As predicted, I read quite well on the plane.
22/1 33 pages Cells at Work (last week’s and this week’s reading), 11 pages おばちゃんたちのいるところ (stories 12 + 13), 19 +3 pages シャドーハウス (finished chapters 60+61), 9 pages 夜カフェ (finished ch 6)
Caught up with all of last week’s reading. Now going to have a nap. It’s nice to have a cat lying on me.
Read 2 sub chapters for re:Zero. Probably gonna read a couple more since my commute is kind of killer today. Then I’m just gonna watch JoJo the rest of the day.
Week 3 - Jan 16th to 22nd
I received my manga:)
I read a few pages in all of them and, well, the ones without furigana are still a little intimidating. I read 雨宮さん from start to finish with barely any lookups to see how that felt and while a good portion of the dialogue had parts that went over my head I was easily able to follow the action and get the gist of each situation. I should probably take the time to decipher some of the harder parts for the learning opportunities they provide, but atm my university workload is pretty high so I’m planning to just keep going with 日常(一) at the same pace. Reading a manga in two sittings felt really good 
January 22nd!
Today I started Volume 6 of Orange. I’ve been looking forward to starting this book with the club, and I’m really happy my copy arrived in time for me to start with everyone else. 
Found a great article on learnnatively.com’s forums about how to approach reading. A lot of great advice for my fellow followers of the crabigator. If you find yourself losing motivation, its possible you just have the wrong mindset about reading in Japanese (or a foreign language in general).
１月２２日 (Home Post Link)
Still not quite back up to speed, but felt ok reading today so I think i’ll add 夜カフェ back in tomorrow. I think I just pushed a bit too hard and needed a little bit of rest. I have already finished 8 volumes (6 manga + 2 childrens book) this year, that was a pretty strong start to the challenge, but was definitely a huge volume increase from what I was doing last month and maybe a bit more than I could keep up long term for now 
Read:
ホリミヤ
独創性「どくそうせい」ー creativity, ingenuity
室内犬「しつないけん」ー indoor dog
薄々「うすうす」ー slightly, thinly, a little
怪事件「かいじけん」ー mystery case
January 22 Home Post
Probably could’ve seen this coming, but for today’s reading I just… played a lot of Genshin Impact 
It’s been a while since I read extensively like this, I’m usually terrible about doing so, but Genshin suits it well so far. And it’s just fun, I’ve continued to mostly explore and do my own thing and occasionally follow what the missions tell me to do 
business as usual really.
Oh yeah I can imagine! I wouldn’t call it easy exactly, if I were actually looking up every single thing I don’t fully know like normal I think I would’ve given up a while ago, but the type of game it is really doesn’t suit that kind of reading anyway 
For my purposes it’s pretty solid, I can follow along just fine with context clues and educated guesses and the like. I figure half the words I “don’t know” are made up and I’d only have a vague idea in English anyway
January 19th
Just Aomi speaking practice again. 
January 20th
What did I read?: 魔女と猫の話
How much did I read?: 6 pages
(Started 2nd Story )
How long did it take me?: 55 min
Another story, another kitty! And another witch, whose name is Kei and who is a friend of Suzu’s. This story comes before the first one chronologically-speaking, since Suzu hasn’t got her cat yet.
This kitty is very smol. This chapter title page demonstrates that nicely, as well as showcases some pretty marine life.
He’s so fuzzy, and he looks so concerned! 
I wonder if he always looks like this, or if his face is just reflecting his current mood. But do you know what Kei’s reaction is to seeing him? “Is that a ball of lint?” What?! NO! What’s with all these unwelcoming reactions?! 
Day 22: January 22nd 
orange Volume 6 (0% ➨ 31%)
好きな子がめがねを忘れた Volume 10 (0% ➨ 15%)
Still not getting as much reading in as I’d have liked, which feels a bit silly considering I’ve worked myself up to 11 manga volumes I’m in the middle of…
Thank you for the link! It was a rather helpful article that helped me reframe some things. Practicing my reading skills with this challenge is a better motivator than comparing myself to everyone above my skill level being able to read more difficult books.
I’m not gonna be able to stop being jealous, but hopefully I won’t be as frustrated or dejected anymore.
