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

[Sylph]

April 1

Got home super late so I only read a couple of pages of 傲慢と善良. Currently at 48%.

[lucylavelle]

April 2nd!

I finished Chapter 3 of 気になってる人が男じゃなかった today, so I’ve caught up to the bookclub.

(Home Post)

[Akashelia]

home post
2024年4月2日

	Title	Read today	Currently at	Notes
	Secret	2 episodes	56/98	—
	ISLAND	5k	420.000 char	24 new words
	シャドーハウス	5 chapters	26/175

シャドーハウス Chapter 25

Wow, never thought I’d see “Galette des rois” written in Japanese

[RebBlue]

四月二日・Home Post

I read two Lv2 Tadoku books, やせうま and 吉四六さんの話 ～舟のお金～. I’m still not entirely sure what happened in the second.

I read two chapters of チョコっとちょこちゃん and one chapter of スーと鯛ちゃん 1 .

I attempted to read the colour pages and introduction page of 薬屋のひとりごと.

[araigoshi]

2024-04-02

Previous | Home post | Next

Date	Name	Type	Amount	Time
2024-04-02	本好きの下剋上第一部６	Manga	Chapter 26-27 61 pages	0h35m

Two more chapters down on 本好きの下剋上 and we got to Myne’s big conversation with her family. If you’ve watched or read it, you know which one. Still makes me emotional

(LN: Part 1 to Part 3 spoilers, entire anime spoilers) Between this and the conflict with Ferdinand and the Head Bishop, I think part 1 is the strongest of the parts I’ve watched or read. The noble adoption in part 3 is maybe the next closest, but it didn’t quite hit as hard as this part 1

[fallynleaf]

I have reached the halfway point of 推し短歌入門! Currently at 46k/90k characters read, so just past 51%!

I wrote a whole lot about the first 1/3 of the book in my study log here if you're curious about some of the highlights and things that it has got me thinking about! (warning: long)

@fallynleaf

I’ve been attempting to write a tanka whenever it instructs me to try writing one (except for the exercise that involved experimenting with 旧かな and 文語. I don’t know either well enough to write a poem in)! This is the first one I wrote, right before the end of part 1 of the book:

半時間あなたと俺のにらみ合い空き会場を照らす火花だ

Explanation of the inspiration and construction:

The first part of the book opened with an extended section with examples about writing tanka about your 推し’s eyes. I don’t really think about people’s eyes that much, so I was drawing a complete blank, but then I thought of the 30 minute staredown at the start of Go Shiozaki vs Kazuyuki Fujita from the 2020.03.29 Pro Wrestling NOAH show, right at the start of the pandemic. This is one of my favorite pro wrestling matches ever, and I’ve talked about it on this forum repeatedly, haha. I thought maybe I could get a tanka poem out of it somehow.

I ended up fixating on the concept of バチバチ, which is one of those words that pro wrestling has taught me that I feel like the above match embodies. So I suppose I wanted to see if I could write a poem that conveyed that without actually using the word.

The other thing the poem needed to include was some mention of this happening in an empty arena setting, which was the only reason they were able to get away with this match in the first place (an actual crowd in the room never would’ve tolerated it). This was a match that could only happen at that precise time in history.

With those two elements in mind, I started composing the poem.

The first thing I wrote down in my draft was 視殺戦, which is a word that definitely exists because I’ve seen it in pro wrestling multiple times, but it’s not defined by any dictionary I have on Yomitan or anywhere else on the internet. It’s a very evocative word! It’s kind of an awkward number of syllables, though (supposing I’m reading it right! I assume it’s all on’yomi readings), so I bounced it around between the first three lines (初句, 二句目, 三句目) in the 上の句 (the first half), knowing that I wanted to put it somewhere in there. Couldn’t find a place, so I left it alone and worked on the second half.

I came up with 空き会場を照らす火花 without much effort and immediately knew that was going to be how the poem ended (with a だ at the end to complete the seventh mora of the 結句, the final line). The 火花 brings the バチバチ metaphor full circle, and I feel like the 下の句 (second half) of the tanka perfectly conveyed how this match felt so exciting and electrifying in that empty arena, the way the staredown seemed like it implausibly filled that entire space (and time).

