📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2023 ☃❄

[javerend]

１月８日 (Home Post Link)

Read:

• ホリミヤ ch 59, 60

Taking a break from magic treehouse today, still deciding if I want to do the 2nd book (just so I can mark it off on bookmeter ) or if I want to move on to 夜カフェ already.

I’d like to do more reading later, have a bunch of other work to do today though, so if not, 2 chapters is ok.

Good Words

泥「どろ」ー mud, slush
溶ける「とける」ー to melt, to thaw
あくまでも ー to the last
歪「いびつ」ー distorted, irregular
妄想「もうそう」ー delusion, wild idea

Replies

@Reyam

I’m curious, how do you all try to memorize new words that you come across while reading?

There’s two major philosophies for how to approach this, and I don’t think one is inherently better than the other:

The first is to approach reading as a thing to sentence mine: you look for new words in the text, and then make flashcards out of them (anki, usually) so you can better remember them in the future. This lets you be more likely to remember the word/grammar and have real context for where you first encountered the word, so that the next time you see it you are more likely to understand it without looking it up, but takes time away from reading (both for making your cards and reviewing them) Livakivi has a good video about this method which is the strategy I use when I want to do mining for things.

The second is to approach reading as reading. Your main goal is to understand and follow the story, and any vocabulary and grammar you pick up is passive. You only spend as much time looking up words, vocab, and grammar as you need in order to understand it enough to move on. If you end up looking the same word up multiple times? totally fine. You spend more time reading.

I tend to prefer the latter of the two, but you can always mix and match. If a word seems particularly useful but also seems like it might not come up much, you can make a card for it to help you remember. But, especially when you are first starting out, a lot of the words and grammar points that are at your learning level are gonna show up preeeeetty frequently. If you make a card for every new thing you see, reading takes forever, so it’s a balancing act.

End of the day, you can really do as much or as little sentence mining as you want and be successful. I personally haven’t felt the need to make flashcards since I started the fall reading challenge, though. Maybe it stays that way, or maybe not!

@Beyond_Sleepy

I’d really like some recommendations if you’ve got any:)

I really have been wanting to check out ヨコハマ, so if you get that let me know how it is!

I’ve been reading 映像研 in english and really enjoyed it (there’s some jokes and cultural stuff that might go way over your head without translator notes, though), also read chainsaw in english, and komi I caught up in english but read the new chapters in japanese. Definitely recommend all of those.

In a similar vein to some of these:
アオハライド - high school shoujo romance
ホリミヤ - slice of life + high school romance, but not as melodramatic (usually)
ルリドラゴン - high school slice of life + some fantasy elements, only 1 volume currently so not sure where it will go with this, but it’s cute
ヲタクに恋は難しい - workplace romance/slice of life. very cute.
おでかけ子ザメ - this might be the cutest thing that’s ever been printed on paper, i’ve been enamored with it since @windupbird shared it
のんのんびより - since you already have yuru camp on your list, pure 癒し系

[Beyond_Sleepy]

replies

@ChristopherFritz

Slight note: This one’s being read in the BBC, which may go at a faster pace and/or have more dense dialogue compared with ABBC books.

My bad, I corrected my post so as not to confuse anyone.

@ChristopherFritz

It only shows if the image was “too big” and resized smaller, in which case you can click/tap on the image to view the larger version.

I see, that’s annoying. Changing the display % or pixel count in the post didn’t help either so no quick fixes:/

@javerend

In a similar vein to some of these:

Thanks for all the recommendations

[lucylavelle]

January 8th!

Today I read the next chapter of Teasing Master Takagi-san!
Despite the fact that the outcome of every chapter is basically the same, I really love this manga. It’s so cute and fun.

(Home Post)

Replies

@alygator

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m ready for my first ABBC at all!

Starting to read native material is hard, but reading with a club was super helpful to me when I first started reading, and still is now! It was great to have the vocab lists available, and people asking and answering questions in the threads really boosted my understanding of a lot of grammar points.
The ABBC (and all the other clubs too) are a really lovely supportive group of people so there is no need to worry about finding it tough because there will be lots of people who are willing to help 頑張ってね

@emiri_learns_jp

I finished my first full manga today!

Congratulations! Finishing your first manga is such a big achievement.
Yotsuba is such a fun manga, I hope you enjoyed it.

@javerend

That means I have technically finished my first book in japanese!

Congratulations
Finishing your first book is a huge milestone!

[Natsuha]

@Reyam

Does the manga have parts that weren’t included in the anime or you haven’t seen the anime itself?

I never watched the anime. These days I don’t have that much time to watch anime unfortunately.

[Reyam]

Replies

@ChristopherFritz

Since learning the 20% most-frequently-used words can cover 80% of the overall words, the system worked out fairly well for me.

