: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…

9th jan home post another (difficult :sob: ) chapter of ouran which finished off vol 6. vols 5 and 6 were a noticeable improvement on the ones before, at least for me, cos there were a lot more fourth wall/meta jokes which were always the part i enjoyed most in the anime. also made a start on ドラゴン、家(いえ)を買(か)う vol 2 and ehhh i’ll finish it. could have read two chapters but wasn’t feeling it. today’s nhk article was this one, plus another granblue chapter, and the entries on に限(かぎ)って (i meant に限(かぎ)らず yesterday, i mistyped…) and に関(かん)して in aDoIJG words that stood out, foods edition: 桜蘭(おうらん)：オマール - lobster コンソメ - consommé, clear soup マリネ - marinade ラー油(ゆ) - (chinese) chilli oil

Jan 9, Tue of Week 2 of Q1 2024 STEINS;GATE (VN) Ch.6 いちばんやさしい世界史の本 Ch.3 (33-34%) 狼と香辛料 Vol.1 Ch.4 (59-67%) Words of the day 折おり紙付がみつき = certified; guaranteed; notoriously. Just nice to have 折おり紙がみ attached (which is somehow 検定証けんていしょう). 寝入ねいりばなを起おこされる = being woken just when one has just fallen asleep. The first part is 寝入ねいり端ばな. 皮算用かわざんよう = unreliable estimate. From 捕とらぬ狸たぬきの皮算用かわざんよう, counting tanuki pelts before they are caught (and skinned). 外征がいせい = foreign military campaign. Probably like 遠征えんせい, without emphasizing farness. ～ぼったい. = appearing quite. 腫はれぼったい in context. Probably grammar, but I can’t find a grammar page for this one. Book highlights デリー＝スルターン朝 = Delhi Sultanate - Wikipedia ムガル帝国 = Mughal Empire - Wikipedia バーブル = Babur - Wikipedia シャー＝ジャハーン = Shah Jahan - Wikipedia. Built タージ＝マハル廟. (Pronounced びょう perhaps.) アウラングゼーブ = Aurangzeb - Wikipedia

:dragon: :red_gift_envelope: １日８月 :red_gift_envelope: :dragon: (Home Post Link) Big wind storm knocked out power for a few hours during my prime attention time, and so also my ambitions of reading as much as I wanted to today. Read: とらドラ！ 194 → 200 - finally in the 200s and over 80% done! feels like I’m in the home stretch at last :tiger2: Analects - Book 1 and 2 - now that I’m into the actual text, it’s a lot slower to read and digest. In no hurry though, something like this benefits from a slow, careful reading (and probably re-reading) CHNM - 26 → 32 - done with language history, on to script!

:cherry_blossom: :teapot: Home post and thread 1月9日火曜日 :notes: Kiki-Mimi Radio, episodes 15 and 16. I really wanted to do more, but I’m too tired… :smiling_face_with_tear:

1月5日 - 薬屋くすりやのひとりごと 1月6日 - 薬屋のひとりごと 1月7日 - 薬屋のひとりごと 1月8日 - 薬屋のひとりごと Working through a backlog of 月刊げっかんビッグガンガン magazines with a chapter each. The palace / royalty / China in the Middle Ages vocabulary is still slowing me down every now and then… but hey, I’ll take it as a history lesson. Full furigana really helps to make this a relatively laid-back read. (Watched one episode of the anime with subtitles just to hear the voice actors and they had translated 後宮こうきゅう as “rear palace”, I think “inner palace” has a much better ring to it.) 1月9日 - となりの猫と恋知らず 7 Another new chapter, these are rolling in quick. Third character introduced. Not sure whether to read 兎原 as うばら or とはら, kinda surprised this series doesn’t have furigana… (Also can’t believe 兎うさぎ isn’t in WaniKani at all!) I felt the presence of 地主 in this panel [何この男は]

:bookmark: Home post // Jan 9 :bamboo: :snowman_with_snow: :evergreen_tree: ・夏のレプリカ Replaceable Summer (54% → 63%) Today was a good relaxing day. Nice weather, not so cold anymore (just -10 C), so my glasses didn’t freeze over while walking outside in the sun. Tomorrow will probably be busy.

2024-01-09 :previous_track_button: Previous | :house: Home post | Next :next_track_button: Date Name Type Amount Time 2024-01-09 :books: 本好きの下剋上第一部３ :green_book: Manga :arrow_forward: 1 chapter :page_facing_up: 12 pages 15m :deciduous_tree: 小さな森のオオカミちゃん２ :green_book: Manga :arrow_forward: 5 chapters :page_facing_up: 89 pages 35m So I wanted to do some reading before bed last night, but I wanted something with less lookups required for me than 本好きの下剋上 or デジモンサヴァイブ, so I started the second volume of 小さな森のオオカミちゃん after reading the first volume with the book club some time ago. It’s certainly still the easiest Japanese content I’ve read (so good for pre-bed reading), and I read basically half the volume in one sitting, which is the most at ease I’ve felt reading Japanese. Since I’d already posted yesterday’s challenge update before reading that, I’m including it in today’s (also given the time I went to bed, it technically was today already). On the other end of my personal difficulty spectrum, I read the bonus chapter of 本好きの下剋上第一部３。Which turned out to be the most difficult chapter in the manga, despite only being 12 pages long, at least for me. Fantasy cooking, _with ingredients that they didn’t even give furigana for. I spent way too long trying to figure out why neither jotoba or jisho had an entry for 野莱. By taking the kanji on their own I guess it’s meant to be “wild goosefoot”, which turns out to be an type of plant that I didn’t even know the name of English. Jisho/Jotoba both just kept telling me it’s a historical Chinese place name. Anyway, since this turned out to be a cooking chapter, I’m going to guess that instead it the short story that covers the introduction.

Jan 10 Flew through today’s 夜カフェ、nearly done! left on a cliffhanger in 心やばい5 last night so will definitely get back to that Not sure if I’ll jump straight into another novel after 夜カフェ、might give it a little rest. I’m fully yomitan pilled now though, it makes skimming so easy

1月9日 | Home post ふらいんぐうぃっち (2) Chapter 9 pp. 63-64 Only 2 pages read today, because I’m not feeling well. I hope I’m not coming down with something. I’m going to sleep now.

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

Japanese Language Reading

lucylavelle January 9, 2024, 6:47pm 338

January 9th!

A chapter of スーパーの裏でヤニ吸うふたり today. I struggled with it a bit, not sure why, might just not be at my sharpest because I’m a bit tired!

(Home Post)

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

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