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.
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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.
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１月１４日 (Home Post Link)
Struggling to focus today, but got a little bit in
Read:
- 「多い」と「たくさん」の違いとは？分かりやすく解釈 | 違い比較辞典 i went to go write a sentence earlier and realized that I had intuitions about which one would be right/wrong to use, but I wasn’t actually sure, so i went out to try to find an explanation. I think I had it right! which is cool, since I’ve never actually looked up which one goes where.
- ホリミヤ ch 72
- マジーク・ツリーハウス pg 98 → 109
Good Words
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
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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.
maybe slightly nsfw
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
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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
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January 13th & 14th (Days 13 and 14) 
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
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おめでとうございます！
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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 
)
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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…
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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.
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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. 
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Friday and Saturday of that week is a little busy for me that I might not be able to go anywhere. Thank you, though.
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I read 3 sub chapters yesterday because the 2 I had were super short (9 pages in total). Finished the remaining two today but the first couple in Chapter 4 are so short I think I could do this today to.
I’m trying not to burn myself out but these smaller subchapters are too manageable. Gahh!
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Home 
January 14th
ジョジョの奇妙な冒険6
35 - 89
I fought off the sleepies last night 
but starting on page 90 there’s a nazi history lesson and then fictional nazis being awful. I didn’t feel like letting nazis be my last thought before sleep. so f that, I stopped before it. kinda feeling like I should’ve continued reading odd parts. I know Part 7 is nazi free
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Day 14: January 14th
What did I read?: マグメル深海水族館 Vol 1
How much did I read?: 49 pages
How long did it take me?: 1 hour 3 min
Finally, some real reading 
As much as I adore tiny shark, he’s not exactly challenging reading practice lol Today’s chapter focused on ラブカ (I love the Japanese name for these, it just sounds so appropriate to what the creature looks like if that even makes sense). Koutarou gets to go beyond his janitorial duties in this chapter when the aquarium director sends him to pick up a frilled shark that accidentally got caught in some fishing nets. The mama shark has died, but with the help of the fisherman, Koutarou’s able to take one of the eggs she was carrying back to the aquarium to hopefully be saved and raised there. In the end, the lil baby shark inside the egg lives, so we can imagine it has a nice future ahead of it 
Some gushy thoughts
I love how this manga looks at these less popular/less “conventionally attractive” sea creatures with such a fond lens. Like they’re not the sea creatures you’d think of as the ones people typically “care about,” but the characters do very much care about them, and by extension you care about them too. You always hear about people saving whales and dolphins and such but the characters care about trying to save these lesser known creatures with the exact same passion and warmth, and there’s something about that that’s just very lovely 
Some less gushy and more random thoughts:
- Why do I feel like I’ve heard of all these random sea creatures that come up, like are these less obscure than I’m thinking they are or am I really just that much of a sea creature nerd leaning toward the nerd thing, child me used to read a lot of animal fact books and illustrated encyclopedias
- I love how one of the fishermen just casually has a pelican friend named Momo, that’s very cute xD
- Koutarou is absolutely adorable when he’s excited about sea creatures I get you Koutarou, I love the sea creatures too
Also while I was googling ラブカ I accidentally found this book called ラブカは静かに弓を持つ and I kind of want to read it now 
The cover is super pretty 
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January 14th
What did I read?: にわにはににん
How much did I read?: 8 sentences
(Continued あとがき)
How long did it take me?: 1 h 3 min
Reading this あとがき is giving me the pretty clear impression that it’s definitely manga, not books, that are the right thing for me to be starting off with… I’m still interested in reading it, but this speed (or should I say, slowness XD) is a wee bit demoralizing, eheheh. Being able to turn pages more often feels like I’m making more progress, even if it might amount to the same wordcount. And it seems the あとがき is written in a more literary style as well, so that’s probably another factor.
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Day 14: January 14th 
ARIA The MASTERPIECE Volume 6 (0% ➨ 11%)
👵🏻 ××でも魔法少女になれますか? Volume 1 (0% ➨ 21%)
I picked this series kind of at random.
The premise is that there’s a strong baddie who has his sights on a certain town, so a fairy goes out in search of a candidate to become a magical girl able to stop the baddie.
However, no one in the town can see him, meaning there are no candidates to become a magical girl and save the town.
Until…
Okay, so maybe he had a little too much to drink and didn’t notice this candidate might be a little old for the part.
But she readily signed a contract with him.
On top of that, the baddie has already reached town.
And is already destroying buildings.
And is turning people into display figures.
Insert magical girl transformation scene.
The fairy lucks out on the result of transformation:
As it turns out, the villain has a very believable backstory, and an elderly magical girl has the vast life experience needed to be able to handle such an opponent.
I’m looking forward to reading more.
からかい上手の(元)高木さん Volume 10 (59% ➨ 66%)
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