📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

Update February 16

  • Jazz Up Your Japanese with Onomatopoeia - Scenario 3 - A Man’s Place. + Section Quiz.
    The English translations continue to be very ‘colorful.’ The quiz contained another furigana typo, the third. あががってきています Makes my brain bleed.
  • Animal Crossing ~45min.
  • Mr. Driller

I really need to read Death Note tomorrow but Volumes 2 and 3 of よつばと! are ready for me to pick up at Kinokuniya. So many people reading chapters beyond my collection. Its been hard not to catch spoilers.

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I wanted to participate in one of them them in the past but I would need to get up super early so I decided it wasn’t worth it.

About the Onomatopoeic discussion I see them pretty often in manga and also the Monobeno visual novel is full of them. I don’t really think I need to study them that much. Nevertheless I still put them into SRS.

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Yeah I appreciate everyone’s ideas, but I’m with you, can’t bring myself to not SRS a lot of them, personally. I’m not concerned about the manga sound effect type of situations right now… sure, everything in a panel was put there for a reason, but with visuals you kinda get it anyway.

Zoo has had virtually none, but I feel like that’s a result of Otsuichi being very straightforward and plain in his writing. Summer Pockets is absolutely loaded though; I come across multiple new ones most days. I’d say my experience with just understanding it in context are kinda 50-50. There are tons of times where they look almost repetitive and basically just more closely describe something, like telling you something is wet while using the wetness onomatopoeia right with it.

But too often I get, like, “負けるときは、ホント、アッという間にぽっくりいきますからね!” where ぽっくり is the sort of sudden snapping type meaning (or amusingly stretching the dying one, what do I know) and it just carries the meaning of this whole sentence. With context I can infer that… something bad would happen if they lose, but that’s about it. Other types they’re alone doing the heavy lifting of being descriptive, some like “とぼとぼとカブを押して歩いていると、…” I know they’re walking while pushing the thing, but so much is lost if とぼとぼ does nothing for you. And to be fair, at this stage, applying some vague approximation to what it means isn’t the same vivid image it’s meant to conjure for a native… but it’s step one to there I hope!

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15th February
Monobeno
I didn’t have that much time so just a few lines.

A Town Where You Live Vol.1
For some reason I enjoy slice of life manga. The characters in it use I little bit of kansei ben.

16th February
Started reading the next Yamada kun and the Seven Witches volume 70 pages. I already like it much more than the second volume. Like always all characters in it are super fun.

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For those of you who feel ready to tackle a not-too-difficult book at a moderate pace, you might want to have a look at the Intermediate Book Club who is currently voting for their next pick:

The club will start to read this pick from April 2nd, which sounds about perfect for the (hopefully upcoming) spring challenge :smile:

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Home Post

As promised the little mixed up kanji from 黒魔女さんが通る!! (volume 4)
We got a letter handed from our classmate who is notoriously bad at kanji. So she uh “simplified” or mixed up a few things, when she tried to copy this chain letter.

これ は 不幸 の 手紙 と いっ て 矢口 さん から 木 た 死 雨 です。 三日 以内 に、 心 で 書き なおし て、 三十 三人 に 出して ください。 出さ ない と 軍 が どんどん 黒く なり ます。 出さ なかっ た ため に、 お父さん の 会社 が 父さん し て しまっ た 人 も い ます。 これ は 木 ヨ の こと です。

Our MC is utterly confused as well!

まったく 意味 不明……。 死 雨? 心 で 書き なおす? 軍 が どんどん 黒く なる? お父さん の 会社 が 父さん し た? だいたい 矢口 さん って、 だれ?

Can you guess what it was supposed to say?
Solution:

これ は 棒 の 手紙 と いっ て 知ら ない 人 から 来 た 死霊 です。 三日 以内 に、 必ず 書き なおし て、 三十 三人 に 出して ください。 出さ ない と 運 が どんどん 悪く なり ます。 出さ なかっ た ため に、 お父さん の 会社 が 倒産 し て しまっ た 人 も い ます。 これ は 本当 の こと です。

As チョコ explains:

ありゃ あ。 「矢口」 じゃ なく て「 知」 じゃ ない。 「来」 は「 木」、「 死 雨」 は「 死霊」、「 心 で」 は「 必ず」、「 軍 が どんどん 黒く」 は「 運 が どんどん 悪く」。

I’d say ありゃ あ indeed!

The 棒 の 手紙 thing is the most fun actually. People changed 不幸 to 棒 more or less intentionally (even wikipedia has a short paragraph on it), but our well meaning friend brought us back the misfortune!

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:house:

Read page 152 yesterday and then pages 153-154 of 銭天堂 today, and now I’m on Chapter 3! I didn’t completely understand page 153 but I don’t have the time or energy to dwell on it. Extensive rather than intensive reading will have to do.

