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January 27th
ジョジョの奇妙な冒険7
108 - 198(?)(end)
January 28th
ジョジョの奇妙な冒険8
Start - 43
I was understanding less and less and couldn’t use the dictionary on my phone, so I gave up and went to bed.
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2023-01-29T01:15:00Z
I think Shibatora is one. At least, I remember that the main character was a police officer. There was even a drama. However, the main concept was that Shibata, the MC looked like a kid so he could go undercover as a student and solve crimes that way. So I don’t know if you’d like it.
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I recommend giving the first volume a try just to see what it’s like. The volume contains three full cases, so there’s no mid-case cliffhanger at the end of the volume.
The main aspect you get with Conan being a kid (while still having the intellect of an adult) is that adults won’t give him the time of day on the clues he finds. This gives the reader a chance to piece together the clues Conan notices along the way, before his reveal at the end.
That said, if you’re not interested then there’s no reason to check it, considering you could get sucked into reading a series that’s over 100 volumes long!
Lately, I’ve been watching the American television series Murder, She Wrote (1984–1996). It also uses this format.
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Day 27: January 27th
What did I read?: おでかけ子ザメ2
How much did I read?: 29 pages
How long did it take me?: didn’t time
I still didn’t have any bright ideas for what to read next yesterday, so I finished off tiny shark instead of trying something new 
I’m obsessed with this page full of sea puns, it’s so cute and I understood it Whatever this show is, I love it
Also small shark wearing a cozyドテラ 
Day 28: January 28th
What did I read?: ペンギン・ハイウェイ
How much did I read?: 5 pages
How long did it take me?: 32 minutes
Does anyone else remember when this was like…super popular for a hot second I bought the light novel back then and just never read it. It was a highly aspirational buy at the time lol, it was definitely above my level and way too long for me to try and tackle by myself. This was like…literally 2018, holy fork In any case, what possessed me to pick it up now, I do not know, but I like the little penguins running around in the page breaks and I’m pleasantly surprised by how easy a read it feels. …The fact that I have the furigana version helps, but still. The grammar is like…easily comprehensible most of the time, it feels like I’m reading rather than slogging which is something I’m not accustomed to with novels. So far it’s mostly been the main kid talking about his town and becoming super えらい, I look forward to the appearance of the penguins lmao
Cool expression I learned today: 百聞は一見にしかず - seeing is believing; one eye-witness is better than many hearsays; a picture is worth a thousand words
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January 28 
Home Post
Again not a super major reading day, I think my weekends being unintentionally busier than my weekdays is really throwing me off Hopefully that settles down soon, but I did play some Genshin Impact for the sake of it anyway. Finally actually met Venti which was fun, one of the few characters I have any prior concept of haha. But oh boy does him being a bard do some interesting language things, especially in the actual narrative cutscenes, oof.
It’s been a while since I actually read it since I got distracted by other things (who could imagine ), but I really enjoyed what I read of 囚獄のヴァニタス! From what I remember it’s like episodic mystery stuff with an overarching plot as you do, definitely some supernatural elements but unclear exactly how at the point I got to? It sounds like the sort of thing you’re looking for though, main character is a detective guy, other ~mysterious~ characters and dynamics, pretty boys cool aesthetics, all the important things 
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１月２８日 (Home Post Link)
I was pretty tired today and brain wasn’t functioning very well, so just a lil read today (these chs are like 15 pages long now) and then rewatched some episodes of 小林さんちのマイドラゴン with jp subs to relax a bit.
Read:
- ホリミヤ 98, 99, 100, volume 13 done! - there was a chapter about オマケ but no オマケ in the volume. 3 more volumes to go, really closing in on the end here… slowly but surely.
I have mostly been reading through people’s posts in the morning in a daze before getting out of bed/having some coffee, so I apparently glazed over some stuff
Sorry I missed this, that’s huge!! congrats 
Also welcome to the challenge @quentl996 !
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January 28th
What did I read?: 魔女と猫の話
How much did I read?: 3 pages
(Continued 2nd Story )
How long did it take me?: 31 min
Today I noticed that the cat in this particular story speaks only in hiragana. 