Oh yeah the pareto principle works for this too
Thanks for the tip!

@javerend Thank you for the detailed explanation

@javerend

Livakivi has a good video about this method which is the strategy I use when I want to do mining for things.

Will check this one out!

@javerend

If you make a card for every new thing you see, reading takes forever, so it’s a balancing act.

Yeah that is exactly why I wanted to ask, i’ll try to mix several approaches and see which works the best for me. For now I’m just going about it in a comfy pace to develop a habit of reading. Aim is to still have fun while learning as much as I can. Thanks again for the intel!

[Redglare]

Home post // Jan 8

・ 本好きの下克上 16 (42% → 44%)

I like finding new verbs while reading.

据(す)え置(お)く = to leave as it is, to defer
娶(めと)る = to marry (a woman)
押(お)しかける = to go uninvited

[Greti33]

January 7th & 8th (Days 7 & 8)

Home post

I didn’t have much time or energy to read yesterday, so opened up a random nhk article and skimmed through it just for the sake of reading something.

Today I decided to join the チュベローズで待ってる AGE22 bookclub to mix things up a bit (reading too much Murakami at once can get a little tiring ), and I am very happy I did so! It was really difficult to put the book down, so I ended up reading the first two chapters.

As for Russian, I started reading Морфий today. The difference in difficulty compared to the collection of stories is quite big, and I have a feeling I may have bitten off a little more than I can chew. I am just not sure I have the mental capacity to read both this and Japanese daily - I can already feel my brain frying Perhaps it’s time to reconsider my approach.

Replies

@Reyam

how do you all try to memorize new words that you come across while reading?

I usually don’t write new words down unless something really catches my eye. Flash cards and notes are also too much effort for something I know I won’t look at again. So I usually just rely on picking up knowledge passively. I’ll look up whatever I don’t know and if it sticks it sticks. If it doesn’t I’ll just hope it will stick the next time I come across it

[Natsuha]

Oh sorry I totally forgot belated Happy Birthday to everyone who had their birthday. I hope you were all partying hard.

Day 6
I started reading vol. 3 of Your Lie in April manga and also read some stories in manga magazines.

733 pages read 19267 to go

@Reyam

I’m curious, how do you all try to memorize new words that you come across while reading? Do you take notes on paper? Add them to anki cards? Do you try to use them in sentences so there’s also output?

It really depends sometimes I put words into a SRS system and sometimes not. If I see a word pretty often and I don’t know what it means I will SRS it. But often I’m too lazy to do it. Of course it also happens that I memorize a word without SRSing it just by seeing it over and over.

[Reyam]

By SRS you mean Anki or are there other tools? I’m not really familiar with the ones where you input the words into the SRS.

I’m living in the stone age and literally writing down words onto paper; kanji, reading, meaning then reading it out loud several times. 笑笑

[Lizziemanan]

Week 1

Read at least a small amount every day. Im replaying Pokemon Scarlet but in Japanese this time. It takes me awhile to get through the txt but im progressing. I also read a couple of pages of Yatsubato vol 1.

[Hantsuki]

1月9日

My last day off so who knows when I’ll have reading time again but I’m proud of myself on the progress I made on かがみの孤城. I made it to the first stopping point in chapter 1 (which is the equivalent of week 1’s reading assignment for the old book club).

I’m really enjoying it so far. The writing can be a little convoluted at times (not sure if it’s the best way to describe it), but the author switches from first person in the sort of intro to third person in the actual chapter reading. Then there’s the weaving in and out between present and past timelines so if you’re not paying attention, it can get confusing. The stylistic choices are interesting, and I’d probably appreciate it more (being a literature major and all) as a native reader or a more advanced reader.

Interesting enough, the themes and issues presented are somewhat similar to 夜カフェ. It’s just not written as straightforward and doesn’t have a sense of lightheartedness that the latter has. For example, even though bullying is a common issue presented in 夜カフェ, the author’s message is we should ultimately just find ways to get along. I don’t think かがみ is going in that direction though. Just based on the cover and title, the book seems to be going in the escapism route, which is the opposite direction of what Aunt Aiko would advise.

Overall, if you’ve read 夜カフェ or are starting to get into native content, the first volume of the series is a good way to get comfortable with written Japanese. But before you get too stuck in your comfort zone, かがみの孤城 is a good level up option to explore other writing styles. I have to say also that reading the book on the Bookwalker app is super helpful for fast look ups. Without that, it would’ve been harder to follow if I took my time with a physical copy.

