This article kicked my butt. I spent close to an hour on it and there are still some vague parts for me. I’m going to bookmark it to read again at the end of this challenge to see if it’s any easier. Probably just not having to look up all those words will help a bit!
Tomorrow is actually the end of the challenge, but tomorrow is also a workday and I’d rather do something like this at a more leisurely pace.
Thoughts on re-reading:
There are still some sentences that confused me, for example:
どうか変わってほしい、と他者に対して思うのは愛ゆえのエゴだ。
I was lost on what 愛ゆえのエゴ was, wasn’t in my dictionary and seemed sorta philosophical which is definitely not my wheelhouse in Japanese. Ended up finding this which helped. I guess…having a ego or reluctance to part with something because of a love for it, possibly too much love. I guess.
I felt like I understood the majority of it this time around, but there were definitely a few sentences here and there (like the one above) where I felt I was missing some sort of context. I think culturally I may be missing something too, and that’s always a frustrating feeling as those gaps are the hardest to fill in.
Started Volume 4 of Yotsuba today, and read the first chapter. Super cute as always.
I have a rotten cold, and the next chapter looks longer and more text heavy than most Yotsuba chapters, so I’m not going to try to read that one today.
I’m saving it for tomorrow instead.
I’m quite sad that its going to be the last day of the challenge! I’ve had such a lot of fun
February 27 update:
Just as expected, I had very little time for reading again, so I read another page of the eighth story of きまぐれロボット. Due to the time constraints I also limited my lookups, so I feel like my understanding is a bit vague. I’m considering re-reading the whole story from the beginning tomorrow.
Any of you having life get in the way or otherwise getting busy are still doing great just for hanging in there; the dropout rate on this language is so high (for good reason). You can do it
I’m tentatively experimenting with my idea of funneling Wanikani time to reading and Anki. It’s going to take a little bit of time for my Wanikani reviews to really significantly drop, but all the same, I pushed a little more today. I haven’t been timing myself, but I read ~6500 characters and ~580 lines!
I’m very glad I picked this route; the writing style is so comfortable now. I look up words, but I feel little to no strain at all with reading, and it’s only the occasional line phrased in way that throws me off. Those happen daily, but they’re never THAT bad. Definitely big progress since starting the challenge.
With no context at all, enjoy this image that looks like 紬 introducing herself as a superhero, or something.
I like how the VN has transitioned from “summer vacation is going to last eternally this is great” to “oh no summer vacation has an end and it’s approaching.” Pretty much sums up every vacation I had as a kid, haha. I never quite had these island adventures, but this game captures the spirit of that time really well.
Turns out there’s a verb for having a nightmare / making a noise during a nightmare: 魘される (うなされる). That’s neat.
On the other hand, I went back to Zoo 2 for a couple pages last night and still really struggled, ended up putting it down on a sentence that was totally losing me. This particular story is rough. I may have just been too tired, but it’s the ego check I expected it to be back when I started reading a book on the side
Oh man, what a cliffhanger! I expected the scene play out to the end, but it didn’t. Not the main plot, but the sub plot If we can call it that, hehe.
Good book! I enjoyed it :3 If you’re interested in good mystery book, I recommend Not just this third book, but the other Saikawa & Moe books so far too. Join the book clubs~
Not much reading as I only got through the first two pages of the first chapter. There were some photos and “teasers” at the very beginning, so I read the few sentences that were on those pages.
So many new words! I realized I didn’t have time to explore them all, so instead of rushing I decided to leave it for tomorrow.
Y’know, I’m not ready for this challenge to end I just started new book!
365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 10 min
Today’s color: 鴇色 (ときいろ) - pink (wing colour of crested ibis)
Named for the feathers of this lovely bird, which used to be quite common in Japan but is now very endangered (It was actually was considered extinct in Japan for a period of time, but it has since been reintroduced)
I played some more 999 today! It was mostly just some character interaction so that was a good time! Somewhat of a break from the horrors of late Honestly I played way earlier today and I don’t really remember what happened lmao but it was fun as always!
It’s really wild that tomorrow’s the last day of the challenge, time is really a trip. I’m sure I’ll get a lot more retrospective tomorrow but even now it’s pretty amazing looking back at what we’ve all accomplished On to the final day!
Worrrrds
露出狂 - exhibitionist, flasher
Oh I went to make my word list and that was it apparently that’s what you get today
Can’t believe it’s the last day of the challenge! I kind of feel like I didn’t read that much and then I look back and I’m like, oh yeah, I finished one book and a computer game, read a whole manga and just under half of a kids novel. None of which I could have done this time last year. I also looked back at the Autumn Read Every Day Challenge thread and it took me 6 weeks to read the first volume of それいけズッコケ三人組, whereas I’ve got 94 pages into this volume in only a fortnight. I can’t emphasise enough how much these threads have helped to improve my reading.
