February 2 
Home Post
Well. I played 999 for like… five hours I think? 
In two sittings but still, that’s pretty wild. I met more characters today!! So that’s always fun; I still haven’t learned any of their names, but they all have great descriptions like 獅子翁 so that’s a good time. I’m intrigued by all of them, but sometimes you see a character and you’re just like “…yeah. I’m probably gonna like you” lmao
Absolutely perplexed by everything happening in his outfit he’s obviously the Aggro one so I’m sold, obviously. But really all of the characters are super interesting, I’m very curious 
This was pretty funny too:
つもりだった… rip
It’s still going really smoothly! I’m honestly so shocked by how manageable it’s been, I never would’ve imagined… I’m sure I’m way slower than if I were playing in English, but I feel like I’m making really decent progress. I was a little worried that it would get harder once more characters showed up, but not so far! I’m through the main intro part I think and I’m still having tons of fun with it, so that feels great 
Anyway, I’m off to frantically search for the voice cast because every single one of them sounds so familiar, I swear
立ち居振る舞い - movements, demeanor
有無を言わさず - forcibly, without letting someone offer their side of the story
観音開き - double doors opening from the center
コの字 - U-shaped
食らわす - to make someone eat, to deal (a blow)
石化 - petrification, fossilization
不気味 - weird, ominous, eerie
健闘を祈る - to wish someone good luck
愉快犯 - crime committed for fun
Man there were so many good words, I couldn’t stop myself
Yes yes omg, I know exactly what you mean!! It’s so vague and just like… vibe-based? It’s like it doesn’t mean anything concrete, it’s just how it feels in the situation, idk. That’s by far the hardest thing in conversational Japanese imo.
That’s awesome! Santa really is great (uhh, is he called Santa in Japanese? the one you posted the image of). No spoilers, but if it hasn’t happened already, the game does like to indulge itself in a bit of science talk, so that could be a new set of vocab to deal with in the future. It’s the kind of game where someone might just go “hey while we’re solving this puzzle, how much do you know about the theory of relativity?” I made that exact example up, but it’s that sort of vibe. Just so you know what to expect on the language difficulty side.
Love that list of words by the way.
– Home Post –
February 2nd
Crystal Hunters
Kept myself occupied today with this beginner’s manga. I remember looking at it when I first learned hiragana and katakana and being completely lost – but now, it almost seems too easy. Although my copy of また、同じ夢を見ていた arrives tomorrow, I am a bit worried that full text without context from images one gets in manga will make things pretty tough. Guess I’ll find out soon!
Ah man, I can’t wait to join the VN crew with all of you. There’s a few games I’ve had the urge to play through again, but saving it until I can go through them in their native translation makes me even more excited to revisit them.
Spent most of my reading time last night trying to set up Game2Text to work with persona 4 and failing 
I did play maybe half an hour of it after giving up and actually was finding it really quite okay even without the ability to do quick lookups (although I expect more unusual vocab will crop up later) which is very cool but also the reason I was trying to play on PC was mainly to have a good mining set up so failed on that one lol.
Also read a little more 世界から猫 before bed, currently at 70% and still loving it 
Work has been crazy busy and I’ve completely lost track of everyone’s updates on here 
Managing a page or two of Doraemon per day at the moment so just about keeping myself in the challenge. Also a shop in the UK has just started stocking &Premium and Casa Brutus so I bought myself a couple of copies and will try to start sneaking in the odd article of that here and there in my workday when I have 5 minutes.
Maybe you can find a script of the text in Persona 4? I’m not sure if it is available for that game tho
To find Japanese game scripts look up the Japanese name of the game. Than add the word セリフ or 台詞 or セリフ集 or some mix of these words.
Yeah, that’s what I ended up doing, finding the script and having it in open in a tab while playing the game. Unfortunately it seems to be missing a fair amount /only partial but definitely still helpful. With Games2Text you can make pretty Anki cards with screenshots though so I’ll probably give it another shot as well! Will get there in the end 
Wow, thanks a lot! This looks much more convenient than reading a (physical) book for sure 
Now the missing part for me is to find a VN that I want to try in Japanese that is available in Japanese. I hoped for Steam to help with that, but apparently many games are only available in English there. The explanation I heard is that Japanese market for games is quite different from western market in that the westerners aren’t willing to pay as much (not sure whether this is regarding VNs or games in general), and the publishers don’t want Japanese people to be able to buy the game cheaper than they would in [wherever they typically buy games in Japan]. Which doesn’t make life easier for us Japanese learners 
Speaking of which, could you share where you found Summer Pockets in Japanese?
(I can still play Zero Escape or Steins;Gate, which are available in Japanese in Steam, but I remember them too well to do another playthrough any time soon. I might try Danganronpa though.)
I played it in English but with Japanese voice acting, and from what I recall he definitely is. It was actually a wordplay on his number, like everyone else’s nicknames, so it makes less sense in English than in Japanese 
I read from random floating times in space, above Canada.
Day 34. I read page 225 of Kiki, and about half of page 226 as well.
