Okay, so the plan starting today is to read one SR episode (currently reading 壁の穴) & one chapter of Human Japanese Intermediate per day.
Last challenge got me using my SR subscription. Hoping this one will get me to get through HJ Intermediate.
Day 1 done & dusted. Am hoping to make weekly updates.
Starting the summer winter challenge. Brr, it’s cold outside…
1 July | Study Log
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Title | Type | Natively | Progress |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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世にも奇妙な商品カタログ 1 | light novel | 23 | 32% → 39% |
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紡ぐ乙女と大正の月 1 | manga | 29 | 38% ( ) |
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ダンジョン飯9 | manga | 30 | 32% () |
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悪役令嬢おじさん１ | manga | 28 | 22% () |
I’ll participate as usual and hopefully can get a proper two month streak now!
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Lately, I’ve been having trouble motivating myself to study. That’s why I think this challenge is a great idea. Thank you very much for organizing. I hope to keep going for as long as possible! 
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I read “Cinderella” from the “Disney Golden Collection” in Japanese. I managed to go to a Japanese book sale when I was in uni (years ago and I hadn’t studied Japanese seriously since) and nabbed a copy. It’s one of those hardback books - for children obvi. All hiragana…about 20 pages with like a sentence each lol.
Many vocabulary words were unknown to me ofc. Lots were from WK levels that I haven’t reached. However, I understood many more words this time after studying on WK than when I bought the book. Words whose phonetic sounds were familiar to me by way of learning kanji gave me general ideas of the meaning.
Examples:
ばしゃ（馬車）the sound for horse and car, “carriage”
ぶとうかい （舞踏会）knowing that “kai” usu means get-togethers.
But I think being familiar with the story itself and the story having pictures helped.
Grammar structures that I hadn’t yet covered but managed to find on Bunpro: (I’m on N4 chapter 2 for reference)
(N3, chapter 11, lesson 1)
Verb[よう]＋とする - Show state which you are about to do an action
(N4, chapter 14, lesson 2)
subject 1~とsubject 2 - simplest way I understood it was “when” in the context of the sentence
(N4, chapter 18, lesson 4)
ことになります - used when a decision has been made by someone else
(N3, chapter 13, lesson 1)
[verb plain]ようにと - used to warn someone of something or give an order
Also the passive voice of verbs.
They were used to uncover the meaning of sentences like this:
そこで だいじんが くにじゅうの
むすめに ガラスの くつを
はかせて みることに なりました。
Given that it’s all hiragana, I think the spaces helped… the spaces don’t really show up when I type on here.
Honestly, my reading comprehension was much better than I expected. For pages that made my eyes roll into the back of my head and made me want to put the book down, I skipped and came back at the end. Turns out they were less intimidating than I thought. I just had to be patient. Was able to get through the book mostly(?) understanding everything.
But again, I think being familiar with the content helped. 
With that boost to my confidence, I think I’ll try a chapter of よつばと！ for the next few days.
I haven’t been reading much in Japanese lately since I’ve been focused on my other languages, so my goal is to read 1 chapter of manga per day. I have a rather mountainous TBR to get through!
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| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
1st july
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Title | Type | Natively | Progress |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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東京トイボックス | manga | 24? | pg 0-43 |
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ブレイブリーデフォルト | game | N/A | 6 diary pages |
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all that remains: a life in death | eng book | N/A | pg 95-117 |
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aDoAJG | grammar | N/A | pg 36-39 |
updates gonna be pretty sparse for this first week, will be back in more detail after the JLPT
I always start these and then disapear after a few days, but I am on vacation for a while and one of my objectives is to be more diligent with my studying.
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| 30 |
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Books I’m planning to read | Type |
|---|---|---|
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花野井くんと恋の病 1 (A Condition Called Love) | Manga |
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なぜ? どうして? 科学のお話 2年生 | Book |
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Tobira | Textbook |
Happy challenge launch everyone!
I am still very much a beginner reader. My approach to reading manga is as follows:
I am currently rereading よつばと！Vol. 3; today I close-read p. 133-140 and generated the following vocab list:
影薄い: かげうすい: in the background; not standing out
確かに: たしかに: surely, certainly
肩たたき: かたたたき: shoulder massage
券: けん: ticket, coupon
こっている: to be stiff; to be elaborate/intricate
ロマンチスト: romanticist
気が長い: きがながい: patient
再発行: さいはっこう: reissue, republication
有効期限: ゆうこうきげん: expiration date (for ticket)
追加: ついか: addition, appendix
Although I make myself go through the tedious work of looking up words I don’t know in Jisho, I have been immensely helped by the よつばと discussion threads when I get stuck: よつばと! Vol 3 Discussion Thread (Yotsuba&! Reading Club)
For example, I know what ざぶとん一枚 means literally, but had no idea what it meant in this context: that it’s a way of praising someone’s joke by suggesting they be given a place on a talk show. Now I know!
It was a challenge to tear myself away from Wimbledon coverage today to do this, but I will do my best going forward…
Progress - Week 1 (July 1st to 7th)
Read Chapter 1 of 花野井くんと恋の病 (3rd of July update. Ha. The chapter is 59 pages long)
Read 1 short story in なぜ? どうして? 科学のお話 2年生
Tobira Chapter 1 (I’ve read it all before, but it’s been a while)
Read 読み物
Read 会話文１
Read 会話文２
Read 文法ノート
Read あいづちとフィラー
During the previous challenge, besides reading fiction, I finished my ~N4 study materials, and easily passed two sample JLPT N4 tests. I’m taking this to mean that I’m officially out of the beginner phase, and so my plan for this challenge is to keep reading (slightly) more complex native materials. My main goal for this challenge will be:
Finish my first Visual Novel (LOOPERS) → nope.
