Joining late but I’m determined this time. I need to get ready for a possible interview were ill need to read a newspaper article. So the goal is at least 1 Asahi newspaper article a day.
| Jan | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
| 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 | 29 |
| 30 | 31 |
| Feb | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
| 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 |
Here are a few methods I’ve seen mentioned on the forums before:
Prelearning vocab using places such as Koohi and jpdb. Generally they’d set a threshold first for how many times it would appear in the book so as to not get bogged down by single uses that could be quickly looked up.
Reading digital in a manner that allows integrated dictionary for quick look up. Doesn’t really work with manga since their pics tho.
Making their own anki deck as they look up words.
Crunching Core 10k etc vocab lists along with one of the above.
Also making a descions on how often to deeply understand a sentence vs getting the gist and moving on so that reading doesn’t become completely tedious.
Personally I bookmark commonly used words as I read in my phone’s dictionary app (takoboto) which can be exported to an excel.
Home post // Jan 4 
・ 本好きの下克上 16 (25% → 33%)
That was a long and exhausting train ride. Too much snow causing delays and chaos, almost freezing my toes off while waiting. Finally back now at least! I can’t wait to go to sleep.
I managed to get to day 4, wow, grand achievement, I know.
I finished 第一話 of うずまき and gotta say it’s really my type of “horror”/uncanny stuff. It’s not something for everyone though, but man is the art style fitting and just gorgeous.
Anyway, if I keep going at this pace I might finish the first book in the series in two weeks from now with the occassional book club read thrown in. If I could hold on til then that would be really great!
Hope you guys are having fun reading as well! See you in my next status report (“status report” sounds kinda too serious, I don’t know what else to call it though?).
Day 3
Going all out while I have time right now. I may be too busy for reading during the middle of January.
I started the second volume of Your Lie in April. Not my favorite manga but I will at least finish the volumes I have.
Three more pages of ぼっちゃん. The book is not bad it’s just that the short stories feel all pretty samey.
355 pages read 19645 to go
I read chapter 9 of 海辺のカフカ and oh boi, it really didn’t disappoint! This was probably the first time I felt truly engaged with the story - how come I don’t remember this chapter even though I’ve read the book before?
I’ve also read the first half of chapter 10, and found some words I liked.
My side quest reading for today was another short story from the collection about Milton and Bulka titled Что случилось с Булькой в Пятигорске (What happened to Bulka in Pyatigorsk). This one was gruesome and unpleasant. I was a little surprised at first, but then I remembered all the strangely gruesome children’s stories and nursery rhymes I grew up with. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected this one to be wholesome. Oh well…
Happy (belated) birthday @Cathm2, @Hantsuki, and @nyxqueenofshadows! 
Day 4, 4th of January
Alright, first DrDru story of the day, we meet different people and ask them who they are, where they live and what they’re doing.
In the second one we take a quiz about superheroes. How well do we know them? We basically have to answer the questions we practiced in the first stoy today.
Managed one further story, one more to go to catch up.
4/1 5 pages おばちゃんたちのいるところ (story 8)
I’m quite bad at not looking up a word if I’m not super sure of it. It usually means very slow reading, but rarely so slow that it annoys me. However, I’m working on not looking up words I’m fairly sure of and words I can guess from context. Because I have to look up enough words that I have no idea about that always looking up the unsure ones adds a lot to my reading time.
Especially since I tend to read on paper/Switch, meaning no instant look ups.
Personally, I have not to so far started adding words to an SRS that I find while reading. For one, I only recently finished WK and once I clear most of the reviews of the last few levels I look forward to some SRS free time.
What I do though, is that in the app I mostly use for look ups, I tend to bookmark what I look up for different things I’m reading. For example, I’m looking up so much for Loopers (visual novel) that I actually put them in folders according to chapters, meaning I can actually see if I’ve looked up a word in Loopers before when I go to look it up the second/third/etc. time.
I also have a folder where I add terms I recognize I have looked up many times that still doesn’t seem to be sticking. It usually means I’ve looked them up at least 5 times probably more like 10+ before I consider adding it to this special folder. If I ever start SRSing stuff I find while I read, this is the folder I would pull from. Words I’ve looked up multiple times across different books and games. Obviously words that would be useful for me to know, whether they are generally common or not. (Considering they seem to be common in what I read.)
The main point though, is to keep looking to your enjoyment.
There are probably more questions/situations, but you get the point. There will be days when you have no patience for lookups and maybe that day only you only look up what you absolutely need. (One method for that is to not look up a word and instead keep reading, if the word proved critical to what followed and you couldn’t figure it out, go ahead and look it up, otherwise continue on.) And there will be days where you’ll have all the patience in the world. Same goes for enjoyment/bored and so on.
I hope my little essay helped. I’m bad at being concise. xD
January 4th!
Today I read chapter 21 of Flying Witch. I haven’t read this in a while since I’ve overloaded myself a bit with bookclubs at the moment!