Plan is to finish this current novel, which should take around a fortnight, and then I bought a few more kids books off ebay recently that I want to get stuck into. Work should start to ease up after Easter and then maybe I’m going to tackle something aimed at grownups…
I go back and forth with this. I have a really limited amount of time each day and I’m never sure how best to spend it. Reading is definitely improving my Japanese but a lot of the words that I look up, I find I’ve looked up and added to my flashcards already. So I feel like I need the support of SRS to actually get them into my brain but any time I spend on flashcards is time I’m not reading… I’m going at a fairly slow pace on WK but then when I read a book aimed at adults last summer I was massively hampered by my lack of kanji knowledge so then I was like ‘maybe I should just step up the pace on the kanji???’. But then I really struggle to learn kanji out of context. It works best for me when I read a word, add it to my flashcards, learn the word, THEN one of its kanji comes up on WK and I learn it as a kanji and then I learn some more readings for the word. But it’s kind of hard to make things happen that neatly. For the last 3 years I have taken September-December off from doing lessons on WK because it’s my busy time at work and I don’t need that added stress and I can really recommend giving yourself a little holiday from it like that.
I decided to end with a meaning book article, so today was 「心置きなく」とは？意味や言い換え！例文と解釈 | Meaning-Book - nothing really special. Broadly the phrase means to do something with your heart at ease, without reservations, etc.
Here is my final calendar:
I knew I would miss a day, and frankly expected to miss more.
My original goal with this challenge was to get used to reading more explanatory, opinionated Japanese. I wanted to do this to improve my own Japanese writing and speech. I haven’t noticed any particular gains in that area unfortunately, but it’s also something that’s rather hard to track. If nothing else I expanded my vocabulary once more and hopefully somewhere in the recesses of my brain the speech patterns left a mark.
It was a delight reading everyone’s updates be they about the books you were reading (so many first novels! ), the manga you’re reading, the games you’re playing, or the fascinating articles you’re finding. Even if I didn’t reply to you directly at any point, I read everyone’s entries.
I only missed four days overall! That counts as a success, if you ask me.
Especially since this is how I did in the last two challenges.
In terms of my reading speed, I couldn’t really see that much progress, but I definitely reached a few milestones and highs when finishing the last two chapters of Kiki. I’m now beginning Chapter 4 of 銭天堂, and I’ll continue steadily working through that in the coming weeks/months.
I started this challenge wanting to make reading in Japanese an enjoyable habit. I’m not quite there yet, but I have definitely improved a lot. My mental block towards picking up a Japanese book and starting to read is slowly but surely disappearing.
A big thanks to everyone who participated in this challenge! Everyone here is so positive and motivating, and I really appreciate that. I’ll definitely be joining again in the Spring challenge.
Haven’t been replying in a while, but I have been lurking and kept reading the whole week ^^ During this challenge, I read one novel, two manga volumes and a third another novel. Now that I’m working through キノの旅, I feel like my reading skills have increased quite a lot! Reading is more fun and I have the feeling that readings of words come much easier than in the beginning of this challenge!
Thanks to everyone for motivating others and showing your progress. I look forward to the Spring 2022 version of this challenge
About a candy seller who’s also an artist (and specialises in drawing cats!) comes across an abandoned town with one sole survivor, a girl who says the entire town was eaten by a giant mouse. The artist draws a super realistic picture of some cats and waits for the giant mouse to appear, when it does the cats are released from the drawing ニャーン！
All the cats come racing at the giant mouse but it is too powerful and it eats the cats. So the artist draws more cats ニャン、ニャン、ニャーン！ and at last they defeat the big mouse of doom.
The girl is all like: “You saved me! お嫁にもらってください ”
十兵衛: [[いや、わたしには、可愛い妻も子もいます。]] Say in a super movie accent for additional effect
娘:
But to say thanks she buys all the candy he has and turns it into a huge oval-mountain of candy… annnnd it’s just a dream … oh
The girl’s described as having round cat like eyes, and she seems to have a fondness for round things… I think 十兵衛 be having dreams about catgirls
☆ Learnings ☆
New Words
カランコロン ー Clip-clop (of shoes, like geta) (onomatopoeia) まん丸「まんまる also: 真ん丸」ー Perfect circle オイオイ ー Can be like “oy oy, wait a minute”, but here it’s onomatopoeia for crying: waaa! or boohoo! 残った「のこった」ー Remaining; Leftover くんくん ー Sniff sniff (onomatopoeia)
Names 十兵衛「じゅうべえ」
This sums it up perfectly!
Everyone’s done really well this challenge! There’s been a lot of successes this time, like first novels read, and it’s so great to see - congrats to everyone who has taken part!
It’s been fun reading everyone’s updates, and seeing the variety of media that everyone’s been reading. Looking forward to the spring thread, and seeing you all there
Thanks again @windupbird for hosting, and for sharing all the cute stuff so much cute stuff
I finished 51 days of reading at least a bit every day. That’s quite impressive. Except for my late start and 1 day missed because of the move of my parents I hit every day.
