📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2023 ☃❄

[fallynleaf]

I technically started this challenge on the first, but I was so busy with it being イッテンヨン week in Japan and all, plus having family visiting, I wasn’t able to be around the forum much, and just quietly got my reading done on my own .

But I am here now!!

Jan	月	火	水	木	金	土	日
Week 52
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5

Feb	月	火	水	木	金	土	日
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9

= Japanese
= Japanese and Spanish

As usual, I’m aiming to read in both Japanese and Spanish every day if possible! I also have an ambitious new goal that I outlined in my 2022 retrospective/2023 goals post…

Basically, I’m going to try to get a full 365 day streak of either reading or listening every day (I typically do the reading challenge for two months and then the listening challenge on the off-month) with both Spanish and Japanese. I honestly got pretty close to accomplishing that last year without even planning on it from the outset, and since I’m freshly unemployed, I figured I might as well aim extra high.

What I'm reading in Spanish:

I’m currently reading Sí, sí es contigo by Calle y Poché, which is a book I had earmarked for adding to the library’s Spanish language collection. I saw it on recommended lists of LGBTQ books in Spanish, and it looked like it would have a lot of everyday vocabulary and be a bit less, well, literary, for lack of a better term, haha, which might make it more accessible to me, since I’d mostly just been reading kids books before.

What I'm reading in Japanese:

As usual, my main priority will be translating post-match comments for Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling! This still counts as reading haha because I’m still heavily dependent on typed transcripts of the comments and don’t have good enough listening comprehension to translate from video yet.

The TJPW comments are very time-sensitive and have to take priority, but whenever I have extra time, I have some Shakespeare deathmatch wrestling shows from over a decade ago on some rare DVDs that I bought recently, and I’m trying to translate the card/cast list for those shows, as well as other materials, like the really cool program that Romeo vs Juliet came with (and I’ll be getting the guidebook for Macbeth hopefully soon…). It can be a somewhat research-intensive process haha because I have to look up a lot of names and such.

As far as, like, normal reading goes, I’m still hoping to finish 大海原と大海原 volume 3! I’m pretty sure I started it during last year’s winter read every day challenge, but, well, life had other plans for me that year, haha, and I ran out of time for reading manga after taking on a huge translation workload. But I still want to finish it!!

I also started reading 女装してめんどくさい事になってるネクラとヤンキーの両片想い recently, after reading the first two volumes in English and getting curious enough to try reading the third in Japanese. I’m reading this series much more extensively than everything else I’m reading, so sometimes I find myself gravitating toward it when I want something a little lower effort.

In addition to that, pro wrestling’s greatest epic gay love story, the Golden Lovers (who are the entire reason I got into wrestling and ultimately the reason I started learning Japanese), have recently gotten back together, and it’s likely that things are going to ramp up a lot with that story in February (when Kota Ibushi’s contract is up), so I’ll probably have tweets and interviews and such from them to read, too. I’m hoping, at least! The first week of January has already been very generous in that regard…

[sddsdd]

Home Post

Day 7 Progress:
お隣の天使様 五冊 - 75.57% → 81.48%

It’s 6 AM and I regret everything.

The anime adaptation for this started airing today… but I can’t bring myself to watch it. I hate this series so much lmao…

Word of the Day: 鴛鴦夫婦おしどりふうふ - loving couple, happily married couple. Unfortunately it seems that the mandarin ducks (鴛鴦) the phrase was coined from are not quite the lifelong couples they were believed to be… the male simply leaves to find someone else in the autumn. Still a cute if slightly ill-fitting phrase.

[Memoria]

Home Post

➳ January 8th.

What: ハイキュー！！ volume 1
Pages: 48
Time: 45 minutes.

Wooo, I finished the volume before it stopped being free to read I admit I rushed things in the end because I don’t really care about volleyball I’m sorry, volleyball boys… But hey, I learned some new words and expressions, so that’s something. I’m excited to read something different tomorrow. I’ve also got this real itch to purchase some physical manga. I might be getting paid next week (I didn’t think I would until next month??) and I really want to order something for myself, something to look forward to. Getting stuff in the mail is like getting a gift from my past self.