It was nice to get back to it.
It was a fairly straight forward chapter other than there being a character who spoke with a dialect I didn’t understand, but the other characters also didn’t understand and that was the point, so I didn’t spend too much time trying to decipher it 
Happy belated birthdays to @Cathm2, @Hantsuki, and @nyxqueenofshadows.
I’m an early January birthday too! Mine is tomorrow.
January 4 
死体は眠らない, start - 13%
I decided I’m not in a particularly spooky mood right now, and since the 山の霊異記 book consists of standalone short stories, there is no harm in setting it aside for now. Instead, I started my new 赤川次郎, which is exactly as I imagined it: a black comedy of errors. It’s a light read (if you don’t mind a dead body or four), both in substance and in text - I don’t think I’ve seen so much dialogue outside of a manga before! All characters are unlikeable (I mean, the first chapter literally starts with the protagonist not being able to answer the door because he’s busy strangling his wife) which makes all their mishaps all the more enjoyable. If you thought that getting rid of one dead body might be problematic, wait till they start accumulating, while the phone and doorbell never stop ringing. 
Downloaded @pocketcat’s bingo card to fill out as I read too.
Happy (belated?) birthdays to @Cathm2 , @Hantsuki and @nyxqueenofshadows! And happy birthday to @lucylavelle too! (here it’s tomorrow already )
Happy Birthday! 
(am I too early? 
Then please read it again later ok? )
Jan 1-4 update
Home Post 
Hi!
First few days going well, except from Tuesday that I missed a day because… I fell asleep too early 
I also had to think of what reading material to go through, and luckily enough, I have quite a few sitting on my shelves. Thought I’d start the challenge with a simple graded reader, to ease back into a rhythm… I’m also still carrying on with a 366 I started last spring.
Day 4: January 4th
What did I read?: 夜の名前を呼んで Vol 3
How much did I read?: 33 pages
How long did it take me?: 30 min
This chapter was so sweet, I am going to cry 
First, can we just set the mood with this darling chapter cover page because it’s beautiful and I love it
Also the phrase そばにいるよ (which is the chapter title) makes me so soft for no real reason, the sentiment just sounds so sweet in Japanese to me, idk, it’s one of my favorites, I love it 
Capri really shines in this chapter, but both he and Rei are just so gosh darn sweet and supportive to Mira, I can’t 
At the very end of the previous chapter, Capri noticed that there was a サイン会 happening in town for Mira’s favorite author (the one who wrote the book that they were discussing all last chapter). In this chapter, the three of them are trying to see if Mira can get herself into town to attend it. Rei and Capri are like walking with her down the path, encouraging her as she goes the way Rei is like holding her hand and leading her gently down the road is so soft 
In the end, Mira’s anxiety is too bad and she can’t get all the way to town, but Capri goes to the サイン会 and gets a copy of her favorite book signed in her name, and the author writes her a really sweet note, and I just-, everyone is so sweet
day 4 
home post
Read: Yotsubato!
Progress: 35/224-> 50/224 (finished chapter 1)
Thoughts: I enjoyed the ending of chapter 1! Amusing, simple to read, but also good practice for me. The final ordeal was quite entertaining and I didn’t have to look up many words, so I could enjoy just reading it. not sure how to spoiler things here, so can’t mention what it was
I look forward to starting chapter 2 tomorrow~
Day 2 - January 4th
Yesterday I left the book at home, so I couldn’t read it. I did read a lot about how to write 履歴書 and 自己PR, though… does it count? Hahaha 
Today I read a little and stopped just right after the MC decided to give up on her first love. Honestly, this story is so trope-y and cliche, but I like it just fine. Give me the ドキs 
I started to read ふゆから、くるる recently and its a pretty wild story so far. I haven’t gotten deep into the actual plot yet (its supposed to be a murder mystery) but the world building has been interesting. I’m loving the music and art in this one too.
Anyways, during my reading they were talking about chess and I came across what has to be the largest word compound I’ve seen so far 「二人零和有限確定完全情報ゲーム」
Day 4: January 4th 
からかい上手の(元)高木さん Volume 10 (10% ➨ 17%)
ポケットモンスタースペシャル Volume 7 (0% ➨ 6%)
Small reading day today as I took out the time to learn all the new things in the HTML standard from the last 20 years. (As it turns out, it’s a lot less than I expected!) Between that and updating one of my projects to utilize a custom element in HTML+Javascript, I was left with little time for manga.
January 4th
What did I read?: にわにはににん
How much did I read?: 18 pages
(Finished 2nd Story: ユーレカの庭 )
How long did it take me?: 2 hours 5 min
I have now finished the second story!
Happy birthday to a surprisingly large group of people! I’m a bit behind so afraid to tag names and miss anyone, but 
happy birthday(s) all the same!
I didn’t read yesterday and only read half the ユージニア assignment today. I’ve been very tired and busy this week so it’s not working out well for my reading goals. Here’s hoping tomorrow goes better.
