📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2023 ☃❄

Just out of curiosity, I see people posting here their progress such as pages read and content… should I do the same? I’ve been reading but have only marked on my calendar so far… :thinking:

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No, I think it’s the same for me, basically. :woman_shrugging: (Example: I still haven’t read stories 2 and 3 of 穴 :roll_eyes:)

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It’s entirely up to you! I don’t have time to post daily updates, but I do like popping in with an update whenever I complete a show translation. It’s a fun excuse to give people who don’t know much about pro wrestling a tiny glimpse into that world, haha.

If you feel like it would be motivating or enjoyable to share what you’re up to, feel free! If you feel like it would be too much of a hassle to type it all out, then don’t feel obligated to post about it :blush:.

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Thanks a bunch! It was an interesting read, it’s amazing how many different reasons people have for learning the language. :smile: I’ve never heard of Yomichan, gonna install it and see how it works. And yeah I think im stressing out a bit too much on learning everything all at once so I’m just gonna skip taking notes or SRSing a few words that I find not so useful in my case or less common, can still learn it in the future but first I should probably go with mainly common ones.

I really appreciate the time you invested into answering my question and giving me such an awesome detailed answer!

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Thank you for your comment. I’ll consider my options :slight_smile: I’ll just keep in my that having fun is more important than filling my whole day hours with content here. I enjoying reading people’s input thou. :smiley:

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Yeah, starting with just common words is a great idea! You can actually install some frequency decks onto Yomichan to help you with that. I’ve souped up Yomichan with a couple things, including that addon I mentioned. If you’re interested in an extension that adds WK/JLPT tags to Yomichan entries, or are interested in adding some monolingual dictionaries or additional frequency dictionaries to Yomichan, there are some links to those in this post on my study log :blush:.

Just keep in mind that if you start using Anki, don’t be afraid to back off of it if it starts to get too overwhelming! It’s easy to overdo it, so you want to make sure that you don’t push yourself too hard too soon.

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Home Post

First week is over! I haven’t been reading as much Japanese this week because I started reading an English book for a change, and it turns out that it’s very addictive and takes up quite a bit of my time :flushed:

But the book is part of a bigger plot and it will all make sense in the end

Last year I read a bit of the Japanese translation of one of my all-time favourite books, “The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett (in Japanese: 大聖堂). I had read that book in German shortly after it was published (i.e. in 1990 or so), and then I went out of touch with reading in general for quite some time. Now coming back to it, I discovered that the book had been turned into a series - the original “The Pillars of the Earth” is set in 12th century England, the sequel “World without End” is set in 14th century, and the 3rd volume “A Column of Fire” is set in 16th century England. As it happens, I’m also reading a Japanese pirate series which is also set in 16th century England and which is very tightly intervowen with the history of that time. So I figured I’d like to read that 3rd volume, but although the books are spaced apart quite widely, of course there are connections between them, and so I figured I’d want to read the 2nd volume first. (In principle I should have reread the first volume first, but given it’s Japanese and the translator does not hold back on vocab, I did not want to wait that long. So I’m basically winging the back references from the bit I’ve read so far and from my almost non-existent memory of the book from reading it back then.) Which wouldn’t be so much of an issue if the book didn’t have a whooping 1200 pages :sweat_smile:

Anyways, now I’m reading the 2nd volume, and it even starts to work out as I planned as I already found some historical information in it that I first learned from the pirate series :grin: So I’m ever more eager to dive into the 3rd volume…

Also, despite me already being equipped with plenty of reading, the Compulsive Readers club struck again! I think this was the quickest book club formation in history, with @omk3 posting a book review video on Friday morning in which the book was featured as #1 and strong recommendation, us chatting about the cover art and the intended target audience throughout the day, and finally deciding to start a club in the evening :crazy_face: and, needless to say, starting to read the next morning. (And so far the book did not disappoint!)

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Plans for the week:

  • Continue this week’s ユージニア and start next week’s on the weekend
  • Read this week’s 半落ち
  • Read chapter 14 of 1Q84
  • Read a chapter per day (or more?) of チュベローズ
  • Finish “World without End”
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Very impressive! That book is definitely on my English list (which is now currently on hold due to Japanese studying). Coming back from such a long hiatus definitely takes its toll on something else. Right now I’m just reading my currently mangas (2 at a time an easy one and a more challenging one) and the grammar/listening studying.

