and I absolutely don’t blame you for holding off on it That font with the circles is really something.
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Day 25: January 29
- 君の名は。page 168-176 (70%)
This novel is so hard to put down sometimes xD Hope I get some more time today to read more!
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Soooo, weekly update: Home post (22d done)
Have finished the first volume of the today’s special Shirokuma Café. Some of the puns are really good. Loved the whole 肉食 草食 ロールキャベツ discussion, with the nice double meaning for men in japan ^^. Also liked the whole 469MA 969MA shenanigans and mixups. but since it relies heavily on prior knowledge or 語呂合わせ to be funny some of them are hard to grasp for me or fall flat since I have to look them up…
So today I decided to put the vol2 and vol3 on the backburner and start with Slam Dunk. Slam Dunk surprised me by how wordy it is in the first two chapters. I thought it would be more “showing rather than talking”. I mean nothing much is happening for now but it’s still a lot of ヤンキー shouting at each other filling pages and pages of dialog and beating each other up. Except for one really really nice double spread page of him trying to dunk it has no relation to basketball at all 
. At least some parts are decently funny.
For Solanin: I have the complete edition with both books and the after thingy all in one. And I just finished the first books worth. What a cliffhanger. Overall it has been picking up steam in the last 3 chapters. The first few chapters felt like an introduction of each character per chapter but now shi* really starts to go down. Can’t wait to read on.
What I noticed: The time it takes for me to finish a chapter of solanin varies greatly. The last one was pretty wordy and I had to make a ton of flashcards, so it took me 1h to read. The one today had pretty simple language (only 2 lookups) and was done in like 10 mins. Don’t know what to make of that 
Either way I enjoy reading all your updates; keep them coming. I will try to post another update next week, however, it’s dependent on how smooth the move of my parents goes.
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I love Solanin, definitely one of my favorite manga of all time! Inio Asano uses simple conversations, abstract conversations and sometimes just his drawings to convey his meaning. That does not really help if you want to read one chapter and take around the same time for every chapter xD
I’m really curious about your overall reaction when you finish reading it. I can really recommend seeing the movie (or just this scene) after you’ve completed it.
One of the best panels in the manga:
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Thanks I bookmarked it for later. I love the 加藤/ビリー dynamic too. Such goofballs.
PS: my favorite for now is the one with the potato in the kitchen 
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Day 29. Read pages 208-213 of Kiki today. I should be less busy tomorrow, so I’ll see if I can read up to Chapter 10 (which starts on page 222).
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This is so true for me!
Which is why I’m thinking of stopping my detailed record of my study habits. I originally started as a way to justify spending ~$50 on a children’s kanji dictionary from Gakken, saying once I had studied 100 hours I could order it. Then there were more things that were above my level but I really wanted anyway. But now I’ve gotten to the point where my accumulated hours exceed my book budget anyway.
Also, not having to always pay attention to the time would be nice, it will leave me more time to post in the forums 
, and I can always start again if I want to make any comparisons with my study habits of the last year or so.
So, maybe soon I’ll be posting a little more frequently here!
And I wanted to say thanks to @rikaiwisdom and @windupbird for reading books I’m interested in and posting word lists! I’ve been sneakily copy/pasting them into a document for potential SRS before reading the book myself.
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Oh, had I known they were very useful for some of you I’d have kept posting them :o I’m just being super lazy lately 
. I’ll try to resume it and post them frequently.
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That’s okay! Didn’t mean to pressure you at all. I was just happy to get a word list for the first part of the book.
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Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220129 
Tanuki Scroll XXIX: 聴き耳ずきん 
Read today’s folk story!
About an old man who helps out a fox, and the fox helps him back
☆ Learnings ☆
New Words
背負い込む「しよいこむ」ー To carry on your back
一日中「いちにちじゅう」ー All day long
何度も「なんども」ー Repeatedly; many times over (Recognise this now seeing it in hiragana, don’t think I’ve seen it in kanji before)
古ぼけた「ふるぼけた」ー Worn-out; threadbare; weathered
ずきん「頭巾」ー headgear (usually made of cloth); hood
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January 29
君の名は , 4 pages.
Random Words
- 関心 = かんしん concern or interest.
- 関連 = かんれん connection, relation.
