January is going to be chaotic with a lot of traveling, so I’m giving myself credit for pretty much anything beyond WK and Duolingo.
Reading List: Isabella Bird in Wonderland (physical manga) SatoriReader (phone app) - etc NHK News Easy (phone app)
means I kept reading whatever I’d read the previous day
Thoughts: The first couple pages was a bit of a struggle as it was very dialogue heavy, but then after a few pages the sentences eased up and I was able to read more without having to look up every second word. I might have a refresh of my grammar, just because it’s been a while since I last did grammar and I’m probably a little rusty.
Didn’t have much time to read to start the year but I did manage to read a little ユージニア. I fell behind the bookclub pretty hard so I’ll be trying to make my way through it this month.
1月１日
We had a lot of guests so it was hard to find the time to read. I read a page of 夜カフェ3 but by the time I realized I had already read it before, Tan-chan was off with my book.
1月2日
Luckily I had caught up on my sleep so I spent the evening reading a chapter of 絶叫学級 4 which I bought with accumulated points on Line Manga and also a chapter Orange 5.
I read a bunch of volumes in the former series and it’s sequel with no break before so the horror sort of lost its impact after a while. It felt a lot more interesting this time around so I’m going to try not to binge read it.
The latter was also a nice chapter. We do finally get more perspective from Suwa, and the comparison between the future and the present was nicely done. I think the other club readers will enjoy this chapter.
I read Chapter 44 of Shadows House today. It’s definitely getting more and more intriguing in this volume
I also spent a bit of time reading summaries of books on CD Japan and some preview pages of books on Amazon because its nearly my birthday so I’m choosing some books I’d like as gifts!
By the way if anybody is looking for their next book to read: The Intermediate Book Club has just started voting! The book will be read from Feb 18th., so it will still cover a bit of this challenge
I’ll look up the proper name for this one later. I wanted to read more but there’s bs drama in other places. I feel quite done with some people and it’s only 1/1.
I felt pretty ill yesterday, so I started chapter 7 of 海辺のカフカ and read a few paragraphs. No Russian, as I found out that staring at a screen for any length of time resulted in a headache
Today, I’ve managed to read the rest of chapter 7, and 1/5th of chapter 8 of 海辺のカフカ - which was probably the most Japanese I’ve ever read in one sitting to date. I’ve neglected my studies for a while, and I haven’t read anything since July, so the start was a little clunky and slow - but it got better by the end. I’ve even managed to immerse myself in the story - too bad I didn’t have more time to read.
As for my side quest readings, I’ve read Мильтон и Булька, which is (I believe) a short passage in a collection of short stories for children about two dogs, Milton and Bulka. It was really refreshing to read for a change - although I started studying Russian very recently, it just feels so much easier. I think I feel ready to switch to reading something a little more challenging once I am finished reading this collection of stories.
1st - はたらく細胞 pages 37 to 61
2nd - はたらく細胞 pages 62 to 67
Im super tired today but I tried my best to read some more pages to catch up with the absolute beginners book club.
Reading about things I sometimes only have a vague understanding of even in english is tough. I definitely find my self clinging on to the words that are more ‘everyday’ in this book with a sense of fondness. Overall though, I am enjoying it well enough. Hopefully, I’ll be able to join back in with the conversation for the final couple of weeks or so!
Off to a good start since the second day is now complete. Did basically the same as I did yesterday which is around an hour of Pokemon Scarlet in japanese and another 7 pages or so of 宇崎ちゃん. The hard part for now is not relying too much on the furigana.
I had an unfortunate windows shopping experience on bookwalker because they had ぼっち・ざ・ろっく！volume 1 for 55 yen and a whole of bunch 日常 volumes for dirt cheap too (first two are 11 yen and 2 through 10 are 100 yen a piece). Which means my backlog isn’t getting any better but hey at least it wasn’t that bad on the wallet.
Speaking of which, the Aomi Japanese app mentioned by Greya seems like a fun thing to try. Was wondering what I should do for eventually starting shadowing and that seems tailor made for that.
Today I started 半落ち with the reading club here. I finished this week’s reading, but I really want to continue, it’s already very interesting indeed. My first proper police procedural in Japanese, it’s full of long kanji strings for police ranks and departments, but this is vocabulary I expect to be coming across fairly often given my preference for crime novels, so the sooner I learn it the better.
Here we go againnnnn! 7th round of the challenge :3 as always @windupbird thanks a lot for hosting again <3
Like the last thread and pretty much onwards, I’m not going to maintain a home post, but I do like to see the threads I’ve participated in so I will still link my first post in those as a reminder of the work I’ve put into this, should I ever need it in times of doubt.
Started the year with うたわれるもの as was expected, it continues to be pretty cool so far. I also started 9-nine- (current VN club pick) today and I’m already liking it a lot, so I’m pretty satisfied with what I’m reading right now overall.
