How about we pretend that the game doesn’t exist.
I’m reading every day it’s just that I’m too lazy to post. Just wanted to say the No Game No Life novel is ridiculous hard to read.
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Hiii! :DD With exams and stuff coming up for me soon, I suspect I’ll have to go that route too - we can do TINY CHALLENGE together 
I’m looking forward to it! 
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Return of tiny 
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A tiny return
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A retiny
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A retinyglare
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Day 81!
Chapter 36 of Yotsuba today. This was a really cute and funny chapter. I especially enjoyed Yotsuba’s horrified face when she pulled the seat off the bike on page 48 
I also had a call with a friend tonight where we did some reading together. We read 4 pages of Full Metal Alchemist, which is the most pages we’ve ever managed to read together in one sitting.
It’s a bit above both of our reading levels, but its fun to work it out together 
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Yay! Looking forward to having you with us! 
Omg yes, tiny challenge returnssss 
I love tiny challenge 
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March 22 
Home Post
Hmm well as expected I have zero self-control, so I started VLR last night and played some more today It’s going well so far! I’ve already gotten through the intro stuff so much faster than I did with 999, so that feels good, though it could be in part because of how much more dialogue-centric VLR has been so far 
I’ll take the progress either way!
VLR things!!
The vibes are simultaneously so different and yet the same VLR feels so much more Danganronpa than 999 did, and yeah that’s probably mostly because of ゼロ the CG bunny but that’ll certainly do it. I really love this nightmare bunny though, the voice acting is just wonderful chaos incarnate
Apparently in Zero Escape the characters I’m instinctively drawn to are the aggro ones who don’t know how to dress, ディオ (what a name lmao) showed up and I was like “yeah here we go again” but also ROBOT MAN?? Amazing, love him already too. And then アリス?? and 四葉!! 
I have many questions but I’m so glad to have her here, oh also “ルナ” … yeah I’m skeptical somehow I feel like I’ve met her before huh
Omg I can’t believe I almost forgot ファイ, what an icon already, she’s fantastic I anticipate so many chaotic interactions with her!!
I do miss having the main character voiced, but what can you do Everyone else talks so much it doesn’t change a whole lot really lmao.
I’m also absolutely terrified of the flowchart, there are just so many things sooo many boxes, but that just means lots of adventures and suffering probably so what else did I sign up for really
Anyway I’ve been really enjoying it so far! I’m excited to see where it goes 
Hey I’ll take it, 100 hours isn’t super terrible in comparison all things considered! It’ll be interesting to see how VLR goes, what’ll be stronger - the amount of content (man the flowchart is terrifying) or my increased speed
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Looking forward to welcoming @mikey2806 and @omk3 into the wholesome and encouraging world of the Read Every Day Challenges!
I’m on track to finish the それいけズッコケ三人組 volume that I started for this last challenge by the end of this month and trying to decide which way to take the next challenge.
Last summer I had two months off work and read my first proper adult japanese novel. When I went back to work I knew I wouldn’t have time for reading so intensely (I was doing 5-6 hours a day during my time off! It was bliss) so scaled back to novels aimed at c.7 year olds (from the それいけズッコケ三人組, which I’d picked up on ebay) to keep myself reading, and started the autumn reading challenge. Over Christmas I tried some manga but found the direct speech too hard so went back to theそれいけズッコケ三人組 series.
Unfortunately I don’t have any more volumes from that series to hand, but I do have some other kids books, aimed at slightly younger children. So I’m trying to decide whether to pitch down to the younger kids books and try to read faster (and possibly without a dictionary?), or pitch up to some of the light novels I have waiting for me, or to order more of the それいけズッコケ三人組 series from Japan and stick with them for a bit.
Thoughts and suggestions welcomed!
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…
I think we all saw this one coming.
I might have started 999 a couple days ago. 
I have around two weeks left until I’ll be busier with classes and stuff again so I figured I might as well use the time I have now.
It’s indeed very fun already!
As an alternative to OCR, textractor seems to work pretty well with at least the VN parts of the game, so that’s nice for mining and lookups.
999 things
I like how the first puzzle was already a ‘huh, this doesn’t really work in English in the same way ’ kind of situation. (I checked out of curiosity, it’s a completely different puzzle in the English version)
Since all the characters’ names are connected to their numbers in Japanese, I was also curious what the codenames are in the translated version. Most of the characters have different (English) names that are maybe a bit far fetched but I suppose they tried to find a connection to their number that works in English - but then Santa is still just Santa with the explanation just being “san means three in Japanese”. Wow. Very creative. Good job. 
I love finding out how things like puns, riddles and the like were translated, I always find that interesting for some reason. I should probably stop looking that up all the time though, don’t wanna run into spoilers. Will try to resist.
I scrolled back up to some old 999 posts to read them now that I have more context and can read the spoiler tags stalker mode
100% same Kinda dig it though.
My monolingual dictionaries give me “おろかな人をあざける語。ばか。” for 三太郎, so I think that’s what he meant? Like: not as in [this insult], as in Santa 
Oh boy. I’m sure that’ll be interesting.
I can’t believe I’m laughing at some of the dumb puns.
While searching a room and checking out a random lamp:
紫: 「ライトですね。」
淳平: 「左にあっても？」
紫: 「ライトです！」
… D:
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Day 82!
Chapter 37 of Yotsuba today. This has been my favourite chapter so far from this volume, it was really cute and made me laugh out loud a few times - especially at Yotsuba grinning but covered in covered in scratches on page 82
I also really enjoyed the artwork in the beautiful panel at the top of Page 77.