I played around with a few variations on wording the time, initially hoping to do some sort of play on wrestling time limit notation, then decided on 半時間 purely due to utility (it’s just the right amount of mora for a 初句 or a 三句目). Also floated a couple variations on あなた (I considered 君 to save a mora). I finally ended up ditching 視殺戦 because I realized that it was sounding like あなたと俺 were the 火花, and I was like “no, I want the staredown to be the 火花!!” and then I realized that I needed to streamline and simplify it to just talking about their gaze. Nabbed にらみ合い from the above youtube video (spelling the first half in kana seemed like the best choice after deep diving into my Yomitan monolingual usage dictionary), and there we go.

I rearranged those first three elements a bit, trying to figure out the best spot for the 半時間 specifically, then decided I preferred it at the start so that it sort of got out of the way of the rest of the poem.

I’m really happy with the tanka overall! I think I managed to fit everything in it that I wanted to be in it, and there’s nothing excessive, and nothing missing. Absolutely no clue how it reads to someone who doesn’t know the inspiration (one of the rules of 推し短歌 according to the author of this book is that the poem should still be understandable/enjoyable to someone who isn’t familiar with the source material), but that’s not a strong priority for me, haha.

I’ve written a few others, but I’m not quite perfectly happy with any of them, so I might share them in the next update after hopefully fine-tuning them (and if I’m still not happy with them, I’ll share my rough drafts, haha).

I did want to share my favorite tanka that I’ve read in this book so far!

わたしの彼女になつてくれる？ 穂すすきのゆれてささめく風の分譲地

睦月都『Dance with the invisibles』

This was given as an example of a tanka written with 口語 and 旧かな. The 旧かな gave me a bit of a hard time, but the explanation helped a lot, and I ended up loving the poem after I was able to understand it a bit better.

Apparently the “つ” in “わたしの彼女になつてくれる？” is the 旧かな way of writing っ, which makes more sense! I wondered if we were supposed to be interpreting this as being about a lesbian relationship, and it seems that I was right! The book points out that 私 is a formal first person pronoun that is used by all genders, but わたし makes the subject more likely to be a woman. Interestingly, the book also points out that it’s more difficult for a same sex couple to purchase a 分譲地, a lot for sale, compared to an opposite sex one.

Additionally, the second half of the poem is describing a windy lot where 穂すすき are swaying and whispering, which also sort of gives the impression that the question in the first half, “will you be my girlfriend?” is also whispered.

Despite initially complaining about the 旧かな making it difficult for me to read, I think it’s really neat how it sort of gives the poem a sense of being a scene from a long time ago, even though it’s about a lesbian couple (who probably would’ve had an even harder time buying a 分譲地 back then than they would now). So it feels both old and contemporary at the same time, almost a scene out of time. It feels like a lesbian love story sort of tentatively trying to get a start in a world that maybe won’t accept them.

I was so taken with it, I thought I’d attempt to translate it into English (with 3-5-3-5-5 syllables instead of 5-7-5-7-7, which seems to be a more suitable equivalent), but I immediately ran into some problems and could not for the life of me get it to fit into the right amount of syllables (there were far too few in the 上の句 and far too many in the 下の句…).

Then I tried breaking it down and realized I could not make the count work at all in Japanese, haha.

わたしの彼女になつてくれる？ 穂すすきのゆれてささめく風の分譲地

(4) わたしの
(7) かのじょになつて
(3) くれる？

(8) ほすすきのゆれて
(12) ささめくかぜのぶんじょうち

34 total! We’re 3 over the total limit, and only one single 句 has the right number of mora, unless we start chopping up words (句跨り). So I realized it was a total fool’s errand trying to fit it into proper formatting in English, haha.

Here was the translation I ended up with, trying to maintain all the relevant details while also trying to make it read smoothly:

she asks,
will you be my girl?

autumn grass quivers and whispers
on a windy lot for sale

Not even as quarter as elegant as the original, alas! And my translation lost all the nuance of the 旧かな. I translated 穂すすき as “autumn grass” because it’s apparently an autumn 季語, and I felt that that translation choice conveyed the feeling better than translating the exact species of grass.

