14th jan
it’s the weekend that means going back to smooth reading stuff! カノカメ continues, and is definitely becoming less fun/interesting as i go on. there’s some tropes i really don’t like in there 
still, i’ll finish the volume cos i’ve started. i’ve read five chapters now but i’m still only like two thirds of the way through, and it’s not even that long of a volume…
January 14
Home Post
BU$TAFELLOWS 
Novel in English 
I haven’t read much Japanese yet, but I’m planing to read more after I write this. Bustafellows keeps being fun, although I’m still very very early.
As for the novel, well, 90% was about the guy figuring out his shortcomings and growing, and the woman had less than 10%, because for the rest of the novel she didn’t even admit to herself that she’d been wrong at all. That split to me just feels bad. Because it makes it seem like the guy have to scrap and crawl over glass to get the woman, and the woman can just enjoy all the attention and then have a shotgun character growth.
I just think they both should have been growing through the whole book, that is how you show that their relationship will work into the future. Right now I can believe the guy will be able to make it work, but whether the heroine will or not, I can’t say. She’ll probably fall back in her old destructive way.
It was fun to read, and I’ll probably pick up the next one in the series. But now I know that this series will be a romance series that focuses on men improving on themselves, and the women recognizing they need to apologize too at the end (if not earlier). So I should just ignore the heroine mostly, and focus on enjoying the guy’s journey.
Jan 14, Sat of Week 3 of Winter Q1 2023 
I went to Kinokuniya bookstore to see if I can find よつばと in paperback version. I can find latter volumes, but Vol.1 isn’t there. Showcasing of other books is amazing, though. Rather than a Japanese book, I bought a piano book, which is western (and I can’t say I could “read” that).
Chapter number (カルテ) restarts to 1. Although current chapters’ mini-story looks separated, later on it connects well with the first volume.
I have some questions about what 手術 wouldn’t do, but not that I care.
ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 has a book club, with a Bookwalker preview link – ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 (Intermediate Book Club)
The Tanuki Kotatsu Reading Den
January 14th
新書太閣記 progress: 01.83% // Volume I: 21.21% 
Getting some back story now, so things are starting to make more sense
茶事「ちゃごと」ー Tea gathering (for a tea ceremony); some matter concerning tea; family gathering in memory of deceased ancestors
数寄「すき」ー Refined taste
濁世「じょくせ / だくせ」ー This corrupt world; this world/life; the world of humans (Buddhism)
郷士「ごうし」ー Country samurai
紅毛人「こうもうじん」ー Old way of referring to Westerners, especially the Dutch
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 
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: 1534 - 15??
日吉「ひよし」- Hideyoshi (as child)
Nickname: 猿「さる」
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
小竹「こちく」- Baby brother
加藤清正「かとう きよまさ」// also 弾正「だんじょう」- Ojisan (only distantly related (before marriage))
– Married to: おえつ (sister of お奈加)
Friends & Acquaintances
仁王「におう」- Big kid friend
於福「おふく」(Nickname - full name: 福太郎「ふくたろ」) // 楊景福「ようけいふく」(Chinese name/birth name) - Timid kid friend (older than Hideyoshi)
– 五郎大夫 「ごろ だゆう」// 祥瑞「しょうずい」(Chinese name) - Father
– 梨琴「りきん」- Mother
捨次郎「すてじろう」- Previous servant to 五郎, later the adoptive father of 於福, and owner of a tea ware shop - and employer of, and master to, Hideyoshi
Others
織田信秀「おだ のぶひで」- Daimyo
– 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
斯波義統「しば よしむね」- Daimyo (head of the Shiba clan) at Kiyosu castle
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)
➳ January 14th.
What: ピーチガール volume 2
Pages: 41
Time: 20 minutes.
It’s been like 6 months since I finished the first volume of this manga… I’d forgotten how dramatic it is, and rife with misunderstandings 
Oh well. It was nice to realize I could jump back into the very casual and slang-y language at least! I should study some grammar this weekend but it’s so boooooring.
January 14th!
Today I read half of Chapter 3 of Cells at Work. Watching the anime has made the vocab a little less difficult for me. I’m still looking up a lot of stuff, but I’m struggling less than I was.
Day 14, 14th of January
In this one we follow now two parallel story threads. Most of the pirate crew is continuing towards the treasure, while one person got lost, but met a monkey friend.
The next one is so confusing I don’t even know where to start. The crew finds the treasure, but another group ambushes them and cuts off their beards, which somehow causes the pirates to fall asleep??? Then they’re saved by monkey’s throwing coconuts.