[windupbird]

Summary post

Day 8: January 8th
What did I read?: マグメル深海水族館 Vol 1
How much did I read?: 17 pages
How long did it take me?: 34 min

Decided to start the pretty aquarium manga today Just read the prologue, which is basically the opening of the aquarium. I think like 70% of my reading time was spent on this one page that was giving detailed info about giant squids

Also, this is kind of unrelated, but I realized as I was putting this into my Bookmeter that I’ve read over 100 manga volumes or books in Japanese :o It’s mostly manga volumes, and over a pretty long period of time, but still, that’s like…a lot? Why do I feel like I’m still so bad at reading Because I don’t study, that’s why

[FrankieFrank]

Jan 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th update

This will be a quick rundown of the past couple of days. Only missed one day! Which I’m pretty proud of as Im trying to build this habit alongside lots of other habits (looking at you, listen everyday challenge )

3rd Spent an hour playing puzzle and dragons z on the 3ds.

4th I kept swapping manga books (and avoiding cells at work which i should be reading ) and reading a couple of sentences on each page while flipping backwards and forwards. The thing that caught my attention the longest and seemed the most interesting to me was a feedback forum that i found tucked between some pages. Absolutely riveting stuff. I’ve decided to count this day because words combined Im sure it would of made at least a page.

5th read 2 pages of spyxfamily

6th missed

7th read 2 and a half pages of cells at work

I know its a little messy but Im hoping these little steps will eventually lead to a stronger habit down the line.

homepost

[fallynleaf]

Replies

@alygator

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m ready for my first ABBC at all!

I definitely wasn’t, haha, when I started with 大海原と大海原 volume one in fall 2021 . I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t really learning a whole lot from my reading because there were just too many unknowns per sentence. My grammar was below N5 (I was not even halfway through MNN book one, haha) and I didn’t have much vocab, either.

But, I was still enjoying the manga even so. I ended up sort of shifting mindsets and just read it to experience the series rather than trying to get anything out of it as a learning tool. By the time I started volume 3, I’d about finished MNN volume 1 and had way better grammar (plus had gotten about halfway through WK), and even though volume 3 had a steep difficulty jump (it’s aimed at an older audience and there is no furigana ), I actually had a way easier time reading it. Since it has taken me so long to finish, it’s even easier (and more enjoyable) for me to read it now!

I’ve learned that I honestly don’t really like using manga as a learning tool because lookups are substantially harder, and I don’t really have a good workflow for adding new words to Anki from manga, since my normal process is to automate that with Yomichan. Even if I type out the word manually, I like to pull the context sentence with it as well, so typing that out adds extra work.

However, I do like reading manga just for fun! But it gets more fun the better my Japanese is, so I have for the most part been holding off on truly diving into manga, because I’ve found that it has just gotten more and more rewarding and useful for me over time.

If you feel like you’re not quite ready, it is totally fine to wait until your Japanese is better! Manga is harder than other types of reading for several reasons, and you might find that you have better luck starting with other mediums.

@Reyam

I’m curious, how do you all try to memorize new words that you come across while reading? Do you take notes on paper? Add them to anki cards? Do you try to use them in sentences so there’s also output?

I tried adding new words from manga to Anki when I first started reading 大海原と大海原, but it quickly became way too overwhelming, because the sheer amount of vocab that I didn’t know was way too high. Plus, as mentioned above, it took extra work because I had to retype the entire context sentence to go along with the word if I wanted it.

My current process is to just not bother with SRS-ing anything from manga. Some words I naturally pick up from repetition, but I just let the rest go. This might change as my vocab improves and I come across fewer unknowns, but for now, it’s just way too much work.

For non-print media, though, it’s a totally different story! I’ve had a lot of success mining words from pro wrestling recaps and transcripts and tweets and such. I use Yomichan and Anki in combination to create cards from digital text at the click of a button, including pulling the context sentence for each word.

However, it’s still very easy to overwhelm yourself! For me, it has really worked out to 1) limit myself to one domain, and 2) only add words that contain kanji I already know.

My domain is a bit of a unique one, haha, because most people start with like slice of life type of vocab, but I started with pro wrestling ! But I started mining words when I started translating wrestling and had a huge incentive to improve quickly, plus I knew that pro wrestling vocab would continue to pay off for me, since it was my main reason for learning the language.

And yeah, it has paid off to an incredible extent! I’ve started to pick up a lot just from listening now that my vocab is better, and I can extensively read a lot of wrestling stuff and get fairly high comprehension without doing lookups just because my vocab is better. When I try reading non-wrestling stuff, it’s a much more humbling experience, haha.

I think most people would probably benefit by limiting the words you SRS by frequency, which is something that I have chosen not to do. It’s hard to determine that with wrestling, for one thing, because lots of words that are very common in wrestling are uncommon outside of that setting, so frequency decks aren’t super helpful. But also I just like learning interesting words, haha, which sometimes includes rare ones! It’s not the most efficient use of my time, but it keeps my Anki time interesting to me.

