I had the hardest time concentrating yesterday. The page was there, my mind was elsewhere. I did read, but certainly not as much as I should have, given the time I spent with the book open in front of me. Today was much better. In these two days I read two weeks’ worth of the 半落ち book club, this one and the next. I don’t intend to read ahead, I just didn’t want to leave the chapter unfinished.
Day 36
I started reading Tsugumomo volume 4 and continued reading the second Kindaichi Shounen volume. The what happened until
now summaries every thirty or so pages are getting on my nerves.
I didn’t read as much as I wanted but at least I had some time to check what’s actually in my backlog. To save me some headaches from now on I should write down everything I buy which is in japanese. Especially tracking all visual novels I have is pretty hard.
Here is a picture of the japanese games I have on Switch
this is very late for me but sometimes you just have one of those days made some headway into shimanami tasogare vol 3, about two chapters (60-something pages) which is pretty good in general but i had hoped to get further. something about this one feels more difficult than the last one. maybe i’m just tired.
I started the day with some Breath of the Wild. Listening/reading the first cutscene. And then went of the Great Plateau to start heading east. Since I’ve already more or less 100% the game before (I did not get all korok seeds, only as many as I needed for all upgrades; outside that I did everything except maybe doing the harder version of all mini games like horse racing), I don’t plan to go all over the place. Instead I want some fun gameplay and also getting the story in Japanese. Basically giving me a better excuse to replay the game than just replaying it.
It also feels good quite how much better I am at the game then I was when I started, because this time I could pick stamina for my first health/stamina upgrade, and I couldn’t stat picking stamina upgrades until I had 5-6 hears last time.
Also, I want better bows. My battle strategy depends on them.
Anyway, then I finally spent a good chunk of time on b$ and finished chapter two. So if I can get a good start on chapter 3 before Friday, then I’ll be closer to catching up then I was when chapter 4 started. So that means I am catching up, but not yet caught up.
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I will admit that I pretty quickly decided to skip all the descriptions on weapons and items. From my previous play through I know there mostly won’t be anything interesting there. In fact, I’m more and more noticing that very few games actually make reading the descriptions worth the time I spend on them. And I didn’t feel like being bogged down by reading them in Japanese. So I’m skipping a whole lot of practice there, but also a whole lot of tedium, I suspect. xD
As for the old guy speech, it for sure is not something I’m used to, but I can understand it mostly. Right now, my biggest problem is still the vanishing text at the start and end of shrines, I’ve almost managed to catch the whole thing after 5 shrines, but that comes from ignoring the first half after I read that two times in a row and then reading the second half and… Well, at least it is the same text every time, so I feel like I’m slowly managing to put it together and I know it isn’t super relevant text so it doesn’t matter if it is taking me forever to put it together fully in Japanese.
So I think for this, I will definitely play the sequel in English, that way I can enjoy it without any reading annoyance, and I can read the weapon/item descriptions so quickly and easily that even if 99% of them turn out pretty average, I can enjoy the 1%.
Aria: the masterpiece volume 3 – progress report Yesterday: Continued up to page 184. Today: Read up to page 197.
Almost done with chapter 28 but I couldn’t bring myself to read the last ten pages as I’m too tired again.
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@MissDagger
Descriptions aren’t really my cup of tea either and I usually skim through them in English etc. unless I know they are humorous. I assume that when I did my JP play-through those years ago, I at least wanted to make myself a bit familiar with weapon names and materials because many RPGs and strategy games use plenty of weapon vocabulary including their upgraded versions (e.g. wooden sword → iron sword → steel sword → silver sword → mythril sword or whatever material it would be). Deciphering those weapon descriptions up to the point where I stopped trying to look up anything during my playing sessions anymore was still a hassle, though.
Therefore, I can certainly understand why you’re skipping weapon and item descriptions and are only going to focus on story and dialogue. Much more relaxing and interesting.
As for the monk dialogue vanishing after a short time – who knew that it being repeated every go***mn time would end up being useful in a case such as this? I always skipped these after the second time but when you have to decipher the words, the repetition is much welcomed.
If my memory is correct, there will be some more vanishing text when you start those shrine trials (mazes, eventide island(?), those ruins inside the completely dark swamp area etc.), so brace yourself (and take screenshots if needed).
Read and finished Flesh&Blood Vol. 11, and started the new ABC pick この本を盗む者は. The start was a bit slow for me, and I was super busy over the weekend, so I did not get very far yet.
Plans for this week:
Continue to read この本を盗む者は (2nd half of Ch. 1)
Continue to read 1Q84 (did not start Ch. 16 yet)
Start reading the new Compulsive Readers pick ユートロニカのこちら側
Flesh&Blood: Read some of the bonus material (mainly side stories written by the same author)
My page count as of Sunday night: 1060 pages down, 8940 pages to go!
So the last couple weeks I have been going through a book above my level little by little and doing word lookups afterwards, then reading manga “on the side” (even though its been my primary reading for the last 3 weeks). I want to basically do this until I finish a manga series and get comfortable enough with the book (study the first chapter/first 100 pages) and then when those conditions are met give 100% focus to the book. Seems like a way to avoid burnout on reading but maintain a consistent amount of reading daily.
had a hard time focusing today, so didn’t want to do too much intensive stuff. Just played some pokemon and kanken practice + my chapter for the day
Read:
三ツ星カラーズ ch 4
Word of the Day
すれちがい (すれ違い) ー generally: missing (meeting) each other; passing each other. Here, specifically: the street-pass function of the nintendo 3DS. Remember when that was a thing?
February 7th
What did I read?: 魔女と猫の話
How much did I read?: 5 pages
(Continued 3rd Story )
How long did it take me?: 57 min
Even though Chise is supposed to be a witch, so far the methods she’s used for curing the woman’s insomnia have been things even I could do! (Herbal teas, aromatic candles, music, etc.) But I guess the idea is that it’s better to start off with something more straightforward before getting magic involved.
And I’m back to reading about Kona’s adventures. After only 4 days of reading with furigana, it took me quite a while to adjust to having no furigana on Satorireader for kanji I had already learned. In this chapter, I could count with two hands the number of kanji that had furigana so I had to figure out the readings for the rest of them myself. And failed miserably at some… using the wrong reading for a few of them. Strange how only a few days of having furigana can have such an effect. I didn’t realize how much I used furigana as a crutch until now. And also how much Satorireader is actually able to help me with exercising my recall!
Read some more この本を盗む者は, but I’m still going pretty slowly. Played nearly 2.5h of BU$TAFELLOWS and finished chapter 4! Which is supposedly the end of the common route so can’t wait to find out what’s next.
And for recording the time, are you using Toggl? I seem to recognize the interface. Very cool to have all those stats, now you can also make a speed graph with page / min, and compare how it evolves in time or per book
And very inspiring stats too, I hope to get there one day! (Still working my way through my grammar books so far, combined with Bunpro, Satori Reader, WK and listening practice, it’s steadily going forward!)