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…
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 - 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…
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.
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.
Replies
Haha, it’s nice to hear that your friend is so enthusiastic about those ladder lotteries. 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.
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.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 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
マジーク・ツリーハウス
図かん「ずかん」ー picture book
ゆうゆう ー leisurely
シダ ー fern
舞い降りる「まいおりる」ー to swoop down
白亜紀「はくあき」ー cretaceous period
絶滅「ぜつめつ」ー extinction
The first chapter of よつばと！ is definitely one of the harder ones because of all the moving terminology and adults talking to each other, but don’t let that discourage you! The chapters do get a lot easier after that for a while (occasionally, when there are chapters with mostly adults talking it gets a little harder again, but most of the chapters are definitely focused on the kids). Looking at vol 1, if you’re through page 25 I think you’re definitely done with the roughest parts.
Better late than never I had every intention of joining this thread before the new year and then I forgot lol. Hopefully that isn’t an indication of how this reading challenge is going to go for me. I need to find some easily accessible reading content because my biggest challenge is becoming demotivated trying to find things online.
Anyway, here’s to a Japanese-reading-filled winter! Cozy up ~
The fun thing about that word is that it’s now been borrowed into English as “petty knife” to refer specifically to this kind of small Japanese style knife… (I don’t know if ペティナイフ is a technical cheffy word in Japanese in the way that ‘petty knife’ or ‘paring knife’ is and ‘kitchen knife’ isn’t.)
January 3rd
新書太閣記 progress: 00.12% // Volume I: 01.44%
I am so glad for furigana. So many place names. I forgot how hard it is to start a new book and you get bombarded with piles of new vocab until you get used to the author’s vocab usage.
Words found under the kotatsu
隣邦「りんぽう」ー Neighbouring country 国号「こくごう」ー Name of a country 国運「こくうん」ー National fortunes; destiny of a country 駆られる「かられる」ー To be driven by… (emotions / impulse / feelings); to be seized by; to be stricken with; to be spurred on by; to succumb to 気遣い「きづかい」ー Consideration; concern; worry 旦那様「だんなさま」ー Husband (honorific); master (of a house/shop etc.) 臥床「ふしど」ー Bedroom; bedchamber (seems to use 臥所 now) 榻「トン」ー Ceramic bench 宵「よい」ー Evening; early hours of the night 窯業「ようぎょう」ー Ceramics; ceramic industry 官窯「かんよう」ー (Government owned) porcelain furnace // with 窯「かま」meaning: kiln; furnace; stove 附随「ふずい」ー being accompanied by; being collateral with 殷賑「いんしん」ー Prosperity 辛苦「しんく」ー Hardship; toil
Places in China & Dynasties 揚子江「ようすこう」ー Yangtze river (also: 長江「ちょうこう」) 江西省「こうせいしょう」ー Jiangxi Province 饒州「じょうしゅう」ー Raozhou (old prefecture, now part of Poyang county (in Jiangxi)) 唐「から」ー China (also used to sometimes refer to other neighbouring countries of that area) (Archaism) // also: 「とう」ー the Tang dynasty (618-907) 宋「そう」ー Song dynasty 廬山「るざん」ー Mt. Lushan
Character Kanji-Name List
for easy referencing later, because these will take some remembering
|| P E O P L E || Main Hideyoshi: 豊臣秀吉「とよとみ ひでよし」// 豊太閤「ほうたいこう」
Side?
五郎大夫 「ごろ だゆう」
捨次郎「すてじろう」
梨琴「りきん」
Historical People
阿倍仲麻呂「あべ の なかまろ」ー Japanese scholar & poet (around 700AD)
I decided to try digging into this a little bit today, and discovered that this phrase itself is based on an older phrase 二六時中, which also meant around the clock (a full day). I was like “there’s no way this makes any sense unless japan used to have some really messed up clocks that no one has told me about.”
Japan had some really messed up clocks that no one had told me about. A full day was divided in to 12 “hours”, 6 day and 6 night (hence the 2x6 = full day), but the length of those hours was based on the actual length of the day/night periods. So in the winter, the 6 night hours were longer, and the 6 day hours were shorter, and reverse in the summer. (Edit for clarification: this time system existed before the clocks, they clocks were made in a super funky way to try to capture the existing dominant way of measuring time in tokugawa/edo japan, but it was still 2x6 = one full day)
During the meiji restoration (at least, according to jp wiktionary 四六時中 - ウィクショナリー日本語版 ), this existing expression was altered to make it make a little bit more sense with a Western 24 hour day
Thoughts: This has definitely been a lot lighter of a read now that I got past the first part, just like @javerend said! To be fair there were a lot of panels without any dialogue, but where there was I was able to understand much better than the first 20-ish pages. I am enjoying it more now.
(I don’t know how to quote people on the forums yet, so I just pinged you lol)
In today’s first DrDru story we talk about Harry Potter. Once again too many Katakana names for my liking.
In the second it’s movie time. We guess which movie it is based on the emoji presented, so there isn’t too much content to read here. Which is good because I’m a bit dizzy today.
Today, I finished reading chapter 8 of 海辺のカフカ, and I finally feel like I’m slowly starting to get a hang of this :3 I am considering reading a little bit more though, because I’ve been scrolling through the bookclub’s discussion on the following chapters and got a little curious
As for my side quest, I only had the energy to read the next short story from the collection about Milton and Bulka titled Черепаха (The Turtle). The story was, to my surprise and delight, complete with some turtle facts - so I got a little refresher on my turtle knowledge as a bonus Sometimes I forget just how cool turtles are.
There’s a little one-room private museum in Tokyo with a collection of those “daimyo clocks”. Recommended for clock nerds, especially if you can make a stab at reading the only-in-Japanese exhibit labels.
Today I read this week’s two stories from おばちゃんたちのいるところ. And this concludes the book clubs for this week. I need to think what to read tomorrow. Continue with my mountain ghost stories book, or read something new?
That’s so cool! I knew about the uneven six hours of day and six hours of night, but had no idea there were actual clocks that could measure such a crazy time!
English reading (The Hot Rock by Donald E Westlake)
Have I mentioned how busy I’d be for the first half of this month? If you’ve missed it, then apparently I forgot to mention it in this thread because I sure have said in a number of places.
So yeah, no actual Japanese reading. Probably a sentence here or there while reading the forum, but nothing on my (Japanese) priorities.
I did however finish a novel in English I’m reading for a workshop, so it was a prioritized read, and I do have another one of those. Which might be the only thing I read for the next two weeks, more or less.
Day 2
I have finished the third volume of U12. Even though there are still six more volumes left, let’s pretend that the manga ends with volume 3. The girls board a subway and drive to safety while running over all the pedos. What a beautiful ending.
January 2
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.
１月３日 
(it will not be the last)
)
I had every intention of joining this thread before the new year and then I forgot lol. Hopefully that isn’t an indication of how this reading challenge is going to go for me. I need to find some easily accessible reading content because my biggest challenge is becoming demotivated trying to find things online.
The Tanuki Kotatsu Reading Den 
Sometimes I forget just how cool turtles are.