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Home post

1 月 9 日
コナの大冒険 第21話 :black_cat:

It’s a Monday and I’m back to reading about Kona’s adventures because manga is a bit too heavy for me on the weekdays. Sharing a personal win: Today, I realized I’ve finally reached WK to the point where I don’t need any furigana for the titles of each episode in this series! :star_struck: I set my Satorireader settings to furigana according to my knowledge. And I just guru’ed 冒 and 険 this morning! It’s such a small thing but it got me really excited! :joy:
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Words of interest
  • 住み心地 「すみごこち」 comfort of leaving, ease of living
  • 機会 「きかい」 opportunity, change
  • 二度と 「にどと」 never again (used with a negative verb)
  • 好奇心 「こうきしん」 curiousity, inquisitiveness

And because of Kona’s internal dialogue, I searched this other phrase in Japanese 好奇心が猫を殺した。 A literal translation but I wonder if that’s an actual Japanese expression…

Also just to add how funny that image is of a cat on a deer’s back… :sweat_smile:

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Most reading is being done in a book I bought on amazon, for now, along with miscellaneous resources.
Here it is, if you’re interested: どうぞ

Jan
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
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:bow_and_arrow: Home :frog:

January 9th

ジョジョの奇妙な冒険63
140 - 227 (end)

What a great ending! It was really interesting to note the differences between the anime and manga here especially. In the manga, it felt a lot more clear that Mista will shortly accept Bucchiarati’s death off screen and also, the boulder looked more like it was reforming into Bruno’s, Abbacchio’s, and Doppio’s faces rather than Naranchia instead of Doppio.

Also, I’ve decided to give up on the prefecture stories and human chair story for the time being. They just don’t capture my attention like JoJo does even though they both interest me. I think it’ll take me needing to be further along in my learning journey to enjoy them like I feel like I should.

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home post

9th jan

back to 蟲師 and oh wow chapter 3 of volume one is so different to the previous two! quite sad, too. i flew through it though, was a great chapter and i’m looking forward to the next one tomorrow!

no specific words jumped out at me, but 通い路 and 通路 both turned up several pages apart, which is fun. there was also some brief discussion of 枕 in context cos the legend about it being where the soul goes when you sleep was relevant to the story.

spoliers for chap 3 vol 1 of 蟲師

it’s a short tragedy tale, following a man who had dreams predicting the future thanks to a 蟲 which had infected him. ginko gives him medicine and is like i’ll be back when those run out and leaves. turns out when he comes back the village is in ruins cos the guy didn’t take his medicine (the townspeople were relying on his predictions and when there was an unfortunate tsunami after he started taking his medicine he felt incredibly guilty and stopped taking the medicine) and his dreams kept coming true cos turns out ginko sort of maybe lied to him. it wasn’t that he was seeing predictions of the future, he was dreaming and it was becoming true. so when he has a nightmare about his whole village succumbing to a mystery illness, guess what happens…

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At the moment what I’m doing is that I look words up in my electronic dictionary while reading, but only when I feel I really need to. Then later on I use the dictionary’s history function to list the words I looked up, and I add them to a deck in jpdb.io. That site’s SRS has a create cards from words in text function so it’s easy to get cards with audio, definition and example sentence. When jpdb has a premade deck for the book I’m reading I use that instead, generally studying words from it in frequency order within the book up to 95% coverage. Unfortunately unless you like trashy light novels jpdb coverage can be rather spotty…

If you read electronically there are setups that can be even more automated and use the sentence you actually found the word in rather than some random one; but I read on paper so have no specific suggestions there.

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Jan 9, Mon of Week 3 of Winter Q1 2023 :snowman::snowflake:

  • かぐや様は告らせたい Vol.26 Ch.258-261 (end volume)

Weird adolescent choice, but not half-bad.

