📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2023 ☃❄

:snowflake: Winter 2023 Reading Challenge :snowflake:


Previous Challenges

2021:

2022:


:books: 01月01日
うたわれるもの

:books: 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” :joy: . But anyways, I’m just rambling.

26 Likes

:house:
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 :thinking:. 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

:bookmark: Home post // Jan 2 :snowman_with_snow: :snowflake:

・ 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 :zzz:

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

:house_with_garden: Ghostmaple’s Home Post :house_with_garden:

Likely Reading Materials
Games

  • :video_game: Dragon Quest Slime Morimori (Game Boy Advance)
  • :video_game: Dragon Quest X Offline (Feb 16th: It’s here!)

Books

  • :books: Dialogs/letters from Genki & Quartet textbooks
  • :books: Japanese Stories for Language Learners by McNulty & Sato
  • :books: Learn Japanese with Manga by Marc Bernabe

Web

Jan
01[:open_book:]
02[:video_game:] 03[:open_book:] 04[:open_book:] 05[:open_book:] 06[:open_book:] 07[:video_game:] 08[:open_book:]
09[:open_book:] 10[:open_book:] 11[:open_book:] 12[:open_book:] 13[:newspaper_roll:] 14[:newspaper_roll:] 15[:video_game:]
16[:newspaper_roll:] 17[:video_game:] 18[:open_book:] 19[:x:] 20[:open_book:] 21[:video_game:] 22[:newspaper_roll:]
23[:newspaper_roll:] 24[:newspaper_roll:] 25[:newspaper_roll:] 26[:open_book:] 27[:open_book:] 28[:video_game:] 29[:newspaper_roll:]
30[:newspaper_roll:] 31[:newspaper_roll:]
Feb
01[:newspaper_roll:] 02[:newspaper_roll:] 03[:newspaper_roll:] 04[:open_book:] 05[:open_book:]
06[:newspaper_roll:] 07[:open_book:] 08[:open_book:] 09[:open_book:] 10[:newspaper_roll:] 11[:open_book:] 12[:open_book:]
13[:open_book:] 14[:open_book:] 15[:newspaper_roll:] 16[:video_game:] 17[:video_game:] 18[:video_game:] 19[:video_game:]
20[:open_book:] 21[:video_game:] 22[:video_game:] 23[:video_game:] 24[:video_game:] 25[:newspaper_roll:] 26[:video_game:]
27[:video_game:] 28[:video_game:]
Mar
01[:video_game:] 02[:video_game:] 03[:books:] 04[:video_game:] 05[:video_game:]
06[:video_game:] 07[:video_game:] 08[:video_game:] 09[:video_game:] 10[:books:] 11[:video_game:] 12[:video_game:]
13[:video_game:] 14[:video_game:] 15[:video_game:] 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28

Jan 1 - :books: Example panels from Learn Japanese with Manga by Marc Bernabe (LJwM)
Jan 2 - :video_game: Dragon Quest Slime Morimori & :books: LJwM
Jan 3 - :books: LJwM
Jan 4 - :books: お星さま (Star) by 小川 未明 (Ogawa Mimei)
Jan 5 - :books: LJwM
Jan 6 - :books: あかい雲 (Red Clouds) by 小川 未明 (Ogawa Mimei)
Jan 7 - :video_game: Dragon Quest Slime Morimori
Jan 8 - :books: お江戸は火事だ (Edo Is a Fire) by 小川 未明 (Ogawa Mimei)
Jan 9 - :video_game: Dragon Quest Slime Morimori & :books: Genki I/II dialogs
Jan 10 - :books: 三か月(Three Months) by 小川 未明 (Ogawa Mimei)
Jan 11 - :books: Essays in Chapter 1 of Quartet
Jan 12 - :books: Essays in Chapter 1 of Quartet
Jan 13 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (Kanji of the Year)
Jan 14 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (Giant Squid)
Jan 15 - :video_game: Dragon Quest Slime Morimori
Jan 16 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (Students with Foreign Roots)
Jan 17 - :video_game: Dragon Quest Slime Morimori
Jan 18 - :books: Essays in Chapter 1 of Quartet
Jan 19 - :x: :sleepy:
Jan 20 - :books: Essays in Chapter 3 of Quartet (class) & :video_game: Dragon Quest Slime Morimori
Jan 21 - :video_game: Dragon Quest Slime Morimori
Jan 22 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (New Rules For Electric Scooters)
Jan 23 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (Watch Out For Freezing Pipes)
Jan 24 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (Seeing Nara From A Hot Air Balloon)
Jan 25 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (Visiting The Big Snow Cave In Iwate)
Jan 26 - :books: Essays in Chapter 3 of Quartet
Jan 27 - :books: Essays in Chapter 3 of Quartet (class)
Jan 28 - :video_game: Dragon Quest Slime Morimori
Jan 29 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (Students Grow Sakurajima Daikon)
Jan 30 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (Pollen & Hayfever Near Tokyo-to)
Jan 31 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (Stricter Rules Due To Swallowed Magnet Balls)

