Yeah I got frustrated with One Punch Man because they had a tournament arc and introduced each contestant but their intros got longer and longer to the point I dropped the series entirely because it wasn’t fun or interesting. I want to just skip it but even after 8 character intros disguised as biographies, it soured my interest in continuing because now I felt like I would be missing some key details to the story.
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２月５日 (Home Post Link)
Read:
- 夜カフェ ch 4 ( pg 43 → 53)
- 三ツ星カラーズ ch 2 - I didn’t think that could possibly be what the chapter title meant, and then I got to the end of the chapter and was rewarded
- 新完全マスター pg 10, 11 - today’s reading was a little easier, and I got the comprehension q right! the grammar lesson was kinda brutal, some more formal writing particles において and によって and stuff are gonna take some practice
Word of the Day:
雪平鍋 「ゆきひらなべ」ー aluminum saucepan with a handle (usu. wooden) and often with snowflake-style embossed pattern (aluminium)
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February 2nd
It was a very busy day, so by the end of it I was feeling very tired and just did Aomi Japanese.
February 3rd & 4th
And then on the next day, I got sick, and the day after that I was still feeling rather sick, so on both days, I, again, just did Aomi Japanese. 
I wasn’t bedridden-delirious-fever-dreams-sick, but I wasn’t feeling very motivated or clearheaded enough to tackle understanding Japanese.
Kind of unhappy with this inauspicious start to February, since I was a little disappointed in how the second half of January went in terms of Japanese-reading productivity… I had been thinking something along the lines of “February is the shortest month of the year! So I can definitely manage to read everyday at least for this month! Right?” But uh, no, apparently, eheh. 
February 5th
What did I read?: 魔女と猫の話
How much did I read?: 7 pages
(Continued 3rd Story )
How long did it take me?: 1 h 25 min
But anyways, although still sick, I’m feeling better and am back to reading again! It was a rather pleasant reading session~ I felt like I didn’t have to look up too many words this time.
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Ha, ha! XD But yes, I would recommend it~
Oh, that looks cute!
On that note, there was a promotional leaflet in another cat manga I bought, and through it, I discovered that that manga, as well as 魔女と猫の話, were both serialized in a magazine called ねこぱんち, which, as you can guess, is just chock full of different cat manga! 0_0 My wallet did not want me to know about this! XD
Oh, Japanese music is a big reason for me wanting to learn Japanese too! That and manga! XD There just aren’t enough reliable translators covering the music and manga I’m interested in.
I didn’t know that their songs got featured in rhythm games! That’s pretty neat. And ヒッチコック is another really great song too! ヨルシカ’s songs are so good on both the emotional and writing-style level… Very lyrical, in both senses of the word! I love all the wordplay in them. That’s one reason why I personally don’t like to listen to their music in the background very much, because I feel like I’m seriously missing out if I’m not following the lyrics, ha, ha! 
And my listening comprehension and translation speed isn’t good enough to understand them just by ear.
I’ve actually started learning some of their songs too! I’ve started both 嘘月 (that wordplay!) and 夜行. But I kind of lost steam with them, since I’m not very good at singing high or making my voice do what I want it to… Sometimes I sing the lyrics I learned of 嘘月 to my own melody for fun (which… probably won’t help me learn the proper melody for them, come to think of it… 
).
[As an aside, have you seen the anime movie 泣きたい私は猫をかぶる? Three of ヨルシカ’s songs got featured in it, and I thought it was a pretty interesting little movie. It’s on Netflix in at least some countries.]
Oh, the songs in だから僕は音楽を辞めた are definitely supposed to be connected! I don’t know if you’ve heard about it already, but both the だから僕は音楽を辞めた album and the エルマ album tell a story together (in conjunction with two works of prose “Letters to
Elma” and “Elma’s Diary”). Roughly speaking, the story is about the relationship between a man (Amy (apparently they didn’t know this was a girl’s name… Maybe it’s supposed to be the French Aimé?)) and a woman (Elma), and how it falls apart, due partially to Amy’s inferiority complex in respect to his ability as a songwriter. Amy goes on a journey which ultimately ends in his suicide. Elma then retraces his journey to come to terms with everything. That might not be 100% accurate, since I never took the time to go down that rabbit hole since I know it will be a deep, time-consuming one, but it’s the gist of it. A reply to this Reddit post contains a link to a Google doc with detailed info about the entire thing, including translations to the letters and diary entries.