I also skip kana-only words, for the most part. I only SRS those rarely. Why? Because I thought focusing on vocab with kanji while I was doing WK would be the best way to reinforce the kanji that I’m learning here (and I think this has proven true), and it also helps limit the amount of words that are “eligible” for SRS-ing so that I don’t get overwhelmed.

I use my WK level to cap that as well, though obviously it’s a pretty high level cap, at this point . When I come across words with non-WK kanji (I have an addon installed on Yomichan that tells me the WK level of a word/kanji), sometimes I will add the kanji and the word to Anki. I’m planning on ramping this up once I reach level 60.

Ideally, I’ll reach a point where the number of unknowns per sentence is so low, I’ll be able to add every unknown word/kanji to Anki. But I’m pretty far from that point still, though the rate of new pro wrestling words has slowed down quite a lot since I’ve mined over 1,000 words already.

Sorry for the long response! I guess to sum it up: I use Anki, yes, but limit myself to one domain, don’t add words from manga/print media, use Yomichan to speed up the card creation process (including pulling the context sentence that I found the word in), focus on vocab with kanji, and use my WK level to gate the words that I add.

[Roxcell]

I started Japanese short stories for beginners January 2nd and it is the best decision for my language learning. I am currently in the middle of N4 Grammar so it makes it a bit more comfortable to read now than when I was at the N5 level. I skipped yesterday but I plan to do it most days and I always try to reread the previous stories as a way of refreshing my memory on the vocabulary (without actually going through the vocabulary list again).

[Greya]

January 8th
What did I read?: にわにはににん
How much did I read?: 12 pages
(Continued 4th Story: にわにはににん )
How long did it take me?: 41 min

Turns out that this story is split into two parts, so today I finished the first part and started the second. A new character was introduced!

[softlyraining]

softlyraining’s snowy book stack

January 8th

ラストで君は「まさか！」と言う 冬の物語 (52% → 60%)

I didn’t really feel like reading this today. I thought about focusing on something else on my list, but that’s usually how I end up with half-read books in the first place…

I’m glad I pushed through, because I really enjoyed the first story! It was a 10-pager and took 22 minutes and 31 seconds for me to read. This young girl is staying in the mountains. She’s been bored because it’s been snowing hard non-stop, and one night she wanders downstairs where one of the workers is. From there, he tells her the story of the 雪女. I liked how it was written like a personal account of someone who witnessed a fable, and I liked the mysterious ending.

The second story I read is the shortest one since the prologue at the beginning: 4 pages. This was the closest I got to the 3-minute mark: 6 minutes and 24 seconds. So close, and yet…

Also like the prologue, this was written from the perspective of a character beckoning the reader (so kind of like second-person perspective). It was a little trippy, but also fun.

[pocketcat]

I read Chapter 11 of this week’s ユージニア assignment and plan to read chapter 12 tomorrow. I started to read 半落ち and after about 2 sentences decided my brain was too tired for such a heavy assignment and read another chapter of チュベローズ instead. Tomorrow I’ll finish ユージニア and see if I have the mental fortitude for 半落ち close reading.

Also voting is open for the Natively Mystery Book club!
The books in the poll are a variety of different difficulty levels and types of mystery, and the more the merrier so please check it out and vote if you’re interested!

…I also need to go refamiliarize myself with the nominations. I at one point had noted down which I was interested in but now I can’t find it
edit: ok I voted but it was so hard So many I wanted to vote for.

[natarin]

January 8 Home Post

山猫 era continues; I read another 28 pages today, it’s wild that that feels like a relatively small amount at this point all about perspective I suppose. I’m approaching the final stretch now, some big ideas are coming together and the like. I’ve already had bits where I’m like “wait I have to know what’s about to happen,” it’s just a matter of time until I get completely sucked in and am unable to stop soon!

[omk3]

January 7

ユージニア , 70-77%

January 8

ユージニア , 77-82%
おばちゃんたちのいるところ , 62-70%

In the weekend I finished this week’s Eugenia and Wild Ladies. In Eugenia we’re getting close to the end, and I’m getting impatient to read on. But there’s so much else to read, it will have to wait.

The Wild Ladies are short stories, so it always takes a while to get into them (like starting a new book all over again). The first one of this week’s two stories was in the form of an essay, and I find these harder to read anyway. Am I the only one who finds short stories harder, I wonder? I’m the type of reader who can read fast and for ages once I’m carried by the flow of the book, but with short stories the flow is constantly interrupted.

The plan for today is to read 半落ち, and depending on how fast that goes, have a couple of days left in the week for チュベローズで待ってる and the 赤川次郎 I have started. (I keep juggling more and more books when I said I like focusing on one at a time, how does this even happen?)

@pocketcat

edit: ok I voted but it was so hard So many I wanted to vote for.

So true. I also left out several I wanted to vote for.