I posted about this poem in the WK film club discord, and someone found a bit more information on the author and their work. Apparently lesbian themes are a reocurring focus: “レズビアンや女性への思慕を詠んだ歌も集中に散見される.”

I’m definitely a bit interested in reading more of 睦月都’s poems, but sadly I feel like that book might be a bit above my pay grade currently, because 推し短歌 talked about how typically you should stick to either 新かな or 旧かな for a collection of poems, so that bodes poorly for my ability to read the rest of this one, haha.

I would say that overall, 推し短歌入門 has actually been a surprisingly fun read! It’s shockingly accessible despite me coming into this as an intermediate language learner who didn’t have much prior familiarity with tanka. The way the book is written is very gentle and friendly, gradually easing you into this world, and I like the video game style “save points” at the end of each chapter that sum up the important points. I don’t think I’ve had any trouble understanding any of the key points. Some of the tanka given as examples are a little bit beyond me, but I do feel like my ability to understand them is gradually improving, and the explanations help a lot.

Tobira’s chapter on haiku/senryu was a really useful introduction to have going into this book! I’m glad I SRS’d the extra words in Tobira, too, because I think all of them have shown up here (despite having abysmally low frequency in my frequency dictionaries, haha).

I’ve also started adding a limited handful of words to Anki from 推し短歌入門, focusing on the technical terms that describe different aspects of tanka, because those seem like the most valuable thing to learn right now. I have added 31 words so far. Trying to add all the unknown vocab would be too overwhelming (I did try that at first! Ended up deleting the whole deck and just started from scratch with the essentials).

I did end up adding one new kanji: 喩 (metaphor, compare), after seeing it come up in 比喩（ひゆ） (speaking figuratively), 直喩（ちょくゆ） (simile), 暗喩（あんゆ） (metaphor), and 喩（たと）える (to speak figuratively, to liken, to compare something to), and I realized it would be ridiculous not to take this opportunity to learn it.

The other thing that has helped me a lot is having decent familiarity with senryu thanks to the senryu thread here! I feel like I have a massive leg up on understanding tanka thanks to the practice I received with senryu, and I also have an advantage as far as composing poems goes, because I’ve composed a few senryu and sort of have a rough understanding of how much information you can fit into a 5-7-5, which is of course the first chunk of a tanka as well.

I think, though, that even without those things, this book wouldn’t be a bad introduction to reading and writing tanka, assuming your Japanese is at least intermediate. Working through it feels sort of like taking a 4-week introductory course on tanka, hahaha!

It’s also surprisingly LGBTQ-inclusive? In addition to the lesbian tanka I mentioned above, it uses an example from The Half of It (2020 Alice Wu film) when describing different ways to say “I love you” without using those exact words, and there’s another example from Call Me by Your Name later on. It’s a small thing, but I really appreciate the inclusivity.

Also, I was very surprised to see Henry Jenkins, one of my favorite scholars, get name-dropped! He’s a pretty big name in the fan studies field, but I wasn’t expecting this book to really dip into the academic literature on fan studies, much less stuff that was originally published in English. 推し活 and English-speaking fandom have many similarities, but also many differences. But I was proved wrong!

Here are the examples it lists for “ファン（推す側）から文化を捉える本”:

• ヘンリー・ジェンキンズ『コンヴァージェンス・カルチャー ファンとメディアがつくる参加型文化』（渡部宏樹、北村紗衣、阿部康人訳、晶文社、二〇二一年）
• 月孝史、上岡磨奈、中村香住編『アイドルについて葛藤しながら考えてみた ジェンダー／パーソナリティ／〈推し〉』（青弓社、二〇二二年）
• 久保（川合）南海子『「推し」の科学 プロジェクション・サイエンスとは何か』（集英社、二〇二二年）鳥羽和久『「推し」の文化論 ＢＴＳから世界とつながる』（晶文社、二〇二三年）

Then followed the two most difficult paragraphs for me to understand in the whole book thus far. Academic writing is still a bit out of reach for me…

