6月5日(木)
SRシークレット (第79話〜第83話)
AQUA ❷
Navigation 06 初めてのお客様
Navigation 07 社長はツライよ
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1/6 12 pages Mina’s Matchbox (finished week 5, started next), 31 pages 毎月庭つき大家つき (finished volume), aDoAJG 向け, ないでもない and 何らかの
2/6 6 pages 明日の世界で星は煌めく, 20 pages 気になってる人が男じゃなかった (read week 7), 21 pages ホリミヤ (finished volume), aDoAJG むしろ
3/6 34 pages 明日の世界で星は煌めく (finished week 5, read week 6), 18 pages 気になってる人が男じゃなかった (finished volume), aDoAJG ないまでも, 中を and 何~ない
4/6 9 pages Mina’s Matchbox (finished week 6, started next), 17 pages 蟲師, 30 pages ふたつのスピカ (finished volume 3), aDoAJG ないし(は) and 並み
4 days off, good amount of reading despite (possibly because of) catching a cold and not having much energy.
I’m now up to date with all my manga except 蟲師 which I just started. Also up to date with all my actively reading books except the latest IBC, which I only decided to join 2 days ago. And I’m catching up with the dictionary.
The next 3 days will be bad for reading due to work, but after that I’ll be on a plane on and off for 2 days so,should make up for it.
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I started writing it in the goals thread, but by questions are about reading, so I decided to post it here! And if someone wants to share their thoughts, please do 
@Malinkal from my perspective, finishing 20 novels in 5 months is impressive on its own, and as far as I understand you prefer reading physical books. But now knowing that you started learning less than 2 years ago… It makes me wondering how many hours a day you are immersing yourself in Japanese 
I’m also really curious about your reading style. I mostly read novels digitally with instant lookups, sometimes to double check that I remember the pronunciation correctly. Sometimes, when I struggle to understand some difficult phrasing, I consult with LLMs (that fortunately becomes less and less frequent). All these facts keeping me far away from reading physical books, but eventually I would like to do very much so.
How do you approach unfamiliar words and kanjis when reading novels? And what about difficult passages?
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Well, any sort of regular updating here fell off fairly quickly, but I am still reading a bit of something every day!
Here’s some stats and what I read in April and May…
| Wk # | Dates | Pages | Time | Daily Avg. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Apr 1-6 | 191 | 3h 18m | 33m |
| 2 | Apr 7-13 | 236.5 | 3h 30m | 30m |
| 3 | Apr 14-20 | 104 | 1h 42m | 15m |
| 4 | Apr 21-27 | 119 | 1h 40m | 14m |
| 5 | Apr 28-May 4 | 191 | 2h 2m | 17m |
| 6 | May 5-11 | 217 | 2h 15m | 19m |
| 7 | May 12-18 | 129 | 1h 34m | 13m |
| 8 | May 19-25 | 196 | 1h 40m | 17m |
| 9 | May 26-31 | 73 | 1h | 10m |
| Totals: | 1,456.5 pgs | 18h 41m |
I started strong, but things have been decreasing with a noticable dip when my partner had surgery. Time spent reading is also very different depending what I read, which isn’t shocking really but I didn’t think there would be such a big difference. Though I didn’t properly get into コーヒーが冷めないうちに yet, I did maintain my daily reading streak 
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Title | Type | Pages/Volumes |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
NHK Easy | News | 89 articles |
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よつばと！ | Manga | Vol. ５−１１ |
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コーヒーが冷めないうちに | Novel | 8.5 pages |
I’m still continuing daily reading until the end of June, but one of my goals for this quarter is to complete the 新完全マスター books I have, so that’s taking priority over general reading for the rest of the month.
Observations from this challenge:
I’m far less intimidated by just trying to read stuff now. When my teammates post things on Instagram these days I noticed I only reach for the translation button out of habit and laziness, not because of being intimidated or having no clue where to begin, which is kinda cool? I want to lean in to those opportunities and avoid that translation button more.
I’m not sure if I should/want to start mining vocab at some point while I’m reading. Me and Anki don’t have the best relationship, so I’m not sure if it’s worth it or if I should try some other kind of system for collecting new words.
Although it’s fairly normal for receptive skills to be stonger than productive skills, I’m really feeling that gap now I’ve spent this time on reading more. I am for sure very intimidated by trying to practice writing and speaking more, so maybe that should be a focus for me in another challenge at some point.
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Happy to answer! Although from what I’ve seen I still think you’re probably still a better reader than me overall so not sure if all of it’s helpful, but seeing different approaches is interesting anyway. Would be interested to see anyone else’s answers too. I know there’s people on this thread like Redglare and enbyboiwonder and probably others on here too who are definitely better readers than me.
