📚📚 Read Japanese Every Day Challenge - Spring 2024 🌸🍡🌱

[Marifly]

June 27 | Home post

2500 characters from Island today

[hughlings]

6月27日 | Home post

• LOOPERS 1367 characters

[Lisaveeta]

Started another SR story 「壁の穴」today. Will continue reading it into the “summer” reading challenge.

[Jintor]

@PotatoDancer

I opened Little Witch in the Woods today because I tell myself that I have to be getting close if I can just figure out how/where to get the new potion recipes from

Funny story, I realised I was confusing Little Witch in the Woods with another witch in a village game, Little Goodie Two Shoes. Lol.

28 June | Study Log

	Title	Type	Natively	Progress
	世にも奇妙な商品カタログ 1	light novel	23	28% → 32%
	悪役令嬢おじさん１	manga	28	0 → 22%
	紡ぐ乙女と大正の月 1	manga	29	31% ()

• Half-chapter of カタログ. Still working on my stamina.
• Chapter of 悪役令嬢おじさん. A bit more difficult than I was anticipating but still manageable over time, like most things.
• I forgot Fridays were my designated だん飯 days so will spin up a chapter today if I feel like it… or push it out another day! I can do what I like!

[lucylavelle]

June 26th!
8 more chapters of Kawazuya.

June 27th!
10 chapters of Kawazuya today, finishing off the first volume.

(Home Post)

[PotatoDancer]

Home Post

6月28日

I spent some time looking at my encyclopedia because I want to make progress filling out all the new creatures. I have to make the mice angry 激怒(げきど), and I have to brew some potions to help gather others.

Reading the encyclopedia doesn’t pause time, but I only need one page at a time really, so I’ve been taking screenshots and pausing the game to read.

Also it’s fishing time There’s a fishing encyclopedia. That’s going to take a while to complete. Luckily the fishing encyclopedia has time and location written down even for fish that are marked as ???.

	Reading	Type	Status
	原罪物語 -罪-	LN	44/252
	ノーゲーム・ノーライフ 1	LN	21/301
	VA-11 Hall-A	Steam game	Day 2 out of ??
	Little Witch in the Woods	Steam game	Month 2 day 27 out of ??

New Vocab

• 膨(ふく)らむ = to become inflated
• クサブエ = 草笛(くさぶえ) = reed pipe (クサブエムシ = small grass bug, fictional to this game)
• 毛髪(もうはつ) = hair
• カルクナル = 軽(かる)く成(な)る = become lighter, the “diet potion” in English translation (also reading in katakana is harder than reading in hiragana, pls give kanji)
• おままごと = playing house
• 班長(はんちょう) = group/squad leader, wk48
• 木札(きふだ) = wooden tag
• ボロボロ = tattered
• 読(よ)み取(と)る = to read and understand
• 木炭(もくたん) = charcoal
• 異臭(いしゅう)を放(はな)つ = to give off a stench
• 雑巾(ぞうきん) = dust cloth, wk47
• ガラクタ = 我楽多(がらくた) = junk
• 火打(ひう)ち石(いし) = flint
• 駆除(くじょ) = extermination
• 追伸(ついしん) = postscript (PS)
• 滝(たき) = waterfall, wk45
• 概(おおむ)ね = generally
• 登場(とうじょう) = entrance, appearance
• 謎解(なぞと)き = solving a riddle (also one of my favorite vocaloid songs…)
• 対面(たいめん) = meeting face to face
• 昼間(ひるま) = daytime
• ウキウキ = 浮き浮き = cheerfully
• 様子(ようす) = appearance
• 支柱(しちゅう) = supports, braces
• 騒々(そうぞう)しい = noisy
• 竿(さお) = rod/pole
• 習得(しゅうとく)する = to learn/acquire a skill
• エサ = 餌(えさ) = (fishing) bait, animal feed
• 食(く)いつく = to nibble
• 浅瀬(あさせ) = sand bar, shoal
• 抽象的(ちゅうしょうてき) = abstract
• 泡(あわ) = bubbles, wk46
• 惹(ひ)かれる = to be attracted by
• 水槽(すいそう) = aquarium, wk57
• 裏目(うらめ)に出(で)る = to backfire
• 勝手(かって)に = without asking permission
• 汲(く)む = to draw water
• 寛大(かんだい) = generous
• ホコリ = 埃(ほこり) = dust
• 順調(じゅんちょう) = doing well
• 頂(いただ)く = to receive (omg this is where いただきます comes from surely)
• ばね = spring