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ヨルシカ stuff
Yeah! I’d read about this in something, but for some reason thought it only was applying to only some of the songs in general and not like a whole concept album (maybe i got it mixed up with YOASOBI？a lot of their songs are based on short prose stuff, but i think they’re mostly independent). I didn’t read them in english because I wanted to read them in japanese, but kinda forgot to do that maybe I’ll have time soon, though
YES! I thought it was really cute, almost trying to do a ghibli-style thing. Definitely definitely a kids movie, but I enjoyed it a lot!
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After a weekend off my my routine, I am not back on and read the next section of 夜は短し歩けよ乙女. Easy section today, and wrote down the words I didn’t know, and there weren’t a lot. Learning the history of 電気ブラン and how miraculous its creation is, but 東堂さん can only get 偽電気ブラン. 乙女 wants to experience drinking it. And uhhh yeah. That’s pretty much it.
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February 5 
Home Post
Pretty solid reading day today actually, read like 36 pages of 山猫 which was a lot of fun! Things are really picking up 
Having read another book in the same series/by the same author is definitely helping it feel more comfortable, and I think I’m now more on board with the general vocabulary tendencies of this volume, so it feels pretty smooth! Good times 
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Finished the volume of manga I’d been reading today and now I’m going to have to buy the serialized chapters because I’m desperate to know what happens next and they haven’t been released as a tankōbon yet.
I am sort of excited to get up to date and start working on reading other things, but I know I’m going to come back to it often.
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This interested me so I looked it up. This page confirms my suspicions that it’s not viewed as common and sometimes downright uncomfortable for some people that talk to a visually male speaker who uses あたし. The exception one person stated is if they’re already expecting the other person to speak like that because they chose to go to a bar with an オカマさん (i.e. a transvestite who works at a bar).
Basically it’s not normal and people will likely make assumptions about you if you’re a male that talks like that. It’s similar to how females don’t use ぼく unless they’re a certain orientation, but interestingly, I’ve heard my 3rd through 5th grade girls use it as their preferred pronouns.
I think anime is the biggest reason/influence for that though. But then I’ve noticed a couple of those girls opting to wear pants instead of skirts for their winter uniforms so maybe they’re more aware than I give them credit for!
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February 4
Started この本を盗む者は although I didn’t have much time to get into it. With new books it often feels like it takes me ages to get through the first bit until I find the rythm. We’ll see how long that takes with this one.
February 5
Played BU$TAFELLOWS ~2.5h so a lot longer than usual
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I’ve seen 僕 used by women in professional roles (eg police) in books, without anything to suggest it has to do with sexual orientation. I’ve also seen men alternate between 僕 and 俺 (again in books) and this again seems to have to do with setting and/or mood, so I suppose people may tend to use several pronouns for themselves depending on situation. This man who uses あたし, he’s a middle aged policeman with unkempt hair and a squint. He ends his sentences with ねぇ a lot. I don’t know what to make of it. He’s been using あたし with colleagues and acquaintances alike.
Edit: Your link doesn’t seem to work outside Japan.
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Haha same here, with that book. It’s really funny because so far it feels like a pretty easy read, still it somehow takes me ages 
In my experience that is pretty normal and mostly depends on the setting, i.e. whether the person is talking “up” (僕) or “down” (俺).
Yep, that’s Yahoo’s answer to GDPR 
You can use a VPN to access the page. (I recommend tunnelbear, it comes with 500 MB of traffic per month for free, which is plenty for the occasional purchase on Bookwalker and the occasional read on Yahoo.)
