Currently reading Harry Potter 1 - Chapter 8: they have their first classes in Hogwarts.
Phrase of the day: 話をそらす: to change the subject of the conversation
Also, Snape uses 我輩 to refer to himself. I learnt that not to long ago on WaniKani, but never heard or read it in actual use.
Btw. I notice in vertical writing I often have trouble finding the right column to read on after finishing one column. Does this get better with time?
Happy reading everyone!
Home post // Jan 16 
・ 本好きの下克上 16 (66% → 71%)
When did I read this much? 
Before sleep? Before getting up? visible confusion
Totally random, but I’ve been around for 4 years now 
Not so much of a neophyte anymore, heh.
I literally have only one joke.
January 16 
半落ち , 14-22%
This week’s 半落ち (and the first chapter of the book) is now completed. From what I can see so far, I believe I’m going to enjoy this book very much. It’s right up my alley, both in writing style and content. A ton of unknown vocabulary, but hey, what else is new? 
It does! Your brain will get used to it in time, and you’ll start skipping over lines less until you do it as much as you do with horizontal text. I’ll sometimes still find myself having to follow the line back up to find the next one, but it doesn’t happen nearly as often anymore as when I was first starting out.
January 16th!
Today I read a chapter of Teasing Master Takagi-san. It was a really sweet chapter.
I struggled with this for ages. I used a reading ruler for a while to help me keep track of where I was on the page, and that helped but I don’t really need to use one any more now that I’m more used to reading vertically.
Started Steel Ball Run and Re:Zero 16 on the way to work. JoJo is one of those series that I just totally shut my brain off while reading, so I can’t really rely on it for reading practice. So I am gonna read Re:Zero along side it but not with the intention of finishing like I was with 青ブタ. Its more or less gonna be just what I am reading on my lunch, and JoJo will be my commute read.
Home 
January 16th
ジョジョの奇妙な冒険6
121 - 165
I only had about 15-30 min to read last night before I turned into a 
. I’m somewhat surprised by the page count but it was mostly a minor fight and confused yelling. I better finish this volume today lol. I hope I can knock it out after lunch or something.
99% of JoJo. xD
I can’t argue with that lmao. The other 1% is convoluted science/history explanations
1% Lore dump, 99% confused yelling. 100% perfect harmony.
1 月 17 日
コナの大冒険 第25話 
On today’s episode, I realized that there were only three kanjis on the page that SatoriReader was showing me furigana for. 
I’m supposed to be able to read everything but those three and I tried but there were times I’d get confused with the reading (onyomi vs kunyomi). There were also some combined kanji that made up vocab that I hadn’t learned yet. 
Kanji I haven’t learned
Learned kanji but new vocab
That one’s my favorite phrase for the moment! I like to call it the circle of life… Which Kona will soon learn about. 
I noted that they list animal names in katakana such as ネズミ, リス, ウサギ from this episode and タカ from the last episode. Can anyone explain why they’re using katakana for those?
Finally, there’s so many people to congratulate on their first volume, manga, or book! Congrats everyone! And happy cake day as well to @Redglare !
With most animals (and plants as well) it’s just the norm to write them in katakana rather than kanji or hiragana. With some, it may have to do with how common they are, but with others, that doesn’t seem to be the case. I mean, 猫 and 犬 and 鳥 are everywhere, but so are ネズミ and ウサギ and リス! The kanji not being common these days would explain kana generally being preferred, but katakana specifically…? I’ve seen someone say before that it’s like scientific names being italicized in English, but that only makes sense to me for specific species names, but general animal types are written in katakana as well. Although with some, especially the single-mora ones like カ (mosquito) and ガ (moth), I could see katakana being preferred over hiragana being so that they don’t blend in with the surrounding hiragana.
So “that’s just the way it’s done” is the best I’ve got for ya, sorry. If anyone knows more, I’d be interested as well.
Got a few more pages in on my lunch and am pretty happy with the amount of lookups per page I am doing with Re:Zero. I have been wanting to read this series for so long, and its so cool I am comfortable reading it (even with a few look ups). I think watching the anime and reading other light novels prepared me a lot for this series. The anime helped me the most but that was still a challenging show on some days (I was watching 5 episodes at a time roughly). My hope is this book will push me to that next level I have been hoping to reach reading wise. I want to have that confidence of getting a book that looks interesting and not fearing if I can comprehend it or not. It seems like this just might get me there.
January 16th
What did I read?: 魔女と猫の話
How much did I read?: 9 pages
(Started 1st Story)
How long did it take me?: 1 h
The next manga I will be reading is 魔女と猫の話 by 四宮しの!
It’s another short story collection, this time all about witches and their cats~ I love how the cats are drawn in this manga! They’re the perfect blend of realism and manga-style! When I was checking out the preview while figuring out whether to buy it or not, I looked at the title page and was instantly smitten!
The first story so far is about the witch Suzu summoning her cat on her 13th birthday. While she was hoping for a pitch black, intelligent, kind cat like her grandmother’s, the one she ends up summoning is… this one:
Oh, that’s totally fine! Amazon Japan shipping can definitely get pretty crazy! And you still bought さめない街の喫茶店, which I’ll be getting around to reading at some point! 
Thank you to all of you for the congratulations! I think that reading alongside everyone and posting in this community have really helped motivate me to stay on track!
And congraultaions to all the other first manga/book achievers! Sorry I can’t mention you specifically, but there were so many (an excellent “problem” to have! ), and I wouldn’t want to miss one of you. So generic group congratulations it is!
Got the 半落ち reading done today. Really loving the story, there’s already hints being dropped at multiple plot lines and I am here for it. Give me complicated relationships 
Tomorrow I should hopefully have time for チュベローズ finally, and then Wednesday is all-day-travel-day so definitely time for it then. I’m somewhat dreading February as I’ll have 半落ち, この本を盗む者は (starting Feb 4), 七回死んだ男 and レベル７* all while traveling for work (which means limited free time after work officially ends as I must 
socialize ) 
* @Belerith how do you feel about postponing that start date til ~Feb 20? 
Day 16: January 16th 
シャドーハウス Volume 4 (71% ➨ 76%)
Somehow or other, the villain turned out to not be as bad as he was made out to seem in the prior chapter. (I suspected as much based on some of his actions, but he had very questionable dialogue.) As with the first villain, he’s given an understandable and innocent reason to have become an evil demon baddie.
I sort of expected to make more reading progress over a third-day weekend…
softlyraining’s snowy book stack 
January 13th ・ January 14th ・ January 15th ・ January 16th
授乳 (29% → 31%)
The past several days have consisted of VERY tiny reads. Not ideal, but sometimes that’s how things go. Looking to get through bigger chunks by the end of the week. 
January 16 Home Post
Read some more 花子くん today! The last few chapters were a bit more dense both language-wise and plot-wise so it was somewhat slower going, but oh the drama
Sure! I’ll also have more time after that date, so that would work out perfectly. 
