day 3 
home post
Read: Yotsubato!
Progress: 25/224 → 35/224
Thoughts: This has definitely been a lot lighter of a read now that I got past the first part, just like @javerend said! To be fair there were a lot of panels without any dialogue, but where there was I was able to understand much better than the first 20-ish pages. I am enjoying it more now.
(I don’t know how to quote people on the forums yet, so I just pinged you lol)
Day 3, 3rd of January
In today’s first DrDru story we talk about Harry Potter. Once again too many Katakana names for my liking.
In the second it’s movie time. We guess which movie it is based on the emoji presented, so there isn’t too much content to read here. Which is good because I’m a bit dizzy today.
Today, I finished reading chapter 8 of 海辺のカフカ, and I finally feel like I’m slowly starting to get a hang of this :3 I am considering reading a little bit more though, because I’ve been scrolling through the bookclub’s discussion on the following chapters and got a little curious 
As for my side quest, I only had the energy to read the next short story from the collection about Milton and Bulka titled Черепаха (The Turtle). The story was, to my surprise and delight, complete with some turtle facts - so I got a little refresher on my turtle knowledge as a bonus 
Sometimes I forget just how cool turtles are.
There’s a little one-room private museum in Tokyo with a collection of those “daimyo clocks”. Recommended for clock nerds, especially if you can make a stab at reading the only-in-Japanese exhibit labels.
absolutely putting this on my travel wishlist thank you 
January 3 
おばちゃんたちのいるところ , 53-62%
Today I read this week’s two stories from おばちゃんたちのいるところ. And this concludes the book clubs for this week. I need to think what to read tomorrow. Continue with my mountain ghost stories book, or read something new?
That’s so cool! I knew about the uneven six hours of day and six hours of night, but had no idea there were actual clocks that could measure such a crazy time!
January 2-3
Home Post
English reading (The Hot Rock by Donald E Westlake) 
Have I mentioned how busy I’d be for the first half of this month? If you’ve missed it, then apparently I forgot to mention it in this thread because I sure have said in a number of places.
So yeah, no actual Japanese reading. Probably a sentence here or there while reading the forum, but nothing on my (Japanese) priorities.
I did however finish a novel in English I’m reading for a workshop, so it was a prioritized read, and I do have another one of those. Which might be the only thing I read for the next two weeks, more or less. 
I’m gonna be sooo behind on both VN clubs…
Day 2
I have finished the third volume of U12. Even though there are still six more volumes left, let’s pretend that the manga ends with volume 3. The girls board a subway and drive to safety while running over all the pedos. What a beautiful ending.
After that I read three pages of ぼっちゃん.
262 pages read 19738 to go
01月03日
9-nine-
Finished week 1 for the club, seems pretty nice so far. I get the feeling I’m going to like it. I have to be responsible and not read more so うたわれるもの until Friday.
I might start NieR:Automata again. And I say again because I did play many hours of it until the first ending back in some previous challenge but I didn’t continue for some reason even though I was adoring the game. I’ve seen that an anime is about to release and it got me curious but I don’t want to watch it without finishing the game first. So I’ll restart it soon, maybe.
January 3rd!
Today I read this weeks ABBC portion of Cells at Work.
I had to look up a lot of vocab, but thats to be expected when it includes words like 血管内皮 vascular endothelium
I was planning to wait to start volume 5 of シャドーハウス, but decided to let myself read 2 chapters since it was my birthday. So I read 6…
3/1 3 pages おばちゃんたちのいるところ (finished story 7), 70 pages シャドーハウス (chapters 51-56)
誕生日おめでとうございます！
I’m still only half way through Volume 4 of Shadows House but I’m really enjoying it so I’m hoping it stays as interesting through volume 5 too.
It’s entertaining and easy reading - so far not as many major revelations as volume 4, though I think something interesting is about to happen where I paused.