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I don’t have any issues accessing the page from the US, so I couldn’t test it, but I can recommend Proton VPN, which is generally regarded as safe and reliable, and which has a robust free option.
Japan is one of the free locations, and I, uh, far exceed 500 MB of traffic per month 
(I can’t stand watching pro wrestling with commercial breaks, so I got it to watch the American wrestling company AEW through their streaming service on Fite, which is only available internationally…).
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No, you’re right about that! I meant to add a little note to the end regarding ぼく being more commonly used by females than あたし being used by males, and I think there’s a logical explanation for it so I’ll expand on it here.
may contain rants
For sure ぼく pops up a lot in strong feminine characters typically with masculine or androgynous personalities or traits. Sometimes it’s used as a technique to sort of trick the reader.
The first example that pops into my mind is Kino from キノの旅. So it totally makes sense to have female police officers using ぼく without it affecting their sexual orientation. Just a technique by the author to help define their character.
On the flip side, I’ve never seen a man in Japan (Japanese national or otherwise) use あたし that wasn’t a comedian. Then again, I guess it all depends on the context because even females using あたし is only heard when 1) she chooses to use it 2) when she’s speaking in a non-formal situation.
If there are guys who are comfortable using that pronoun, they’d probably be doing it in front of their friends or in another situation that permits it. But since masculinity is also a core piece of the average Japanese man’s existence (it’s common to hear variants of 女の子じゃないから、泣くな！or お前は男でしょう??), it wouldn’t be very easy for them to adapt a very feminine pronoun without being looked down on or people making the assumption “he just swings that way.”
(Sorry the link doesn’t work for you) but that’s why one of the commenters mentioned they would be uncomfortable if they heard it. ぼく is gradually becoming more common place thanks to media so it wouldn’t be creepy to hear a female speaker use it. But I can confirm from personal experience that many of the older generation (typically Showa-era born) do find even find females using ぼく weird if not uncomfortable.
Some of it is like the equivalent of Americans shaking their heads at the younger generation for their Tik Toks and weird lingo. Some of it is the older generation miss old Showa-era/early Heisei-era Japan (the good ole days where you could smoke anywhere you want) and all the new changes shock them (what?? Young people aren’t going to nomikais and becoming alcoholics? How are we going to sell our overpriced sake?).
Some of it is genuine fear that Japan is going to disappear because the low birth rate has become a big problem and now the LGBT are supposedly going to contribute to the issue (because it’s not like there are bigger issues like the little financial support available for families - education in Japan is especially not cheap!).
I was actually very curious about what kind of character you’re reading about because it definitely is intriguing due to the rarity. The only character I can think of off the top of my head is the transvestite in Tokyo Godfathers, and I don’t even remember what pronoun was used either. .
Anyway, mind dropping the title of the book you’re reading? 
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The title is no secret, it was in my original post asking about the pronoun: 狐火の辻
I still fear I may have misunderstood something, because there’s a lot of dialogue where it’s not clear who is speaking. (The speaking styles are distinct, I’m just never 100% sure which person uses which style, and that’s partly because of that あたし throwing me.)
I don’t know much about the character (yet?). I’ll be sure to let you know if something comes to light that explains this あたし (or if it turns out to be some huge misunderstanding on my part).
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2 月 ６ 日
からかい上手の高木さん Volume 1 Chapter 5 
As promised in my last post, I went through chapter 5 again using the vocab and grammar notes from ABBC. I feel like a broken record thanking the previous participants of that Book Club every time I finish a new volume. I learned so much as usual, especially from the grammar questions and answers. Some of you are participating in this forum so thanks again everyone!
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It happened. I ended up with no access to my book, at the end of a day with no time to read 
I thought it was the end of my reading streak. However, while being grumpy about this, at some point I realized I don’t always have to read the same book and managed to sneak in 5 or 6 articles of NHK news (the easy ones). Ha!
Regarding Harry Potter, I finished chapter 15 / 17 in the meantime. The end is in reach. Recently, I tend to read faster, ignoring more of the words and phrases I don’t understand. I would like increase the look up rate a a bit again, but let’s see how it goes.
