Listening challenge was a success! Finished all 100 hours, and then pretty much immediately jumped into vacation mode. I was planning to do a big reading challenge this month and try to read my remaining volumes of ３月のライオン in ３月, but i’ve made it a lot harder on myself by taking a 2 week vacation right at the start
I did bring a handful of volumes with me, but based on how much I’ve been able to read per day I will definitely be playing catch-up when I get back.
Today I finished the first volume of the challenge, 2/16 down! (I already read volume 1 last summer during my Operation Clean Out Javerend’s Bookshelf challenge)
some pretty pictures! although i'll have nicer ones from my camera when i get back
Some very long long driving days to get down here, and in pretty bad conditions going through the mountains. A huge blizzard closed some of the roads we wanted to use, so we had to take a longer route.
Something wonderful happened: it just clicked and I was reading page after page in a focused flow state. I got over the introduction and am now looking at normal-looking dialogue! It seems very manageable… from here on a boy meets a girl and I’m back on mostly solid ground after all that antimatter propulsion drive technology.
My new #1 enemy is all the vocabulary that doesn’t use kanji. 「ジントはひそかにうめいた。」, two hiragana lookups in one short sentence.
One of the characters uses そなた consistently. They also express their wishes with ___がよい. 「許すがよいぞ。」 I’ll try to avoid replicating these myself.
Another thing I now feel when reading a lot of text vertically: when I lose my place, it takes actual ages to get back to wherever I was. With manga I’ve never lost my bearings but in this sea of writing it’s so easy, especially when scrolling. I’m back to turning pages just so that the text stays still.
Another accidentally a whole volume of Ms Elf though this was yesterday evening and I will need to go over again with lookups
I ended up scanning Vols 8 and 9 of Ms Elf as well but can’t really count it as reading, more pre-prep
I think I’m beginning to get tired of quickly reading stuff and want to start counting re-reads or lookup runs of stuff as reading. Will probably stick out the rest of March and then slow my pace a bit. Been thinking about maybe the next listening challenge and just checking in on the reading challenge from time to time.
For as much as I feel neutral about Stake , I gotta say, Remon is best girl.
Japanese Colors was about Hinamatsuri and the new season. For the middle subsection of this season, peach blossoms feature. The book made a fun point that “peach” color in English is based on the fruit while in Japan, 桃色 is based on the blossoms.
As for Fluffy Yakuza the best laid plans of mice and men… I’m hoping to finish it tonight and then probably sell it back some other time.
I’m still reading every day, I just got lazy about posting every day here lol
March 3rd, 2024:
Two more chapters from the TWC, and no NHK Easy articles because I had none left (very rare that this happens lol). I planned to translate an NHK “normal” article during March because I’m already done with a good chunk of N3 grammar. (I still haven’t started, but it’s on my to-do list)
March 4th, 2024:
Two more chapters from the TWC, two NHK Easy articles because I was too lazy to read them all
March 5th, 2024:
Two more chapters from the TWC, one NHK Easy article because I was even lazier than the day before lmao
For today’s reading challenge, I finished this week’s IBC reading of セラー服と機関銃。It went at pretty much the same speed as least week’s reading, which is good enough for me I think.
Feels easier, the discussions flow very naturally. These longer conversations are actually something I’ve been missing when reading only manga. Settling in and enjoying the ride.
The アーヴ consist of 皇族、貴族 and 士族. Accordingly, I’ve already seen 陛下、殿下 and 閣下. From what I gather 陛下 is only used for the emperor / empress but I’ve yet to deduce when you’re supposed to use 殿下 and when 閣下.
(Just two boys with deep mutual affection saying farewells, right? )
As a side effect of reading this book, I’m happy that my very first suggestions to JMdict were approved! Soon you should be able to look up these new entries:
光帆
太陽帆
腕環
Among these actual real words, there’s a bunch of made up things like 頭環 and 翔士修技生 in the vocabulary. But these are actually very easy to read and comprehend compared to all the kana-only vocabulary that I seriously lack in… くっきり, てっきり, すらり, ぴっちりした, うんざりした, あやふや, きょとん … can we please get more kana-only vocabulary into WaniKani? Is there some additional resource for kana-only vocabulary I should be aware of?
Back to work, alas. Giving a new manga a look, 焼いてるふたり 1, which is a slice-of-life cooking manga with a focus on meat. I’ve already read part of this in eng, so hopefully will absorb me in enough to keep going beyond where I read up to, but either way I have 3 volumes of this already.
I know I already figured out a solution to this but it really annoys me I have to do a convoluted process to save handwritten notes on a page of manga (and blow up the file size by like 3 times) when it really should just be built into like every reader app
I don’t have much experience with driving yet, but I’ve heard sunglasses or yellow tinted glasses can improve contrasts in low-contrast scenarios such as white snow. Or just wearing your glasses helps too (Sometimes just glasses is not enough though, e.g. those with cataracts.)
As for increased blurred vision at night, that sounds like night myopia. It’s because the pupil gets bigger in the dark, then instead of gathering in a spot to create a sharp image, the few light rays that hits the back of the eye creates a bigger blurred image. It’s called the pinhole effect.
That’s why some people experience improved vision when they try on pinhole glasses because those peripheral rays get blocked off.
Ah, I forgot to say DC is the counter for astigmatism power. So the astigmatism/CYL/cylinder in your left eye is -0,75 DC in 160 degrees. Not a lot, but it’s a bit, the nearsightedness of yours.
(If I had the vocab to talk about vision in simple terms in English, I’d explain more. I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s whole different language )
花野井くんと恋の病 vol. 2 (A condition called love), end of chapter 6.
I mixed up some of the subjects of a bunch of sentences again. I’m tired tonight, but I also think that manga don’t really help. To me, sometimes, they really lack context.
Downside of riding train with people I know: Not much reading is done.
Perks of riding train with people I know: Classmate convinced me I should buy a house or apartment.
Taking it slow today with 焼いてる二人, no need to rush.
I’m hearing today’s ダン飯 might actually cover three chapters despite the preview, so I might have to read an extra chapter tonight/tomorrow to be up to date and then read ahead another two - three (difficult) chapters next week. Well, it’s not like it’s a problem… will probably just put Ms Elf lookup run on hold for a bit.
Gym time… probably should reset a bit lower since I had a vacation and then I was sick for a few days :T
３月５日 
Home post and thread
The Jam Maker on Satori Reader, episodes 2 & 3. It’s beginning slooooowly.
2024年3月6日 
Previous
Home post
セラー服と機関銃
Novel
IBC Week 3
8% → 12%
14 pages
45m
)
= 出汁巻玉子
. Second Kanji is usually ソウ (e.g. 喧騒), 騒ぎ or 騒めき
March 5
(Sometimes just glasses is not enough though, e.g. those with cataracts.)
)
花野井くんと恋の病 vol. 2 (A condition called love), end of chapter 6.