[DIO-Berry]

June 27

	Book	Pages
	スーパーの裏でヤニ吸うふたり 4	68 - 71

Ooop, I knew the sleepies got me but I didn’t realize it was that bad lol

[Marifly]

June 28 | Home post

Lots of reading today - a couple of weekly readings from book clubs, a few pages in a text book, 2000 characters from Island Even though it’s still hard and I have to look up a lot, I really feel that the more I read, the easier it gets. I can’t wait to see where I’ll be in 3 months, 6 months or a year!

[Jintor]

29 June | Study Log

	Title	Type	Natively	Progress
	ダンジョン飯9	manga	30	0 → 32%
	世にも奇妙な商品カタログ 1	light novel	23	32% ()
	悪役令嬢おじさん１	manga	28	22% ()
	紡ぐ乙女と大正の月 1	manga	29	31% ()

• Two chapters of ダン飯, second was a bit easier than the first but both weren’t too bad (or maybe I was just more relaxed when reading them idk). Mmm, reading for fun, how enjoyable.

[lucylavelle]

June 28th!

Started Volume 2 of かわずや, and read 8 chapters.

Today is the last day of my visit to Canada, so I’ll be travelling all day tomorrow, and the time-zone change while I do that will mean I lose 7 hours. I’ll cram some reading in on one of my flights though hopefully!

(Home Post)

[DIO-Berry]

June 28

	Book	Pages
	スーパーの裏でヤニ吸うふたり 4	72 - 82

I had a few spare minutes to read last night. Looking forward to more reading today

[hughlings]

6月28-29日 | Home post

Finished Chapter 2 of LOOPERS today.

6月28日: LOOPERS 1132 characters

6月29日: LOOPERS 4753 characters

[Marifly]

June 29 | Home post

2500 characters from Island today.

[Jintor]

30 June | Study Log

	Title	Type	Natively	Progress
	紡ぐ乙女と大正の月 1	manga	29	31% → 38%
	ダンジョン飯9	manga	30	32% ()
	世にも奇妙な商品カタログ 1	light novel	23	32% ()
	悪役令嬢おじさん１	manga	28	22% ()

Last day of the spring autumn challenge!

• The week’s IMC chapter for 大正. Cute and fun.
• Might read more 悪役令嬢…

[Lisaveeta]

And that’s a wrap for the Spring reading challenge for me!

Managed to read an SR episode every day bar one, completed 2 stories 「ジャム屋さん」& 「聞き耳ラジオ」as well as starting a third, 「壁の穴」.

Looking forward to joining the “summer”challenge.

@DIO-Berry

[fallynleaf]

@fallynleaf

I’ll probably be back in this thread one last time to share whatever tanka I end up writing for Hyper Misao’s produce show, haha!

Just realized I totally forgot to do this!

This post is horrifically late, but I wanted to wrap up what I started here, so here’s one last update:

The author of 推し短歌入門 says that tanka should ideally be written vertically, all in one line. This is because some techniques like the 一字空け (leaving a space between words) can’t be used if you separate out the 句.

So here are all of my tanka written vertically (they’re in order from right to left):

I changed my third poem a bit after receiving feedback from folks in my study log!

And here are the explanations for a bonus tanka I wrote by accident, and then the one that was the entire point of this endeavor in the first place (warning: long):

@fallynleaf

下の句は十音だけで字足らずで申し訳ありません

Explanation of the inspiration and construction

This one happened by accident. I commented to a friend that it was kind of a shame I hadn’t tried to write any comedy wrestling tanka, considering how big of a DDT and TJPW fan I am. My friend jokingly suggested an “apology tanka” (like how TJPW wrestler Mahiro Kiryu has a move where she apologizes on top of her opponent), which made me burst out laughing.

I started writing out 申し訳ございません just to count the mora, realized it was an extremely awkward number for tanka (11), and swapped it out for a 申し訳ありません because 10 in two splittable parts felt more doable somehow. Then it occurred to me that it would be funny for the tanka to be apologizing for itself, so I set up the 上の句 to be an orthodox 5-7-5 whose entire purpose was to apologize for the rest of the poem being 字足らず.

