Home 
January 1
人間椅子 -
Prefecture Stories
4 pages
I’ll look up the proper name for this one later. I wanted to read more but there’s bs drama in other places. I feel quite done with some people and it’s only 1/1. 
24 Likes
January 1st & 2nd (Days 1 & 2) 
I felt pretty ill yesterday, so I started chapter 7 of 海辺のカフカ and read a few paragraphs. No Russian, as I found out that staring at a screen for any length of time resulted in a headache 
Today, I’ve managed to read the rest of chapter 7, and 1/5th of chapter 8 of 海辺のカフカ - which was probably the most Japanese I’ve ever read in one sitting to date. I’ve neglected my studies for a while, and I haven’t read anything since July, so the start was a little clunky and slow - but it got better by the end. I’ve even managed to immerse myself in the story - too bad I didn’t have more time to read.
As for my side quest readings, I’ve read Мильтон и Булька, which is (I believe) a short passage in a collection of short stories for children about two dogs, Milton and Bulka. It was really refreshing to read for a change - although I started studying Russian very recently, it just feels so much easier. I think I feel ready to switch to reading something a little more challenging once I am finished reading this collection of stories.
26 Likes
January 1st and 2nd 
1st - はたらく細胞 pages 37 to 61
2nd - はたらく細胞 pages 62 to 67
Im super tired today but I tried my best to read some more pages to catch up with the absolute beginners book club.
Reading about things I sometimes only have a vague understanding of even in english is tough. I definitely find my self clinging on to the words that are more ‘everyday’ in this book with a sense of fondness. Overall though, I am enjoying it well enough. Hopefully, I’ll be able to join back in with the conversation for the final couple of weeks or so!
23 Likes
Off to a good start since the second day is now complete. Did basically the same as I did yesterday which is around an hour of Pokemon Scarlet in japanese and another 7 pages or so of 宇崎ちゃん. The hard part for now is not relying too much on the furigana.
I had an unfortunate windows shopping experience on bookwalker because they had ぼっち・ざ・ろっく！volume 1 for 55 yen and a whole of bunch 日常 volumes for dirt cheap too (first two are 11 yen and 2 through 10 are 100 yen a piece). Which means my backlog isn’t getting any better but hey at least it wasn’t that bad on the wallet.
Speaking of which, the Aomi Japanese app mentioned by Greya seems like a fun thing to try. Was wondering what I should do for eventually starting shadowing and that seems tailor made for that.
Hopefully everyone is having a fun time reading !
23 Likes
January 2nd 
半落ち , start - 6%
Today I started 半落ち with the reading club here. I finished this week’s reading, but I really want to continue, it’s already very interesting indeed. My first proper police procedural in Japanese, it’s full of long kanji strings for police ranks and departments, but this is vocabulary I expect to be coming across fairly often given my preference for crime novels, so the sooner I learn it the better.
26 Likes
Winter 2023 Reading Challenge
Previous Challenges
2021:
- 📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2021 🏖🏖 - #46 by rikaiwisdom
- 📚📚 Read every day challenge - Fall/Autumn 2021 🍁🍂🦝 - #21 by rikaiwisdom
2022:
01月01日
うたわれるもの
01月02日
9-nine-
Here we go againnnnn! 7th round of the challenge :3 as always @windupbird thanks a lot for hosting again <3
Like the last thread and pretty much onwards, I’m not going to maintain a home post, but I do like to see the threads I’ve participated in so I will still link my first post in those as a reminder of the work I’ve put into this, should I ever need it in times of doubt.
Started the year with うたわれるもの as was expected, it continues to be pretty cool so far. I also started 9-nine- (current VN club pick) today and I’m already liking it a lot, so I’m pretty satisfied with what I’m reading right now overall.
I want to keep pushing vocabulary hard and I’m still going strong with the 20 new words a day in Anki, it’s been like a month and I’m not burnt out in the least so that’s a good sign, if anything it’s giving me a lot of drive. When I stop and think about it it’s insane the amount of vocabulary and effort learning a new language takes, especially one that shares no roots whatsoever with your native one, even after a lot of years and many thousands of words seen or studied it still feels like there’s like a million left to learn. But it’s also fun, and the more I know the more addictive everything becomes because I get to enjoy the things I consume a lot more as I understand more over time. Occasionally I still get the thought “why the heck am I learning Japanese?” and then I always go back to “damn, learning Japanese is so cool” 
. But anyways, I’m just rambling.