Feb 1 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (Hyougaku Matsuri in Hokkaido)
Feb 2 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (7-11 Coffee Machines & Water Outages)
Feb 3 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (Wobbling Skyscrapers During Earthquakes)
Feb 4 - :books: Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (Cover+notes+1 page)
Feb 5 - :books: Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (2 pages)
Feb 6 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (Grammy Win For Takumi Masanori)
Feb 7 - :books: Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (4 pages)
Feb 8 - :books: Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (10 pages)
Feb 9 - :books: Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (4 pages) & :books: Tadoku Graded Readers (ぼくのお父さん)
Feb 10 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (PM Kishida’s Upcoming Nasal Operation)
Feb 11 - :books: Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (1 page)
Feb 12 - :books: Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (18 pages)
Feb 13 - :books: Tadoku Graded Readers (夜の空で)
Feb 14 - :books: Transcription of 会話2 in Chapter 3 of Quartet
Feb 15 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (Asking Young People About Raising Children For The Future)
Feb 16 - :video_game: Dragon Quest X Offline! Finally! (ドラゴンクエストX オフライン)
Feb 17 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 18 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン (I finally fought a slime!)
Feb 19 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 20 - :books: Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (7 pages)
Feb 21 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン (Fought the first boss, and then…)
Feb 22 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 23 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 24 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 25 - :newspaper_roll: NHK News Easy (Sakura Viewing in Shizuoka Prefecture)
Feb 26 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン & :package: food descriptions at the grocery store
Feb 27 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 28 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン

Bonus Round!
Mar 1 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 2 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 3 - :books: Dialogs in Chapter 3 of Quartet (class)
Mar 4 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 5 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 6 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 7 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 8 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 9 - :video_game: Switch eShop/News channel descriptions
Mar 10 - :books: 読み物1 in Chapter 4 of Quartet (class)
Mar 11 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 12 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 13 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 14 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン & :video_game: Switch eShop descriptions
Mar 15 - :video_game: ドラゴンクエストX オフライン

25 Likes

:sparkling_heart: Lima’s Reading Home Post :sparkling_heart:

New year, new me. That also means a new challenge for me :eyes:

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 :sweat_smile:

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! :100:

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~ :dizzy:

Jan
01
02 03:open_book: 04 05:open_book: 06 07 08
09 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31
Feb
01 02 03 04 05
06 07 08 09 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28
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… :upside_down_face: 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. :sweat_smile: Probably a more reasonable estimate of what I’ll be able to do daily. But with that I have finished the first story! :tada: 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… :thinking:
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

:spiral_calendar: Day 2: January 2nd :closed_umbrella:

spacer:sun_with_face: 夢みる太陽 Volume 1 (53% ➨ 100%)
spacer:love_letter: 6月のラブレター Volume 3 (80% ➨ 100%)
spacer:bust_in_silhouette: シャドーハウス Volume 4 (0% ➨ 13%)
spacer:mag: 名探偵コナン Volume 13 (16% ➨ 22%)
spacer:sun_with_face: 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

:sparkling_heart: Day 1 - January 3rd :sparkling_heart:

  • 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

(Home Post)

25 Likes

:snowflake: :snowman: Home Post :snowman: :snowflake:

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 :sweat_smile: I’m going through the older threads as I go along though, so might pop a message here and there :blush:

11 Likes

:books: :snowflake: softlyraining’s snowy book stack :snowboarder: :open_book:

January 2nd

:red_square: 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 :snowflake: 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 :joy: 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 :grin:

24 Likes

Home post

1 月 3 日
コナの大冒険 第17話 from Satorireader

Felt the suspense during this episode of Kona’s big adventure! What could the looming shadow be?! :face_with_peeking_eye: :clown_face:

This is definitely helping me with the casual form which I only recently started learning from my Minna no Nihongo classes. Well if you count maybe a month ago recent since I had a holiday break from classes. Up til now we’ve only been exclusively learning in the formal form.