Overall I finished:
7 Manga (Yotsubato 2x, Slam Dunk 4x, Shirokuma Cafe 1x)
Solanin (Technically also manga but harder than the others and with 466 pages more like 2 volumes ^^)
Around 100 news web easy articles
5 Chapters of Tobira including the workbook excercises.
Tons and tons of other random stuff. Bookwalker thread free stuff to see if it fits my taste and Death note the free stuff to talk about it in the first week of the club etc.
2 chapters of the book from the advanced bookclub that just began.
Looking back now the volume of reading material in these roughly 50 days was surprisingly high. Especially since I didn’t really do anything with Japanese for the last 1 ¹/₂ years.
Overall I’m very grateful for this thread and all the participants in it. You all gave me the motivation to pick Japanese up again and it is no understatement that I’m having a blast at the moment. I for sure plan to take part in the spring edition again. Though I’m not sure I can be as consistent then. I love the warmer weather and will try to spend much more time outside compared to now.
I just love how colourful it looks, and the little stories it tells me, like when I started reading 大聖堂 () and how hard it was in the beginning, but then it got much easier, or when I speed-read Demon Slayer () to make sure I’d finish before chrisosaurus so they can make use of my vocab sheet, or when I wanted to read しあわせのパン () before the film festival ended so I could first read and then watch it (which was a very good decision), and, and, and …
I think I will continue my calendar for March as I will be reading anyways
Also, a big Thank You to all you others in this thread! I did not post much but I read all of your posts and enjoyed all the interesting details and the cuteness See you around in the Spring Challenge!
Finished reading What did you eat yesterday? vol 1. I was a bit frightened by the first chapter, the main character names everything that went into his dish last night and after he left work he starts thinking about what to cook and his entire process. It was just a lot of internal monologue. The main character really loves cooking. So it was lots of food stuff I had to look up. Found it gets better as it gets on. There’s still a focus on cooking but also shows different aspects of life. It’s sometimes a bit hard to follow as we move between scenes.
Today ends the winter challenge, but I’ll be continuing my own challenge for the next month. I’ll post updates as we go along. For tomorrow’s reading I picked pretty boys detective club. I know of the anime (not seen it) and I thought it is probably something nice to expand on. As I do wanna read some detective manga later on.
Continued these last few days as I have done for some time, with a few pages of ハイキュー！！ and time spent playing Animal Crossing… and with that, challenge over! And I made it every day despite work getting so busy.
When I started this challenge I said that I just wanted to read a page of anything a day, and planned to read volume 2 of レンタルおにいちゃん, and then maybe continue with something else if I finished it. However, my pace ramped up significantly because of wanting to know what happened next in this series, so, here’s the full list of things I managed to complete during the challenge:
レンタルおにいちゃん Vol.2
レンタルおにいちゃん Vol.3
レンタルおにいちゃん Vol.4
カードキャプターさくら クリアカード編 Vol.1
Animal Crossing pretty much every day.
A few random days of Tetris99 and Pokemon Cafe ReMix.
A selection of articles from NHK Easy News and BARKS.
And the things I have started, but did not finish by the end of the challenge and will continue on with:
ハイキュー！！ Vol.1 re-read.
れつ！ハイキュー？！ Vol.1
I’ve noticed my comfort level with reading for longer periods of time has improved, which has motivated me to go back to Tobira to get stuck into grammar study again (which is going well!). I’ve learnt a bunch of new words which I’m still in the process of adding to Anki, and reinforced a whole lot more words that I’ve learnt in the last six months.
Definitely going to join everyone for the Spring challenge. Until then, I’m going to spend most of my time with Tobira, try to finish vol.1 of ハイキュー！！, and think about maybe possibly using the Spring challenge to tackle my first proper novel if I feel ready?
Thank you to everyone for your regular updates, and well done to everyone who’s reached their own personal targets! I’ve really enjoyed seeing what everyone is reading, I’ve made note of a number of books and games to try in the future. Seeing everyone’s progress has been super motivational and I hope to see familiar faces in spring!
I just started new book! 
(It was actually was considered extinct in Japan for a period of time, but it has since been reintroduced)
Honestly I played way earlier today and I don’t really remember what happened lmao but it was fun as always!
On to the final day!
), the manga you’re reading, the games you’re playing, or the fascinating articles you’re finding. Even if I didn’t reply to you directly at any point, I read everyone’s entries. 
So the artist draws more cats ニャン、ニャン、ニャーン！ 
”
) and how hard it was in the beginning, but then it got much easier, or when I speed-read Demon Slayer (
) to make sure I’d finish before chrisosaurus so they can make use of my vocab sheet, or when I wanted to read しあわせのパン (
) before the film festival ended so I could first read and then watch it (which was a very good decision), and, and, and …
See you around in the Spring Challenge!