📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2023 ☃❄

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I have been very, very tired lately. I don’t even remember the last time I updated, but the tradeoff seems to be that I actually remembered to mark off the calendar and add the books I finished in my home post whenever I was on the computer, instead of forgetting for long periods of time despite starting every post by copy-pasting the link to my home post?

Anyway, I did still manage to read a little bit in Japanese (and do at least a few reviews on WK) every day, including making progress on (or even keeping up with) book club books.

Although the past four days (since the 1st) I’ve been reading a lot more again since I bought My Time at Portia (JP: きみのまち ポルティア) for the Switch and have been playing that in Japanese. It’s not originally in Japanese (it’s made by a Chinese studio), and there are a few places where I’m not sure if I just don’t know enough yet or if it is actually a little off; the kanji are a little hard to read sometimes, especially with non-white or -black text, since the text is a little small; and it’s an exercise in recognizing Chinese variants, which, some of them are easy enough, but some take me a bit. I love the game though and have found myself playing it much of the day and into the early hours of the morning even when I have work later that morning, and while there are absolutely words I gotta look up, I sometimes forget that it is in Japanese? And it’s not just because the voice language is only English. Though, of course, there is also a lot where you don’t have to actually read it, just recognize it, like with item and material names…

この本を盗む者は also got here a few days ago, and I wasn’t expecting it to be an actual, proper hardcover? The few I have that I thought were considered hardcovers are really just paperback, but a different type where the cover’s a little thicker and sturdier than the usual kind. But maybe those aren’t considered hardcover and it’s just Amazon being dumb. tbh I stopped paying attention to whether Amazon JP says a book is hardcover or paperback a long time ago.

That club started today, but I haven’t started it yet. Or any other book club reading lol I got home and just wanted to play MTaP, which I will continue doing after posting this and will hopefully put down well before 1:30 a.m. because I’ve got work again tomorrow. (I don’t see that happening though, it is very easy to lose track of time playing this.)


ページ is also the actual reading of 頁, while テーブル is a special reading of 卓子 which is usually only read たくし, hence the difference in furigana application.

The only other kun reading for 頁 is おおがい, but that’s only as the radical name. Well, かしら is also listed, but I don’t think it’s ever actually used, and that’s “head” anyway.

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I’d like to point out that that’s an actual reading of that word, it’s not a weird furigana thing. I know it’s hard to believe, but it is a thing.

From my dictionary:

About the spoiler: at least she isn’t obsessing over it. Just poison and medicine :skull_and_crossbones:

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February 4th!

Today I read a chapter of Teasing Master Takagi-san, it was an especially cute story this week.
Then I also read a chapter of Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun. I only have one more chapter left before I finish the volume, so I’m looking forward to reading it again tomorrow :slight_smile:

(Home Post)

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:chocolate_bar: :love_letter: 2月4日 :love_letter: :chocolate_bar: (Home Post Link)

ooooooh man i’m tired today :sleeping:

Now that ホリミヤ is done I found myself kinda floundering a bit. I opened up 夜カフェ in my browser again just to remind myself that it’s there, but I don’t have a clear agenda for what/how much to read and of what. I need to figure out a new balance and I didn’t have the energy to really do that today :sweat_smile:

Read:

  • 夜カフェ ch 3 (pg 35 → 43) - i’m further along in this than I remembered being, which was a nice surprise. Another nice surprise was that it felt easier to read now than it did even a week ago. idk if i’ll be in time to finish it before the book clubs start, but i’ll definitely be able to do it before the end of the month.
  • 新完全マスター pg 8-9 - I now understand the questions i’m being asked and what I need to do, even if I lack the particular knowledge to answer them, so that’s a big step up from the last time I tried working on this :sweat_smile:
  • 三ツ星カラーズ ch 1 - decided to do this instead of しろくまカフェ just bc the chapters are a little more standard manga chapters, so easier to keep track of

Word of the Day
寝ぼけ眼「ねぼけまなこ」ー sleepy eyes, drowsy look

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:performing_arts: Home :it:

February 4th

ジョジョの奇妙な冒険8
163 - 201 (end)

This bit killed me because I absolutely wanted to finish the volume but I started reading at around 3am and really just wanted to sleep

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It’s taught in WK, actually! IIRC a newer addition

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Now they just need to add a few more necessary ones like 蚕 and 齎.

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Summary post

I’m predictably late, but I wanted to make a check-in post after the halfway point!

I finished January with a perfect score!!

Jan
Week 52
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5

= Japanese
= Japanese and Spanish

I did manage to finish translating some stuff for 大日本プロレス リア王 (Big Japan Pro Wrestling’s 2008 deathmatch King Lear production)! Here’s a post with all of the info I managed to gleam about the show and some stuff I translated, as well as a bunch of screencaps from the DVD.

