So I’m caught up on book clubs and finished the manga I had in progress on my own so it was time to pick something up. I’m pacing ahead of the goal I’d set for the year, so felt like trying something rated a bit higher on Natively (level 26). I’ll probably still end up having a second manga on the go from the easier tier for reading in bed when I fell like that (probably more volumes of 老女的少女ひなたちゃん) , but for now I started 放浪息子.
It’s something that’s been floating around to try, being such a common topic for anime that deal with trans issues, but I never got to the anime, so guess I’m trying the manga now.
It was more challenging than that page count and time would suggest, as I had a lot of second guessing what I was reading as it felt like things were jumping around and scenes were a bit disconnected from each other. Also the art style makes some of the characters look samey so I mixed up the MC and their sister, or the late teacher and a student. I actually took a look at the English manga chapter after to see if I hadn’t missed something, but it seems that kind of jumping around style is just how chapter 1 is. It may be just how the manga is written, or it may be intentional to reflect MC’s unease.
Oh no, I was hoping to read this soon, haha, but that’s not encouraging …
My hope is that Mokuro parses it alright. I’d probably do okay with the kanji, but I don’t read much in the genre at all, so I’m assuming lots of new vocab for me as well .
I suppose I could also give up and read it in English, as I’m mainly hoping to get through the first 9 volumes so that I can then read the rest in Harta, but I feel like being impatient to read Harta is not a valid enough excuse…
The first two volumes show a large vocabulary, with over 1,900 and 1,700 unique words each.
When I looked at this series as a possible read, my vocabulary analysis showed I’d be looking up unknown vocabulary in 70% of sentences; of those, half I’d be looking up multiple unknown words.
Granted, I haven’t excluded character names from my frequency lists, and there are a lot of obvious monster names such as マンドレイク and バジリスク that I haven’t added to my known words list. And I probably haven’t excluded non-content pages (such as the copyright page) from my stats.
But I still get the impression I won’t be reading this series any time soon…
Spot-checking volume one, it looks like Mokuro’s parsing is flawless. Maybe there will be some areas where it struggles, but the pages are a large resolution (1125x1600), and the font is crisp and clear.
Yeah, my guess is I will finish this vol and come back in a few months. It’s not like 猫猫(薬屋) where the furigana can really make chapters with even quite difficult terminology a breeze… Also generally I feel like the meshi crew are already talking a bit more esoteric compared to Kusuriya, where they are still largely grounded in life (of a sort)
Progress:
聞き耳のラジオ Episode 17 - 22
Spanish Short Stories for Beginners Volume 2 - Short story 2 titled “El Cocinero”
I’m actually having a harder time reading Kiki Mimi Radio than when I read Kona’s Big Adventure. Even though supposedly it’s an easier level on Satori reader. I had time to read the Satori reader appreciation thread by @mitrac over the week and really appreciated all the contributions by everyone there. Especially the ‘how I use Satori reader’ sections, which has influenced me to reread the prior episode with the accompanied audio before proceeding with the new episode. I’m also now doing that with Spanish as well. By rereading the previous chapter, I also get to review the words I wasn’t too familiar with before.
I’m new to the thread, but have been reading most days for a while now. Approximately two months ago, I decided read every day unless there’s a really good reason (sickness, visitors, etc.).
I’m reading a couple of collections of short stories right now in parallel, alternating stories from each volume. The first is a collection from 東野圭吾、a mystery writer I like. The other is a 2022 collection of short stories by contemporary authors and is interesting because many of the stories were written with an awareness of Covid, so some of the stories have related elements in their plot lines. It’s also always nice to read collections by various authors to increase exposure and perhaps find new favorites.
Weekend combo post! Between Friday and Saturday, I was able to finish Chapter 2 in both Atelier and BLEACH
Bleach is still fairly wordy but, because I expected the walls of text this time, it wasn’t as much of a shock as the first chapter was And now that the ultra-serious mood of the intro has died down a bit, we get to have some fun background Rukias
So glad that post has been helpful! Your list of new words took me right back to that story Those were the words that stuck out to me as well. What you say about the relative difficulty is interesting, I did kinda wonder if Kona’s Adventure was easier than Kiki Mimi, but since I read Kona afterwards, I wasn’t sure if I had just gotten used to reading more.
did another chapter of the granblue bnha collab. was originally only going to do one bit cos i’m exhausted but i managed the whole thing so i’ll take it.
random uraraka thing
didn’t realise when i originally watched the series back whenever that was but uraraka occasionally uses や in place of だ which sort of makes sense (ig, if you squint) cos she comes from Mie (apparently) but for the life of me i can’t work out when specifically she’ll use it, it seems almost at random, plus she has no other dialect features as far as i can tell??? maybe it’s in the accent and i just can’t hear it
I’ve read a few more pages of Alice 19th. Honestly, I’m surprised with how consistent I am with basically reading something every day.
I guess it made a huge difference to take out all expectations about amount of reading and language. Just let myself read what I feel like.
And this is despite it being pretty low on my priority list. It helps that I picked something easy to read in Japanese, and something I love. That means I’ll happily pick it up right before bed even for just a few pages.
Continuing on reading more 放浪息子. It continues to be challenging for its relationship with time more so than the vocab. I mean there was also a bunch of references to roles in a play I don’t know, but to give an example, in chapter 3 there’s a conversation about which role to play which sort of flows from a classroom scene, to the characters walking home, to one of the characters having a meal with their parents to the characters meeting up again for another character’s birthday party. Sort of presenting a bunch of not-actually-the-same-conversation as a continuous flow. But at other times, it just does what feels like a sudden scene change and the topic entirely changes. It’s enough to make me second guess my feeling of what the conversation is.
Chapter 151 of Shadows House today. I really enjoyed this one. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Barbie, even though she’s been an antagonist for the whole series so far.
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放浪息子 1
Manga
Chapter 1
28 pages
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１月 １２日、１３日 
Those were the words that stuck out to me as well. What you say about the relative difficulty is interesting, I did kinda wonder if Kona’s Adventure was easier than Kiki Mimi, but since I read Kona afterwards, I wasn’t sure if I had just gotten used to reading more.