26 Likes
Jan 3
かがみの孤城（下）0% → 4%
Every time I take a break from かがみの孤城 and come back it feels so much easier to read 
. I read it on my flight, so no looking up words, and to my surprise I was able to understand almost everything with no major confusions, and reading fairly quickly too! A few parts took some re-reading to understand, but I got it eventually.
I might end up reading more throughout the day, I’ll see.
29 Likes
Home post // Jan 2 
・ 本好きの下克上 16 (16% → 22%)
Read a bit in the morning but then I got a headache that lasted for the rest of the day. Only in the late evening did I start to feel better so I read a bit more, and now it’s definitely time to go to sleep, yeah 
27 Likes
2/1 5 pages おばちゃんたちのいるところ
I’m slowly catching up - was tempted to read on with the story but it’s midnight now, so I’ll aim to finish it tomorrow.
24 Likes
Hey, long time no see! I’ve been doing well! I was put on a big project at work around March of last year and got a promotion, so I was working a lot of extra hours, but we’re hiring a couple of new people so I can hopefully stop feeling so burnt out all of the time.
I didn’t read much in Japanese last year, only a few manga I didn’t really keep track of. I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things with the new year. I need to browse around and see what the book clubs have been reading. I did see that you have a Saikawa & Moe reading club, so I might be browsing your old threads. I just bought the first few books in the Kindle sale that’s going on right now. Amazon had 40% points back.
I hope you’ve been doing well! Did you have a good holiday? あけましておめでとう！
20 Likes
Ghostmaple’s Home Post
Likely Reading Materials
Games
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Dragon Quest Slime Morimori (Game Boy Advance) -
Dragon Quest X Offline (Feb 16th: It’s here!)
Books
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Dialogs/letters from Genki & Quartet textbooks
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Japanese Stories for Language Learners by McNulty & Sato
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Learn Japanese with Manga by Marc Bernabe
Web
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NHK News Easy
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Short stories in Japanese.io’s classics section
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Jan 1 - Example panels from Learn Japanese with Manga by Marc Bernabe (LJwM)
Jan 2 - Dragon Quest Slime Morimori & LJwM
Jan 3 - LJwM
Jan 4 - お星さま (Star) by 小川 未明 (Ogawa Mimei)
Jan 5 - LJwM
Jan 6 - あかい雲 (Red Clouds) by 小川 未明 (Ogawa Mimei)
Jan 7 - Dragon Quest Slime Morimori
Jan 8 - お江戸は火事だ (Edo Is a Fire) by 小川 未明 (Ogawa Mimei)
Jan 9 - Dragon Quest Slime Morimori & Genki I/II dialogs
Jan 10 - 三か月(Three Months) by 小川 未明 (Ogawa Mimei)
Jan 11 - Essays in Chapter 1 of Quartet
Jan 12 - Essays in Chapter 1 of Quartet
Jan 13 - NHK News Easy (Kanji of the Year)
Jan 14 - NHK News Easy (Giant Squid)
Jan 15 - Dragon Quest Slime Morimori
Jan 16 - NHK News Easy (Students with Foreign Roots)
Jan 17 - Dragon Quest Slime Morimori
Jan 18 - Essays in Chapter 1 of Quartet
Jan 19 - 
Jan 20 - Essays in Chapter 3 of Quartet (class) & Dragon Quest Slime Morimori
Jan 21 - Dragon Quest Slime Morimori
Jan 22 - NHK News Easy (New Rules For Electric Scooters)
Jan 23 - NHK News Easy (Watch Out For Freezing Pipes)
Jan 24 - NHK News Easy (Seeing Nara From A Hot Air Balloon)
Jan 25 - NHK News Easy (Visiting The Big Snow Cave In Iwate)
Jan 26 - Essays in Chapter 3 of Quartet
Jan 27 - Essays in Chapter 3 of Quartet (class)
Jan 28 - Dragon Quest Slime Morimori
Jan 29 - NHK News Easy (Students Grow Sakurajima Daikon)
Jan 30 - NHK News Easy (Pollen & Hayfever Near Tokyo-to)
Jan 31 - NHK News Easy (Stricter Rules Due To Swallowed Magnet Balls)
Feb 1 - NHK News Easy (Hyougaku Matsuri in Hokkaido)
Feb 2 - NHK News Easy (7-11 Coffee Machines & Water Outages)
Feb 3 - NHK News Easy (Wobbling Skyscrapers During Earthquakes)
Feb 4 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (Cover+notes+1 page)
Feb 5 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (2 pages)
Feb 6 - NHK News Easy (Grammy Win For Takumi Masanori)
Feb 7 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (4 pages)
Feb 8 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (10 pages)
Feb 9 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (4 pages) & Tadoku Graded Readers (ぼくのお父さん)