  • うたわれるもの
Interesting words
  • かっさらう = to snatch (and run). From ()(さら)う, where there was (さら)う previously.
  • ハマる = to be addicted to; to be hooked on. From ()まる.
  • (ゆず)る = to hand over. I kept confusing with (ゆる)す.
  • (ほつ)れる = to become loose. Has Furigana in context.
  • (あお)る = to fan in the wind. Sound almost like (あお)ぐ / 扇子(せんす), but with fire (火).
  • (くし) = comb. This one has Furigana, but I failed to recognize anyway.
  • ()く = to comb
  • ()(なお)す = to fix hair tying. From ()う.
  • ()()まり = dead end. Rendaku tripped me a little.
  • (ちから)ずくで = by brute force. From 力尽(ちからず)く.
  • 一同(いちどう) = all of us
  • ()(まい) = all over again. Probably, dancing a second time.
  • その他大勢(たおおぜい) = and many others
  • 懸案(けんあん) = unresolved problem. Probably feels like 懸念(けねん)(あん).
  • 遂行(すいこう) = execution
  • 不覚(ふかく) = blunder
  • 穀潰(ごくつぶ)し = good for nothing. First Kanji is for grains (穀物(こくもつ)), but takes atypical Dakuten. I also confused the Kanji with (から) / 甲殻(こうかく)., which the latter has table / hat-like shell. The former is just grain radical ((いね)).
  • 撹拌(かくはん) = beating; whipping (of egg yolk, cement). Just like 攪乱(かくらん), there is another official version = 攪拌(かくはん)
  • 汚物(おぶつ) = filth; excrements
  • 肥溜(こえだめ) = tanking for holding human waste = 肥溜(こえだ)め. From (こえ) + ()める.
  • 岩礁(がんしょう) = reef (coral)
  • 昏倒(こんとう) = fainting; swoon
  • 幸先(さいさき) = good omen. First Kanji is usually (さいわ)い or 幸福(こうふく).
  • 押送(おうそう) = transferring (a convict to a different prison). Has Furigana.
  • (うまや) = a stable (for a horse). With Furigana and reading is explanatory.
  • 補導(ほどう) = protective custody / guidance.
  • 王家(おうけ) = royal family
  • 卓越(たくえつ) = superiority; transcendence
  • 満喫(まんきつ) = eating to one’s heart content
  • 軋轢(あつれき) = discord; strife / friction. The second Kanji is that for running over by a car (()く). Like some hot ((あつ)い) and broken brick (瓦礫(がれき)) sounding.
  • 遺恨(いこん) = enmity (a word that I can’t spell before); grudge.
  • 継母(ままはは) = stepmother. (まま)~ is step-. (No way people would say mama twice in two variations.)
  • 傀儡(かいらい) = puppet. Some time ago, I also saw 傀儡(くぐつ).
  • 屋台骨(やたいぼね) = foundation; framework
  • 在処(ありか) = hiding place = ()(). Has Furigana in context. The first part is probably ()る, but I don’t know about the latter half.
  • 齟齬(そご) = inconsistency; disagreement. No Furigana, but not in manga dialogue, but in a short essay.
  • 弱輩(じゃくはい) = inexperience person. Also written with 若輩(じゃくはい)
  • 不手際(ふてぎわ) = clumsy. Opposite is 手際(てぎわ)よく.
  • 観念(かんねん) = resignation; preparedness
  • 虎視眈々(こしたんたん) = waiting for an opportunity. Tiger’s eyes. The last Kanji is watching intently with an eye (目), compared to 耽読(たんどく), which is addicting voice (耳).
  • 適材適所(てきざいてきしょ) = right person in the right place
  • 人身御供(ひとみごくう) = human sacrifice. 御供(ごくう) is sacrificing to a temple.
  • 飛車角落(ひしゃかくお)ち = playing shogi with only rook (飛車(ひしゃ)) and bishop ((かく)). Actually, 飛車(ひしゃ)(かく)()ち in context.
  • 王手(おうて) = check(mate) the king
  • まっぴら御免(ごめん) = flatly refusing
  • 骨身(ほねみ)()しまない = unsparingly; tirelessness
  • ()(あし)()む = to think twice; to hesitate
  • ()(じょう)じる = to take advantage of an opportunity

