You can always link them in your home post here if you want, otherwise you could always start your own study log. There are plenty around, and feel free to put whatever you want about your studies in there.
It’s that time again! It’s wild thinking about how it’s been a year since I started really getting involved in these challenges, how far we’ve come :') Welcome to all the new faces as well, I hope you have a great time! I know these threads have been really impactful for me, so here’s hoping they do the same for you
Background
I’m oddly not very far into any projects right now A main thing will be reading BU$TAFELLOWS with the VN club, but I know I’ll get up to plenty of other chaos on the side. I’ve recently been playing 13 Sentinels as well, so that’ll probably be a significant part of this challenge too. I’ve also been working through 怪盗探偵山猫 on the novel side, so hopefully I can make progress there too! I’m very mystery-heavy it seems Inevitably I’ll end up going in and out of other things along the way (maybe I’ll start up another manga since I’ve finished ブルーロック? or keep listening to the バディミッションBOND drama cds at some point??), so we shall see how it goes!
Joining again, but not doing a home post I’ll inevitably neglect. I plan to check in about once or twice a month as my goals have me reading one book a month and one manga a week, except September when I’ll be vacationing abroad.
Good luck to all participants, new and returning!!
Reading has continued to be the mainstay of my Japanese “studies” so I don’t really have any definite goals this year other than continuing to read and hopefully get fast enough to eventually read the things I want to read.
Currently reading
お隣の天使様にいつの間にか駄目人間にされていた件 - oh, my good friend from hell, that’s kept me chained for so long. I hate you so much and yet you’re excellent reading practice and I’m determined to see you through to the very end. On the bright side, I should be able to catch up on this series this challenge, which frees me up to read something hopefully a little more exciting…
I had originally intended these to be supplementary reading but the more I read the more I realized I didn’t really have the mental leeway to just pick up a manga on the side. I really hope I can get back to these eventually because I love SOL manga and these have been a lot of fun so far.
Future reads! (hopefully)
Monkeys!¡ - I read a lot of visual novels but I’ve been afraid to dip my toe into the JP visual novel pool because all the ones I want to read are so dang long. I think I’ll be starting this once I finish 天使様 though, it seems fairly short and with any luck I could probably read it in a month if I pushed myself.
サクラノ詩－櫻の森の上を舞う－ - This one’s the cream of the crop, baby. One of the reasons I started learning Japanese in the first place, to read untranslated 神ゲー like this. If it weren’t for the length, I might have started practice on one of these right away. But the idea of taking half a year to read something was not very appealing so I’m hoping to get to a decent enough speed by this year to get started on one of these.
This is my first anniversary of the Read Every Day Challenge, which is exciting! Since it helped me so much last year with building a reading habit and then reading a ton, I’m back again!
I plan to read 30 pages per day in either Japanese, Spanish, or Mandarin.
Planned Reads
Japanese
かくりよの宿飯３
かくりよの宿飯４
Spanish
La librería del Señor Livingstone
Operación cliché
Mandarin
我能摸摸你的财神光环吗？ch. 52-100
恐怖片男主的冬天
我的世界坠入爱河
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
Actual Reads
Japanese
花野井くんと恋の病 1 (manga); finished 1/28/2023
TUGUMI (245 pages; finished 1/21/2023)
死神の精度 1-15
舟を編む (on page 36/346)
かくりよの宿飯 3 (320 pages; finished 2/12/2023)
デッドプールさむらい
Spanish
La librería del Señor Livingstone (93/194) (DNFed 1/21/2023)
Kalsarin (webtoon) (6/59 chapters read)
Mandarin
我能摸摸你的财神光环吗？ch. 52-100 (read ch. 52-100 from Jan 1-Jan 11!)
= read today = listened today = read and listened today = missed day
Approach for this challenge
History has taught us that I’m not very good at doing the Listen Every Day challenge and the Read Every Day challenge at the same time. January is also slated to be a pretty busy month for me, work-wise and personal life-wise. So I’m going to be focusing only on the Read Every Day challenge for January, and I’ll try to add in the Listen Every Day challenge for February. I want to start the aquarium manga I bought a while ago (someone from a previous challenge read this, but I can’t remember who ) - and also read the rest of 夜の名前を呼んで. Not going to go for anything like a novel for now - that seems like a better project for a future challenge.