１月１４日 (Home Post Link)
Struggling to focus today, but got a little bit in
Read:
ホリミヤ
内蔵「ないそう」ー internal, built in
過信「かしん」ー trusting too much
尊敬「そんけい」ー respect, esteem
危機感「ききかん」ー sense of impending crisis
マジーク・ツリーハウス
ひんやり ー cool, chilly
並ぶ「ならぶ」ー to stand in a line (occasionally we still find some random n5 stuff i’ve never seen lmao)
面頬「めんほお」ー faceguard, visor
ガチャン ー (with a) slamming noise
衛兵「えいへい」ー guard
螺旋「らせん」ー spiral, helix
天井「てんじょう」ー ceiling
処刑「しょけい」ー execution
餌食「えじき」ー prey
光景「こうけい」ー spectacle, view, scene
Day 11
Today I finished the manga from yesterday. I put everything behind a detailed tag. It may be a little nsfw so if anyone is bothered by that don’t read any of the hidden text please.
The sister was pure evil. Not only did she seduce her brother but she later made fun of him. “I know that you like woman with big chest sizes I found your pervy manga collection. But isn’t it funny that you had your first time with me your little sister. HaHaHa.” The manga ends with an orgy with the brother and ten girls involved. Little sister forces her brother to say in front of all the other girls that he enjoys sex with her most. It felt like the brother
was just a tool to fulfill the sexual desires of all the girls. The manga was fun because everything was so ridiculous and over the top.
1170 pages read 18830 to go
January 14th
Home Post
Read よつばと！ Vol. 1
To quote myself…
Well I finished the whole manga, MEANING I FINISHED MY FIRST MANGA 
. There were 2 chapters left for today and I read both of them with pretty much no problems. I got used to the way they speak and by these last few pages I could understand the colloquialism too which I couldn’t in the beginning, so I just had to look up a few words here and there. Pretty satisfied with how it went and I got hooked to reading I guess 
I’ll definitely get my hands on more yotsuba volumes in the future 'cause this was loads of fun 
Tomorrow I start with the nemesis that has been lurking in my room for a while, namely 僕だけがいない街. 笑笑
Yesterday, I read chapters 14 and 15 of チュベローズで待ってる AGE22, and today I finished the rest of it! I finished my first Japanese book! I can’t believe it! :333
おめでとうございます！
Your first book!?! Wow, I’m seriously impressed! 
Yay! Lots of first-time finishers here
Haha yes this week’s was a bit more entertaining to read than last week’s, luckily 
(Ok I still got 8 or so pages left but will tackle them asap)
Nobody is going to blame you for that 
I guess I’ll do the same tomorrow; I’m back to thinking that it doesn’t work too well for me to read a lot of books in parallel where I really need to focus on the details. Therefore I will clean up ユージニア this weekend, and after that I’m planning to read 半落ち and チュベローズで待ってる in alternating chunks or something like that. (Sorry bookclubs 
)
Congratulations! A huge milestone
This was your first Japanese book? And you read it at this speed? Truly impressive! Congratulations!
I have big trouble stopping at the end of each week’s 半落ち, and we’re only at the first chapter so I suspect I might do the same, but discussing in the weekly threads (well, one thread, but still) is fun and I don’t want to lose that. I guess I’ll have to fill my schedule with lots of other books instead, so that I simply won’t have the time to read ahead…
Home post // Jan 14
・ 本好きの下克上 16 (61% → 63%)
Just a short read :3 Maybe if I wake up early tomorrow I can get more stuff done. Assignments are piling up faster than I can process.
January 14 
ユージニア , 89%-end
Well, I finished Eugenia. I didn’t want to. I wanted it to go on and on. I took breaks during the final pages so it would last longer. I really loved that book. The atmosphere, the storytelling, the language, it was all perfect.
Riku Onda has written an unbelievable number of books, and from what I can see the style of her books seems to vary a lot. If the writing is to the same standard as Eugenia, I’d probably be happy with anything though.
Amusingly, the atogaki was about the book design process (cover and binding), which ties in well with my recent investigations into the world of Japanese book covers. 
Random question - from memory you’re in Thailand, where are you based? I’m flying from Tokyo to Bangkok in a few days but only there for 2 nights. There are plenty of copies of yotsubato in Book Off here - I’ve already bought myself volumes 1-6.
I am working and living in outskirts of Bangkok, but sometimes I go to Kinokuniya bookstores in shopping malls alongside BTS. There are 3 branches of the store, Siam Paragon and Central World branches are walkable from Siam BTS station. Emquartier branch is a separate branch that has to take BTS to go to. Central World and Emquartier are more focused on Japanese books. There are Japanese villages near Emquartier as well, I think (like Thonglor).
Yesterday I went to Siam Paragon.
Would you like me to pick up some volumes of Yotsubato for you? There are loads in the ¥100 section of Book Off. I could leave them at my hotel or meet you somewhere - I’m in Bangkok on 20th/21st. Planning to stay somewhere on Sukhumvit Rd.
Friday and Saturday of that week is a little busy for me that I might not be able to go anywhere. Thank you, though.