『「推し」の文化論 ＢＴＳから世界とつながる』では、他者を「使用」することで私たちが主体化を実現することが述べられています。普段使っている言葉もそうですが、「推し」もまさに私たちの「使用」の対象の一部です。推しの輝きや不完全さを享受、あるいは投影しながら生きています。しかし、そのことに無自覚になり、推しが自分の思い通りの存在ではない＝「使用できなくなった」と感じるとき、攻撃的になり、「アンチ」に転じてしまいます。

敵をあえて作り出して鏡として自己を権威化することで主体化を果たしたにもかかわらず、言い換えれば、敵という他者を使用して主体化が実現したにもかかわらず、そのことを隠蔽してしまうのがレイシズムの問題だとすれば、「使用」に無自覚なファンたちは、推しが私の主体化を支えてくれたという事実を忘却することで、易々と「支配関係」に陥り、レイシズムに近接します。（同書一三六頁）

I’m talking about a bunch of stuff from this book in a totally weird order (sorry), but the last thing I wanted to touch on for now are the 推し短歌三原則, the three principles of 推し短歌 that the author presents. They are as follows:

①原作を知らない人が読んでも短歌としてよいものを作る
②言葉を借りすぎない
③余白・言わないことを作る

All in all, a pretty solid list, I think! I understand and agree with the reasoning for all three. But what I wanted to comment on was how 推し短歌 feels different to me from other fanworks such as fanfiction.

I think ③ is the one that is the most broadly applicable to pretty much all creative writing of any sort. The best pieces of writing have blank spaces; things that are unsaid. I intentionally cultivate a degree of ambiguity in my work because it makes things more interesting. Pretty much everything I write, even the most surface-level fanfics, have something else going on that is underlying them. Sometimes I feel like those unsaid things are very obvious. Other times I wonder if any reader will ever notice them, haha. With tanka, the most important part here is probably to take out superfluous words (since you don’t have room for them!) and don’t over-clarify what you mean.

② is one that is a difficult balance to strike across all fanwork. Here, it’s mainly referring to not making your tanka too specific so that it becomes inaccessible to those who don’t know the work (and I suppose probably also keeping you out of copyright infringement trouble). With fanfic, that specific thing isn’t an issue, but I feel like the main thing is that you want your fic to be saying something new, which means not borrowing too much from the original work. I aspire to the same thing with my pro wrestling tanka, where even though I borrow a lot of specific phrasing and vocab descriptions (mostly due to still having only intermediate Japanese), I try to make sure that all of my poems are saying something new.

① is where I feel that fanfic and 推し短歌 most diverge. I don’t write any of my fics with a goal of them being accessible to people who don’t know the original work. If people read them without knowing the original and enjoy them, that’s great, but they’re not my target audience, haha.

The author says that the most important thing with 推し短歌 is for each poem to be “一首の短歌としてよい” “good as a single tanka”, and the second most important thing is for them to “原作を知っているとより深い味わいになる” “have a deeper meaning if you know the original work”. I do like this description: “推しのことを考えて作った短歌は、一首で二度おいしくなるのが理想です.” Ideally, a tanka created with an 推し in mind will have twice as much flavor/appeal within one poem.

This reminded me not of fanfiction (like I said, I don’t think my own fics qualify because I don’t think they’re independently good outside of the context of the original work), but of pro wrestling matches. (You thought you’d escaped the pro wrestling talk, huh?)

Pro wrestling is a weird medium in that it’s both inherently super accessible (the plot within each match is incredibly straightforward, and a good match tells its story without requiring context) and also inherently super inaccessible (each match is a piece in a larger story that is interwoven with hundreds of other stories). Because of this, it’s a medium with a lot of layers all operating at the same time, and different people can come into the same match and have an incredibly different experience based on their own familiarity with the characters/story (or the medium as a whole), in addition to their own preferences and mood at the time.

Like, you don’t have to be a longtime fan to root for the underdog to get a big win. Wrestlers are very good at telling that kind of story physically within the ring, without needing words. But if you are a longtime fan, you’ll notice all these little details that’ll elevate the match to a whole new level. I can’t even tell you the number of times a single move in a match has made me burst into tears because it referenced a moment from a past story that meant a lot to me.