Is it too much of a stretch to say I’ll attempt reading 10 pages of 銭天堂 tomorrow? I’ll make it a low-priority goal :joy:

Fellow Aussie :raised_hands:

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Today’s reading was スピンと花布 – 出版レッスン帳 which was about bookmarks, ribbons, and book bindings basically. My head is pounding this morning so no comments past that. :pill:

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I continue to be so happy I went back to reading a novel after struggling through a couple of manga. I’m really enjoying reading again. I struggle so much with casual speech that manga just feel like I know no Japanese at all whereas in a novel it’s more in context and I’m like, I can do this!

Also not strictly reading but I started Den Noh Coil on Netflix last night and didn’t change my settings so it started with japanese subs and I was too lazy to change it and…I understood pretty much everything? Only had to pause and look up one word - 獲物 (prey) - because it appeared in hiragana so I had no clues to what it might be. I checked and it’s about to come up imminently in my WK lessons though!

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:tiger2: :books: Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220217 :books: :raccoon:


Tanuki Scroll XLVIII: 安義橋の鬼 :horse:

Read today’s Hyakumonogatari, from Shiga Prefecture.

About tricking the demon that resides on a bridge by out-running it on a horse, but the demon gets its revenge.

☆ Learnings ☆

New Words

腕自慢「うでじまん」ー Pride in one’s strength or skill
詰らない「つまらない」ー Dull; Boring; Uninteresting
腹帯「はらおび」ー Girth (for horses) - the band that goes under the horse and keeps the saddle on. Can also mean a bellyband in general not just for horses.
たっぷり ー Plenty; Full; Ample
跨る「またがる」ー To mount or straddle - usually written only in kana - can be used to mean riding a horse or motorbike, but can also mean to spread out onto or over something.
薄気味悪い「うすきみわるい」ー Weird; Eerie; Uncanny; Creepy
薄紫色「うすむらさきいろ」ー Light Purple; Lilac
身震い「みぶるい」ー Shivering; Trembling; Shuddering
たたり「祟り」ー Curse; Punishment (supernatural); Wrath (of a spirit). 祟 is a really cool looking kanji.
物忌み「ものいみ」ー Abstinence or fasting; confinement to your home on an unlucky day

New Meaning
傾く「かたむく」ー to lean, to slant, to lurch - but it can also mean “to go down (like the sun for example)”; to wane; to sink; to decline.

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Summary post :bookmark:

February 17

笑わない数学者
Progress: 58% → 60%

Not much time for reading today :zzz:

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Summary post

February 17 update:
Finished the second story of きまぐれロボット today. I liked it even more than the first one. These stories are fun, and even though the idea becomes somewhat predictable before the actual finale (which, I guess, is to be expected for a children-oriented book), they are short enough to still make it worthwhile to read it to the end. Besides, I like how it’s written – the storytelling style is simplistic and to the point, which suits short-short stories quite well, and is also very comfortable to read at my level.

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Summary post

One thing I want to stop and appreciate is that I’m noticing recently my reading stamina is a lot better. So much better I don’t think I’d even describe most reading I do as tiring anymore? The times that I stop are more based on time than anything else now, whereas in the past I’d regularly quit at about the point where it was wearing me out. No doubt harder reading material will still do that, but it’s big progress all the same!

On that note, probably the last few days have just been easier, but the general upward trend in what I’ve read in Summer Pockets continues. ~3400 characters and ~280 lines is something I can be pretty happy about for now. The only reason I focus so much on amount read is that visual novels are often LONG and I want to read a lot of things. JPDB says Summer Pockets has 720182 characters… I don’t know if that’s the original or the expanded version because all it says is “Summer Pockets” but uses the image of the updated version. All I know is, when I was previously hovering around 2000, that’s roughly a full year of reading, heh.

All the same, it’s trending in a positive direction! Like I said, I seem to come out of bad days feeling like improvement is more noticeable.

There hasn’t been much I’ve felt too strongly about on the screenshot side recently, but here you can see 紬 has a second outfit and also there’s another onomatopoeia! Let’s be fair though – ぼうぼう (here sort of rampant or overgrown) is a pretty fun word. Yomichan first gave me “burning vigorously” which I could tell was probably wrong, but that sure gave me a different mental image of the scene for a moment, haha.

Another fun word is 万引き (まんびき), one I learned today for shoplifting or shoplifter. They pull 10,000 things from stores, I guess.

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I am so bad at updating here, wooops. Unfortunately I have got into the habit of meaning to read 鏡の孤城 for half an hour or so before bed, which quickly turns into me staying up way too late because things are starting to happen…and then I’m too tired to update.

Also, I complained here before about feeling like it was too tough for me but I’m glad that I pushed on, it’s feeling way more manageable now :slight_smile: I probably won’t read more of that today though (well, maybe a little…) because a manga and game haul arrived today so I had to read the new shiny things!!!

Pics

バスタフェロウズ - a ridiculous crime/romance/time travel game for the switch that came in a box made to look like a suitcase full of money and included some fun goodies alongside it!


ギブン - cute boys in bands and everyone is gay!