I’ll also keep progressing in N3単語 (as an Anki deck, but since it is an actual book I’m also tracking it in Natively), and I’m practicing writing N5-N3 Kanji using RTK since recently I’ve noticed that I mix up some kanji while reading, and I’m no longer doing Wanikani reviews.
Currently reading:
Finished during this challenge: Nothing 
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Home post // July 1 
・本好きの下剋上 17 (0% → 3,5%) | 6836 ch.
Here we go! 
I’m starting this book anew for this summer challenge. I got to around 16% at the beginning of June when life happened and I ended up taking a break during the off-month. It’s the first time I’ve taken a real break from Japanese since I started learning in 2019. 
Feels good to be back again 
It’s going to be interesting to see how I’ll fare now that I’m in 100% work, no longer a student.
| Word | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 口添え | くちぞえ | ある人の依頼・交渉などがうまく行くように， はたから言葉を添えてとりなすこと。 |
| 加わる | くわわる | to be added to |
| 発展 | はってん | development, growth, explansion, flourishing |
| 落ち目 | おちめ | on the wane (popularity of something) |
| 其方等 | そちとら？ | 二人称。複数・単数ともに用いる。お前たち。 |
| 嘲る | あざける | to scoff, to laugh at, to make fun of |
| 迎合 | げいごう | 相手の気に入るように努めること。 相手に合わせて自分の意見や態度を変えること。 |
| 体よく | ていよく | gracefully, politely, tactfully, discreetly |
| 逞しい | たくまし | burly, strong, sturdy |
| 傅く | かしずく | to wait upon, to serve |
| 仰ぐ | あおぐ | to look up to, to look up at, to respect, to depend on |
| 儘ならない | ままならない | 思いどおりにならない。自由にならない。 |
I’m working my way through Haruo Shirane’s Classical Japanese: A Grammar and I figured it’d be fun to read about the same topics in Japanese as well, hence 望月光の古文教室 古典文法編. I highly recommend it!
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望月光の古文教室 古典文法編 | L28? | p. 14-29・6% |
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これで古典がよくわかる | L28? | p. 117-122・2% |
Sylph’s home thread
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| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
Another summer challenge! I’ll admit I almost forgot this time but here we are. I had JP reading plans in mind for this month anyway so it works out.
July goals:
Finish 美しい彼
Read Ikki’s route in Amnesia VN
Read the 3rd case in Ace Attorney
Read another JP book (TBD)
Read 4 manga volumes
July goals are pretty ambitious and I’ll probably be busy with other stuff as well so they may not happen but I always prefer to aim high. We’ll see.
August goals:
TBD
Day 1!
I read a little over 14k characters in Chaos;Head so far. Generally I focus on getting a decent chunk of the major thing (VN/book) done for the day then later when I have time I’ll sprinkle in my other videogames and stuff, so I’m probably going to read more, but this is a solid start. Timed the first hour mostly focused and got 8k characters. Still slow, but not terrible. It didn’t help that today was relatively full of descriptions of action and the sort of reading that is a little harder like that, with relatively little voice acting either, and the one main speaker is probably the most difficult guy to read in the VN.
Mined too many words, for example: 黙祷 (もくとう, silent prayer).
I’m pretty late in the first run of this VN before going for the other endings, things are wild. One spoilery reference to what’s going on for those with no plans to read Chaos;Head (the image is slightly risque too):
July 1st | Home post
2000 characters from Island 
today. I hope to finish Island before the end of this challenge!
7月01日 | Home post
I am trudging along with the SKM N2. There are so many vocabulary words that I don’t know (that I am saving to be added to an Anki deck afterwards) and I also notice that I understand less when the topic is niche or boring. sigh this is going to be a long and brutal fight.
Home Post | 
Study Log | 07月01日
| Resource | Pages | Completion (%) |
|---|---|---|
 Flying Witch Vol.1 |
66/162 → 112/162 | 69% |
Read 2 chapters, took about 35 minutes. It was good I like all the really simple pictures of Chito. I’m thinking I might try finish flying witch this week since it doesn’t take as long to get through as Frieren.
7月1日
More Little Witch in the Woods (continuing from Spring Challenge). I spoke to a god today, and they speak in mysterious riddles which are intentionally hard to puzzle out. I had a fun moment where they referred to me as 汝、花を咲かせる者 and I couldn’t decide if they meant I’m literally making plants grow with my nutrition potions or if they think I’m enthusiastic about saving people or if they think I’m a successful witch…maybe the magic of Japanese is that it can mean all 3 at the same time.
| Reading | Type | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|
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原罪物語 -罪- | LN | 44/252 |
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ノーゲーム・ノーライフ 1 | LN | 21/301 |
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VA-11 Hall-A | Steam game | Day 2 out of ?? |
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Little Witch in the Woods | Steam game | Month 2 day 28 out of ?? |
Spring 2024
Winter 2024
Autumn 2023
Spring 2023