Happy reading!
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Feb 6, Mon of Week 7 of Winter Q1 2023 
- ふしぎの国のバード Vol.1 Ch.2 江戸.
Last chapter was 横浜, so Yokohama pidgin. This chapter is 江戸, and waiting for a passport.
- 一度読んだら絶対に忘れない日本史の教科書 Ch.1 Part 弥生・古墳
Compare with China, the Three Kingdoms; and afterwards.
- うたわれるもの
Words of the day
- チラシ = flyers; leaflets. I am not sure about English, but in my native language, it is similar to Kanji counterpart, 散らし.
- ニタリと = smirking
- ぶつくさ言う = to mutter. 呟く + ブツブツ.
- やり抜く = to carry out to completion = 遣り抜く
- やり遂げる = to carry out to completion = 遣り遂げる. Similar to above.
- 後じさる = to retreat. Also, 後退る.
- 嗤う = to sneer at; to ridicule. Has Furigana. Probably like 嘲笑う.
- 蚤 = a flea. Has Furigana. 蚤の市 = flea market.
- 蓑 = straw raincoat. Has Furigana in context.
- 憔悴 = emaciation; being worn out. Has Furigana.
- 息災 = (praying for) good heath
- 寛大 = generous; tolerant; broad-minded
- 羨望 = envy. First Kanji from 羨ましい.
- 物の怪 = (vengeful) ghost. No Furigana.
- 雨具 = raingear
- 雨期 = rainy season
- 手提げ = can be carried by hand / handbag
- 精米 = rice polishing
- 道のり = itinerary; path = 道程. I remembered this one as 道の里.
- 街道 = a highway; also a highway to success
- 旅路 = journey
- 難航 = difficult journey
- 調達 = procurement; provisioning
- 必需品 = necessities
- 雑貨 = miscellaneous goods
- 行商 = peddling; hawking
- 荒物屋 = variety store
- 常連 = regular customer
- 居留民 = residents. 居留 = residing; settling in
- 卿 = Lord; Sir. No Furigana
- 公使館 = legation, where diplomats (公使) stay. Smaller than 大使館 = embassy?
- 焦燥 = impatience. The writing reminds me that dots can have different directions, and hook or not can have variations.
- 皆目 = (not) at all; entirely (not)
- 渡世人 = gambler; person without a legitimate job
- 打ち首獄門 = beheading followed by mounting of the head on a pike in front of the prison. 打ち首 is beheading.
- 席を外す = to be away / to slip off from a meeting
Places
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Day 35
I finished the third volume of Tsugumomo. After that I read maybe one third of chapter 17 of the Monobeno visual novel.
2691 pages read 17309 to go
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You can also plug the URL into archive.org and ask it to archive it, which will produce a page readable from anywhere, like this one.
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Yesterday I just played some more きみのまち ポルティア. I tried unsuccessfully twice to romance Arlo. Which is probably for the best though because there’s apparently a quest you’ll get soon after you start dating him (and if you don’t accept or complete it in time, you never get it again) that requires you to go to the Eufaula Desert, which I don’t have unlocked yet, and you’re apparently supposed to be able to jump across the river on a mount at a narrow point, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. So I’ll be trying again after completing the bridge.
The personal pronouns are a little inconsistent in this game. Most characters use 私, except for Antoine who uses アタシ (he’s an effeminate gay (bi?) man—he’s a romanceable character, but I’m playing the male builder, so I don’t know if he’s also romanceable regardless of your builder’s gender like the other romanceable characters. Would be cool if he is bi though, as that would mean he doesn’t fit the stereotype!), but there was one character (don’t remember who) who used 僕 in one dialogue but then 私 in another immediately afterward, and there was no reason to switch. Arlo used わし once, which I gotta tell ya was a little wild coming from a twenty-something, but it may have been a typo since yesterday at one point he used わたし.
I definitely feel like I’ve seen 俺 used before, but I don’t remember which character(s) used it, so I’m not sure if there are any inconsistencies with that too lol
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