- 強行 = きょうこう forcing, enforcement.
- 預言 = よげん prophecy.
- 同様 = どうよう identical, the same, equal to.
- 巷間 = こうかん on the street, around town.
- 薬指 = くすりゆび ring finger, fourth finger from thumb.
- 不在 = ふざい absence.
These last few pages of the book are destroying me . I’m not sure if I’m just tired, but they’ve been a significant bump in difficulty for me for sure. Too many unknown words per page, and the sentences have gotten so long that it’s hard to parse everything together. By the time I reach the end I’ve lost track of the beginning. But I think it’s fair to call defeat and move on. I hope to come back to it at some point in the future and see that it isn’t a challenge anymore! But for now, though, dammit I just can’t xD
Oh it’s no pressure at all don’t worry about it, I’m glad you let me know.
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Today’s article was オーディオブック制作の裏側--原作を重視し過程を踏んで作るオトバンクのこだわり - CNET Japan
It’s about the founding of the company audiobook.jp/otobank and some of their notable projects.
It was a longer and more complex article than I’ve read recently and made me stare at how long I have to go before I’m at any level I consider ‘fluent’. I’ve been B1 in “can do” statements (pg 5, pdf) for a long while now and I’m trying not to get down on myself about the time it’s going to take to reach B2.
I prefer the CEFR can-dos over JLPT levels because I’m not sure I ever plan to take the JLPT but I care very much about what I can do
Some words I looked up
拘り - obsession about s.t.; pickiness about s.t.
創業 - established (I knew this one and forgot it ;_; )
緑内障 - glaucoma
失明 - loss of sight
試行錯誤 - trial and error
開拓 - open a new market
なぞる - to trace
台本 - script
吹き替え - dubbing
落語 - traditional style of comic story telling
群像劇 - production w. multiple storylines
行間を読む - to read between the lines
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If it helps, I’d be genuinely super excited to hear about that! As Key VNs go, I’ve actually only read a lot of Clannad years back, but I burnt out well before the end. Hoping to return to that in Japanese, and get to Little Busters eventually… anyway, would love to know more people reading this sort of stuff! Also I don’t know a single thing about Solanin, but I love that panel you posted.
There’s a fine line, that I guess varies for everyone, for what level of that sort of thing is motivating and exciting vs just too much added stuff to keep track of. You all can surely tell I like to ramble about the stuff I’m up to; I look forward to posting here when I finish reading, but I’ve also always done best monitoring things in a general, lax way. No hard check in times, posting about whims that pop into my head the moment I start typing… that’s why I’m super scatterbrained about my time spent, haha, but I like it overall. I’m sure you’ll work out what’s best for you soon; don’t feel too overly attached to something if you’re getting tired of it.
The plateaus are brutal, and this language is so much work as a whole, but from what I’ve gathered about where you are, it’s super impressive. I know that doesn’t exactly alleviate the grind you’re staring down, but since you’ve come this far, no doubt in my mind that you’ll get the rest of the way there eventually.
I did actually think to watch the time today, and I’d say about an hour and 10 minutes! Not bad. One of my finger joints is aching badly for some reason today so I was going to keep this short… and then I accidentally typed a ton to other people already because I can’t help it. So I’ll wrap up fast this time:
Nothing too surprising, gliding through. I’m also 60% through Zoo 1 and finished the third short story! Very low key session of Summer Pockets in happenings, so I’ll just share this nice night swimming picture:
Simple to please as I might be, I remain enamored with the mood conveyed by this game’s colors and whatnot. Since I always seem to learn some piece of trivia from this game’s references, today it was a reference to Mikako Kotani: “a Japanese former synchronized swimmer who competed in the 1988 Summer Olympics, where she gained a bronze medal each for the solo and duet events, and the 1992 Summer Olympics. She was the first woman to be Japan’s flag-bearer for the 1988 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony.”
I’m a sucker for expressions, so today’s cool new word is 大目に見る (おおめにみる), to tolerate/overlook/etc. I guess this STILL wasn’t all that short, huh? I’m gonna get some ice for my finger and stop rambling.
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January 29
本好きの下剋上 8
Progress: (34% → 36%)
Haven’t been able to concentrate on reading lately. So many times I’ve had to reread a sentence 4+ times 
It has been a tough week.
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