We’ll see! Have a nice Sunday, everyone

[midnightblue]

January 8th

Home post

Aria: the masterpiece volume 3 – progress report
Yesterday: Began reading volume 3 of Aria: the masterpiece, read up to page 16.
Today: Continued up to page 38, finished chapter 21.

This chapter was full of revelations for me but not because the chapter had a big one to offer. It’s because I managed to put some discoveries on my part together.

a) A new character named Alice came into the picture and I’m noticing a trend here: first I found it peculiar that everyone’s name started with an ‘A’ but by now I can say that this was most likely not a coincidence by the author but all done on purpose. So in other news, I’m captain obvious and oblivious… soo captain oblovious…obvivious? To my defense, I went into this series blind but I still could have put 1 and 1 together sooner.

b) I might be on the way of developing a love-hate relationship in regards to Aika. I do find her amusing as she’s pretty sassy but this chapter made her rather obnoxious when she tried 'asserting dominance over the new character Alice in terms of ranks. Granted, she’s still pretty young, so immature behaviour like that is nothing out of the ordinary but meh…

c) I might also be on the way of developing a love-hate relationship in regards to Akari. I do like that she’s in good spirits, enthusiastic about many things, willing to learn and improve and just a cute gal in general.
However, she’s too good natured for the lack of a better word? Except for her annoyance with Akatsuki calling her err ‘sideburns girl’ she almost never expresses any ‘negative’ feelings except for being embarrassed and panicky here and there. On the contrary, she seems happy about basically everything and doesn’t mind losing as long as she can still help someone in the midst of a race which has happened twice by now. She seems too good and accommodating in a way and it’s getting slightly irritating for me. Come to think of it, Alicia fits the ‘good and accommodating’ nature as well but she seems a bit more ‘wild’, at least when she drank too much.
But at the end of the day, maybe I should simply enjoy the good-natured and relaxing ride of this series where most things are nice and comfy… hmm.

Grievances aside, I just began reading volume 3 out of 7, so maybe I’ll change my mind soon enough and (fully) like both of them again; who knows.

@javerend

I realized I was actually pretty close to finishing the first story today (The e-book is actually the first 2 books combined into one volume), so I decided to push a little bit harder on this to finish it today! That means I have technically finished my first book in japanese! I

I missed this one, apologies. Congrats to finishing your first book! …which you finished practically and not technically just as @MissDagger pointed out.

Reply

@sddsdd

お隣の天使様 五冊 - 75.57% → 81.48%

It’s 6 AM and I regret everything.

The anime adaptation for this started airing today… but I can’t bring myself to watch it. I hate this series so much lmao…

It may have been your own decision to continue reading this series but I hope that you will finish it soon to finally set your soul (and sanity) free from it – 頑張って! Do you already have a (palette cleanser) book in mind once you finish this one?

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Word or expression of the day:
素直 - (すなお) - honest, frank, upfront (about one’s feelings)​

Honourable mention(s):
照れる - (てれる) - to be shy, to be bashful, to feel awkward, to feel embarrassed

[Sylph]

January 7

Good progress with ユージニア (21% → 26%).

[Natsuha]

Day 5
I finished reading the second volume of Your Lie in April. The manga is slowly improving a little bit. It starts to focus more on the relationship of the main characters.

581 pages read 19419 to go

[kimera]

Thanks! Heartwarming and calming sounds good, adding to my TBR (in English, that is )

[Twelvewishes]

Day 8, 8th of January

Back to my Home Post

Today I read one page of Kiki. Compared to last year it went much more smoothly, so learning vocab in advance shows its usefulness. It was still quite difficult because the text has to be read vertically and not horizontally. And there are still places where I’m stumped on how to interpret the grammar, but overall I got the gist.

I stopped at the part where Kiki’s father is laughing because he heard the bell in the high tree(s?) ring, which means Kiki had a mishap with her broom again.