Home post // Jan 3
・ 本好きの下克上 16 (22% → 25%)
Was busy packing stuff today, but got to read a bit while waiting for the train. …Ah, train wifi is as spotty and unstable as always. I wonder how online lecture tomorrow will be Good thing classmates take audio recordings.
Happy birthday! 
Well, today was largely and unexpectedly successful on the reading front. I spent a good hour trying to figure out how to buy books online and ended up going through basically the entirety of Book Walker JP in Japanese without realizing that a lot of the pages are also available in English haha. By the time I ended up buying the mangas and light novels I wanted, I felt as though I got in enough reading for the day but I didn’t stop there. I read:
Huge success for me. I’m glad I now have easy access to a few different series so that I can read something every day~
Day 3: January 3rd
What did I read?: 夜の名前を呼んで Vol 3
How much did I read?: 28 pages
How long did it take me?: 41 min
My heart 
This chapter is like bursting with cuteness. Goat Boy (whose actual name is Capri) comes back again because he needs some medicine for his mom - however, he came for it on the wrong day, so he has to wait around for a bit while Rei makes it. Sorry idk why but I thought this panel of Rei rushing to answer the door was adorable so I’m putting it here, he’s just so cute with the little toothbrush hanging out of his mouth
Rei makes Capri wait around as Goat Boy because Mira is too shy around him as a human but loves him in his tiny goat form He and Mira have such a cute little time together They start talking about this book that Mira was reading, and then they start having imaginary adventures, and it’s just- 
PERFECT.
Rei clearly agrees with me, look at him getting all mushy 
THIS IS LITERALLY THE CUTEST PANEL IN THE WORLD I’M SORRY BUT LOOK AT THEM, THESE SQUISHY LITTLE BEANS
YAAAAAS This makes me so happy, I hope you love them when you get to them
I love this, thank you for bringing this to my attention
I love that the day and night hours actually corresponded to the actual day and night all the time though, like honestly that logic makes it my new favorite time system. Also love that it basically acknowledges that time is made up, like the idea of the hours literally just being longer sometimes is so fascinating to me. I want to experience this time system just to see what it would be like, I can’t decide if I would hate it or love it in practice My sense of time passing is so wonky anyway, idk if variable hour lengths would help me or confuse me more xD
January 3rd
What did I read?: にわにはににん
How much did I read?: 5 pages
(Started 2nd Story: ユーレカの庭 )
How long did it take me?: 47 min
I wanted to keep going, but it’s too late for that, unfortunately. Should try starting earlier tomorrow! This story seems pretty interesting so far, though. It’s about a girl who’s captivated by an overgrown garden that she glimpses briefly behind a fence during her bus-ride to school.
I never had any of these books next to each other before, so I never realized until today that the pages are slightly different colors. Top is 透き通った風が吹いて, middle is おばちゃんたち, and bottom is 2.43 代表決定戦編①. I wonder if it’s because they’re all from different publishers. Anyway:
I read 12 pages of 2.43, finishing ch 2-2 and leaving off on pg 184. Since Chika’s staying with Yuni for the time being, we get a description of Yuni’s house. It looks like something straight out of a yakuza drama, with a gabled roof and gated stucco fence and white gravel, and a traditional landscape garden and a pond with brocaded carp. The only thing they’re missing is a Doberman lmao. The grounds are kept this way according to his grandfather’s interests.
I think this confirms that Yuni and his parents live with his grandfather? I mean, yes, in the first volume, Yuni mentioned that Yori would come over to play shougi with their grandfather as a kid, which would imply that Grandpa Kuroba lives with them. Also, Yuni’s father is the first son, making them the main family line, and Grandpa Kuroba is the current family head. But then, I’m pretty sure he made the banner that Itoko toted over to one of Yuni’s games in middle school—from her house? Which would imply that he doesn’t. Since Itoko, Yori, and their parents live separately from Yuni and his parents. Also he literally never actually shows up, just his calligraphy (and his naming sense, considering he gave Yuni the reading of his name), and we have been to Yuni’s house before a few times. I dunno, I’m confused.
