📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2023 ☃❄

January 1st
What did I read?: にわにはににん
How much did I read?: 37 pages
(Completed Prologue: 庭師の仕事, Started 1st Story: 水槽屋敷)
How long did it take me?: 1 h 32 min

The book I will be starting with is にわにはににん by 中野シズカ! (That title’s so fun! XD)
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It’s a collection of manga short stories which all are on the theme of gardens. I thought that starting with a short story collection would be good since when I’ve finished what would ordinarily be just a chapter’s worth, I could say, “I’ve finished a whole story!” Gotta motivate myself somehow! XD Will probably also be good since I’ll be reading pretty slowly, and having fewer characters and events to remember as I go through will be helpful.

While I technically did read 37 pages, the entirety of the prologue had no words except for sound effects, and quite a few of the pages in the first story were pretty sparse in words. So it wasn’t that much reading. But I still learned a few new words! There is also no furigana, so that’s, uh, fun. :sweat_smile: Though I actually don’t mind that much, since Wanikani has helped me out a lot in that respect, and I don’t actually want to lean on the help of furigana too much.

The Prologue was about a gardener maintaining a Zen garden while evading the attacks of sentient pine needles??? Random, but I thought it was neat how he could turn the strokes in the sand that represent water into actual water that he could drown the needles in. I’m only part way through the first story, so nothing to say about it yet except that the background art is really nice~

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After breezing through reading yesterday I managed only 4 pages of 半落ち before my brain gave up. I maybe shouldn’t have waited so late in the evening to read a rather difficult book. I need to catch up on the ユージニア reading so probably should have done that instead but oh well! Tomorrow!

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This is my first time commenting in the wanikani community forum so hopefully I am doing this right :sweat_smile: Anyways, I figured this is a great opportunity to try to be more consistent I with my reading practice. I seem to be able to read more succinctly in my head verses when I read out loud (I end up getting all tongue tied) so I am hoping that’s something I can work on slowly improve upon with this challenge.

:green_book::sheep: Stray Sheep Home Post:sheep::green_book:

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:tea::sunflower: Shishamo’s Home Post :sunflower::tea:

Hi, there!

It’s my first WaniKani challenge! :blush:

The plan is to read as much as I can daily before life gets in the way or my brain turns to mush (whichever comes first). Hopefully, I’ll be able to consume more books than last year.

I initially started logging the pages I read daily. However, once work resumed after the winter break, I couldn’t keep up. Now, I’m just checking the boxes and logging the books I’ve read. :heart: :sweat_smile:

:snowman_with_snow:Jan
:last_quarter_moon_with_face: :fire: :ocean: :deciduous_tree: :1st_place_medal: :brown_heart: :sunflower:
01[74]
02[73] 03[3] 04[100] 05[153] 06[17] 07 08
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Book List

Book 1: コーヒーが冷めないうちに
DNF: ぼくらの七日間戦争
Book 2: 夜市
Book 3: 君の膵臓をたべたい

Satori Reader Series

Series 1: コナの大冒険 Finished 1/11
Series 2: 奥日光 Finished 1/21

Feb
01 02 03 04 05
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:spiral_calendar: Day 1: January 1st :snowflake:

spacer:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: からかい上手の高木さん Volume 10 (0% ➨ 13%)
spacer:sun_with_face: 夢みる太陽 Volume 1 (0% ➨ 53%)
spacer:mag: 名探偵コナン Volume 13 (0% ➨ 16%)
spacer:love_letter: 6月のラブレター Volume 3 (0% ➨ 80%)
spacer:girl: からかい上手の(元)高木さん Volume 10 (0% ➨ 10%)
spacer:ninja:t2: くノ一ツバキの胸の内 Volume 7 (0% ➨ 13%)


As I dove into my first day of reading for the year, a surprisingly common situation came up.

First, from volume 1 of 「夢みる太陽」, I encountered:

image

It took a bit of searching to discover this is 一目惚(ひとめぼ)れ.

Good to know. Probably will never see it again.

Time to jump into volume 13 of 「名探偵コナン」.

bc086a36b581c6e046b4791bea904cb9c7dbd8cc

What are the chances that I’d start a new series that uses a not-so-common word that appears in volume 13 of another series, and oh yeah I read both pages with that word within maybe ten minutes of one another?

Apparently, the only other time I’ve encountered this word written this way in manga was in 2019, in volume 1 of 「怪盗セイント・テール」. Since I read that mostly without look-ups (due to knowing the material already) to build up my reading and comprehension speed, I would have glazed over this word back then.


If you find you struggle even while knowing the words and grammar, keep going! It may take time to build up the pattern recognition that will allow you to understand sentences without carefully processing them.