It came together pretty effortlessly! I don’t think it’ll really read as a poem inspired by wrestling to anyone else, haha, but to me it sounds exactly like something Mahiro would say in some sort of random Misao gimmick match with a stipulation where the wrestlers have to write tanka or something.

夢を出て現実のなか生きるのは愛情という試練を受ける

Explanation of the inspiration and construction

This is it. The poem I read an entire book in one month in order to compose. My final project of sorts.

Obviously the inspiration for this one was Hype 2 on April 19, Hyper Misao’s second produce show! The rest of this section will contain spoilers for that show, so just a heads up.

My listening comprehension for the show as a whole was… less than great . This one was even more Hiragana Muscle-esque than the last, so there was even more talking, which was fun but also a steep challenge for my poor listening comprehension. A lot of it was enjoyable even if you just caught a bit, though. Here’s an (English) summary of it if you’d like more context for the rest of this description.

I will say I was not really a fan of the ガングロ stuff just because it is visually so close to blackface. A few of my Black friends who are fellow wrestling fans saw some photos of the wrestlers in ganguro costumes and were a bit appalled. I’m not exactly sure of the full history and cultural context of the ガングロ style and am not in a position to be able to speak about it in the context of blackface as we know it elsewhere in the world, but it was enough to make my Black friends pretty uncomfortable.

That aside, the rest of the show was really fun! I deeply enjoyed the 男装コンカフェ characters that Mahiro Kiryu, Toga, and Haru Kazashiro played in this, especially Mahiro, who did an amazing job with the role. It felt like a natural evolution from her brief Takarazuka Revue character in last year’s Hype. I would have preferred it without the underage wrestlers also participating, but considering how tame it was (and how obviously it was them playing joke stage characters and not trying to portray any sort of real romance), it’s not a big deal.

I loved the magical girl storyline with Raku (it reminded me of my own abandoned writing project from early 2022 that reimagined TJPW as a magical girl anime, haha), and recognized Shoko’s voice portraying the rabbit immediately after spending so many hours translating her. I wish shupro had a better recap or a transcript of Raku’s (real) story about how she became an idol, because that’s the main part I really wish I had been able to catch… I caught only bits and pieces .

I loved, loved the climax of this one, which involved Raku needing to undergo a grueling ordeal in order to wake up from the dream that she was in. I thought it was such a neat way to weave together Raku’s pro wrestling character, who is very sleep-oriented (she has a signature move called the “Oyasumi Express” which is referencing the train of the same name, and which also involves sleeping, and she has a move where she puts her opponents to sleep by singing them a lullaby, and her trademark weapon is a pillow) with the fantasy world created by this show. In many of Raku’s recent post-match comments, dreams and characters going into dreams have been recurring themes, so it fits very well here.

What was the grueling ordeal, you ask? Nothing less than a surprise singles match with the legend Aja Kong.

This was where I thought the TJPW of it all really shone through in such a wonderful and special way.

Being a legend, Aja is easily one of the strongest wrestlers in joshi, and she almost never gets pinned in any company. She’s super tough and scary, a large, intimidating wrestler who built most of her career as a monster heel. Raku, meanwhile, is one of the weaker wrestlers on the TJPW roster, who took over two years to get her first win, and who still wins fairly infrequently to this day.

But the real special thing in this match was not that incredible disparity between the unbeatable Aja Kong and the easily defeatable Raku. What was so special about it is that this was the first time in four years of TJPW matches together that Aja and Raku had stood on opposite corners.

Aja Kong has been in 22 TJPW matches so far. She has tagged with Raku for 9 of those (and tagged with Raku’s usual tag partners for 2 more). Aja Kong loves Raku. She has never wanted to hurt her.

This was my favorite Aja Kong match that I’ve seen so far. I’m sure most of her best work happened long before I started watching wrestling, and maybe eventually I’ll check some of that out (once modern wrestling stops monopolizing so much of my time), but I thought the emotion in this was really good and really unique. It was totally different from every other Aja Kong match in TJPW, especially her other singles matches, where she typically is some sort of final boss character for the younger wrestlers to frustratedly and futilely throw themselves against.

I don’t think anyone had any illusions that Raku was going to win this, dream or not, but it was still emotional to watch her try. The point of this match wasn’t for Raku to win, but rather for her to endure the ordeal.