Which is why I spent several minutes staring at a single sentence, before I could figure out what on earth I was looking at.
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I finished the reading for 七回死んだ男 and might read a smidge more of この本を盗むものは before bed. Pretty tired though so we’ll see.
You lasted longer than me. I got 3 chapters in, saw the others’ reviews and noped out. First book was a delight, second book…who knows what happened.
I read the first few volumes and it is fun and the shows follows it pretty closely, but I stopped on one very drawn out plotline (that the TV didn’t get to) and I just kind of got bored and haven’t resumed it. I wanna say it was about a family curse or something? Obviously not a real curse (not a fantasy series) but you know, people thinking they’re cursed.
I thought the manga adaptation of 十角館の殺人 was a fun read! I don’t read much manga, but some dramas I watch are based on them. Here are the mangas of some shows I’ve liked:
掟上今日子の備忘録 - super smart woman whose memory resets every time she sleeps solves tricky cases within time limits
金田一少年の事件簿 - there’s a billion tv adaptations of this and seemingly a billion manga versions as well.
心霊探偵八雲 - I read the novel version of this (which I think came first?) and enjoyed it. It’s a college student who can see ghosts solving crimes
I actually can’t think of any true police procedural manga 
It’s all 名探偵 type stuff. Googling a bit is ハコヅメ which was made into a show. I wanted to like it for the lesbian vibes (so rare in Japanese tv dramas!) but it just bored me. Maybe the manga is better. There’s a ranking of police manga here but that was the only one on the list I recognized.
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Thank you so much for your daily summaries that was very fun and interesting to read 
You’ve made me realise I need to update the site index. Part 5 has actually been proofread a month ago !
The Tile World Chronicles stories are much harder. It’s going to be a very big leap/ If you want to give it a try I’d recommend starting with Aryn’s rescue as it’s the easiest one.
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January 28 
死体は眠らない , 30-38%
This book is easy to read and the pages are nearly empty as it’s almost all dialogue. I’m also enjoying it, so why am I reading it relatively slowly? After some thinking, I realized it’s probably that, while it’s certainly entertaining, it doesn’t even try to make me invested in the characters (it couldn’t, they’re all pretty despicable, that’s where most of the humour is based on and why it’s perfectly okay for the bodies to keep accumulating). So while I’m entertained by the constant twists in the plot and the ever more complicated predicament the main characters find themselves in, in fact I couldn’t care less if they died on the next page. And I suppose caring about the characters is the main thing that normally makes me keep turning pages with some urgency. I do like the book for what it is (light, black comedy of errors), but maybe it works better in small chunks between other books. I need something I won’t want to put down, and that’s not it.
I’ll add my voice to the others who encourage you to quit. I personally hate quitting books, so I battled through it. Much of it was pretty boring, then the action and “revelations” finally started, but they felt totally out of sync with the rest of the book, to say the least. I don’t really recommend the second volume at all.
Hey, no need for apologizing. We saw a video on that book, were intrigued, decided to try it. It’s not on us if it wasn’t up to expectations. And enjoyment is subjective anyway. There are definitely people out there who liked it and were even impressed, it seems, and that’s fine.
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Can’t seem to bring myself to finish blue period today. Will do it tomorrow probably. Got my sub chapter of Re:Zero in. Read a chapter of Eizouken and about 1/3 of Dress Up Darling volume 10.
Did enough for a day.
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➳ January 29th.
What: 風のクロノア2
Pages: ?
Time: 45 minutes.
Klonoa 2 is such a fun throwback! This game is filled with nostalgia for me. My parents bought a ps2 for my siblings and I, but thought games were included 
So for a while, all we had was the ps2 demo disc with a handful of game trials. Klonoa 2 was on it (and also a skating game?? Iirc), but only one level was included. We played that level to death and finally convinced our parents to get the full game. Anyway, I love this game and I’m glad I can play it on my computer now.
Related: this illustration of my favorite guys 
The language is pretty easy, and since it (mostly) doesn’t auto advance, it’s a better language learning experience, too.