Words/phrases of interest:

  • ウトウト falling in a doze
  • 影に覆われている (かげにおおわれている)to be covered in a shadow
  • 気が付く(きがつく)to notice, to become aware, to realize
24 Likes

:open_book: :desktop_computer: :snowman_with_snow: :snowflake: January 2

One of my goals for 2022 was to try a mock N2 exam (just a mock one since I don’t need the real thing for anything and just want to more or less check my level) so I did that today (just two days late P:). I’ve done absolutely zero practice for this apart from doing the same with a mock N3 exam a year ago so it was pretty exhausting to get through, props to anyone taking these for real! The whole time I felt like I was missing a looot and I though I might not pass but in the end I did (barely)!! So that’s kinda exciting and I’m counting it as my reading for today. Definitely not trying for N1 at the end of this year so maybe I’ll try N2 again but aiming for a more comfortable pass. It’s hard to say if I’d have passed the real thing this time…

I also read a little ユージニア (12% → 13%)

25 Likes

Home Post

Day 2 Progress:
お隣の天使様 五冊 - 54.61% → 62.18%

Not much to say about today’s reading but I did try my hand at translating a decently-sized ウマ娘 twitter comic today. It was simultaneously kinda fun, but also time-consuming and exhausting (typesetting aside) after I realized how much of Japanese nuance I had simply internalized and was actually unable to explain properly…

Word of the Day: 鳩尾みぞおち - pit of the stomach or solar plexus. Why the heck is the solar plexus the pigeon tail?

I had heard about French having an unwieldy counting system but this is certainly nuts lmao. And for such a specific subset of numbers, too, all the stranger…

21 Likes

Home

Yesterday:

For once, Amazon recced me a book that wasn’t already on my list (or Minato Coin Laundry), 食堂かたつむり by 小川 糸, so I read the preview for that. It’s about a woman who comes home one day from her part time job to find that her boyfriend she’s been living with for three years has taken everything and left her, so she decides to return to her hometown and open a 食堂. The writing isn’t too difficult and the story seems it may be good, though with only 4 actual pages in the preview, it’s hard to tell. Anyway, I came across the phrase “イタリア製ペティナイフ,” which is so incongruous because “petit” is French! Why couldn’t it be “小さい (小さな?) ナイフ”…

I read ch 4 of 夜カフェ③, which was 16 pages of text. This chapter just increased my feelings of not liking this volume/series, which is disappointing, because I did like the first.

I finished vol 38 of HQ, and then read 暫定、恋人.

Some vocab of note:

不動産 (ふどうさん) [noun] real estate
猫かぶり [noun, する verb] feigned innocence or naïveté; beguiling innocence; wolf in sheep’s clothing
上顎 (うわあご) [noun] upper jaw; palate. I knew 顎 was “chin,” but “jaw” too.

25 Likes

January 3rd

:snowman: Home post :snowflake:

Card Captor Sakura volume 5 – progress report
Yesterday: Continued up to page 70.
Today: Continued up to page 86.

Feeling a bit under the weather today and couldn’t concentrate much. The play continues and I find myself chuckling at some of the performances such as the very convincing one of liar-kun as the wicked fairy and the less convincing but err passionate one by Shaolan as the princess. The contrast between Toya’s and Kero’s comments being bewildered by these two or even roasting the latter and Yukito being as friendly and encouraging as always is also pretty funny to me. :smile:

Replies

Haha, it’s nice to hear that your friend is so enthusiastic about those ladder lotteries. :grinning: I’m not sure about all the things one could possibly do with them in a maths context but if I had to guess it may be probability related.

Don’t hold back on letting your excitement for Rei (simply existing) out!
And let me relish in it from far away. :grin:

My book order actually arrived today. Now I have access to Aria: the masterpiece 4 & 5 – and also to these:

I won’t be reading the adventures of adorable magical girl and adorable magic man anytime soon, though, because I want to finish the two series I’m currently reading first and that will take a few months. :sweat_smile:

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Word or expression of the day:
演技 - (えんぎ) - acting, performance

Honourable mention(s):
お祝い - (おいわい) - congratulations, celebration, congratulatory gift

24 Likes