Too many. I don’t track closely but somewhere between 3-4.5 hours on an average day since start of this year, split 50-50ish between reading and listening. Add some time (maybe 1-2hrs) for textbook study/anki as well on most weekdays during work. Much more than the average person can or should do, but my main priority by far in 2025 is getting good at Japanese because I live in Japan and I will probably not be here forever.
TLDR:
Most of my reading is physical, some is kindle. I use dictionary app on my phone for lookups, and am pretty fast at looking up unknown kanji on it now too. I look up about 80-90% of unknown words now, but it was more like 20-30% when I started.
My main approach to reading: I have a high tolerance for ambiguity, and if I have to do more than about 1-2 lookups a page, or to reread more than once to work out exactly what a phrase or sentence means, it stops being enjoyable, so I will just accept more ambiguity if that happens. The first few books, there was a lot of stuff I half-skipped over, now it’s gone down over time like I predicted, as vocab ability and general comprehension has gone up. I am closer to quantity > quality which maybe means a bit less progress each book. But after 26 novels now there’s a lot of overall progress, and over time I am looking up a higher percentage of unknown words, paying closer attention to things because my baseline comprehension has gone up massively.
Long version / details
2/3rds of my books so far have been physical, the other 1/3rd on Kindle. I don’t have a strong preference between either, I have swapped back and forth a lot depending on where it’s easier to get, whether I can get it from my library or not etc.
When I use Kindle, I have an actual kindle rather than the app (which I don’t like) so the lookups are pretty good on it. Now recently I switched to using monolingual dictionary for lookups on it, which is useful for the pronunciation like you said, or getting the gist of a word with the JP definition.
When I read physical, I do a bit less lookups. But I still do quite a lot. Since about book 3 I’ve been using Takoboto dictionary app on my phone for lookups for physical books. I don’t look up everything. At the start maybe I looked up 30% of stuff, mostly unknown kanji or words which showed up multiple times. Now, because there’s less unknown stuff, I probably look up 80-90% of unknown things when reading easier books maybe it goes down to about 60-70% for harder books like 六人の噓つきな大学生. If I hit my threshold for about 1-2 lookups in a page, I don’t usually look up anything more, unless it’s really important for understanding.
I have about 2500-3000 words saved on the app from lookups since starting reading (about 500 are from other sources or from listening probably), which I shift over to Anki once a month or so automatically on the app, and is sitting in a big pile which I slowly work through every day. If there’s a kanji I see which I don’t know the reading of, I use radical lookup to find it, which isn’t that hard once you get used to it, but it does take a bit of time to get used to. Now I can look up a 2-kanji compound word which I don’t know either kanji for on the app in about 20 seconds probably which isn’t that bad.
About reading physically - I didn’t start off reading digitally but I’ve heard from some other people as well that it seems scary to jump into reading physically without instant lookups. I think it might take some time to adjust to, but as long as you have a good, quick way of looking up things (like a good dictionary app and your phone next to you at all times like I do), I think you would quickly get used to it. I do sometimes read news articles with yomitan and instant lookups (and when I play ひぐらし I use Yomitan too), and it does feel like a different experience, so it takes some time to get used to. I’ve done that since the start so I didn’t have to adjust much.
Your level is definitely way way way higher than mine was when I started reading physically - I was scraping a bottom of N3 pass probably. So if you are able to accept a bit more ambiguity than digital, and have a good, quick resource for looking things up when you need to, I think it will not take long to get used to. If you want to! Personally I don’t like reading on a tablet/PC/phone screen for too long, it hurts my eyes and makes me feel bad. I can also read physically anywhere easily if it’s a bunkobon - on the train, at home, at the restaurant, cafe, etc.
As for understanding phrasing - I don’t think I’ve ever used an LLM or anything. Most of the books I’ve read are adult novels somewhere in the 28-33 range on natively, which is my kind of “easy” range now (was very hard at the start), so I don’t think there’s that many places where it’s hard to get the gist of a passage. I don’t spend that long trying to decipher something - if there’s vocab which is the problem, I look it up. If it’s just because it’s a long, windy sentence with lots of interconnected clauses, I just maybe reread it once, just try and get a feel for how it connects together rather than deeply analyse it, and move on. Maybe I check the following section and see how it connects up. I don’t spend much time trying to work out precisely what a section means because that’s not really what I like about reading even in English. Sometimes that means missing out on stuff, but it also keeps my speed higher and exposes me to more stuff.
If I see something which reminds me of something I didn’t understand when I saw it before, I probably pay more attention to working it out.