Update: A couple pages later, it says that Grandpa Kuroba usually presides over the head of the table 巌のごとき渋面で, so, yeah, he lives with them. I guess Itoko just had him come over to her house to do the calligraphy on that banner. Also, hey! First on-page appearance for him!
It’s kind of interesting though them (or at least the main house) being compared to the yakuza. The Kuroba family owns a lot of land in/around Monshiro (though most if not all of it farmland considering how many of his relatives in the area seem to be farmers), and they’re probably the richest/most powerful family in this part of Fukui. Yuni’s even called ボン or 坊ちゃん by some people. Not that he acts like it though lmao it’s easy to forget he’s not just some guy. At least until the two of you spontaneously decide to catch a train to Tōkyō so he goes and gets (expensive!) tickets for free from his family member who works at the train station (book 1, ch 5), or you wanted a strawberry tart but the café doesn’t have any left in their display case so he goes and talks to the chef who’s his relative and gets you a fresh slice with a big helping of extra strawberries because they’re your favorite (even though you’re the now-ex-captain of his rival school and he barely knows you? Yuni) (first audio drama included with the 2nd vol of the anime). The Kuroba family is big, so he’s got relatives all over Fukui, and even though he usually doesn’t act like an heir, he is definitely used to asking for and getting things (even getting things he didn’t want/ask for) from his family. I would not be surprised if he has family outside of Fukui too and he still gets spoiled in college all the way out in Kantō. Yorimichi’s the only one who could be considered “yakuza-like” though, being a delinquent and even being compared to an outlaw by Chika (book 1, ch 5), but he almost got disowned for it in the past (short story included with the 1st vol of the anime), and at the end of book 1, he’s decided to clean up and study to become a teacher. So the yakuza comparison isn’t exactly apt, but it also sort of is.
We also learn Chika’s parents’ names: 公信 (Kiminobu) and 早百合 (Sayuri). Well, I already knew his father’s name, but at this point I can’t remember if it was just hearing it in the anime or if I’d seen it written aside from when I went looking for how it was spelled…
同い年の従姉妹で、ややこしいのか覚えやすいのか名前も絃子という。
lmao
Okay, I’d thought Chika lived with his grandparents in Suzumu, but it turns out he’d lived with his parents in Suzumu, and his grandparents live in Monshiro? Did that get retconned or am I just misremembering.
This subchapter is called CHILDHOOD FRIEND though and I’m enjoying the little bits of backstory we’re getting of Chika as a little kid when he’d come visit Yuni’s house. We knew from the first book that they were friends in kindergarten, but it turns out they didn’t meet there—their grandfathers were shougi friends, and when Ooe-jiisan would come over to play shougi with Kuroba-jiisan, he’d often bring along little Chika since he was left with his grandparents a lot as a young child due to his mother frequently being hospitalized. Chika was shy and would just sit there unmoving like a doll watching his grandfather, and Yuni was the one to approach him. Also he was scared of the bath back then (he was like four), so today he doesn’t want to use the bath first so he can put it off a little longer, but it turns out the Kurobas have had their bathroom remodeled in the intervening years and they have a different type of bathtub now, so he had nothing to worry about.
And it’s even more clear in this than the anime how excited Yuni is that Chika came to consult with him about his worries, which is cute. There are about five sentences that end with “!?” in a row lol (only one of them said out loud), although a good half of that was his surprise that Chika, who usually keeps to himself, would actually come to someone for help (明日の地球は無事か!?). They were inseparable as kids, and since Chika moved back Yuni’s wanted to go back to that, and they’re not nearly there yet, but this is a step.
Anyway Chika’s awkward and Yuni’s a little weirdo, and that about sums that interaction up lol. I love them.