SFX

  • ちゃっかり = shrewdly; cunningly
  • ぼさぼさ = ruffled (hair)
  • ぐるりと = surrounding
  • どっかり = plucking into a chair
  • パラパラ = flipping of a book

Kanji

  • (アツ)

    • rubbing with friction
    • Compare: ()   (軌道(きどう))
    • アツ
      • 軋轢(あつれき)
    • (きし)る,     (きし)
  • (レキ)

    • running over with force
    • レキ
      • 軋轢(あつれき)
      • 轢殺(れきさつ),     轢死(れきし)
    • ()
  • (ケイ) (Level 36)

    • (まま)
      • 継母(ままはは),     継子(ままこ)
  • (ケツ) (Level 17)

    • (むす)
      • 縁結(えんむす)
    • ()
      • ()()げる

In longer past, I didn’t take note of vocabularies in reading at all. I simply looked up in a dictionary. I trusted Wanikani and Core 10k for necessary memory. For those decks, I took notes and mnemonics in Anki (AnkiDroid, Anki on Android), while SRS’ing. I also copied texts from websites (via in-Anki hyperlinks) to AnkiDroid. So, Anki is like a portable personal database. Tae Kim and textbooks are simple enough to try to remember most things, so I didn’t really actively try to remember and SRS everything. (Though I tried very hard to remember Kana at the very beginning, but no SRS.)

I imagine that jpdb.io or koohi.cafe would be saner starting points for pre-made deck outside Wanikani; but I didn’t really use those myself.

Since last year, I took note for selected words in Google Sheets; but recently, I simply typed here. I also add some words detected by Yomichan to Anki. Original context (sentences) aren’t added to Anki.

I didn’t sort Anki cards by frequency in the past, but maybe I do a little very recently.

However, more often that I find Kanji more important than vocabularies, otherwise I would try to (arbitrarily) breakdown Kana-based words to smaller words and risk losing the original meaning.

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Very poor effort last 2 days - I essentially just read to say I had! But I was only in New York for 2 full days, and with my sister, so I didn’t have much reading time (kind of figured I should talk to her…)

7/1 2 pages 夜カフェ

8/12 1 page 夜カフェ

I’m at the airport waiting to board a 14+ hour flight to Tokyo so I’m certain to get more reading in. Will have to decide how to calculate my reading as I’m crossing the international date line. I’ll probably count the reading before I nap as 9th then after as 10th.

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January 9 :heavy_check_mark: :flashlight:

半落ち , 6-14%

So, done with this week’s 半落ち. I’m finding this book surprisingly readable, and quite hard to put down.

And with this, let me check, yes, I’m all caught up with this week’s scheduled book clubs. So tomorrow it’s back to チュベローズで待ってる, I suppose.

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:raccoon: :books: The Tanuki Kotatsu Reading Den :snowflake: :raccoon:

January 9th
新書太閣記 progress: 01.05% // Volume I: 12.21% :bell:
Chapter start:
香炉変
こうろへん

Finding it hard to know when to stop reading this for the day, just one more sentence turns into just ten more.

Words found under the kotatsu

赤蛙「あかがえる」ー Japanese brown frog (Rana Japonica); any brown/red frog of the Ranidae family
入夫「にゅうふ」ー Marrying into the wife’s family
凱歌「がいか」ー Victory song
折檻「せっかん」ー Physical punishment; beating; severe scolding
囈言「うわごと」ー Incoherent mumbling
唐変木「とうへんぼく」ー Oaf; bigot
寺入り「てらいり」ー To enrol at a temple school; incarcerating a criminal at a temple for punishment; to go to a temple and repent
日蓮宗「にちれんしゅう」ー Nichiren school of Buddhism
記憶力「きおくりょく」ー Ability to remember (記憶力のいい is to have a good memory)
托鉢「たくはつ」ー Asking for alms
鐘楼「しょうろう」ー Bell tower; belfry
愕然 「がくぜん」ー Astonished; amazed; aghast

Forms
淋しい = 寂しい「さびしい」(Lonely; solitary)

Character Name List

for easy referencing later, because these will take some remembering
Also probably some spoilers, but this is a historic novel, so can spoilers really exist for things that have (for the most part) actually happened :thinking:

Main
Hideyoshi: 豊臣秀吉「とよとみ ひでよし」
– – – Childhood name: 日吉「ひよし」
– – – Childhood nickname: 猿「さる」

Volume I Characters
日吉「ひよし」- Hideyoshi (as child)
Nickname: 猿「さる」

Friends
仁王「におう」- Big kid friend
於福「おふく」- Timid kid friend

Family
木下弥右衛門「きのした やえもん」- Father
筑阿弥「ちくあみ」ー Step-father
大政所「おおまんどころ」also お奈加「おなか」ー Mother
おつみ - Older sister
加藤清正「かとう きよまさ」- Ojisan (only distantly related)


Others
織田信秀「おだ のぶひで」- Daimyo (Foreshadowing drum noises)
– 織田与三郎「おだ よさぶろう」- Younger brother
今川義元「いまがわ よしもと」- Daimyo

五郎大夫 「ごろ だゆう」// 祥瑞「しょうずい」(Goro’s Chinese name)
– Servant of Goro: 捨次郎「すてじろう」
– Mother of Goro’s child: 梨琴「りきん」
– Rikin’s & Goro’s child: 楊景福「ようけいふく」

Historical People
  • 阿倍仲麻呂「あべ の なかまろ」ー Japanese scholar & poet (around 700AD)

  • 白楽天「はく きょい」ー Late 700s Chinese poet (Bai Juyi / Bo Juyi) also known as: 白楽天「はく らくてん」in Japan.

  • 道元「どうげん」(or 道元禅師「どうげん ぜんじ」ー Japanese Buddhist Priest, writer & poet (Early to mid 1200s) (also known as 栄西禅師「えいさい ぜんじ」)

  • 空海「くうかい」ー The one and only Kukai or Kobo Daishi - a Buddhist monk. Posthumously given the title of: 弘法大師「こうぼう だいし」born as: 佐伯 眞魚「さえき の まお」(late 700s to early 800s)


Reply

I write any new words I encounter down on my daily posts and then hope for the best. Going through the effort of writing each down does help me remember it better, and most of the time, the word will be popping up again in whatever it is I’m reading so if it’s a common enough word I’ll eventually remember it that way. Some words are just too obscure to really remember effectively.

I’m sure there’s probably a lot of ‘new’ words that keep reappearing in my posts.

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:snowflake: :red_gift_envelope: 1月9日 :red_gift_envelope: :snowflake: (Home Post Link)

Watched the g-witch finale today and had a very hard time sitting down to read slice of life manga after… that :melting_face: Still did some studying, but mostly listening stuff. Couldn’t get my eyes to focus on the page for the life of me, thankfully today’s chapters were fairly light

Read:

  • ホリミヤ 61, 62
Good Words

ホリミヤ
一応「いちおう」ー more or less
現役「げんえき」ー active duty
幼稚園「ようちえん」ー kindergarten
卑怯「ひきょう」ー unfair, sneaky, dastardly

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:snowflake: Day 9, 9th of January :snowflake:

:open_book: Back to my Home Post

More stories! :partying_face: Today’s first story is about the compass, and where on the map you can find certain coutries. Hey, I know these Kanji already. Neat! Then, the two travelling animals are using this new knowledge to go to Gabun. Except someone can’t read maps and they end up in the Arctic.

In the next story we appear to be in a quiz show. Apparently the second Harry Potter book was the Goblet of Fire in this parallel universe. And a panda’s favorite food is bread (パン) because of a pun. That’s story logic for you, can’t argue with that.

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

January 9th

:yellow_square: ラストで君は「まさか!」と言う 冬の物語 (60% → 69%)

As soon as I started reading, I didn’t feel like continuing. :upside_down_face: I thought maybe it was because the first story didn’t grab me right away, so I pushed through and read a second one. That went a little bit better, and the ending for it was kind of cute.

The first story for today was 8 pages and took 19 minutes and 35 seconds to read. The second story I read was 10 pages long and took 22 minutes and 56 seconds to read. Though I want to finish this book before moving on to the next, I might switch it up tomorrow just to give me a break and maybe renew my desire to continue reading this.

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