Feb 10 - NHK News Easy (PM Kishida’s Upcoming Nasal Operation)
Feb 11 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (1 page)
Feb 12 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (18 pages)
Feb 13 - Tadoku Graded Readers (夜の空で)
Feb 14 - Transcription of 会話2 in Chapter 3 of Quartet
Feb 15 - NHK News Easy (Asking Young People About Raising Children For The Future)
Feb 16 - Dragon Quest X Offline! Finally! (ドラゴンクエストX オフライン)
Feb 17 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 18 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン (I finally fought a slime!)
Feb 19 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 20 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (7 pages)
Feb 21 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン (Fought the first boss, and then…)
Feb 22 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 23 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 24 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 25 - NHK News Easy (Sakura Viewing in Shizuoka Prefecture)
Feb 26 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン & 
food descriptions at the grocery store
Feb 27 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 28 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Bonus Round!
Mar 1 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 2 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 3 - Dialogs in Chapter 3 of Quartet (class)
Mar 4 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 5 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 6 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 7 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 8 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 9 - Switch eShop/News channel descriptions
Mar 10 - 読み物1 in Chapter 4 of Quartet (class)
Mar 11 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 12 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 13 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 14 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン & Switch eShop descriptions
Mar 15 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
25 Likes
Lima’s Reading Home Post
New year, new me. That also means a new challenge for me 
I don’t enjoy reading that much, so I won’t be shocked if there are a few days when I don’t read anything. While I try to read every day, I have no problem skipping days. That, at least, is far more effective for me! You know, to avoid burnout and stuff 
This time, I have an anthology titled 5分後に恋の魔法が解けるまで 二度目の初恋 in my line-up for the challenge. It has 17 short stories with romance as the genre. I bought this book in 2020 but never really got around to reading it. So I’m going to try to finish the novel with this challenge! 
A low standard, I know. But for someone who doesn’t like reading, it’s challenging enough for me. Hopefully, I can keep myself accountable~ 
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26 Likes
Another day of only reading a teeeeeeny tiny bit of 半落ち (although with most of the club ahead of schedule I did make a poll asking if we want to move faster).
I was planning to read ユージニア but I had also planned on taking a N1 practice test to benchmark myself and that completely wiped me out mentally. The reading section is long and not at all the type of content I’m used to reading. Ugh. Need to read more essays, 死体は語る is not that style at all. Might need to swap to the actual essay book even though it looks boring… Then again I only have ~130 pages left so might just push the essay book to after since 死体は語る isn’t completely without merit. And it’s entertaining, in a grotesque sort of way.
26 Likes
January 2nd
What did I read?: にわにはににん
How much did I read?: 9 pages
(Completed 1st Story: 水槽屋敷 )
How long did it take me?: 1 h 7 min
These pages were more densely populated with words, hence the big drop in the number of pages read. Probably a more reasonable estimate of what I’ll be able to do daily. But with that I have finished the first story! 
It turned out that the little boy’s mother hadn’t died, she was just in the hospital! And that the fire was actually only a small one, not the blaze of flames the little boy made it seem like. XD He seems to have quite an active imagination (when he went into the garden, he assumed that one of the stone lanterns was his mother’s grave…) A bit of an odd story, but the water and fish rushing through the mansion were really well-drawn and nice to look at.