I want to keep pushing vocabulary hard and I’m still going strong with the 20 new words a day in Anki, it’s been like a month and I’m not burnt out in the least so that’s a good sign, if anything it’s giving me a lot of drive. When I stop and think about it it’s insane the amount of vocabulary and effort learning a new language takes, especially one that shares no roots whatsoever with your native one, even after a lot of years and many thousands of words seen or studied it still feels like there’s like a million left to learn. But it’s also fun, and the more I know the more addictive everything becomes because I get to enjoy the things I consume a lot more as I understand more over time. Occasionally I still get the thought “why the heck am I learning Japanese?” and then I always go back to “damn, learning Japanese is so cool” . But anyways, I’m just rambling.
Every time I take a break from かがみの孤城 and come back it feels so much easier to read . I read it on my flight, so no looking up words, and to my surprise I was able to understand almost everything with no major confusions, and reading fairly quickly too! A few parts took some re-reading to understand, but I got it eventually.
I might end up reading more throughout the day, I’ll see.
Read a bit in the morning but then I got a headache that lasted for the rest of the day. Only in the late evening did I start to feel better so I read a bit more, and now it’s definitely time to go to sleep, yeah
Hey, long time no see! I’ve been doing well! I was put on a big project at work around March of last year and got a promotion, so I was working a lot of extra hours, but we’re hiring a couple of new people so I can hopefully stop feeling so burnt out all of the time.
I didn’t read much in Japanese last year, only a few manga I didn’t really keep track of. I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things with the new year. I need to browse around and see what the book clubs have been reading. I did see that you have a Saikawa & Moe reading club, so I might be browsing your old threads. I just bought the first few books in the Kindle sale that’s going on right now. Amazon had 40% points back.
I hope you’ve been doing well! Did you have a good holiday? あけましておめでとう！
Feb 1 - NHK News Easy (Hyougaku Matsuri in Hokkaido)
Feb 2 - NHK News Easy (7-11 Coffee Machines & Water Outages)
Feb 3 - NHK News Easy (Wobbling Skyscrapers During Earthquakes)
Feb 4 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (Cover+notes+1 page)
Feb 5 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (2 pages)
Feb 6 - NHK News Easy (Grammy Win For Takumi Masanori)
Feb 7 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (4 pages)
Feb 8 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (10 pages)
Feb 9 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (4 pages) & Tadoku Graded Readers (ぼくのお父さん)
Feb 10 - NHK News Easy (PM Kishida’s Upcoming Nasal Operation)
Feb 11 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (1 page)
Feb 12 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (18 pages)
Feb 13 - Tadoku Graded Readers (夜の空で)
Feb 14 - Transcription of 会話2 in Chapter 3 of Quartet
Feb 15 - NHK News Easy (Asking Young People About Raising Children For The Future)
Feb 16 - Dragon Quest X Offline! Finally! (ドラゴンクエストX オフライン)
Feb 17 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 18 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン (I finally fought a slime!)
Feb 19 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 20 - Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken volume 1 (7 pages)
Feb 21 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン (Fought the first boss, and then…)
Feb 22 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 23 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 24 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 25 - NHK News Easy (Sakura Viewing in Shizuoka Prefecture)
Feb 26 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン & food descriptions at the grocery store
Feb 27 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Feb 28 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Bonus Round!
Mar 1 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 2 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 3 - Dialogs in Chapter 3 of Quartet (class)
Mar 4 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 5 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 6 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 7 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 8 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 9 - Switch eShop/News channel descriptions
Mar 10 - 読み物1 in Chapter 4 of Quartet (class)
Mar 11 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 12 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 13 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
Mar 14 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン & Switch eShop descriptions
Mar 15 - ドラゴンクエストX オフライン
New year, new me. That also means a new challenge for me
I don’t enjoy reading that much, so I won’t be shocked if there are a few days when I don’t read anything. While I try to read every day, I have no problem skipping days. That, at least, is far more effective for me! You know, to avoid burnout and stuff
This time, I have an anthology titled 5分後に恋の魔法が解けるまで 二度目の初恋 in my line-up for the challenge. It has 17 short stories with romance as the genre. I bought this book in 2020 but never really got around to reading it. So I’m going to try to finish the novel with this challenge!
A low standard, I know. But for someone who doesn’t like reading, it’s challenging enough for me. Hopefully, I can keep myself accountable~
Another day of only reading a teeeeeeny tiny bit of 半落ち (although with most of the club ahead of schedule I did make a poll asking if we want to move faster).
I was planning to read ユージニア but I had also planned on taking a N1 practice test to benchmark myself and that completely wiped me out mentally. The reading section is long and not at all the type of content I’m used to reading. Ugh. Need to read more essays, 死体は語る is not that style at all. Might need to swap to the actual essay book even though it looks boring… Then again I only have ~130 pages left so might just push the essay book to after since 死体は語る isn’t completely without merit. And it’s entertaining, in a grotesque sort of way.
Kimera’s home post 
Isabella Bird in Wonderland (physical manga)
SatoriReader (phone app) - 
etc
NHK News Easy (phone app)
. But anyways, I’m just rambling.
. I read it on my flight, so no looking up words, and to my surprise I was able to understand almost everything with no major confusions, and reading fairly quickly too! A few parts took some re-reading to understand, but I got it eventually.
Ghostmaple’s Home Post 
Dragon Quest Slime Morimori (Game Boy Advance)
Short stories in 
]
food descriptions at the grocery store
Lima’s Reading Home Post 