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January 1 :snowflake: Home Post

Day 1! I actually managed a pretty significant reading day today; I finished chapter 2 of BU$TAFELLOWS :tada: it continues to be a wonderful/emotional time. Really I’m setting myself up to suffer, I’m gonna miss all the characters over the next like two weeks :joy: restraint!

Then I just… really felt like playing Breath of the Wild? So I started a new game in Japanese and that’s been fun, I forgot how nice it is to just explore and such. It’s also fun to see how it’s all presented in Japanese, and it’s mostly at a chill reading level for me thus far so it was a nice time. Another project to throw in whenever I just wanna relax with a game I suppose :man_shrugging:

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Hi, Greya! I also bought the Aomi app last year but found it too difficult to use! :face_in_clouds:
How do you go through the exercises? I’d love to give it another try!

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Home Post

Day 1 Progress:
お隣の天使様 五冊 - 46.90% → 54.61%

Nothing like feeling a little more confident after doing a few months of reading now and immediately getting 左 and 右 wrong. Talk about a confidence crusher.

Word of the Day: 四六時中しろくじちゅう -around the clock; day and night. Four and six because multiplied together they make twenty-four hours. What a silly phrase lol.

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:house:
Jan 2

世界から猫が消えたなら pg12 → pg15

The writing style of this book is my favourite out of the Japanese novels I’ve read so far. It’s more difficult than I expected, considering the Natively reviews I’ve read about it all say the language is easy and it’s graded similar in level to かがみの孤城. But perhaps I just need to get used to it!

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:tea::sunflower: January 1st :sunflower::tea:

Book 1: コーヒーが冷めないうちに (53/286)

I saw the movie a couple of years ago, which is why I’m progressing faster than usual. The writing so far has been easy to digest. However, it’s not gripping enough for me to sit still and read for a prolonged period of time. How do you guys build your reading stamina?

Book 2: ぼくらの七日間戦争 (20/388)

This book came highly recommended by a Japanese native as an “easy read.” The writing to me is much harder than コーヒーが冷めないうちに, even with furigana, and it’s just thick and daunting. I’ll give it a few more pages but it may be one of those books that I abandon early and add to my list for when my Japanese gets better.

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January 1st :heavy_check_mark: :rose:

ユージニア , 63-70%

The year started with another intriguing chapter from Eugenia. I just love the writing and atmosphere in this book.

Happy New Year, everyone!

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:snowflake: :snowman: Home Post :snowman: :snowflake:

January 2nd.

What: ハイキュー!! volume 1
Pages: 14
Time: 32 minutes.

Read some more ハイキュー!! today. It was an easier time than yesterday, thankfully. The font size is still abysmally tiny, but at least the words make a little more sense… I’m considering adding the words from my spreadsheet to Anki but 1) I’m so burned out on SRS, and 2) figuring out Anki seems like something I want Future Me to deal with. For now I’ll just gaze longingly at my spreadsheet…

Some life stuff

While I was not reading during the fall, I was job hunting. After two months of unemployment, I finally managed to get a new job :confetti_ball: It’s a full-time, permanent position and I start tomorrow. I know it’s going to be hard to combine work with studying but I refuse to turn into a person who can’t have hobbies outside of work. I hope to do my readings while cooking/eating dinner, before I inevitably pass out on the couch. From experience, it’s a terrible idea to do it before bed.

How do humans do all the things they want…?

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I also watched the movie, was enthralled, and started reading the book with the reading club, but I found the writing style so bland and off-putting that I dropped the book during the first chapter. :woman_shrugging:
So I would say, for building stamina you need some motivation. Either it is “I am absolutely determined to read x pages / y amount of time no matter how boring it is” or it is “It’s so good / I need to know what happens next, I can’t put it down”. Both are totally valid for me (and I’ve applied both to various degrees). If neither applies but you still want to read the book, you can read another book in parallel (like you seem to do), and if that still doesn’t cut it, then maybe defer it altogether? :woman_shrugging:

OMG lol! I recently explained the French counting system to a few Japanese friends (in case you don’t know that: For numbers between 70 and 100, the French somehow lost their marbles and turned counting into an act that you need a maths degree for, e.g. they have the “number” four-twenty-ten-nine which means 4 * 20 + 10 + 9 = 99 :sweat_smile: ok that’s admittedly the most convoluted example but still :sweat_smile:) and they were like oh! and ah! and incredible! - I should have known this example back then, it would have put things more into perspective :grin:

Hey! :wave: It’s been a while! How have you been?

Haha this week I found ユージニア equally brain-frying as 半落ち - for entirely different reasons though. :woman_shrugging: Curious to hear what you think about it :blush:

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Eyyyy, congratulations! I hope you absolutely smash your new gig! I usually wake up an hour earlier to get some reading done. Like you, I haven’t had much luck reading before bed during a work day.