Replies
Thank you for the encouragement! I definitely see myself staying at the stage of needing to carefully decipher sentences before I can reach the point of “actually reading” smoothly. But I will push on! And I don’t even mind it too much for now, because each sentence feels like a fun puzzle to figure out~
Hi, shishamo! The app recommends doing just one training session a day, so that’s what I’ve been doing. I listen to a word or phrase a couple of times, then try saying it out loud myself. Sometimes I say it while playing the recording at the same time, or I practice only part of a sentence. Then I record myself in the app. You can record yourself several times on the same word or phrase. I try to get at least 70% or more correct, but if it’s just too frustrating I move on (and because of the spaced-repetition-system, you’ll see words and phrases later on too). I’m not even sure if reaching a certain percentage is necessary to move on to the next levels…
I remember reading somewhere that each training session is only supposed to take something like around 15 minutes, so if you’re going over that, you might be spending too much time with it.
And if the recordings are too fast, there’s also a half-speed option you can turn on. That might be a semi-new addition, so you might not have seen it yet.
If you look at the main page, there are also other sections for various types of words (i.e. tongue twisters, slang, katakana words) but I’ve been ignoring them for now. I think they might turn up in training sessions in some point anyways, but I’m not super sure. They seem more like an extra self-study-mode-type thing and won’t help you level up.
You might want to check out the “Japanese Phonetics” section which contains a little overview of pitch-accent and the “Our methodology” section since that gives an overview of what to expect. Both of these are found on the main page. The app is still pretty new and still improving, so it might be easier to use than when you last checked it out! I hope this helped you out. If you have any other specific questions, feel free to ask me~
24 Likes
Day 2: January 2nd 
夢みる太陽 Volume 1 (53% ➨ 100%)
6月のラブレター Volume 3 (80% ➨ 100%)
シャドーハウス Volume 4 (0% ➨ 13%)
名探偵コナン Volume 13 (16% ➨ 22%)
夢みる太陽 Volume 2 (0% ➨ 7%)
I have a feeling I’m going to be (unintentionally) focusing on reading 夢みる太陽 a bit.
23 Likes
Day 1 - January 3rd
- 二度目の初恋 page 006-013
This was the first story of the anthology. I only read the first half. There were some kanji I could not read and vocabularies I did not know. However, I was able to understand most of the story since it was a very light read.
New words
- 肩＝shoulder
- ガクガク＝trembling; shaking
- 揺さぶる＝to shake; to jolt; to sway
- あきれ顔＝looking dumbfounded
- 登校＝attendance (at school); going to school
- 居眠り＝nodding off (while sitting); dozing
- イビキ＝snoring; snore
- 慌てる＝to be flustered; to panic
- 起こし＝standing (something) up; waking up
- 垂れる＝to hang; to droop; to dangle
- 性＝nature; disposition; character
25 Likes
➳ January 3rd.
What: ハイキュー！！ volume 1
Pages: 30
Time: 30 minutes.
Definitely faster today, but I didn’t bother listing things in my spreadsheet. Today is my first day of work, but it’s only a half day, so I’m sneaking in a little reading before I leave. I’m enjoying ハイキュー！！ well enough so far. I’m not really into sports manga/anime though, so I don’t see myself continuing with the series after this week. I’m also thinking of finally placing an order for some physical books, just to get less screen time when I’m studying.
23 Likes
Thank you! I’ve seen the club but I’m unfortunately only on volume 2 so don’t think I’ll manage to catch up I’m going through the older threads as I go along though, so might pop a message here and there 
11 Likes
softlyraining’s snowy book stack 
January 2nd
ラストで君は「まさか！」と言う 冬の物語 (27% → 27%)
That’s not a typo; I basically read one paragraph of the next story in the collection before bed. It was my mother-in-law’s last day with us, and we were out for most of it. (It was fun, but I’m tired.) She leaves to visit some more family tomorrow, so I should have more time for reading then.
26 Likes
January 2 Home Post
Read some 怪盗探偵山猫 today! I’m starting to get out of the intro kind of stuff and more into what’s actually going on and it’s a good time, but man am I feeling the difference in reading a standalone book versus a voiced VN or whatever I haven’t really been reading novels lately so it definitely feels slower and takes more mental energy but I’m getting there, I’ve also casually picked up jpdb SRS again so hopefully that’ll help me feel better vocabulary-wise 
24 Likes