Kicking off in here although new years is a few hours yet for me in this time zone.
I read another chapter of 死体は語る. Since it’s nonfiction and the contents can be disturbing (it’s case files from a coroner) I’ll limit what I say unless someone is curious, but it’s about what you’d expect. It’s one of 4 (minimum) nonfiction books I’m planning to read this year. New year, new genres!
Challenge Plans
This is my first time doing a reading challenge. I really just want to focus on reading even just a few sentences of Japanese each day. I also study Mandarin Chinese, so I’d like to note any progress I make reading in Mandarin as well.
What will I be reading? (Japanese)
I’m about halfway through よつばと volume 2 - I’ve picked it up and put it down multiple times over the last year. So my first big goal is to finish よつばと volume 2. Next I’d like to finish the Crystal Hunters manga series.
Besides よつばと and Crystal Hunters, I have a few other manga 1st volumes and an upper-beginner picture book of Studio Ghibli stories that I will try reading. I bought them over a year ago when my reading level was much lower, so now would be a good time to revisit them to see how much I can comprehend.
I’ll update this section with anything else I end up reading. I also have a study log where I may go into more detail about my reading progress.
Happy new year! 2023 is here and I’m starting bright and early with my reading. I noticed the first two volumes of ハイキュー！！ are free on Bookwalker until January 8th, so I figured I’d check it out. I’m going a little slower than usual to pick up new words for my spreadsheet. So far it seems fun, but I’m having the worst time trying to read the furigana over the kanji. The font is tiiiiny and I feel like the quality isn’t all that great either. I’ll keep at it though.
starting off the year by finishing the last chapter of ワンダンス volume 2, a manga about a boy with a speech impediment who joins his high school dance club after seeing a girl practising.
this was my weekend read for a couple of weeks, loads of words i don’t know but easy enough to follow without a dictionary. looking forward to continuing this series at some point, i really like the relationship between kabo and wanda. unique art style too!
Giving a weekly status report plus keeping a Home Post worked really well for me during the last challenge, so I’d like to continue in the same style going forward.
Plans for this month:
ユージニア (with the ABC)
半落ち (with the 半落ち club)
1Q84 Book 1.2 (with the 1Q84 book club)
世界から猫が消えたなら (my new sauna book)
ユージニア will run until the end of the month. 半落ち just started. It’s currently on the very slow side with lots of unknown words, but I hope this will improve once the initial world building is done and we know the ranks of all the police officers and the names of all the rooms they have . 1Q84 is something I wanted to continue reading in Japanese for a long time, and I hope I can read it now at a good pace. And then I have 世界から猫が消えたなら which I plan to read when I chill at the sauna/spa.
Hello all! With the new year I’ve made one of my resolutions to try to read more (in general), and with that includes japanese. I’d like to try participating in my first read every day challenge. I did participate in the advent reading challenge thread, in which I was bad at making update posts, but perhaps this time I’ll be a bit more consistent.
I will be reading:
Yotsubato!
News articles
Song lyrics (for the lazier days)
Youtube subtitles (again for lazy days)
I am still very new to reading, so I doubt that I will be reading a lot each day, but I’m determined to see if my skill will improve as I read more!
Card Captor Sakura volume 5 – progress report Today: Began reading volume 5, finished chapter 19, stopped at page 47.
Happy new year everyone! I hope you started off this new year well.
New year, same old new things to read. Decided to continue reading Card Captor Sakura for this and the coming week until I probably start Aria: the masterpiece volume 3 on Saturday. (My order containing volume 4 and 5 should arrive in 1-2 weeks, I hope).
