Yes, Triforce Blitz involves triforce piece collection – the ruleset puts some carefully tuned hints in up front about where the three pieces are, so the racers (and commentators/chat…) get to play the logic puzzle of “where are they most likely to be?”. There’s also a time limit.
The other oddball format I found fun to watch was the Pictionary Randomizer races, where one person starts with the spoiler log and has to tell the runner what to do purely through drawing…
I watch on twitch; there’s a quarter final coming up this evening if I haven’t misread the schedule.
Might have to check it out then. As a spectator I do know logic pretty well now, but also get it hilariously wrong at times. xD So Blitz does sound like a fun time in that way. I wonder if the pictionary races even are on the youtube. I might have to go scrolling through the twitch videos.
It is just that twitch requires crazy amount of power or something (I can’t remember the right words), so my laptop runs hot and it eats up battery, unlike youtube that runs like a smooth machine, so I don’t watch Twitch much for those reasons.
I’ll be able to watch the quarter final in two days, when they can upload it/take it live on yt. Although I’ll have to keep an eye out now, because I do try to catch the grand final live, if time zone permits.
Reached the second chapter, which is called 何を. With the first one being called 何が, this feels like a grammar lesson.
The book is interesting and easy to read so far. There have been several mysterious incidents in the same wider area, ranging from serious to trivial, that people are quick to call ghost stories. Is there something supernatural going on? Or is there a rational explanation?
So far there are different characters in almost every section, with only one making a reappearance. I have a feeling that they will all converge somehow later on.
Finished Saikawa & Moe book 5. I liked the beginning of the book Moe being all gungho about the mystery and her dog being super cute, also the fact that Saikawa was absent for a while, lol and a bit of the last part when Saikawa spoke with Fumi, the widow, who answered the “why” part of the mystery, ie. why her husband died. Some of the stuff in the middle made my eyes roll (the part where Moe secretly having a disease turned out to be a massive april fools as well as marriage suddenly being a theme and then discarded swept under the rug just as quickly. Honestly, I used to root for the two of them, but unless they stop being so weird with each other, I’m not getting my hopes up).
Tried reading Eugenia (0% → 3%) but I’m not in the mood for a random stand-alone book right now. Decided to go for 薬屋のひとりごと３ (0% → 2%) instead. Then I realized it’s been quite a while since I left off from the second volume. Hopefully, I’ll remember more of what happened previously as the story unfolds.
@MissDagger I haven’t seen any of Zelda Ocarina of Time randomizer tourneys as I simply didn’t know about them. You may have just shown me a new rabbit hole I can explore – do I dare?
I’ve only seen some Ocarina of Time (and other games’) speedruns on Awesome Games Done Quick/Summer Games Done Quick and those were already bonkers and entertaining with all the frame perfect wall skipping, bomb sliding tricks, generating medallions through bottles filled with bugs and whatnot. If some of these past zootr tournaments can be found on a Twitch archive or something, I may give it a watch one fateful weekend.
One of my favorite single panel jokes in the series
They barge into a conversation that’s already happening, and then immediately drop the topic after this. But i think it gives some excellent insight into the types of conversations we can expect 宮村 and 会長 to be having in their free time
Word of the Day:
肩車「かたぐるま」ー giving someone a ride on one’s shoulders
ヨルシカ Replies
I’d be lying if I said that ヨルシカ wasn’t one of the reasons I decided to start learning japanese seriously I played 言って, 花に亡霊, and だから僕は音楽を辞めた a ton in various rhythm games, and then back when I still worked mostly night shifts, the line「 青空だけがみたいのは我儘ですか。」from ヒッチコック hit pretty hard. When I started learning songs for karaoke, those were some of the first ones I practiced
For some reason I remembered listening to the albums back then and thinking that they were styled more as singles albums (i.e. not meant to be listened to in any particular structured order), but driving around with them the past few days I am changing my mind, especially for だから僕は音楽を辞めた. I am really loving all these little almost-ambient insert songs, especially 4/10.
Day 32
I finished the first volume of Kindaichi Shounen. The conclusion was awesome pretty much everybody was a victim of the situation. If the murderer actually did know how his dead girlfriend felt, he may have not become a murderer. Some of the dialogs at the end where incredible.
After finishing volume one I started the next volume right away. It’s the case playing in that strange town.
Today I read chapter 8 of Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun.
I’m enjoying it, but finding it a bit tough in places - I often struggle a bit with 4 koma stuff though. Not sure why!
I was starting to get worried that I was lacking motivation to read Part 2 of JoJo, but Lisa Lisa has finally been introduced, so hopefully I’ll be more interested in reading now lol. I’m pretty sure her intro page says info that gets contradicted later. Also, hopefully I’ll have more reading time tonight since I don’t have work tomorrow. I ran out of time again lol but this time because I was excited to make my lunch for today.
Day 31: January 31st
What did I read?: ペンギン・ハイウェイ
How much did I read?: 3 pages
How long did it take me?: 23 minutes
Day 32: February 1st
What did I read?: Nothing
Day 33: February 2nd
What did I read?: ペンギン・ハイウェイ
How much did I read?: 7.5 pages
How long did it take me?: 50 minutes
I love how immediately after I was like, I’m gonna try to read an hour of this every day!, I proceeded to do…not that. The reason I did not do that is that work is DUMB and I hate people. But I got some good reading time in today. Enjoying the book so far Also I just learned a fantastic new word, it’s my favorite: 魔法瓶 (まほうびん) - IT’S JUST A THERMOS but I am absolutely referring to thermoses as “magic bottles” from now on
4-koma is HARD and I don’t know why either They feel so dense imo
Not me happen to be reading the chapter in my graded reader about romance and Valentine’s day customs in Japan when my crush at work is standing close to me. swoon
I did understand about 70% of it before going through the vocab section though so that’s great.