When you find answer, let me know. :sweat_smile:

Hi, Nicole! <3 The latter was how I felt with おいしいごはんが食べられますように, which is probably why I overestimated what I am actually able to do. :face_exhaling: I guess for these books, I’ll have to Pomodoro technique my way through them until I can no longer stand the content. Sometimes I feel bad for the money wasted but then again, life is too short to be wasted on bad books!

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January 2nd

:snowman: Home post :snowflake:

Card Captor Sakura volume 5 – progress report
Yesterday: Began reading volume 5, finished chapter 19, stopped at page 47.
Today: Continued up to page 70.

Small read today. (Disclaimer: you will hear that more often from now on :sweat_smile:).

Turns out that chapter 20 is the school play chapter. I have fond memories of it and it started on a funny note with Shaolan being completely upset over getting the role of sleeping beauty. Come now, Shaolan, you look great and so does Sakura as the prince because Tomoyo did a good job on your clothes.
And speaking of the latter: thanks to Tomoyo, wing(wo)man and problem solverTM, Shaolan became determined to see this through after all because she made a comment that him not playing his role would make Yukito sad. :smiling_face_with_tear:

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Congratulations on your new job! :smiley: I hope that you will have a comfortable work environment and friendly coworkers. :crossed_fingers:

The gushing has returned. :eyes: And I love it! :grin:

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Word or expression of the day:
演目 - (えんもく) - programme (musical, concert, theatrical etc.)

Honourable mention(s):
公平 - (こうへい) - fairness, impartiality, justice, objectivity
阿弥陀籤 - (あみだくじ) - ghostleg lottery, ladder lottery
(Now I know what these charts that were used in the Dragon Ball tournaments are called.)

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I want to continue reading more difficult books that I really enjoy in combination with books together with the book clubs. Let’s all have fun reading together!

What I want to read:

:microbe: (45 pages read) 働く細胞 or Cells At Work (Absolute Beginner Book Club)
:speech_balloon: (0 pages read) 古見さんは、コミュ症です。 (Beginner Book Club)
:cyclone: (203 pages read) うずまき by Junji Itou (Horror Manga)
:bust_in_silhouette: (15 pages read) 人間失格 by Osamu Dazai / adapted by Junji Itou
:eye_in_speech_bubble: (0 pages read) 約束のネバーランド or Promised Neverland (Manga)
:newspaper: NHK Easy News

Jan
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02 :microbe: 03 :cyclone: 04 :cyclone: 05 :cyclone: 06 :cyclone: 07 :microbe: 08 :microbe:
09 :microbe: 10 :cyclone: 11 :cyclone: 12 :cyclone: 13 :bust_in_silhouette: 14 :sleepy: 15 :sleepy:
16 :cyclone: 17 :newspaper: 18 :cyclone: 19 :newspaper: 20 :microbe: 21 :cyclone: 22 :cyclone:
23 :black_large_square: 24 :black_large_square: 25 :black_large_square: 26 :black_large_square: 27 :black_large_square: 28 :black_large_square: 29 :black_large_square:
30 :black_large_square: 31 :black_large_square:
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Replies

Thank you very much! I’ve considered getting up earlier since I’m a morning person. First I need to check if my work hours are flexible - maybe I can start early and leave early. Should be easier to squeeze in some reading then. I hope we can both find the perfect balance!

You got it! :fire:

Thank you! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: They seem pretty cool so far, so crossing my fingers!

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home post

day 2!

debated between 3月のライオン and 蟲師 and chose 蟲師 mainly cos there’s fewer volumes but ooooh boy it’s turning out harder than i thought it would. i (naively) thought it was just gonna be loads of words i didn’t know, which it is, but there’s also some grammar i don’t know and a writing style which i’m struggling to parse in places. managed about 20 pages before my brain gave up, might try some more later.

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I intend to come back latter and fill in some details about what I’m reading, etc. But for now just getting this calendar posted is a big win … :smile:

Jan
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Home post
Started doing this in my study log but will post from here on. Here are two days of reading!

1 月 1 日
コナの大冒険 第15話 from Satorireader

Questions: (already posed in my study log)
に出る which was translated to arriving to a room whereas I learned it as to leave, come out, or go out. Is it the particle that makes a difference? Or just based on context? Somewhat answered in my log but still a little unclear about it…

Words/phrases of interest:

  • 寝心地 の良さそうな (ねごこちのよさそうな)seems comfortable/pleasant to sleep on
  • 興味津々 (きょうみしんしん)very interesting, being immensely curious about

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1 月 2 日
コナの大冒険 第16話 from Satorireader

Words of interest:

  • 日向ぼっこ (ひなたぼっこ) bask in the sun or sunbathe
  • 親子(おやこ)parent and child *kanji learned separately but vocab not yet learned
  • 夢中で頬張っていた (むちゅうでほおばっていた) stuffing their mouths in a daze
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