After Aja beats her, she hugs Raku and Raku just cries in her arms for a bit. That, too, is different, not for TJPW as a whole, but for Aja Kong matches here.

I browsed the #tjpwHYPE hashtag after the show, and I liked this tweet from a fan: “マッスル/まっするでもそうなのだけど、演劇的な世界、物語的な世界から一気に戦い、そしてその中から溢れてくる感情という「リアル」へと転じていく一瞬が本当に感動するんよね”. The person compares this show to Hiragana Muscle, talking about how the moment where it suddenly goes from a theatrical, story-like setting to a fight, and from there the emotions start overflowing and it becomes real, that’s really moving. I think I totally agree! Most of the Hiragana Muscle shows end up with at least someone in tears, usually Muscle Sakai (who created Hiragana Muscle, and whom Misao has named as one of her biggest influences), but often other performers as well, and I think it’s because of pro wrestling’s ability to take it from merely a stage play to being somehow realer than that.

As soon as the show ended, I started trying to think about what I wanted to write my tanka about. The two topics under consideration were the 男装コンカフェ and Raku’s ordeal to escape the dream. I ended up having no real concrete ideas for the 男装コンカフェ, so I scrapped that.

An early draft had some sort of wordplay based around 試練 and 試合 both being 試 + a homophone of a word for love (恋 and 愛 specifically), but I couldn’t really wrangle that in a way that both made sense and didn’t feel too contrived. I had 恋愛という夢を見る in the 下の句 for a bit, but 恋愛 seems to be more specifically romantic love, so despite the fun wordplay, it wasn’t really a good fit because I don’t think that’s really what this is about.

I thought more about Raku’s ordeal, and I realized that the interpretation that I liked was that the real ordeal wasn’t that Raku had to face an impossibly strong opponent, but that Raku and Aja both had to push past their love for each other to have that match (and I suppose Raku also agreed to do it for love of the fans and all of that, too). So the 下の句 came together easily after that: 愛情という試練を受ける.

The first part took a lot more thought. An earlier draft played around with the two different meanings of “dream”; I think I had 叶った夢を in there at one point. I finally settled on 夢を出て現実のなか生きるのは after much deliberation.

Before posting it, I actually took the time to ask a native speaker for their opinions on this one! I messaged the Japanese TJPW fan who has helped me a bit with some translation questions, who has been interacting with English TJPW fandom as a way to practice their English. They actually went to see Hype 2 in person, so they’re very familiar with the source material for my poem.

Here was the extremely sweet response I received:

Sugoi! Your tanka suits the format of it, especially syllables.
You want to express the theme of HYPE!2. I’m moved with your tanka.

You know the poem is a bit strange, but I guess you shouldn’t mind because it’s a poem!
If you want to fix it, for example,
夢を出て現実のなか生きるため愛情という試練を受ける
It might be better. But it’s my opinion. I think you should cherish your current Japanese expression.

I actually strongly considered using the ため structure for this, and I think it was in all the early drafts, haha. I ended up moving away from it because I liked the way のは drew an equivalence between the two halves of the poem better than the dependence expressed by ため. Like, “to leave the dream and live in reality is to undergo the ordeal of love” rather than “to leave the dream and live in reality, I undergo the ordeal of love”. I think ため is a more direct adaptation of the Hype 2 plot and のは is a more “inspired by” (燻し, you could say) take on the Hype 2 plot.

So after receiving that encouragement, I ended up deciding to keep my original wording, slightly weird Japanese and all, haha.

Here’s how posting my tanka went:

@fallynleaf

I posted my tanka on my public twitter account! Here’s the thread ! I’ll talk more about the poems in the later section of this log, but I was pleasantly surprised to see my post get more than a dozen likes. Another tanka poet on twitter liked a few of my tanka posts, and the author of 推し短歌入門 liked my post about reading that book. I’m glad I was able to convey to the author that even an intermediate language learner enjoyed their book.

(And yes, Hyper Misao did like a couple of my tanka posts, so she indeed saw them! I hope she was pleased and not weirded out by it, haha)

Owning a print copy of the book did end up coming in handy because I was able to include a photo of it along with some portraits I owned from the last Hype show and some misc. other TJPW items, including some of Mr. Haku’s old DDT/TJPW English Update stickers. I guess I wanted to visually represent not the poem itself but rather what went into the poem.