Here’s one screenshot:

That altar is actually made of light tubes, which I only realized part of the way through the main event (naturally, a wrestler crashed through it, haha). It was a really cool show! I was really glad that I was able to find it. I’m contemplating translating shupro’s recap of it and making a big blog post about it so that there’s more info out there about it.

Romeo vs Juliet is up next. Jun Kasai and “Black Angel” Jaki Numazawa decided to give us a preview for the main event of that show…

No idea when I’ll get around to actually watching Romeo vs Juliet, because I have a bunch of stuff I still want to translate for it, first, but hopefully it’ll happen by the end of next month?

I also did one Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling translation, for their January 29 show. I won’t post any photos from that haha because this post is already long enough!

Something kind of funny is that I am apparently trilingual enough to follow along pretty well with the Wrestle Universe chat during shows. I can read the comments from Japanese fans pretty easily (especially with the help of Yomichan), and people will often repeat some of the funniest lines from the wrestlers, which helps me get in on the joke if I missed something. I noticed that sometimes the Japanese fans will comment (in Japanese) on stuff the English speakers in the chat say.

During that show, there was a Spanish speaker who was a first time TJPW watcher asking some questions in the chat, so I got very distracted trying to answer them (in Spanish) haha. The person seemed to mainly have experience with CMLL (a Mexican wrestling promotion). I know enough wrestling-specific vocab in Spanish that I was able to answer pretty confidently.

With my Spanish reading, I ended up getting kind of hooked on Sí, sí es contigo, and I am currently 76% of the way through it, according to my kindle :sweat_smile:. It’s the first book I’ve read in Spanish that is easy enough to read for me and also compelling enough that I have a hard time putting it down when I get started… So I’m feeling pretty good about my progress there! I’ll definitely be having to start another book soon to get me through the rest of the challenge!

I also started reading 小説 ミラーさん -みんなの日本語初級シリーズ-, which is the first novel in the MNN textbook series. I’m just finishing up the beginner series right now, so I started reading the book because I wanted to see what it would be like to be able to basically just read a novel in Japanese without having to stop and do lookups haha.

And sure enough, yeah, I know all the grammar in the book and basically all of the vocab! There are a few words in it that aren’t in the textbook, and some other words that I don’t remember getting taught in the lessons, but which I did learn from WK, but by and large, the only time I’ve looked stuff up is just to double-check that I’m on the right track with a trickier sentence. It’s pretty cool! I’ll probably finish the book within the next few days.

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Summary post

Day 35: February 4th
What did I read?: ペンギン・ハイウェイ :penguin:
How much did I read?: 7 pages
How long did it take me?: 35 minutes

Ok what is happening :joy: I hope I understood this part correctly, otherwise I will feel dumb, but the dentist office girl showed up at the bus station and like…a) randomly decided she was going to help yank Aoyama’s loose tooth out of his mouth after untying him from the vending machine (the class bully Suzuki tied him up there as revenge for the whole fake disease thing) and b) used a soda can to do it, but in the process the soda can turned into a penguin? I don’t understand :joy: She’s like completely unbothered about it, too lmao, is she the secret of the penguins :eyes:

Today I learned that 気をつけ can be a noun, meaning “standing at attention.”

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Day 4 :black_cat:

Decided to just read multiple books simultaneously so I started the first chapter of 世界から猫が消えたなら. I read the first few pages some years ago but I’ve forgotten so much vocab since then.

vocab

くだらない - trivial
妄想(もうそう)
出来(しゅったい)

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February 4 :snowflake: Home Post

Didn’t read as much as I could’ve today, just how it goes sometimes I suppose :man_shrugging: but I read some more 山猫 and it continues to be a great time! Lots of interesting mysteries floating around, new character things, all the fun stuff :grin:

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It’s even on WK nowadays :eyes:
Got added with the most recent big overhaul last year? Two years ago? :thinking: Something like that.

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Home post

2 月 5 日
からかい上手の高木さん Volume 1 Chapter 5 :smiling_imp:

Read through the full chapter 5 today titled 空き缶. Takagi-san is evil… :see_no_evil: I haven’t gone through the vocab and the thread for grammar points yet. So i might go through the chapter again and do that tomorrow.

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Bit better today- 3 hour plane ride which I stayed awake for!

5/2 11 pages 夜カフェ (finished ch 8, started 9)

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Watched anime all day long. So I finally ended it with a chapter of steel ball run. Not sure if I’m gonna read real books this week. I wanna try but I’m pretty determined to finish stardust crusaders by the end of the week.

I do want to read volume 4 of SBR and get back to推しの子 but the new my hero volume comes out tomorrow. So I’m pretty unsure what order in gonna do things in.