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I think it’s hard cause you’ve got several viable options and it’s going to come down to what exactly you’re in the mood to handle right now – which you might not even properly be able to recognize until you start something and go “this definitely was not it” haha. I have a compulsion to keep making things harder on myself so that’s the way I’d lean if it was me, but if you can, I think the answer is to try to nail down what it is you want out of reading right now. Like, I see the things that I read here as essentially my primary studying at this point, the way in which I fill in all of the gaps (ok there are so many gaps it’s mostly one big gaping hole 
) in grammar and vocab that I still don’t know. When I have time I work in more casual reading for those great feelings of going through something and making that more natural, but I know I want to be challenged as much as I can tolerate. It’s fine to not be in the mood to struggle through that here now, though. I dunno if that helps but it’s a hard question! The flipside is there’s no wrong answer; anything you do will be beneficial.
Hey, I finished my second route of Summer Pockets. I didn’t even realize Shizuku having a route was unique to the Japanese-only Reflection Eternal edition – apparently like half of the routes are. So getting this content not at all available in English is a nice feeling.
It was really nice! I have a tendency to marathon once the end is in sight and once again read over 15,000 characters today (~1320 lines!) to wrap this up. My head aches a bit! But it’s been good. I struggle on a bunch of lines, but I’ve also had a noticeable jump in comprehension, and am so much more confident in a lot of words I know… as always, it came on the heels of when I was struggling more (mostly through life circumstances), heh.
When I realize it’s still not been a year (about 10 months), and I’m also at 86% through my second book on top of this… I mean, I really can’t be anything but very pleased.
I didn’t realize just how close the next thread was; I’m genuinely really excited to get back to it as a regular thing 
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March 23 Home Post
Played some more Zero Escape today! Shocking, I know I’m still very much early enough in the game where I don’t really have any idea what’s going on, so very curious to see what happens. I have many questions and basically no answers haha. One difference from a Japanese standpoint is that there’s definitely more dialectal/role speech type stuff in VLR than there was in 999; it’s still not like a crazy amount, but it’s there for sure. ファイ and 天明寺 (is that how you write his name? I can’t remember lmao rip) are the worst offenders, and then ディオ’s just aggro but like… really aggro Still generally manageable though for sure, dialogue is so much faster to read oh man.
I also read a couple pages of 風つよ between classes! Definitely haven’t been very consistent with novels in the Zero Escape times, but it’s nice to check in sometimes Altogether a pretty good day!
Ahhh congrats!! 
(10 months woah, you are powerful 
)
Whaaaaat, nooo… how could you have possibly guessed ah, predictable Natalie is predictable lmao
999 responses :o
Ahhh yay!! That’s so fun, I’m glad you’re enjoying it! Having a good text extractor is definitely super helpful
Ooooh yeah that’s really neat, I love that kind of thing! I remember feeling super cool doing that puzzle
lmao we love Santa, what a guy very on brand
Honestly?? Like I don’t know where he got these like shredded fabric scraps, but it’s a vibe
Omg I love that, that makes it so much better immediate branding of “no I promise I’m not an idiot, I’m Santa obviously”
Wow I think that went over my head completely before, 紫's brand of nonsense is strong
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Just checking in lightly to say I’m up to page 23 in 透明カメレオン! I think I’m getting used to the author’s way of writing 
As for the story:
It’s just the intro so there’s no drama yet. Basically, the main character is a man who has a wonderful voice without a face to match. They’re just talking about how little luck he has with women, and his job as a radio personality.
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This is really good advice, thank you. I think I’m leaning towards trying a light novel. I’ve got the fear a bit because although I successfully read one last summer, I had so much more time on my hands then than I do now. But that was nearly a year ago and I’ve made a lot of progress since then. In reality the grammar of a light novel is probably no harder than a kids book so it’s really just the kanji that could scupper me.
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I’m sure not sure if this is everywhere or even common anymore, but where I grew up there was definitely an insult of “they have a face made for radio”. 
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Light novels can be quite hard actually 
So far as I know it’s basically just the Young Adult (aimed at middle and high school) category in Japan, but with a larger adult audience and its own set of tropes. High school students can understand quite a lot of tricky grammar, they’re just less likely to be writing in what I’d call prose, but that doesn’t mean archaic nonsense, keigo for effect, dialects and the like won’t be present.
As a quick, concrete example, a light novel I read, 夏へのトンネル is rated a 32 on Natively (3 people have finished, I’m not the sole grader) and I personally consider it significantly harder than novels like コーヒーが冷めないうちに (29) or 世界から猫が消えたなら (29) which I’ve also read.
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Indeed The “light” bit does not mean “easy in terms of grammar and sentences” but instead “non-deep in terms of contents” (some people might call it “pulp” actually). A pretty hard light novel is e.g. Spice and Wolf which is rated 36 on Natively; it contains a lot of advanced grammar and economy-related vocabulary. The Advanced book club is currently reading 薬屋のひとりごと which is also rated 36 on Natively and which also contains a lot of difficult vocabulary, from what I’ve heard.
Of course there are also light novels that are easy to read. Just please don’t take that for granted 
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If you want to, I say go for it! The worst that can really happen is you try reading something and you’re like “actually nevermind, let me read something else” Yeah light novels are really situational like others are saying, but if there’s something you want to read you never really know how it’ll go until you try! I know some of my best experiences have been with media I thought was probably way out of my depth but I had tons of fun with regardless, and I’ve definitely grown a lot from those.
Anyway my point here is really there’s nothing to be afraid of! It’s not like you have anything to lose really, you can always change your mind
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