I think where my approach is different from most “very high volume of immersion” people is that I also do quite a lot of traditional grammar study. It has been very helpful for my understanding, and I’ve gone through about 3 N3 textbooks and 2 or 3 N2 textbooks up until now since starting reading 7 months ago or so, currently slowly starting N1 study as well. For some reason if there’s unknown grammar I come across while reading I don’t really notice it, I just kind of don’t process it and skip. So studying grammar properly is my way of dealing with that, and it’s worked very well so far. I think the most progress I make is when I do lots of grammar study, and lots of reading immediately after. It really reinforces each other, but it takes a lot of extra time input, and I feel tired after.
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Hey, congratulations on holding back on the translation button!
This is really my third incarnation as a Japanese student and this time I’m aiming to lose that very same kanji intimidation you’re talking about.
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I don’t know if I am studying well, but I am using Google Translate on native articles and text hooking results all the time. (For Chinese, though. with Simple Translate extension.)
Not for the whole article. Also, there are so many paragraphs. Dumping all texts would be confusing.
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Thank you! 
I don’t know when exactly it happened, but I have definitely switched from feeling intimidated when encountering kanji I don’t know to more curiosity and a slight frustration (but I think this frustration might be good because I want to understand what I’m looking at?). It’s an interesting development though! I hope you find something similar!
I think it’s one of those things that depends more how you’re using it than just being good or bad overall. Trying to read, checking individual words, thinking about how the setences work etc. I think is good learning, rather than just getting a translation and moving on.
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June 5th
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Book | Pages |
|---|---|---|
 |
木曜日にはココアを - L28 Novel | pg.24 |
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冷たい密室と博士たち DOCTORS IN ISOLATED ROOM - L32 Novel | pg.139 |
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乳と卵 - L37 Novel | pg.34 |
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神様の定食屋 - L30? Novel | pg.44 - pg.52 |
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さよならも言えないうちに - L27 Novel | pg.154 |
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国境の南、太陽の西 - L31 Novel | pg.42 |
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ひぐらしのなく頃に綿流し編 | n/a (totals 37 mins, 8.1k chs) |
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名探偵コナン 6 - L27 Manga | pg.92 - pg.174 finished  |
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香君1 西から来た少女 - L36 Novel | pg.16 |
Finished conan. Pretty good volume. Also tiny bit of novel. List decreasing! Might increase again tomorrow though.
Low day for study overall, was busy with travel planning. Looking forward to Saturday for my big reading day this week hopefully, Sunday I’m also spending half the day on trains going places for hours again so will get maybe 2-3 hours done on them as well.
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２０２５年６月５日(木)
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Book | Pages |
|---|---|---|
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ちいさな森のオオカミちゃん 1 | 9 - 15 |
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Home Post5nd June 
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Book | Pages |
|---|---|---|
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ふらいんぐうぃっち 5 | 80 - 109 |
A bit of ふらいんぐうぃっち today, just a chill lazy day.
Cool words today:
孤独 - こどく - solitude
旨み - うまみ - good taste or umami
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Thank you for the such a detailed reply! I enjoyed reading it 
Your way of reading sounds like a super healthy approach. I think that when I just started reading in Japanese, my approach to decipher everything and my anxiety of not understand everything slowed me down significantly.
And I think that you actually inspired me to get out of my comfort zone and try reading physical content from time to time. I can always start with something on an easier side or something that I have already read in other language. My friend has a physical copy of 変な家, which I haven’t yet read 
Wow, that’s really impressive! Even when you have enough time it’s really not easy to be persistent and concentrated in a long run.
BTW, I started looking up kanjis via handwrite input feature of gboard, and it is amazing. It recognises well even if you draw fast and simplify (e.g. I draw 糸 as one stroke now) or even mess up with the stroke order or accidentally miss something. Sometimes it is even faster for me to draw kanjis than type romaji.
Totally can relate. With Russian (my native language) and English I always prefer physical books to e-books with rare exceptions.
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July 5
A little SeaBed today too. I can’t put it down!
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Home post // June 5 
・ 薬屋のひとりごと 13 (37% → 43%) // Time: 35 min. Total: 2h 59 min
One chapter. Dozed off a couple of times 
There was 言語道断, whose reading I remember as gongeruduudengeru because of Kuzuha 
Clip with timestamp here
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6月5日(木) Home Post
read more yotsuba again today
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22 pages of Another after work I wanted to finish the whole Chapter today, but I came back from work later than I thought so that will have to do for today.
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Home Post - 6月5日
サイレント・ウィッチ 4: 38.56% → 43.99%, 52m
Another chapter. It feels like soon there will be a lot of action.
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I read 6 pages of a Pokemon manga.
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６月５日
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Book | Type | Progress | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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無職転生 ~異世界行ったら本気だす~ 1 | L31 | Light Novel | 49.60% → 50.28% | 17m |
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