I’m a little disappointed though that this scene just ends with Chika blinking, caught off guard, when Yuni suggests that the two of them just have to be like Mimura Subaru together, instead of shooting him down and saying that Yuni needs to catch up to and surpass Mimura on his own (and calls him バカ, and Yuni’s like, “You Tōkyōites really know how to make your insults hurt”) like in the anime, tbh. Oh well, we got some good stuff that wasn’t in the anime, too.
And because I have no self-control, I also started 透き通った風が吹いて, a novella by あさのあつこ. (Although I guess I have some self-control, because it was either that or 風が強く吹いている, which is, what, 600-some pages?) The book includes the novella plus a short story and is only 186 pages total, so it’s probably the thinnest (non-doujinshi) book I own lol. Anyway, I read 20 pages, leaving off on pg 30. I like it so far.
It’s set in Okayama Prefecture, so they speak in a dialect I’m unfamiliar with, though I did get a bit of exposure the other day in the Mujinazaka-Fukuroudani match in HQ. I think I can more or less understand a good portion of it by feel, though. Like, I think けん shows emphasis rather than is a negative like some -えんs are, in a lot of places じゃ is obviously だ, and -ている and しまう and 言う seem to work the same as in Kansaiben. Hopefully it won’t give me too much trouble.
And then I had wanted to read a bit of おばちゃんたち while I was at it, I only have like 12 pages left of the story I’m currently on, but my brain didn’t wanna do anything more novel-wise today so I just grabbed HQ vol 39 and read 2 chapters of that. It seems I can now read one chapter of it in about 10 minutes, so a whole volume would take me less than two hours, even accounting for the chapters with more text, providing I don’t get distracted! That’s a big improvement over the last time I semi timed myself with this series, where it took me closer to 4 or 5 hours for one full volume.
枯山水 (かれさんすい) [noun] traditional Chinese/Japanese dry landscape garden. Also written 枯れ山水 (thus the reading).
錦鯉 (にしきごい) [noun] colored carp; brocaded carp. a.k.a. what in English are known as “koi.”
当代 (とうだい) [noun] current head of household
一粒種 (ひとつぶだね) [noun] only child
ひとかど [noun, の-adj., adv.] a cut above the rest; superior; respectable; full-fledged
巌 (いわお) [noun] huge boulder
茶々を入れる (ちゃちゃをいれる) [expression, 一] to interrupt (with frivolous remarks, silly jokes, etc.); to butt in; to make teasing remarks
忘れ形見 (わすれがたみ) [noun] memento (from a dead person)
虚を衝く (きょをつく) [expression, カ五] to attack the enemy in the moment they’re unguarded
英気を養う (えいきをやしなう) [expression, ア五] to restore one’s energy; to restore one’s spirits; to recharge one’s batteries
はとこ [noun] second cousin. In kanji, it’s written 再 + any of the ways that いとこ can be written.
“Petty”… At least it still comes from ‘petit,’ but it’s the wrong sort of “small”… Ohh, this whole thing’s gonna give me a headache…
January 3 Home Post
Read more 山猫! I think it generally went smoothly today, though I did end up looking back at some previous passages to figure out what was going on which helped me get a better grasp of things but also wrecked my brain so not as many pages as yesterday but that’s okay. It continues to be very interesting; in my rereading I finally grasped that there are two different incidents that occurred on different days under discussion, the murdery one of which does not seem to be the work of 山猫 which makes sense, can’t exactly have your honorable thief character running around killing people lmao. But then who guess that’s the mystery huh 
. So yeah it’s still going pretty well, and it’s not like it’s a super long book so hopefully I can make some good progress in the coming days!
➳ January 4th.
What: ハイキュー！！ volume 1
Pages: 10
Time: 10 minutes.
Suuuper quick read before I’m off to work. More volleyball boys! Lots of conflict! Good stuff! Yesterday I found out several other people in my office are learning Japanese