I agree with @NicoleIsEnough in that it all evens out in the end. I don’t even know how many books I’ve read at this point because some people would only count novels, some would count anything without pictures, and some would throw in manga and kids books I’ve read somewhere between 30 and 100+ books depending on which measure is used. Define whatever metric works for you and your goals and that’s the important thing. For me it’s a vague page count which varies wildly based on medium. I’ve also shifted to a basic “minimum 5k pages a year” goal, though, and don’t have much interest in tracking beyond that.
My spreadsheet, for the record:
I don’t have any reading to report I’ve been super crazy busy lately and that won’t be changing for at least another two weeks. I’m going to try to push through this week’s 半落ち tonight and also read ahead in 七回死んだ男 as neither of those I’ll be bringing with me.
Woof, today’s bit of 夜は短し歩けよ乙女 was really tough. I had to do a lot more look up than yesterday. There was 六地蔵（ろくじぞう） and 錦鯉（にしきごい）. 賑やか（にぎやか） is one of those words I keep forgetting I know, but I get tripped up every time I see it. It doesn’t come up enough for me to really know it yet.
I am gonna read it one more time before I put it down as “read” on Natively. I got about 50% of the story that 東堂さん was telling, but if I give it another read I can probably get it right. I don’t remember this part of the movie as clearly, so I am trying to string the images together.
EDIT: Having finished 推しの子 earlier, I think I am gonna treat myself to some Stardust Crusader viewing on the way home. I am kind of burnt out from today not having much to do. These days are really frustrating because I get more tired by having nothing to do. T-T
Started off with some 山猫; the general setup for this book is coming together and it continues to be very intriguing poor 勝村 always getting caught up in some nonsense haha, the trials of a protagonist. I also played some more Steins;Gate which was fun! I think I’m getting more used to the general writing style though it definitely will not hesitate to throw some weird specific terms at me Thinking about it the glossary entries are probably good practice for more informative-type writing, god knows I never seek that sort of thing out on my own lmao. Yay variety!
I agree 100%, it’s been a while since I’ve messed with it (mostly because I found it exhausting haha) but I definitely remember 4-koma feeling like a lot more work than other manga. I feel like it is a density thing, just by nature of having to fit an entire little narrative/joke/whatever into only four panels, it makes sense that they’d necessarily feel more dense. Also trying to figure out specific jokes like that can be rough It really has been a while though, perhaps I should try again sometime!
Read 極主夫道 1 on the bus. It was a super quick read I didn’t expect. But it was safer than watching JoJo on the train X.X (Stardust Crusaders ep 31 is a no go on public transportation).
My plan for reading more manga was to take it easy and read like a chapter a day but it turns out that doesn’t work for manga where things are getting intense and the endings of chapters are super cliffhangery. What I’m trying to say is that I finished Vol.8 of 青のフラッグ and with that the entire series. I loved the series but have some conflicting feelings about the ending.
Super spoilery ending thoughts on 青のフラッグ manga
Like srsly, don't read this if you want to read the series at some point
The whole reason I started this in the first place was that it was supposed to have a good portrayal of LGBT characters, and I’d say it did that, but up to the second to last chapter it seemed that the hetero relation was the cannon one, which was a bit disappointing but it was a nice relationship too so it was fine and it made sense. But then in the last chapter they decide to do a full 180 and just tell you that they broke up for no particular reason AND THEN it’s implied (they won’t even show it outright) that the two boys end up together. Which would have been a great ending if they’d shown how that relationship developed at all, but they didn’t, and you have to wonder if this was just terrible decision making of if in spite of the message of the manga they were not allowed or didn’t dare actually show a homosexual relationship. Wasted opportunity in my opinion.
And then there’s the somehow more worrying bit that the character written very much as a lesbian ended up with a husband!?!? I’m always rooting for more bisexual characters but this was not it, I think she showed some very specifically lesbian struggles and it just seemed like a last minute cop-out. Idk.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still loved the series and the characters but I think it could have been handled so much better if they really wanted that ending for them.
That took up all my reading time for the day, so nothing else was read.
2/2 5 pages Spy Family
3/2 6 pages Spy Family (finished mission), 2 pages 夜カフェ
I’m not reading as much as I should and am now behind in most clubs. I’ve got plenty of time off but I think it’s because I’m using that time to sort my house out in the 2 weeks I’m home. It is looking neater. Current house sitter leaves tomorrow morning, next arrives in the evening. Hoping the cat likes him.
I suspect I’ll ironically read more once I’m away from home. Which is from Sunday morning.
２月２日 
I played 言って, 花に亡霊, and だから僕は音楽を辞めた a ton in various rhythm games, and then back when I still worked mostly night shifts, the line「 青空だけがみたいのは我儘ですか。」from ヒッチコック hit pretty hard. When I started learning songs for karaoke, those were some of the first ones I practiced
Also I just learned a fantastic new word, it’s my favorite: 魔法瓶 (まほうびん) - 
I’ve read somewhere between 30 and 100+ books depending on which measure is used. Define whatever metric works for you and your goals and that’s the important thing. For me it’s a vague page count which varies wildly based on medium. I’ve also shifted to a basic “minimum 5k pages a year” goal, though, and don’t have much interest in tracking beyond that.
I’ve been super crazy busy lately and that won’t be changing for at least another two weeks. I’m going to try to push through this week’s 半落ち tonight and also read ahead in 七回死んだ男 as neither of those I’ll be bringing with me.