So in that way, pro wrestling matches are like 推し短歌, haha. Ideally, you’ll want a match to be good just as an isolated match with no context, but also have another layer to it for those fans who have been following the broader story. I do think it’s probably true that an 推し短歌 can pack twice the meaning into one poem, simply because it being a derivative work gives it the amazing superpower of being able to also draw upon your existing emotions toward that work, whereas a normal tanka only gets ~31 mora to tell a whole story. There’s just no way it can compete.

I am currently 33k/90k characters into the book! So I’ve read about 37% of it, which means I’m making pretty good time.

For those of you who skimmed this whole section, in sum: tanka book cool! Three thumbs up! It’s hard but not too difficult, and I’m enjoying myself way more than expected. If you fall somewhere in its incredibly niche demographic, you’ll probably have a good time.

I’ve been posting my finished tanka on my (locked) twitter account, though my potential reader base maxes out at, like, maybe five people, and of those people, there are maybe two who are able to read Japanese proficiently and also appreciate/understand pro wrestling stuff. But my Japanese friend did like my tweets, haha, so either my poems are at least ok, or she’s just being supportive . Either way, I’ll take it.

I think I’m going to save the in-depth descriptions of the poems and the book as a whole for my study log, but I might cross-post it here as well!

I do want to share, though, the next few tanka that I’ve finished! Full explanations are to come later in my next study log update.

にこやかなベビーフェースの面脱いで生地を一刀 両断に切る

Inspiration:

For context, read this.

念願のベルトを巻いて上に立つ 王が一人で呪いを背負わなければいけない

Inspiration:

This one wasn’t inspired by any example in particular, but as my friends and I always say, championship belts are cursed…

I have a very busy week ahead of me, but so far I’m weathering it pretty well! It’s been a bit tough, though, trying to devote 2 hours to reading the tanka book and 2 more hours to translating Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling every single day. And I have probably at least two more weeks of that to look forward to if I want to finish this book in time and also not fall behind on my translations.

[taiyousea]

4月 2日

	Book	Natively	Progress	Type
	ありす19th	L 21	67% → 85%	Manga
	鋼の錬金術師 (FMA)	L 30	63% → 66%	Manga

I’m one chapter away from finishing the first volume of ありす19th!! Chapter 4 went by super quickly because there’s a lot of action in lieu of dialogue. I’ve also started skimming ありす’s handwritten diary entries instead of attempting to decipher them because the tiny handwriting is just overwhelming

As for a novel to sink my teeth into over the next few weeks, I collected some recommendations and chose different genres to taste; fantasy, action, Suzume (her own genre), mystery, and Lycoris (also its own genre).

They’re all Natively level 30-32 so it really comes down to reading the first few pages of each and seeing what hooks me ^–^

If you’re interested in checking them out:

• 異世界ラーメン屋台 エルフの食通は『ラメン』が食べたい | L30??
• ほうかごがかり | L30??
• 小説 すずめの戸締まり | L31
• 西由比ヶ浜駅の神様 | L30??
• リコリス・リコイル Recovery days | L32??

See you next time!

↑ zoom back up to home thread

[DIO-Berry]

April 2nd

	Book	Pages
	山に行きました	10 pages
	イエヴァ / イエヴァ - 鮫島ヤエ子 | サンデーうぇぶり	41 pages

Mountains was Renshuu’s beginner reading, but it just didn’t jive with me. I get a lot of these are more like cute diary entries, but this one felt pointless.

The intermediate club wasn’t really my cup of tea either. It was cute but the takeaway to me seems like you should force yourself to live in loneliness rather than attempt to make connections

I was hoping to read Nausicaa but something came up.

[hotdogsuplex]

This is the second time this has happened to the participant list. @ksiretsus did you mean to do this? (Or is this just something new that I don’t know about yet?)

[DIO-Berry]

I think it’s a weird fluke with the table updater

[hotdogsuplex]

@DIO-Berry

I think it’s a weird fluke with the table updater

Looks like you’re right, all issues arose due to the table editor, but it doesn’t necessarily cause an issue every time. @Mods are you aware of this issue?