There was an expose on a youtuber that claimed he could read all these really complicated books in Japanese and they found he didn’t know the readings for some vocab or kanji, but the reality is he was in fact reading the books, but he wasn’t stopping to look up every word and was in fact reading the books. Just not at the native level. So the reality is while we all might be reading “hard books” we aren’t really reading them the same way our friends or family are when they tell us they’re reading books in their mother tongue. So no sweat!
I don’t think my reading figures today are entirely accurate as I read some on the plane yesterday/ overnight. I basically got to the final chapter of シャドーハウス and found that one page had failed to download. So skimmed the rest of the volume, and went back to finish it today with that page downloaded.
23/1 8 pages シャドーハウス (finished volume 4, which I kind of did yesterday), 25 pages Spy Family (finished mission)
I’m gradually working my way through this week’s book club reading. Then if I have time I’ll read some of Age 22 which everyone else has finished already I think.
Updates for the weekend!
January 20
Read some ユージニア (63% → 65%).
January 21
Tiny ユージニア (65% → 66%) but played BU$TAFELLOWS 1h 45min
January 22
Some more ユージニア (66% → 70%)
1 月 23 日
コナの大冒険 第29話 
Back to Kona’s adventures on the weekdays! One episode short of being exactly two thirds through the whole series. And I’m thinking I can finish my first series on Satorireader just in time for the start of my first ABBC. Yay!
Last three are so similar in meaning. 
10分で読める伝記, 17min. Just this for tonight, feeling too 
Day 23, 23rd of January
I only have something over a dozen stories left, so I want to get these done this week. I want to read The Tile World Chronicles finally! It’s been my goal since the last challenge.
So today we start with this story. It’s about the army, so there’s lots of use of the imperative form. I don’t know anything about how that one is formed, so I want to read up on the rules later today. Also, I wonder how they say military time? In English they apparently say “twenty-two-hundred” for 22:00.
In the next story we meet another wizard. There’s an amazing animated illustration in this one, please go check it out! You can see the wizard at work. In this story he’s making a potion with his helper mouse.
In this story some people meet on the road and decide to travel together towards a certain kingdom. So lots of introcutory phrases.
spots 雨と君と
I see the Tanuki curse is back in this thread…
まっ・・・まさか！
This is your doing, fiend!!! Don’t let them escape!
My mind just reminded me of this one video but with a Tanuki instead. This is what I do instead of reading and updating my posts.
Jan 23, Mon of Week 5 of Winter Q1 2023 
Actually, I skimmed the whole volume for what to expect. Hope? Hopeless?
23 jan
read chapter 2 of 蟲師 vol 3 and he first twenty pages or so was deceptively easy (words i didn’t know in abundance, but grammar was okay) and then the second half was really hard! it introduced a character who spoke in old-fashioned speech and a dialect, i’ll put some pictures in (edit: this character didn’t make it into the pictures idk what happened ). nice story tho, more mournful vibes
words that stuck out: もや (mist), 口出し (interference, butting in), 仲買 (brokerage)
next story looks like it’s about teeth so i’m sure that’s not gonna be horrible at all 
January 23
Home Post
NHK なぜ人は、雪に向かってしまうのか 
Novel in English 
So… stayed up way too late again last night reading a novel in English. I had to finally put it aside when I got too tired to continue at waaaaay-tooooooo-laaaaaate-o-clock. I’ve been freaking tired today.
I finished off that novel and to get some Japanese reading done I went ahead and read the article I linked above. Learning all about why people might be stupid enough to leave home when a blizzard is predicted. Since I personally don’t get that kinda thinking, it was a bit interesting. But also kinda simple in the standard of that kind of article I could read in Swedish/English.
Well, I had an easy enough time reading it with safarikai giving me look ups when needed.
Also, I’m already up to 6 finished novels in English so far this year, so if I keep this up I can hit the goal I’m aiming for (50 books in a year) easily. I want 50 books a year to become my minimum, so it is important to be reading most days. But maybe, I can slow down a little and not read until 3-4 in the morning when I get up at 7:30? Yeah, maybe?..
Please… Self… I want to read, but I’m too old to function on no sleep… 