[polv]

Jan 8, Sun of Week 2 of Winter Q1 2023

• かぐや様は告らせたい Vol.26 Ch.256-257

I don’t feel strongly about this arc, but prior vocabulary learning making going through much easier.

• うたわれるもの

Interesting words

• ブレ = blurring. From 振(ふ)れる. Probably like ボケ?
• ちっと = a little bit. Also, 些(ち)っと, and I have seen ちっとも…ない before.
• 優(すぐ)れる = to surpass. The vocabulary isn’t new, but without Furigana, and thinking about 優(やさ)しい (as well as 嬉(うれ)しい and 憂(うれ)える) makes it even more confusing. Kanji Level 23 and vocabulary in Wanikani.
• 変(か)わった = odd; weird. Like 変(へん)な as an adjective.
• 当(あ)てもなく = aimlessly. No 当(あ)て.
• 涙(なみだ)する = to shed tears
• 履(は)き違(ちが)える = to mistake one thing for another
• 不憫(ふびん) = pitiable
• 稽古(けいこ) = practice; training
• 猛威(もうい) = violence; menacing
• 言伝(ことづて) = hearsay; rumor. 伝(つて) = connections, and in Wanikani.
• 蚊帳(かや) = mosquito net. Exceptional reading for 手帳(てちょう), which has additional meaning of a veil (帳(とばり)). 蚊(か) is just a mosquito.
• 利権(りけん) = personal interests, like of business and politicians
• 軟禁(なんきん) = house arrest; confining in their own house
• 幼子(おさなご) = little infant. Written in context with 幼児(ようじ).
• 調達(ちょうたつ) = supplying; procurement. First Kanji uses the meaning of 調(ととの)える.
• 選(よ)り好(ごの)み = being fastidious; being particular. The first Kanji is for choosing (選(えら)ぶ).
• 道交法(どうこうほう) = Road Traffic Act (law article) = short for 道路交通法(どうろこうつうほう)
• 百面相(ひゃくめんそう) = making different comical faces (面相(めんそう))
• 益荒男(ますらお) = excellent warrior. Probably 益々(ますます) + 荒(あら)い + 男(おとこ).
• 艱難辛苦(かんなんしんく) = hardships. First Kanji is about hardship.
• 色恋沙汰(いろこいざた) = love affairs. Matters (沙汰(さた)) about love (色恋(いろこい)).
• 詰(つ)め所(しょ) = office; crew room. Also, 詰所(つめしょ).
• 詰(つ)めが甘(あま)い = not planning well towards the end of the game (詰(つ)め)
• 腑(ふ)に落(お)ちない = hard to swallow
• 浮(う)き世離(よばな)れ = otherworldliness. 浮世(うきよ) = this fleeting world. The reading from 浮世絵(うきよえ).

SFX

• ほんわか = cozy; warm; fluffy
• もちもち = springy texture
• ぐさりと = deeply thrust; stab

Kanji

• 艱(カン)

  • hardships
  • カン
    • 艱苦(かんく),     艱難(かんなん),     艱難辛苦(かんなんしんく)

• 憫(ビン)

  • pity; compassion => 愍(ビン)
  • ビン
    • 不憫(ふびん),     憐憫(れんびん)
  • ミン
    • 憐憫(れんみん)

• 帳(チョウ) (Level 48)

  • notebook / veil
  • veil
    • チョウ
      • 几帳(きちょう),     開帳(かいちょう),     紙帳(しちょう)
    • 帳(とばり)
    • 蚊帳(かや) (in Wanikani)

[Kappa421]

Read challenge first week done, too.
I think my 夜市 progress is at around 35% now. Not as much as I hoped for but since I’m reading this before sleep in bed I sometimes fall asleep while reading and then I have to reread a lot on the next day or just don’t end up reading much because I’m too tired. But seems like I’m on par with the intermediate book club pace, haha.
Also found some manga to read that’s gonna keep me occupied for a couple more days. I just wish I’d get myself to read more.

[Reyam]

January 8th progress update
Home Post

Today was really successful in my opinion.