I read the first chapter of ギブン today but mostly played the start of ブスタフェロウズ. It was hard! A lot of crime and law related vocab over and above what I’ve come across in Ace Attorney & persona 4. It is pretty nice though in that it is fully voiced, you can set it so that dialogue doesn’t move on until you want it to, and you can also open a log and replay the audio for previous dialogue. All lovely features for a language learner desperately trying to figure out what the hell characters are on about. Literally, within the first scene a character threw 心神喪失of unsound mind, 多重人格multiple personality disorder, 解離性同一性障害dissasociative identity disorder at me in quick succession :scream: Still, it also seems like it will be a silly and fun ride!

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Oh those words are fun! :smiley: I actually have only heard 二重人格, never 多重人格, so that’s a new one for me. I might put 二重人格と多重人格の違いとは? away as my weekend reading.
心神喪失 is actually composed of 心神(しんしん) which means about the same thing as 精神 (せいしん)if you know that word as it’s more common. And 喪失 means loss, so like, very interesting neat word. Never seen it before either though I know the two base words.

解離性同一性障害 is actually several components. And now I’m down a rabbit hole about 解離性 because if you break it as 解離・性同一性・障害 instead of 解離性・同一性・障害 you get disassociation/gender identity/disorder instead of hysteria(?)/identity/disorder.

…I love this stuff, I’m sorry. :sweat_smile:

:tada: Yay! Glad things are trending up again :slight_smile:

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Home post :house:

Day 41:

I read the last few pages of chapter three in よつばと! today :four_leaf_clover::slightly_smiling_face::four_leaf_clover:

I need to stop reading after midnight tho

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Day 48!

Chapters 13 and 14 of Yotsuba today - so I’ve finished Volume 2! I found a few bits of chapter 14 a little confusing, but luckily all of my questions had been answered in the old bookclub thread :slight_smile:

I’m off work until Tuesday, so I’m looking forward to having some extra reading time for the next few days!

(Home Thread)

Edit: Accidentally managed to post this as a reply, and can’t work out how to undo that… Sorry for any disruption pocketcat :grimacing:

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Oof that’s wild, the only thing I guessed was 軍 to :joy: 会社が父さんしてしまった is pretty funny lmao

Oooh that’s super exciting, congrats!! It’s always nice when these things become more fun than work :tada:

Niceee, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for your thoughts! I watched the anime a while back and really enjoyed it, and those look so pretty omg :sparkling_heart: I’ve never heard of バスタフェロウズ but it sounds like my brand of nonsense too lmao, add it to the list

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I thought that this time I would get an unbroken streak but yesterday, I had no choice but to break the streak. Yesterday, there was an island-wide blackout just before one in the afternoon. The blackout took out water and Internet connections as well. It was almost 12 hours before electricity was restored. Unfortunately, I had not downloaded the manga I was reading. I was using the Bookwalker web reader to read Cardcaptor Sakura. So even though I’d serendipitously charged my tablet the morning before the blackout, I couldn’t continue my Japanese reading practice.

(Here is where my policy of relying on electronic methods of reading failed me. It’s only convenient when the current pace of technology is maintained.)

I was quite disappointed to break the streak but I have no choice but to swallow the loss and move on. I have no intention of putting extra work on myself to ‘make up’ the deficit. I am too lazy for that. Fortunately, the problem with the electricity supply was not too severe and it was fixed before I got up this morning. So now my schedule can continue as normal. Just to avoid any other breaks in the reading streaks, I have made sure to download the manga that I am currently reading to my tablet and I am writing this to remind myself to do the same for all manga going forward.

This is one onomatopoeia I will never forget. Boa Hancock from One Piece has this as her power and she is one of my favourite characters, partly because she has the same birthday as I do.

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Summary post

Day 48: February 17th

365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 10 min
Today’s color: 浅緑 (あさみどり) - light green

So, funny story - today’s color was actually 山葵色, but apparently I must have skipped a page because I definitely read about that color on Tuesday xD Whoops. This is what I get for not using a bookmark, I guess. Honestly, the colors are pretty similar though :rofl:

Good words
  • 霞 (かすみ) - haze (esp. in spring); mist​
  • 含み (ふくみ) - implication; hidden meaning; latitude; atmosphere; tone; sentiment; inclusion
  • 新鮮味 (しんせんみ) - freshness; novelty
  • 芽吹く (めぶく) - to bud
  • すっくと - straight; upright; erect​
  • どちらかと言えば - if anything; if pushed I’d say; if I had to say
  • 官位 (かんい) - office and rank; an official rank

まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 6 min

Today’s reading was about 祈年祭 (きねんさい or としごいのまつり) - prayer service for a 五穀豊穣 (ごこくほうじょう) - huge harvest or abundant crops. It usually takes place today!

What else did I read?
Nothing because busy D:

Ah yes, another series I’ve been meaning to start for a long time but haven’t for completely inexplicable reasons xD I bought the first volume a while ago and it’s still sitting in my TBR pile…would be interested to hear your review/how difficult you find it ^^

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