[Ksiretsus]

I only added myself using the same format as the other names. Looking at the markdown it seems like the bottom few entries are duplicated, that, I did not add.

[hotdogsuplex]

Alright, that’s what I suspected. Looks like there’s some tomfoolery going on on Discourse’s end

[Ksiretsus]

I wonder why it does that. For a second when I saw you mention me I thought I’d done something terrible like delete half the participant list lol.

[soggyboy]

back to my home post

		04月02日	Type	Progress
	ABBC	老女的少女ひなたちゃん	manga	13% → 17%
		ナルト vol. 1	manga	20% → 29%
		ハリーポッタと賢者の石	prose	13% → 14%

Read this week’s granny girl hinata chan section, more Naruto, and a little more HP. It’s funny to see when the percentage ticks over; I really didn’t read a lot of it today, maybe just a few paragraphs.

Thinking of some goals for this challenge… Loosely, I want to make sure I’m reading prose every day. I also want to make real progress on some of my prose reads, maybe 25% on HP and somewhere around 2/3rds (or even completed?) for Fushigi Sweet Shop and Goosebumps. If it gets reliably warm anytime soon, I can sit on the porch in the evenings and read my paperback copies, that’s what I really want. Sadly the storm system that just moved through is going to give us cool weather again.

[meagstudies]

2024.04.01 home post
気になってる人が男じゃなかった１: 39% → 43%
教養366 Day 38 - レオナルドダヴィンチ

2024.04.02
教養366 Day 39 - ミケランジェロ

I’ve been making my way through 小学生なら知っておきたい教養366, which is a kids education book where you learn about a new topic every day. This week is all about famous artists around the world.

I’m not sure what I prefer more, “learning” about things I already know about (but in Japanese), or learning about completely new things (like last week’s topic of famous Japanese architecture). The former is easier and teaches me how to talk about things I already know about, but the latter is more interesting!

---

Going on a flight tomorrow, so I’ve got to decide what to read on the flight… here’s a poll in case you want to sway me

• 気になってる人が男じゃなかった１
• 神さまがまちガえる３
• get a head start on 葬送のフリーレン
• read a bunch of days’ worth of 366

[Jintor]

3 April | Jintor’s Study Log

	Title	Type	Natively	Progress
	焼いてるふたり 3	manga	25	0 → 35%
	不思議駄菓子屋1	book	24	79% (no change)
	また、同じ夢を見ていた	book	25	52% (no change)
	ダンジョン飯５	manga	29	56% (no change)

• I was feeling a bit out of it, but managed to start up 焼いてる二人３。They made hot sandwiches and coffee… which seems nice… this is a very pleasant series, but thankfully that’s because it’s not that challenging (though it does have a decent amount of new vocab).

[Akashelia]

@RebBlue

吉四六さんの話 ～舟のお金～ . I’m still not entirely sure what happened in the second

Do you want help with it? Just read it so I can explain if you want (I have to say I was expecting something easier!!)

[SeanBones]

SeanBones’ home post

Natively
Extended Mag Harta Nozaki
Study Log/Plan/Media List

Gotten off the wagon a bit with my Japanese reading, so I want to use this challenge to not only hold myself accountable to reading, but hold myself accountable with posting and responding to others as well. More reading goals are listed here!

			Apr
月	火	水	木	金	土	日
01	02	03	04	05	06	07
08	09	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

			May
月	火	水	木	金	土	日
		01	02	03	04	05
06	07	08	09	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

			Jun
月	火	水	木	金	土	日
					01	02
03	04	05	06	07	08	09
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30

Finished Books

	Book	Date Finished
	女装してめんどくさい事になってるネクラとヤンキーの両片想い 1	April 1st/2nd
	Dai Dark Chapter 46	April 3rd

[SeanBones]

April 3rd | SeanBones’ Home Post

	Book	Progress
	Dai Dark Chapter 46	Finished

Thoughts:

First day off to a good start! I used to read Dai Dark with a friend in English, updating each other every day. Now that we are finished with the English, we decided to read the most recent chapter in Japanese. For as crazy as the Dai Dark world is, the chapter was actually super duper easy!! Great ease back into reading Japanese!