:books::books: Welcome to the “Read Japanese Every Day” Challenge, Winter 2024 Edition! :bamboo::snowman_with_snow::evergreen_tree: Hello! Up here in the Northern Hemisphere, we’re experiencing winter. It’s the perfect time of year to curl up under some blankets and read. For folks in the Southern Hemisphere… well you need something to take your mind off the heat, don’t you? So let’s get reading! This Season's Emoji Explanation In Japan, one of the most important holidays is New Years. Families gather together to celebrate the coming spring. One of the decorations you can find at many homes is a barrel or wooden bucket of bamboo with some other winter greenery. They represent the longevity that people hope for. The second emoji is a snowman and if you’re from a country with snow, it’s a common winter sight. However, have you noticed this emoji is a Japanese snowman? In comparison with Western snowmen that are made of 3 balls, Japanese snowmen are typically built with only 2 balls. Lastly, the final emoji is a pine tree. Across various cultures in the Northern hemisphere, pines and evergreens have stood out to ancient peoples as one of the few plants that stay green in winter. It’s a symbol of life in many cultures. Where does this challenge come from? Back in the summer of 2021, @Redglare had the great idea of a “Read Every Day” challenge, in which participants challenged themselves to read something in Japanese every day for 2 whole months. Since then and until now, @Redglare and @windupbird have hosted this challenge every season. Thanks to them, many of us have improved our Japanese and lifestyles! You might notice that I am neither a bird nor glare. I offered to take over the challenge since they’re quite busy (お疲れ様！), but of course they’re welcome to take it back at any time if they want to. I’ll do my best to keep up the encouragement! Please help us keep this a positive, encouraging, and fun space! Please feel free to bribe encourage fellow participants with cute pet and animal photos or recipes even. Archive of Past Challenge Threads Read every day challenge - Summer 2021 :beach_umbrella::beach_umbrella: Read every day challenge - Fall 2021 :maple_leaf::fallen_leaf::raccoon: Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 :snowman_with_snow::snowflake: Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 :cherry_blossom: :seedling: Read every day challenge - Summer 2022 :beach_umbrella: :sunny: Read every day challenge - Fall 2022 :maple_leaf::fallen_leaf: Read every day challenge - Winter 2023 :snowman_with_snow::snowflake: Read every day challenge - Spring 2023 :cherry_blossom::tulip::blossom: Read every day challenge - Summer 2023 :sunglasses::sunny: Read every day challenge - Fall 2023 :scarf: :fallen_leaf: :maple_leaf: While the name of the challenge is “Read Every Day,” you may have noticed that it also has a season attached. That’s because each challenge only lasts 2 months. Forever would be a long commitment. By having clear start and end dates, it becomes a much more manageable goal. At the end of the challenge, please consider what worked or didn’t work for you. Did you have fun? Then you can take a break or decide to keep going. Also, please don’t worry about starting late or not completing the challenge! Life happens. This is an open opportunity for everyone who wants to set some reading goals. Everyone is welcome. Some participants have even started tracking their reading in other languages. As @Redglare has said: This is a thread for people who: :bookmark: want to spend time reading a bunch this winter :bookmark: want to improve their reading speed and comprehension :bookmark: want to hold themselves accountable and have a place to document their progress :bookmark: simply want to join in on the challenge of reading every day for two or so months :books: :books: To add onto that, this is also a thread for people who want to track or talk about their reading too. If you’d like a computer to do most of your tracking, please check out Natively. Time frame: January 1 - February 29 Again, late starts are totally welcome! Usually people will continue posting through March and some may give some updates even later. It’s all good! You can start and finish your personal challenge at any point during that time, and shorten or lengthen the challenge to the time period that works best for you. Personally, I usually extend my reading into the 3rd month since I find these challenges have been great at helping me reach my annual reading goals. As @windupbird has said Your reading materials can be whatever you want, be it manga, light novels, books, visual novels, magazines, graded readers, satori reader, Japanese webpages/blogs, or Japanese games - you name it, anything goes as long as it is something in Japanese :jp: :durtle_the_explorer: “Reading” can be interpreted creatively, if that helps keep you motivated - for example, some people have counted reading Japanese subtitles as reading some days. In general, we are a pretty flexible and forgiving bunch :wink: Need help finding something to read? Check these threads out! The News Reading Challenge - folks typically read the easy NHK article of the day or other similar articles from various apps The "news reading" challenge 🗞 The Immersion portion of this thread has a lot of great resources The Ultimate Additional Japanese Resources List! Reading the same book with others can be pretty motivating. It’s also easier to ask about grammar or vocab, so how about joining a book club? If you don’t want to join, you could always take it as a recommended book instead. A list of book clubs can be found here: Master List of Book Clubs poll Happy reading!