Last night I read three pages from ぴこぷり and thirteen pages from Death Note. I found some interesting words.
お化け------おばけ------ghost; apparition
おばけ and ばけもの are a class of ようかい. The term おばけ refers to things that change, and is often translated as ghosts.
The best お化け is of course the Sumikko Gurashi obake
Lmao I believe that 100%, very much tracks based on the vibe and the digital root coming up like two seconds in. I’ll mentally prepare, but that should be interesting
Right?? Most of the words and phrases I don’t generally know are super cool anyway so I’m not even mad about it. Thank you, I’m glad I have good taste
Ahhh that makes a lot of sense!! I still haven’t gotten to their actual names yet so it’ll be fun seeing how they all work
Same! I’ve been thinking about getting into visual novels as well and was browsing Steam but felt utterly disappointed. I’m also interested in knowing where you all get your VNs from 
.
They also seem a bit pricey, but I hope the duration and quality makes up for it.
Today’s reading was https://j-town.net/2022/01/11330101.html - today I’m running short on time because of my mini-rant below, so no vocab list. It’s another ‘oh no! situation’ that ends up happy. Man thinks he’s about to be oyaji-hunted and ends up getting unexpected kindess.
I started reading ロクヨン (Eng) after trying and failing to read it in 2020 and omg, it’s still kicking my butt. I’m copying out sentences for Anki and just look at these:
お門違いの栄転話に出世欲をくすぐられることもなかった。
大義も定見もなく、ただ警察の権威を貶めんがために失策を論う昨今のマスコミは看過できません。
保険を掛ける意味合いから過去の勤務経験者を充当するのが警察人事の常道
^That last one is just part of a sentence! Pages and pages of long, complex sentences with less common words and set phrases I don’t know yet. It’s like diving in Aozora all over again except it’s a novel and not digestible short stories.
Like the writing is gorgeous but also…send help! 
I’m sure it will make me grow but it’s going to be a rough first couple of chapters.
Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220203 
Tanuki Scroll XXXIV: 節分! & 節分の鬼! 
Hope you’ve got some beans ready because today is Setsubun! [節分] 
鬼はそと！福はうち！
The first thing I read was the “on this day” section of Hukumusume, and it explains all about the history of Setsubun - it’s a pretty old tradition! This year’s lucky direction to eat your Ehomaki in is:
北北西 (北微西) - North-northwest!
鬼はそと！福はうち！
The story is a cute little story about an おじいさん who lives by himself with no family left. On the night of Setsubun he can hear all the village having fun with their families 「鬼は～、外！ 福は～、内！」.
He returns to his lonely home and finds out an old demon mask and throws the beans around by himself, but he says: 「鬼は～内、福は～外」. Suddenly there’s a knock at his door, it’s some demons! They’re happy that someone wants to spend time with them, and then even more demons turn up. They have a big feast with lots of Amazake and have a super fun time.
☆ Learnings ☆
つきもの「付き物」ー Essential part (of something)
追儺「ついな」ー Ceremony of driving out evil spirits
ヒイラギ「柊」ー Holly (tree), specifically False Holly
えほう「恵方」ー Favourable Direction; Lucky Direction
かんぴょう「乾瓢」ー Strips of Dried gourd: Kanpyo.
伊達巻「だてまき」ー Rolled omelette with fish paste. Also a woman’s under sash (for kimono).
でんぶ「田麩」ー Finely shredded seasoned fish.
ズカズカ ー Without permission; Rudely barging in; Without hesitation
Historic Eras
慶雲「けいうん」ー Keiun era, May 704 - Jan 708. Also read as きょううん.
室町「むろまち」ー Muromachi Era, 1336-1573.
応永「おうえい」ー Ōei era, Jul 1394 - Apr 1428.
文安「ぶんあん」ー Bun’an era, Feb 1444 - Jul 1449.
Deities
歳徳神「としとくじん」ー Goddess of Lucky Directions
七福神「しちふくじん」ー Seven Lucky Gods
Kanji Form!
恵方巻「えほうまき」ー Ehomaki sushi roll (uncut). Tasty! Look up recipe maybe??
Additional Meaning
極楽「ごくらく」ー This is on WK as: Paradise… and pretty much no other information. It’s Sukhavati, the pure land that is associated with Buddha Amitābha.
I’m going to respond to the VN talk later but I don’t have the time just yet, just wanted to say something to this while it’s on my mind – if you have a script on hand, have you tried importing it into Game2Text? I haven’t done it, but that should be able to fix the sentences for you, I think.
I know the struggle though, I’ve spent too much time trying to mess with settings. The light preset worked decently well on Ace Attorney overall, but it made it so that the occasional red highlighted text was absolutely invisible to the program, haha.
Thanks so much! I actually managed to get it working this evening! Think my laptop just couldn’t handle having the game and the captured video on screen at once and so everything was weird and stuttering but tried it using a monitor today and it works well! Very excited! I saw someone also using it with switch games (using video capture to the laptop) as well when watching videos to see how to get it to work so might be able to unlock yomichan on switch games too which would be a game changer!