First world problems, but I am trying my damnedest to figure out my true level this week because my hero was a real struggle for some episodes but I’m completely fine watching Jojo… But that’s all listening stuff. Reading I’m pretty confident about where I am.

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home post

5th feb

well, i didn’t plan on sitting down and rereading the entirety of shimanami tasogare vol 1, but it happened :joy: i think i’m gonna read the next volumes next week (and probably the week after), so this was good prep. i didn’t do any lookups, so the housing stuff in the middle went completely over my head

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:performing_arts: Home :it:

February 5th

ジョジョの奇妙な冒険9
-

ララの結婚(けっこん)
start - 185 (end)

Wowzers, read that in one sitting and it took about 1.5-2 hours? I guess I finally have an estimate for how fast I read.

The names bug me a little. Like ラムダン’s name sounds like “random” in English to me :skull: Also アリアナ… Ariana Grande… :skull:

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Home Post

:snowflake: Week 5 - Jan 30th to Feb 5th :snowflake:

I read the rest of 古見(こみ)さんは、コミュ(しょう)です volume 1, as well as おでかけ()ザメ volume one. A pretty gentle introduction to reading something without furigana:p I started volume one of シメジシミュレーション today and I don’t expect I’ll have finished it by next weekend since I’m pretty busy next week. The vocab sheet is a huge help, looking up kanji by radical is still a bit painful for me… But I suppose ought to keep practicing then(:

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:spiral_calendar: Day 35: February 4th :mountain_snow:

spacer:crossed_swords: YAIBA Volume 1 (0% ➨ 11%)

Diving into another series by Detective Conan’s mangaka. This one seems a bit actiony, but I’m only one chapter in.

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Feb 5, Sun of Week 6 of Winter Q1 2023 :snowman::snowflake:

  • 一度読んだら絶対に忘れない日本史の教科書 Ch.1 Part 縄文

Not a long passage, but with diagrams and re-reading.

  • ふしぎの国のバード Vol.1 Ch.1

Looks interesting from Bookwalker promotion (freebies) some time ago. Travelling to YEZO and the shrines of NIKKO and ISE, it seems. I also saw Vol.10 NOW PRINTING in Bookwalker.

  • うたわれるもの
Words of the day
  • とばっちり = getting splashed and getting wet; getting involved (with troubles) = とばしり. From (ほとばし)り?
  • すっからかん = completely empty; penniless. ()(から)かん, perhaps.
  • (あつ)い = fervent; ardent; devout / critical (of illness). For the second meaning, it would be like 重篤(じゅうとく) or 危篤(きとく).
  • ()わる = to hold still; to be in place
  • 無下(むげ)に = flatly (refusing)
  • 蝦夷(えぞ)(しま) = Island of Ezo (Yezo); northernmost of Japan. Furigana’d, but ヶ not Furigana’d, making me guess. It is 蝦夷ヶ島(えぞがしま).
    • Also written simply as 蝦夷(えぞ) later.
  • 陸路(りくろ) = land route
  • 博物学(はくぶつがく) = the study of natural history. 博物館(はくぶつかん) is a museum, however.
  • 真珠(しんじゅ) = pearl
  • 洞察(どうさつ) = discernment; insight. First Kanji means cave (洞窟(どうくつ),     洞穴(ほらあな)), but can also mean deep place, or looking deeply.
  • 粗悪(そあく) = inferior quality. 粗悪品(そあくひん) = inferior goods.
  • 日本人街(にほんじんがい) = Japan-town. Chinese counterpart is 中華街(ちゅうかがい) or 中国人街(ちゅうごくじんがい).
  • 身元(みもと) = one’s background. In context as 身元不明(みもとふめい).
  • 前人未踏(ぜんじんみとう) = unprecedented discovery; no one has done before. Also, 前人未到(ぜんじんみとう).
  • ピジン() = pidgin language. Grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common.
  • 随行(ずいこう) = tagging along with; accompanying
  • 踏破(とうは) = travelling on foot, over long distance, may have difficulty
  • ヘボン(しき)ローマ() = Hepburn romanization
  • 人望(じんぼう) = popular (person)
  • 土木(どぼく) = civil engineering. In context as 土木工事(どぼくこうじ).
  • 弓矢(ゆみや) = bow and arrow
  • 貧富(ひんぷ)() = disparity of wealth; the distance between the poor and the rich
  • 濁声(だみごえ) = grating deep voice, with heavy accent. Has Furigana in context.
  • 甲斐性無(かいしょうな)し = good for nothing (person). Also, 甲斐性(かいしょう)なし
  • 見世物小屋(みせものこや) = show tent; circus tent. 見世物(みせもの) is a show; exhibition; spectacle.
  • 曲芸(きょくげい) = acrobatics; stunt
  • ()()む = to fret over
  • 自負(じふ) = self-confidence
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