Finished the first chapter of よつばと！- vol. 1. That means I went from page 20 to 53 in about 90 minutes or so. Today wasn’t nearly as tiring as yesterday, reading felt a lot more comfortable as I had to look up less grammar and vocab compared to yesterday. I’m using the old yotsuba&! book club thread along with the memrise course to speed up the learning process and help better understand even the tiny bits.

So far I’m having a blast with the manga which is a cute and funny story, a perfect beginner manga imo. Definitely going to read more in the future, got all the 僕だけがいない街 vols ready but I don’t feel like i’m even remotely close to that level yet.

Today I learned the following expression:
遣っ付ける - to beat; to attack (an enemy); to finish off

@Natsuha

I finished reading the second volume of Your Lie in April. The manga is slowly improving a little bit. It starts to focus more on the relationship of the main characters.

Does the manga have parts that weren’t included in the anime or you haven’t seen the anime itself?

[Zakarius]

The Tanuki Kotatsu Reading Den

January 8th
新書太閣記 progress: 00.86% // Volume I: 09.98%

Chapter start: この一軒

I think I got a little carried away reading today, I began and finished the chapter at least, but at what cost?

My brain is mush

Words found under the kotatsu

納屋「なや」ー Shed; barn; outhouse
焚物「たきもの」ー Firewood (also: 焚き物)
癒える「いえる」ー To recover; to be healed
陣笠「じんがさ」ー Ancient soldier’s hat; common soldier
顫く「おののく」ー To shake; to shudder; to tremble (more common to see as: 戦く)
足軽「あしがる」ー Common foot soldier; lowest rank samurai
工面「くめん」ー Contrivance; one’s financial condition
細腕「ほそうで」ー Slender arm; slender means
笊「ざる」ー Draining basket
産後「さんご」ー Postpartum; after childbirth
馴れた「なれた」ー Tame; domesticated
駄々「だだ」ー Tantrum; fretting
汲む「くむ」ー To draw water; to ladle; to pump; to pour
癇「かん」ー Temper; nerves
水甕「みずがめ」ー Water jug (also: 水瓶)
奇異「きい」ー Odd; peculiar
叱言「こごと」ー Scolding; telling off (also: 小言)
旗揚げ「はたあげ」ー Raising an army; raising a banner
刀鍛冶「かたなかじ」ー Swordsmith
系図「けいず」ー Family tree; genealogy
呟く「つぶやく」ー To mutter/murmur/grumble // also has a more modern meaning: to tweet on Twitter
燈心「とうしん」ー Wick (candle, lamp etc.) (this kanji is now outdated though, newer version is: 灯心)
膳越し「ぜんごし」ー Rudely reaching over your serving tray with your chopsticks to grab food behind it
密使「みっし」ー Secret messenger
魘される「うなされる」ー To cry out in your sleep
怯え「おびえ」ー Startled; trepidation; panic
疳の虫「かんのむし」ー Convulsions (in a child); nervousness; short-temperedness; bug thought t cause diseases in children
灸「やいと」ー Moxibustion (Traditional Chinese medicine)

Forms
呶鳴る ＝ 怒鳴る「どなる」(to shout/yell in anger)

Character Name List

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」// 豊太閤「ほうたいこう」

Volume I Characters
日吉「ひよし」
(Hideyoshi as a child)

Friends
仁王「におう」- Big kid friend
於福「おふく」- Timid kid friend

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」ー Mother
おつみ - Older sister
加藤清正「かとう きよまさ」- Ojisan (only distantly related)

---

Others
織田信秀「おだ のぶひで」- Daimyo (Foreshadowing drum noises)
– 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

五郎大夫 「ごろ だゆう」// 祥瑞「しょうずい」(Goro’s Chinese name)
– Servant of Goro: 捨次郎「すてじろう」
– Mother of Goro’s child: 梨琴「りきん」
– Rikin’s & Goro’s child: 楊景福「ようけいふく」

Historical People

• 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)

[Reyam]

I’m curious, how do you all try to memorize new words that you come across while reading? Do you take notes on paper? Add them to anki cards? Do you try to use them in sentences so there’s also output?

