Are you referring to 奇跡の愛 ? Hmm, I think you could phrase it like that. But I wouldn’t call that “romance” … (neither what 愛 refers to nor what was in the book)
I took the description from Amazon and threw it into Deepl, honestly. xD But that text seemed to come out to pretty much the same, and when it pulled out love story (more or less) and the book is called the housekeeper and the professor, you can see why I leapt to romance.
I wish I could casually read descriptions, but since they tend to have a lot of words I don’t know, I usually just Deepl them for a quick overview…
Oh okay yes absolutely! When you phrase it like that, it’s easy to get there, I guess. But it’s really different.
You know, the thing is, sometimes I think that maybe I’m the weirdo, and everybody has a completely different view of what’s going on in the book etc, and then I doubt myself sometimes, and I worry that I might lead people astray but now I have said that and now you know what you are up to with my comments
Oh, don’t fret! I’ve read so many books by now, but I’ve only recently started to be able to read the summaries Sounds weird, but they are often written in this newspaper-like write-as-compact-as-you-can style with way too many (to me) unknown words.
Hmmm… maybe I should read book summaries to practice for N1?
It’s easy enough to make an account and buy off the JP store but I wouldn’t want to buy it without having the eng to fall back on, so it will remain on my wishlist for another day. Thank you for the info!
Day 30: January 30th
What did I read?: ペンギン・ハイウェイ
How much did I read?: 8 pages
How long did it take me?: 55 minutes
Not Aoyama making up a new disease to terrify the class bully before his dentist appointment Why did I think there was actually something called Stanislav syndrome though, like what disease was I thinking of
Random thought, I might try for about an hour of this each day and see if I get any faster as we go along (like if I’m able to read more pages within that time frame). I’m curious if I will actually speed up or stay the same. I don’t really know what a “good” reading speed is
Aww, yay! That’s always encouraging to hear Maybe I’ll watch the anime after I read the book
Gotta admit, the vocabulary in Japanese for Beginners volume 2 is kicking my ass but I am powering it through it. Where stories in volume 1 took me 20 minutes to complete (read once, answer questions, check the vocab, read summary, read the story a second time then read the story with English translation), volume 2 second story took me 40 minutes to complete. WOW
January 30th
What did I read?: 魔女と猫の話
How much did I read?: 5 pages
(Finished 2nd Story )
How long did it take me?: 43 min
I have now finished the 2nd story in this manga! I finally learned the name of the kitty in this story! マルセル! Which I guess would be romanized to Marcell?
A couple of last pictures of this kitty before I move on to the next one!
He looks so cute perched on her shoulder like that! And look at his little face and paws!
Evidently, Marcell does not have a permanent resting-sad-face, it’s just that he’s a rather anxious little kitty, and thus often looks concerned. Like he does here (still cute though!):
Echoing the others in that the first one stands alone and the second one belly flops.
From what I remember of the TV show (didn’t read the manga) there were a ton of tantalizing hints but no clean resolution. At least in the drama her memory issues aren’t fixed but there’s an overarching romance that basically ends with well, I’ll just convince you I’m lovable every day we meet which I found kinda…depressing. It was 1 season running in 2015 - it looks like the book series started in 2014 and is ongoing, the manga ran from 2015 to 2017. It’s possible either the manga or the book series give a more satisfying ending to her memory loss.
I tried searching for a ネタバレ but only got the one for the show unfortunately.
Finally had some time to chill and play some BU$TAFELLOWS! Don’t think I’m super far into the chapter yet but it’s a good time as always, some interesting events already
Yay! Haha I was thinking of BU$TAFELLOWS recommending it, definitely some similarly chaotic characters and dynamics and pretty boys never hurt
That one caught my eye too somehow, probably because the 山猫 I’m currently on has ウロボロス in the title? Convenient timing, I supposed that could be where you’ve “seen it mentioned”
I read The Housekeeper and the Professor in translation so many years ago that I wouldn’t trust me on any kind of details, but I wouldn’t call the book a romance at all (or I wouldn’t have read it). If I remember correctly (and I very well may not) it was a quiet story about the slowly developing human relationship of an aging professor with mainly his housekeeper’s son, and by extension the housekeeper herself. The English title is unfortunate and hints more at romance, the Japanese title less so. It was more about how so different people in age, profession, education, interests, can ultimately connect in a meaningful way. It was touching at times, but never devastating or even dramatic. It was a good book, but I read it directly after The Diving Pool which I loved for its haunting atmosphere, so I was a little disappointed in how “normal” it felt. It had a very different feel.
So yeah, I think you were describing it just fine!
Finished blue period volume 1. Will probably just watch the anime from here. Next I need to finish steel ball run before Thursday because it’s a rental.
Oh no! Somebody got hurt! It wasn’t Kona but I’m still sad about any animal getting hurt. It was one of the wolves in the pack who was hunting them.
New vocab
諦める [あきらめる] to give up, to abandon, to resign oneself
馬鹿にする [ばかにする] to make fun of
ますます increasingly, more and more; decreasingly, less and less
片目 [かため] one of one’s eye
つぶれる to collapse, to cease functioning,
襲う [おそう] to attack, to assail
洞穴 [ほらあな] cave, den
方がいい [ほうがいい] had better, had better not (after negative verb)
態度 [たいど] attitude, manner, behavior
慌てる [あわてる] to be flustered, to panic, to hurry
がくぜん [愕然] astonishment, shock, amazement, terror
First month is over and I only missed 2 out of 31 days! Yayyyy! I mostly read on Satorireader and it has definitely spoiled me. But hey I gotta start somewhere! I’m 10 more episodes away from finishing my first series on Satorireader!
And just to say congratulations to everyone else doing this challenge! Whether you’ve done only 2 days or 31! 頑張ってね!
Officially dropped Re:Zero. Started 夜は短し歩けよ乙女 but plan to use it to study on my lunch, not really trying to reading it for pleasure per se.
Gonna read manga on my commute for a bit. I went to hard on reading Re:Zero and even showed down but it was just a chore too read because nothing was happening.
chapter two completed! someone please, please give ginko a break, the poor guy deserves it some of the specifics of this one went over my head but i got the broad strokes. this chapter featured some very long constructions and some more dialectal speech, which was a struggle, but i got there in the end.
words that stuck out: 方方 (ほうぼう, here and there, everywhere), 文献 (ぶんけん, literature, reference books), 絶縁 (ぜつえん, breaking off relations with someone), and tho they didn’t go into anki i have to mention 十中八九 (じゅうちゅうはっく, in 8 or 9 cases out of every ten, in all likelihood) and 村八分 (ostracism, esp. of a household) cos they’re quite fun