The spring thread is live! [image] booksbooks Read Japanese Every Day Challenge - Spring 2024 cherry_blossomdangoseedling Reading booksbooks Welcome to the “Read Japanese Every Day” Challenge, Spring 2024 Edition! cherry_blossom dango seedling It’s a time of beginnings and flower blossoms in much of the world! For those of us with hay fever, it’s the perfect time to curl up with a book indoors. Or for the lucky, you can relax at a park and read in the sunlight. play_button This Season's Emoji Explanation Where does this challenge come from? Back in the summer of 2021, @Redglare had the great idea of a “Read Every Day” c…

Day 4 Home post :cherry_blossom: Today I read chapter 11 and half of chapter 12 in Genki 1. I also read 6 level 0 Graded Readers and tried to get the gist of the two new articles on NHK easy. Sad to read that so many people lost their life.

1月4日 Looked up to much grammar so only 1 eps form Japanese101pod. Tomorrow almost weekend.

Home Post 1月4日 Tried reading more this time but read one sentence from beginner book club and went in to deep dive of grammar. Secondly Bunpro story. That’s all. But hade fun and pushed true after a hard day of work at work.

🌸 animena's 2024 reading home post 🌸 This is my first participation for an event here! I’m starting a little late because I only saw this today. I’ll be reading everyday until the end of this January and then see and decide if I can prolong it once I’ve reached that point. Reading Weekly Progress [Week #4] GENKI I pg. 107/382 ツバサ-RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- (ENG translation) ch. 7 (until pg. 11)/233 ×××HOLiC (ENG translation) ch. 16 (until pg. 7)/213 Number of days I didn’t read so far: 3

1月4日 | Home post ふらいんぐうぃっち (2) Chapter 7 pp. 15-20 Today I also came home late, and only read the bare minimum. I listened (and later read the dialogues) to the 2 remaining lessons lessons from JapanesePod101 Lower Intermediate Season 2, finishing both the season and the JLPT N3 Recommended Course. Just in time, since my subscription expired today.

:man_walking: back to my home post :star2: 01月04日 Read: Progress: :sunrise_over_mountains: Oku Nikkou 1 episode 1/62 eps :owl: ハリーポッターと賢者の石 felt like soo much 9% :ghost: グースバンプス 1pg 12/189 pgs :crossed_swords: The Three Musketeers [eng.] chapters 3-6 80/704 pgs Let’s see… After seeing Akasheila talk about how useful Satori is for the grammar glosses, I was influenced into starting a new story. I just have to remember to carefully read the grammar glosses and think over them instead of rushing through them. Read HP for what felt like 100 years, and actually, checking back on my last update, I read a whole one percent in a day which I don’t think I’ve done before. Also, other people are posting other language reading so I will too. I’m reading the Three Musketeers in English, the Pevear Penguin Classics unabridged translation. It’s really fun, the story moves a lot quicker than Monte Cristo did. (read last year) Probably due to all the swashbuckling :person_fencing:

Home post Jan 4 Finished chapter 1 of ジョジョの奇妙な冒険. Slow-going, but it feels nice to be able to read something a bit more challenging than usual. Read another しまなみ誰そ彼 chapter. The next one is the very last one!

first few days done…!! I caught up with the ABBC on the 1st and the 2nd, and threw a few of the tadoku graded readers in there. on 1/3 because I was working from the office all day I opted to try an NHK news easy article again, especially since I’ve seen some other people reading it. I read an article about a seal doing caligraphy at an aquarium with the help of a high school student. I got the jist of it for sure, but I did read over an english translation to check my comprehension 1/4 (today) I discovered while windowshopping on bookwalker that they had given me an extra 100 coins for seemingly no reason, so I was able to pick up the first volume of happiness for free :sunny: :sunny: :sunny: I read the first chapter today, although to be fair I had read the first chapter before as a sample so it was mostly a reread + I read through the corresponding bookclub threads for more context