[Beyond_Sleepy]

Home Post

Week 1 - Jan 1^st to 8^th

I’ve been reading an episode of じゃむ屋(や)さん on Satori Reader each day so far, and plan to continue doing that throughout the challenge. I’m also considering joining the BBC( British broadcasting corporation (beginner’s book club) ) with 古見さんは、コミュ症です but while I enjoyed the first season of the anime I don’t want to commit to buying more than one volume to start with and I also don’t want to pay shipping for just a single manga, so: I’ve decided to buy a selection of first volumes from different series (or one-shots and short story collections) to try them out and see if I want to stick with any of them. I’d really like some recommendations if you’ve got any:)

Here are some titles I'm considering

I’m not limiting myself to manga with furigana since the worst case scenario in that regard is me having to wait and try again later. If the manga seems interesting then that is basically just additional motivation to study kanji

Technical difficulties

I went through the trouble of saving each image as the title of the manga so that the information would be accessible on hovering your mouse over the image but for me this only works for one of the images:

in spite of there being no difference in how it is encoded in the post

it seems to work as intended in the preview vindow:

I also can’t click to open the gallery view of any of the other pictures either.

All of this annoys me, does anyone know what could be causing this behaviour?

[ChristopherFritz]

@alygator

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m ready for my first ABBC at all!

You have at least one month before the next one starts.

One path you could take, for example, is to go through Cure Dolly’s subtitled “Japanese From Scratch” video series on YouTube.

Watch just one video (typically 10 to 15 minutes long) per day, which may overlap with grammar you’ve already learned as well as touch upon grammar you haven’t yet learned, and the book club will become more of review of grammar you’ve encountered rather than trying to learn a lot for the first time.

It’s enough to know the various grammar exists and get a basic idea of what they mean, as you can flesh out your understanding by revisiting the grammar when you encounter it while reading.

By the way, I found chapter two of Takagi fairly difficult as well back when I read it with the book club.

@Reyam

how do you all try to memorize new words that you come across while reading?

Although I’m currently on hiatus from using SRS, for me the process was to add the highest-frequency words in a manga volume I planned to read to Anki. I don’t bother trying to learn the low-frequency words because I probably won’t see them often. Since learning the 20% most-frequently-used words can cover 80% of the overall words, the system worked out fairly well for me.

@Beyond_Sleepy

I’m also considering joining the ABBC with 古見さんは、コミュ症です

Slight note: This one’s being read in the BBC, which may go at a faster pace and/or have more dense dialogue compared with ABBC books.

@Beyond_Sleepy

does anyone know what could be causing this behaviour?

It only shows if the image was “too big” and resized smaller, in which case you can click/tap on the image to view the larger version.

[javerend]

１月８日 (Home Post Link)

Read:

• ホリミヤ ch 59, 60

Taking a break from magic treehouse today, still deciding if I want to do the 2nd book (just so I can mark it off on bookmeter ) or if I want to move on to 夜カフェ already.

I’d like to do more reading later, have a bunch of other work to do today though, so if not, 2 chapters is ok.

Good Words

泥「どろ」ー mud, slush
溶ける「とける」ー to melt, to thaw
あくまでも ー to the last
歪「いびつ」ー distorted, irregular
妄想「もうそう」ー delusion, wild idea

Replies

@Reyam

I’m curious, how do you all try to memorize new words that you come across while reading?

There’s two major philosophies for how to approach this, and I don’t think one is inherently better than the other:

The first is to approach reading as a thing to sentence mine: you look for new words in the text, and then make flashcards out of them (anki, usually) so you can better remember them in the future. This lets you be more likely to remember the word/grammar and have real context for where you first encountered the word, so that the next time you see it you are more likely to understand it without looking it up, but takes time away from reading (both for making your cards and reviewing them) Livakivi has a good video about this method which is the strategy I use when I want to do mining for things.

