April 25
Time for the weekly readathon! ..well, more like weekly timed weekend reading, I guess
Only read some 薬屋のひとりごと 1: read chapters 20, 21, and 22 in 35 minutes, 22 minutes and 20 minutes respectively. I’ve gotta be honest, I enjoy having a physical book in my hands much more than I thought I would!
And look what came in the mail yesterday! I took this photo as a size comparison with a regular Japanese manga volume, but now I’m utilizing this as a loophole to post in the Japanese reading thread
It looks beautiful, a very nice edition It would be cool if more manga had some special editions in Japan, as well. I’m only aware of the Nausicaä manga that has been released as a two-part hardcover edition
international shipping would probably be insanely expensive though with the significantly higher weight
橋の上で
Complete! - a short real life tale he heard from an old man on the Ansei bridge about an encounter the old man had there during the Satsuma Rebellion.
夏の日の夢
Read the first entry - made a start on this one, it’s a collection of recollections and memories.
This looks interesting!! Thanks for sharing, I’ll make a note of this one
・ 後宮食医の薬膳帖 1 (9% → 16%) Page 28 → 51/320
・Edit: Almost forgot, played Hollow Knight for a few hours in JP too (3.5h)
There’s a bunch of words not in the dictionary here, folks. At some point you realize some of them there’s no point in even looking up, you can tell by the furigana. Some examples (turns out only one of them is not in the dictionary lmao, but the random furigana is very fun):
彩色瑠璃 (loanword with fitting kanji)
肉桂 (にっけい, oh wait, it’s actual cinnamon, haha)
月李花 (fictional rose?)
妾 (めかけ/“concubine”, the empress’s self pronoun)
I guess it’s typical for the genre considering the same thing is going on in the 薬屋のひとりごと novels. For once I’m not looking up each and every unknown word I come across like I usually would do (especially with the latest bookwalker update, I’m still disappointed). But I’m still doing lookups :3
Last one, 雪花石膏 is not yojijukugo, it’s just white rock (alabaster). The most yoji-looking four character compound I’ve ever seen.
Weekly total: 36 + 4 + (24 + 12) + 4 + 9 + 3 + 23 = 115 pages Hmm… 思うことはある. Not bad, but not what I hoped for either.
Super unwell yesterday evening so didn’t post. I did >10 mins of reading Satori prior to getting unwell. Still feeling not quite right and will be in bed for much of today but I have had enough energy for more light reading, again Satori.
I haven’t been updating, but I’ve managed to read everyday for at least 10 minutes. I finished the entirety of Pokemon Scarlet along with all the DLC’s about a week ago. Since then I’ve mostly been reading manga with some book and game clubs here and there. I’m hoping to start some new series soon, mainly とんがり帽子のアトリエ.
I played about an hour of グランディア before stopping, but then I realized I hadn’t saved properly (!)…so I had to go back and do the “sword”-finding section again. It didn’t take that long to redo but then I kept playing. The museum section was really difficult reading, very wordy, lots of kanji. I think I need to keep my sections to an hour so I don’t get worn out!
I thought I could read a whole vol of Dai today, but no such luck. I’m tired. Didn’t end up reading any JR like planned, either.
Oh, yeah, reading the 準備編 of the Wii取扱説明書 yesterday, there was one warning re: epilepsy, but it didn’t actually use any word that meant that, only was like, “some people may experience these things.” I looked it up today, and the word for epilepsy is てんかん (癲癇). I wonder if the word’s not very common/not expected to be known by most people, and that’s why. Anyway, later on, the word 糖尿病 made an appearance, and I somehow recognized it as “diabetes” while never having encountered it before and not knowing it had to do with urine. I thought it was just blood sugar.
Played:
・ドラクエⅨ「星空の守り人」 (30:12 ⇒ 32:57)
After a shopping trip in Bloomingdale, I decided to take on Equinox, though I figured 28/27/28/26 was too low. It was close. He could do ~70-75 damage in a single hit—two would take out anyone but Terry. But we all hung in there and managed to defeat him without anyone carking it. I think I wanna level up a bit more before trying to grind for his drops, though. Especially since one of them you can only Half Inch off him, and I’m not sure I could defeat him with the drop in damage rn
Metal medleys seem to be almost obsessed with fleeing on their first turn. Milly and her assassin’s dagger often go first, but I’ve yet to have it proc against a MM. Botts’ Pressure Pointer finally did, though! But, yeah, slime-hunting did not exactly go very well today. 3/6. Plus a couple more that before I could reach them I either scared them away or was accosted by a different monster. And then there was the one that spawned literally right after I hit A to cast Evac… Augh. Anyway, they’re called metal brothers in JP, which is cute
April 26
Read a few pages of 薬屋のひとりごと 1 but no full chapter. In the evening, I played some Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined. I’m still pretty early in the game (pretty much right where the free demo ends ), booted into the game and within like two minutes
The Japanese page just calls it ロサ・キネンシス
I feel like I’ve seen this in Kusuriya as well, that they just write something in Chinese and then use the furigana to tell you what it means Like I remember from the top of my head one chapter being called 可可阿
Fell asleep on the couch again reading, but got a chapter of 午后のあくび in at least. To be fair, I did a reading exercise in Marumori earlier in the day, I just don’t track those. Tomorrow should be a better evening for reading I think!
夏の日の夢
Read the second entry - were he talks about an illustrated folktale book he found, and he goes on to talk about his ponderings about the stories. I found one of these for sale once! In English, but probably from a similar time period (1890s/1900s), I kept a picture of it because I loved the artwork:
It says it’s No.19 in the series and I can’t help but wonder how many of these existed. I didn’t buy it because it was super expensive but it was really cool.
ポール・ジャクレー~軽井沢を愛したフランス人~[続編]
Started on the Tadoku art book that @illieallen suggested, read about halfway.
As well as being the Chinese names, quite a lot of the time (especially for common plants/animals and such) these also end up being the old Japanese names for them too, and you end up getting the weird 3 kanji-with-only-two-kana readings - and also end up having multiple kanji-names for the same thing. If I remember Irises (specifically the purple one that is common in Japan) have several kanji names all pronounced as アヤメ and each one has a different origin.
I’m guessing it’s been done here to give it that oldey-time feeling like how in English you’d just stick a ‘thy’ & ‘thou’ in there.
Work was mad busy the past few days and I guess it caught up to me today. I’ve been repeatedly falling asleep today despite getting a full night’s sleep last night. I think I’m going to stay up tonight because I had planned a bath after a study session with a friend, but I fell asleep for an hour or so right before we were supposed to start! With all the naps I’ve taken today, I’m sure it’s been at least 2 extra hours of sleep, if not 3 or more.
Anyhow, over the past few days, I read the book club sections for Not a Guy and Kesaran on either Saturday or Sunday (not sure which day, I just know I read them the same day.
I’m pretty sure I read a bit of Mushishi on Friday because I was trying not to get ahead in book clubs and my cat had me pinned in place.
I’ve also been tearing through Senseis’ Fridays lately. In the latest bit I read, the teacher who I mentioned being annoyed with last check in did something wonderful for the students and this outweighs his annoyingness lol. I’ll probably take this one to the bath with me now that I’m awake and very determined to have a nice bath.
I’ll try to read over everyone’s posts tomorrow if I have time.
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It would be cool if more manga had some special editions in Japan, as well. I’m only aware of the Nausicaä manga that has been released as a two-part hardcover edition
April 26th 
Complete!
April 26th 
Hmm… 思うことはある. Not bad, but not what I hoped for either.
), booted into the game and within like two minutes
Fight 
読み終わった本： 2巻
