Home post and thread1月3日水曜日
ホリミヤ vol. 1, 2 pages.
I love these two idiots 
Next is the beginning of chapter 2 so I guess tonight I’m celebrating the fact I’ve read my first whole manga chapter in japanese ! \o/ Cheers ! 
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wait i’m interested… [googles] do you have the fifth edition or the sixth edition? looks like sixth edition comes in two volumes
also…while we’re on the topic of history books, do you or @pm215 (shameless ping) have japanese history book recommendations? all i’ve read is the brett walker concise history of japan which was uh, VERY concise
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I haven’t read anything about the history of Japan myself but I have seen this even more concise video!
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hire a samurai ← my brain for the last seven years since this was uploaded
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I’d seen the “entire history of the world” version of this but not the Japan one. YouTube has been recommending one of those “Japanese person reacts” to this videos to me for ages, but been ignoring it as I hadn’t seen the original. I guess I’ll see that next time it shows up to see how accurate they think it is. It at least corresponds with my knowledge from anime and video games 
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University of Cambridge lists a book called “Japan before Perry” in the to-read list for Asian Studies students:
I have it sitting on my nighttable but haven’t read it yet 
So if you want to know any details, I can look them up (but only from next week).
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haha this was one of my textbooks in undergrad, anything by Totman will be dense but very informative. I enjoyed his environmental history of Japan text as well, which inspired one of my master’s theses on Tokugawa agriculture
@soggyboy Other than Totman, Andrew Gordon is a great resource for Japanese history. This one was one of the few textbooks that I actually really enjoyed being assigned:
edit: sorry, just remembered this one, too 
For something other than a textbook, Musui’s Story is the autobiography of an actual samurai who was very honest about how reckless and privileged samurai could be, as well as how deep in debt he got himself ahaha. His son ended up being a very famous character during the Perry years for strategy and international know-how, the total opposite of his father. It’s a very quick and entertaining read
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January 3rd
Today I’ve gone through Genki 1 chapter 8 - 10 and read 5 lvl 0 Tadoku Books. My pace through grammar is too fast but I plan on going through the chapter multiple times. Reading speed has improved and that’s fun!
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In case you don’t know about it already, for Genki 1, I highly recommend doing the exercices for each lesson on this website: Genki Exercises - 3rd Edition | Genki Study Resources
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Ohh thank you so much! Will 100% start doing those, I feel like it’s easy to cheat oneself to believe you know stuff when you are just passive reading it so this site looks like a huge help to combat that!
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Yaaayy, thank you!!
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I have the 3rd edition actually! It’s the first of the “new manuals” with, with the 4th, 5th, and 6th having basically the same structure and layout, just more. I’m no maximalist though, this is plenty for me right now 
There’s an adage that you can’t understand the history of japan (or anywhere in east asia) without first understanding the history of china, and that’s primarily the angle I’m coming at this from. I would like to know enough chinese history to situate my study of japanese history.
I can +1 both of these, they are also heavily referenced by the japanese history podcast I listen to. Really all the shownotes on this site are just a gold mine for sources if that’s what you’re looking for
These two also come up quite a bit. I haven’t read as much of them as I’d like, but ain’t that just the way. 
The first is a collection of 2 volumes of translated primary sources with some commentary and introductory essays (even if you tried to read most of these in japanese, you would still need to be reading a modernized version of them btw), and the second is a 3 volume set covering the history of japan through 1867.
(And there’s the previously mentioned okinawa book)
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Yussss, thank you!!!
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Day 2
Today I continued playing Master Detective Archive I started the last chapter. It’ finally time to solve the mystery of the town, that is the location of this game. What dark mysteries await us and what is the inside the meat buns everyone loves to eat? Everyone who is interested in playing this game don’t read what’s hidden by the spoiler tags.
The main character wakes up in some unknown place. What is going on and why are zombies everywhere? It’s time to search this whole place. Bit by bit we find clues what’s happened here and unfortunately we find the corpses of our detective buddies. Why did they have to die just a meaningless death as zombie food? What’s going on here? The time has come to solve all the mysteries.
Playing this game made me hungry I want to eat a meat bun.
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Home post // Jan 3 
・ 夏のレプリカ Replaceable Summer (24% → 27%)
Another short read. Gotta get up early tomorrow, will be traveling. Can read a bunch then instead :3
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I don’t have any recommendations in the “general overview” category. I have read and liked these (biased rather toward my personal interest in early Meiji history); largely more pop history than academic:
- Peasants, Rebels, Women and Outcastes (Mikiso Hane) – fills in the stories of some of the groups who were not so much borne up by the Meiji restoration and its modernisation programme, and which the general “progress!” narrative tends to leave out
- Low City, High City (Edward Seidensticker) – Seidensticker is not a historian, but he clearly had a deep fondness for Tokyo of this period, from the Meiji restoration to the 1923 earthquake, and he draws on anecdotes and quotations from authors and poets of the period to back up his sketches of the city and its changes. (There is a second volume, Tokyo Rising, covering the post quake period up to the 1980s, but IMHO it’s not as good, as the author’s heart was not really in it – he freely admits that he has more affection for the earlier time period.)
- The Coming of the Barbarians (Pat Barr) – entertaining and readable account of the first westerners in Japan in 1853–1870, largely from their point of view. Colourful picture of the kinds of optimists, chancers and traders floating around Yokohama in those early years.
- Early Japanese Railways 1853-1914 (Dan Free) – I am a bit of a train nerd as well as a Meiji history nerd, and this book hits both at once. Copiously illustrated from the author’s personal collection of photographs and prints – practically every page has at least one image. If the topic is at all interesting to you you should get this book.
Some readable primary sources:
- A Diplomat in Japan (Sir Ernest Satow) – Satow was a junior British diplomat in Japan during the years covering the arrival of the western nations; this is his contemporaneous diary (as later edited by him for publication)
- Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (Isabella Bird) – Bird travelled from Tokyo to Hokkaido in 1878, and wrote an account of her travels through remote parts of Japan that practically no westerners had visited before, including visiting the Ainu. (This one is freely available via Project Gutenberg.)
- Makiko’s Diary: A Merchant Wife in Kyoto (Nakano Makiko, trans. Kazuko Smith) – translation of a diary covering a single year, 1910. Window into how merchant families of the time lived.
The NHK also has their 日本史 programmes online as part of their 高校講座 series, which covers the high school Japanese history programme in forty 20 minute programmes which run in chronological order from ancient history to the present day. I recommend these mostly for the perspective on what gets taught in schools and for the listening practice.
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home post
2024年1月3日
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Title | Read today | Currently at | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
奥日光 | 2 episodes | 21/62 | — |
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舞妓さんちのまかないさん | 3 chapters | 89/261 | — |
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阪急電車 | 2.85% | 16.35% | 51 new words |
舞妓さんちのまかないさん Chapter 87
Making progress in Kansai-ben, example of a panel where I didn’t need to look up / translate anything to get the meaning:
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2024-01-03
Previous
Home
| Date | Name | Type | Amount | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-01-03 |  老女的少女ひなたちゃん |
 Manga |
 4 chapters (73 pages) |
1h |
I read 4 chapters of 老女的少女ひなたちゃん
Today I laughed at this panel. The girl climbed into a second story window nonchalantly to see her sick friend.
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I see i chose the right time to get back into history podcasts and vaguely think about my poor neglected Kindle english account
Jan 4 | Home
- A half chapter of 夜カフェ, will probably read more later. Reading on the deck in the sun is very nice.
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1月3日
I have read a different story on satori reader and that what about grammar. Explanations are solid.
Just a tid bit, hopefully tomorrow up to speed with the book club.
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