Also, just last month, Hyper Misao wrote another tanka of her own! The first in a long time, I think (at least that she has published anywhere). She wrote it as a contribution to チャリティー百人一首, which was a charity project created to support victims of the 2024 Noto earthquake (buy a copy here).

Kind of a fun coincidence for me specifically is that 榊󠄀原紘 (the author of 推し短歌入門!) also contributed to this project, haha. I was also charmed by the fact that Misao’s tanka uses a similar structure to the tanka that I wrote that was inspired by Hype 2!

I haven’t read much more of チャリティー百人一首 since purchasing it due to not having a lot of energy for Japanese lately, but I’d like to read the full 100 tanka and shout out a couple of my favorites on twitter (including Misao’s and 榊󠄀原紘’s) because I feel like the poets might appreciate having their work acknowledged.

Anyway, that’s it from me on my random spring plunge into tanka, haha!

[polv]

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Q2 of 2024 | Week 13

6月28日 (金)

• (Du) 你的孩子不冷吗？
• おもしろいほどよくわかる羽生善治の将棋入門 (71-82%)
• 京都寺町三条のホームズ (0-2%)
• ヒラヒラヒヒル end Ch.

6月29日 (土)

• (Du) 你用什么烧开水？
• おもしろいほどよくわかる羽生善治の将棋入門 (82-100%)
• ヒラヒラヒヒル end Ch.

6月30日 (日)

• (Du) 为什么清明总下雨
• 京都寺町三条のホームズ (2-5%)
• 鋼の錬金術師 1 (0-53%)

Words

• ペテン = fraud; trickster. Like 詐欺(さぎ). Supposedly from Chinese, though not sure of the characters (绷子?)
• フッ素(そ) = fluorine (F) = 弗素(ふっそ)
• 硝石(しょうせき) = Niter - Wikipedia, a crystal form of potassium nitrate (硝酸(しょうさん)カリウム)
• 開(ひら)け胡麻(ごま) = Open sesame - Wikipedia, a magical phrase to open a cave
• 古(ふる)き良(よ)き～ = good old-fashioned
• 柔(じゅう)よく剛(ごう)を制(せい)す = the soft and pliant defeats the hard and strong
• 如才(じょさい)ない = clever; tactful; sociable. Originally from 如才(じょさい)ない = 手抜(てぬ)かりない (shrewd; slick).
• 予断(よだん)を許(ゆる)さない = unpredictable
• 水墨画(すいぼくが) = India-ink painting. Like 墨絵(すみえ).
• 一息入(ひといきい)れる = to take a breather
• 虻(あぶ) = horsefly; gadfly. Some suck blood, some take nectar.

---

[javerend]

Final day of the spring challenge:

100% of days read! As it stands, the reading streak is at 649 days, with no plans to break it any time soon.

I didn’t end up posting many (any?) reading updates this challenge, but I was here in the background, reading everyone’s updates

Especially this month, thanks to the solstice reading challenge, I had a pretty good reading showing for the first time in a while!

I finished 10 volumes of stuff in total (9 manga, 1 book), knocked out two bingo squares, and finally set a new record text page month!

Finished Stuff

• イジらないで、長瀞さん volumes 2 and 3
• アオのハコ volume 7
• 気になってる人が男じゃなかった volume 1
• とんがり帽子のアトリエ volume 1
• 僕の心のヤバいやつ volumes 1 and 2
• 夜のクラゲは泳げない volume 1
• スーパーの裏でヤニ吸うふたり volume 1 (reread)
• 怪人二十面相 book complete

See you all tomorrow for the summer challenge (and maybe I actually post some updates this time around)

[Kokinshu]

Final update
This third month was not really good unfortunately but I still managed to read, almost exclusively on Satori. This challenge was quite a good experience, I definitely feel like I’ve made progress. Also made me realize how much vocabulary I still need to learn, but at the end of the day learning a language is a lifelong journey… especially one like Japanese

[Marifly]

June 30 | Home post

Last day in this challenge, 2000 words from Island

I have read so much from Island during this challenge. It’s still too difficult for me, but I have learned a lot. Really happy with how my reading abilities have grown during these 3 months, and looking forward to seeing where I’ll be in another 3 months. Summer challenge, bring it on!