I’ve already gone a bit overboard and finished one chapter despite not planning to do so today. I won’t complain…but a ‘strong’ start means that it’s only going to be worse from now on which is most likely what will happen because of my change of focus in the coming weeks. Well, I’ll simply continue to enjoy satisfactory progress for as long as it lasts.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Word or expression of the day:
てがい / でっがい - huge, big, gargantuan
Honourable mention(s):
避暑 (+する) - (ひしょ) - escaping the summer heat, going somewhere cooler during summer
Congratulations on making it through 2022, and I hope 2023 will be bright year for everyone
The New Years tradition I share with my friends (and a relatively small but very dedicated group of indie music fans more generally) is to all raise a glass and sing along to The Mountain Goats - This Year (Video) - YouTube I hope that wherever you all are, and whoever you all are with, you got a chance to celebrate in a way that is meaningful to you!
Unfortunately my 初夢 was not full of any good omens (at least that i’m aware of, i’m no oneiromancer), but hopefully yours were/will be!
Read:
NHK News Web Easy: 温泉から「金」がとれた - My goal last month was to do one of these every day, and I succeed in that. Not sure if I want to keep that up necessarily, but they are so quick to do I might as well if I see something that looks interesting. When I first read this title, I wasn’t sure if the 金 was money or maybe metaphor, but it’s neither! It’s literal, real 金 that they are extracting from hot springs.
ホリミヤ ch 45, 46, 47 - I know I said I wasn’t in any real hurry to finish this, but it would be nice to get it done by the end of January, especially since I already know I can read most of it quickly. I’d need to average about 2.5 chapters/day to do that, so here’s getting a little bit ahead of that
マジック・ツリーハウス pg 12 → 16 (end of ch1) - small bites of this, at first. But, as long as I’m reading at least a couple pages every day, I think the speed will pick up a lot.
Good Words
NHK
溶ける「とける」ー to melt, to dissolve ラン藻 = 藍藻 「らんそう」ー cyanobacteria, blue-green algae
性質「せいしつ」ー nature, property, disposition
ホリミヤ
品切れ「しなぎれ」ー sold out, out of stock
嫌がる「いやがる」ー to appear uncomfortable
庇う「かばう」ー to protect (someone), to look after (something)
どうでもいい ー inconsequential, not worth worrying about
激しい「はげしい」ー extreme, intense, strong
災難「さいなん」ー calamity
雨乞い「あまごい」ー praying for rain
手抜き「てぬき」ー cutting corners, omitting crucial steps
承知「しょうち」ー forgiving, excusing (usually negative 承知しない)
応援「おうえん」ー cheering
やる気「やるぎ」ー will, motivation (to do something)
マジック・ツリーハウス
沈み込む「しずみこむ」ー to sink (into)
梯子「はしご」ー ladder
Happy new year everyone
This is my first post on the forum, I’m hoping to improve my reading comprehension and general Japanese skills through some reading immersion this winter. I will be reading 高木さん volume 1 to start with, this is my first manga volume.
Good luck everyone!
A main thing will be reading BU$TAFELLOWS with the VN club, but I know I’ll get up to plenty of other chaos on the side. I’ve recently been playing 13 Sentinels as well, so that’ll probably be a significant part of this challenge too. I’ve also been working through 怪盗探偵山猫 on the novel side, so hopefully I can make progress there too! I’m very mystery-heavy it seems 
Inevitably I’ll end up going in and out of other things along the way (maybe I’ll start up another manga since I’ve finished ブルーロック? or keep listening to the バディミッションBOND drama cds at some point??), so we shall see how it goes!
= listened today
= read and listened today
) - and also read the rest of 夜の名前を呼んで. Not going to go for anything like a novel for now - that seems like a better project for a future challenge.
ユージニア (with the ABC)
半落ち (with the 半落ち club)
1Q84 Book 1.2 (with the 1Q84 book club)
世界から猫が消えたなら (my new sauna book)
. 1Q84 is something I wanted to continue reading in Japanese for a long time, and I hope I can read it now at a good pace. And then I have 世界から猫が消えたなら which I plan to read when I chill at the sauna/spa.
Decided to continue reading Card Captor Sakura for this and the coming week until I probably start Aria: the masterpiece volume 3 on Saturday. (My order containing volume 4 and 5 should arrive in 1-2 weeks, I hope).
１月１日 