The second is to approach reading as reading. Your main goal is to understand and follow the story, and any vocabulary and grammar you pick up is passive. You only spend as much time looking up words, vocab, and grammar as you need in order to understand it enough to move on. If you end up looking the same word up multiple times? totally fine. You spend more time reading.

I tend to prefer the latter of the two, but you can always mix and match. If a word seems particularly useful but also seems like it might not come up much, you can make a card for it to help you remember. But, especially when you are first starting out, a lot of the words and grammar points that are at your learning level are gonna show up preeeeetty frequently. If you make a card for every new thing you see, reading takes forever, so it’s a balancing act.

End of the day, you can really do as much or as little sentence mining as you want and be successful. I personally haven’t felt the need to make flashcards since I started the fall reading challenge, though. Maybe it stays that way, or maybe not!

@Beyond_Sleepy

I’d really like some recommendations if you’ve got any:)

I really have been wanting to check out ヨコハマ, so if you get that let me know how it is!

I’ve been reading 映像研 in english and really enjoyed it (there’s some jokes and cultural stuff that might go way over your head without translator notes, though), also read chainsaw in english, and komi I caught up in english but read the new chapters in japanese. Definitely recommend all of those.

In a similar vein to some of these:
アオハライド - high school shoujo romance
ホリミヤ - slice of life + high school romance, but not as melodramatic (usually)
ルリドラゴン - high school slice of life + some fantasy elements, only 1 volume currently so not sure where it will go with this, but it’s cute
ヲタクに恋は難しい - workplace romance/slice of life. very cute.
おでかけ子ザメ - this might be the cutest thing that’s ever been printed on paper, i’ve been enamored with it since @windupbird shared it
のんのんびより - since you already have yuru camp on your list, pure 癒し系

[Beyond_Sleepy]

replies

@ChristopherFritz

Slight note: This one’s being read in the BBC, which may go at a faster pace and/or have more dense dialogue compared with ABBC books.

My bad, I corrected my post so as not to confuse anyone.

@ChristopherFritz

It only shows if the image was “too big” and resized smaller, in which case you can click/tap on the image to view the larger version.

I see, that’s annoying. Changing the display % or pixel count in the post didn’t help either so no quick fixes:/

@javerend

In a similar vein to some of these:

Thanks for all the recommendations

[lucylavelle]

January 8th!

Today I read the next chapter of Teasing Master Takagi-san!
Despite the fact that the outcome of every chapter is basically the same, I really love this manga. It’s so cute and fun.

(Home Post)

Replies

@alygator

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m ready for my first ABBC at all!

Starting to read native material is hard, but reading with a club was super helpful to me when I first started reading, and still is now! It was great to have the vocab lists available, and people asking and answering questions in the threads really boosted my understanding of a lot of grammar points.
The ABBC (and all the other clubs too) are a really lovely supportive group of people so there is no need to worry about finding it tough because there will be lots of people who are willing to help 頑張ってね

@emiri_learns_jp

I finished my first full manga today!

Congratulations! Finishing your first manga is such a big achievement.
Yotsuba is such a fun manga, I hope you enjoyed it.

@javerend

That means I have technically finished my first book in japanese!

Congratulations
Finishing your first book is a huge milestone!

[Natsuha]

@Reyam

Does the manga have parts that weren’t included in the anime or you haven’t seen the anime itself?

I never watched the anime. These days I don’t have that much time to watch anime unfortunately.

[Reyam]

Replies

@ChristopherFritz

Since learning the 20% most-frequently-used words can cover 80% of the overall words, the system worked out fairly well for me.

Oh yeah the pareto principle works for this too
Thanks for the tip!

@javerend Thank you for the detailed explanation

@javerend

Livakivi has a good video about this method which is the strategy I use when I want to do mining for things.

Will check this one out!

@javerend

If you make a card for every new thing you see, reading takes forever, so it’s a balancing act.

Yeah that is exactly why I wanted to ask, i’ll try to mix several approaches and see which works the best for me. For now I’m just going about it in a comfy pace to develop a habit of reading. Aim is to still have fun while learning as much as I can. Thanks again for the intel!