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I had to peek under the spoiler tags in the other two threads and what a mess. I’m crying None of that was on my bingo card.
Nothing to apologize for - none of us could’ve foreseen how hard the second volume would flop 
And as @omk3 said, enjoyment is subjective and you don’t know until you try :3 Not to mention the first book was a very enjoyable read, so no regrets here :3
Oooh, a Murakami book that I’ve not actually read before! Interesting. Bookwalker says the first part is 314 pages - shouldn’t be too difficult to catch up, right? 
I’m so tempted.
I am still learning the art of noping out I really wonder what happened with the second book though…
I hate not finishing books as well, but I am not yet at a point where I can read a Japanese book at a comfortable pace. It still takes considerable effort compared to reading in English for instance. So I think I need to learn to admit defeat and move on before driving myself insane (at least for now) 
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Yep, same here. Right now I think it’s more valuable for me to focus on books that I can read at a faster pace, because that means I can read more in the same amount of time. I guess I will return to those more difficult or less interesting books at a later stage (or maybe not) 
And I found that it’s not too hard to drop books once you get used to it 
Actually, I recently decided to turn my Natively account into a “Wall of Defeat” of sorts, and I’m keeping track of all books that I started but didn’t finish yet - I mainly use Bookwalker for tracking my reading (and I don’t want to flood it with all my half-read stuff), and since I basically use Natively for the grading only, I figured I could as well use it for that purpose, too.
(In case you’d like to take a peek: https://learnnatively.com/user/nikoru/library/?list=80a39538-4b3c-4599-8a6b-8a125a8c69ff&collapse_series=1)
You should! I’ve read it in German already and I liked it better than Kafka, actually.
That’s what I was thinking when I suggested that 
If you stick with it, I don’t think you’d have issues catching up to us.
17 Likes
1 月 29 日
In an attempt to play games in Japanese and read some visual novels, I switched my language settings on Switch to Japanese today. Decided to download Coffee Talk but obviously bit off more than I could chew. I didn’t even get throught the first dialogue with Freya
Oh well, at least i tried to read.
Some vocabulary:
変更する「へんこする」to change
続ける「つづける」to continue
毎度「まいど」every time, as usual
業者 「ぎょうしゃ」trader, supplier
配送ミス「はいそうミス」delivery mistake
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Do you mean Bookmeter?
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January 29th
Aria: the masterpiece volume 3 – progress report
Yesterday: Continued up to page 128.
Today: Read up to page 143, finished chapter 24.
Finished chapter 24, ended up feeling indifferent towards it.
While I enjoyed Alicia not having any of Akira’s cr***, this chapter also featured one small scene with one of my least favourite tropes(?) in media that is especially prevalent in Japanese media. 
I can’t describe it very well but it’s when (I’ll just use random names from now on) ‘Peter’ – usually someone of ‘higher rank’ or mentor or parent or older sibling – is acting in a constantly somewhat maliciously teasing or tough-love (sometimes including threats or hitting) or cold tsundere-ish kind of manner towards ‘Sam’ and an outsider person ‘Mary’ amusingly looking at their interaction and pointing out ‘that Peter is such a good person (deep within).’
I can’t think of many examples on the fly, so I’ll just use two from the material I’m currently reading. One would be this chapter with Akira’s behaviour towards Aika and Alicia saying that Akira is a good person and another one Touya teasing Sakura all the time and meanwhile Tomoyo and Yukito both saying that they’re such a wonderful pair of siblings.
I have encountered this ‘trope’ at least a dozen times by now, and I highly dislike it. To me it feels like ‘Mary’ is not even considering how a cold or hot-and-cold treatment towards ‘Sam’ may have affected them and in a way immediately siding with the questionable or even outright abusive ‘Peter’ and calling that person ‘good’ of all things. Meh. 
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Word or expression of the day:
そんなこんな - this and that, various things
Honourable mention(s):
魔の手 - (まのて) - evil influence, (evil) clutches; tentacles of evil
21 Likes
名探偵コナン Volume 13 (71% ➨ 81%)