:umbrella: :notebook: １月４日 :memo: :umbrella: Book Natively Progress Notes :mending_heart: 可愛いだけじゃない式守さん Lv 18 82% → 100% Finished! :tada: :crossed_swords: BLEACH Lv 28 0% → 30% :crystal_ball: ありす19th Lv 20 0% → 16% :womans_hat: とんがり帽子のアトリエ Lv 26 0% → 7% Today is my Friday for the week! Once I got home, I celebrated by jumping into my softest pajamas and reading manga until my eyes crossed o(>ω <)o I finally finished Shikimori-san and it was sooo cute. Izumi’s mom was so… hey there :flushed: But I’m incredibly geeked that I finally got to fill my first bingo square!!! And because it was so exciting being able to finish a square, I immediately started “testing out” the tentative choices I’d made for other categories and read the first chapters of some to see which would pull me in next. BLEACH thoughts Bingo Category: “Won an Award” - BLEACH won the Shogakukan Manga Award in the Shounen category in 2004 Jumping into a level 28 manga after finishing a level 18 was a shock of cold water :sweat_smile: This is one of the first anime series I watched as a pre-teen and so I read this entire first chapter of the manga blasting number one in my head even though it’s been years since I’d heard it. Like, when Rukia introduces herself mid-battle?? Iconic moment that for sure had NOW YOU FEEL LIKE NUMBER ONE screaming in the background of that scene in the anime :relieved: [image] Otherwise, I was a bit shocked by how wordy this manga is. Even without taking into account the reading level of the words, nearly every panel was just a wall of text. (Though I liked the use of different fonts to give personality to whomever spoke) [image] The first chapter ended up being 30% of Volume 1 so I may just continue reading it to complete the bingo category sooner. ありす19th thoughts Bingo Category: “No Media Adaptation” - though this manga has a few translations, it doesn’t have an anime adaptation! This series was recommended to me by @Book9 ! I had a void in the “no adaptation” category and I’m a huge fan of mahou shoujo, so I moved it over from the full “recommendations” category. This series has such a nostalgic CLAMP-esque feel to it that I can easily see myself reading the entire first volume in one night. And the mangaka has since come out as non-binary so we’re basically family (＾▽＾) [image] アトリエ thoughts Bingo Category: “Beautiful Cover Art” Let me first say that I have never flipped through this series or seen a single page because it is always fully wrapped in plastic at the bookstore. But every time I’ve walked by it, I’ve always thought that the art style of the cover was just gorgeous, so it immediately made sense to me that I put this series in the category for beautiful cover art. And then when I saw the first few interior pages… I wasn’t ready. I thought the style was just for the cover art, but it’s just the way the mangaka does the entire story??? Every panel is literally so breathtaking :sob: [image] [image] [image] Even though this manga is within my regular reading level range, it is very intimidating to be the first I’ve ever read without furigana. I’ve gotten so used to it being a crutch on every kanji that I had to slow way down and read the first chapter of Atelier far more mindfully and purposefully than normal. Along with generally looking up words, I’m now needing to draw the occasional unknown kanji into my dictionary app. So this manga is extremely interesting but will definitely be one that takes me a long time to complete. ALSO THIS CHARACTER DESIGN… HI !!! :face_with_peeking_eye: [image] Phew! See you tomorrow (ﾉ´ヮ`)ﾉ*: ･ﾟ ↑ zoom back up to home thread

📚📚 Read Every Day Challenge - Winter 2024 🎍☃🌲

Japanese Language Reading

lucylavelle January 5, 2024, 12:56am 207

I’ve had a crazy few days, but I still managed to read every day!

January 2nd!
Chapter 147 of Shadows House

January 3rd!
Chapter 148 of Shadows House

January 4th!
Chapter 26 of Behind the Supermarket, Smoking With You

(Home Post)

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📚📚 Read Every Day Challenge - Winter 2024 🎍☃🌲

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