7月19日
あしたは土曜日 春・夏 - 12 pages (30%)
Got interrupted but read for longer than normal. I’ve never been happier to find out I did in fact translate ボルゾイ (borzoi) correctly and they were in fact talking about dogs this chapter.
I’ve always known that type of cloud to be called ‘Mackerel clouds’ which is the same sort of thinking as the Japanese name it seems!
July 17
I played more the The Masquerade Lullaby case. We were allowed to search the victim’s room but we didn’t find anything interesting yet.
Day 19: 7月19日
Home Post
Another chapter of まいにち鳥びより today, this time all about the history of pigeons! Some absolutely incredible drawings in this one! I wish it didn’t take me so long to get through one chapter because I really wanted to carry on reading this evening but unfortunately human beings need to sleep 
Today: finished Chap. 46 of よつばと！ Almost gave reading a miss in favour of the World Cup, but had some time after dinner in the end. Best new expression: 一生後悔 (いっしょうこうかい).
７月１９日
夏子の酒 1 pgs 231 – 246 / 451
Week 3
| Date | Book | Chapters or Progress |
|---|---|---|
| July 13 | また、同じ夢を見てた | 54% → 57% |
| July 14 | また、同じ夢を見てた | 57% → 71% |
| xxxHolic 2 | 13 | |
| July 15 | また、同じ夢を見てた | 71% → 86% |
| ひらやすみ 5 | 36-41 | |
| July 16 | また、同じ夢を見てた | 86% → 100% |
| July 17 | ひとりぼっちの○○生活 7 | 76 |
| ポケットモンスタースペシャル 8 | 11-13 | |
| July 18 | ひとりぼっちの○○生活 7 | 77 |
| July 19 | 変な家 | 0% → 3% |
I finished my first novel this week 
I locked in during the first half of the week and read a few hours a day. Today I started on my second novel, it’s very different so far, but it’s interesting too. xxxHolic has slowed down but that’s okay.
I highly recommend Card Captor before Holic/Tsubasa for the overarching lore. I’ve heard X/1999 are a bit more disconnected, there might be alternative cameos? I haven’t read them myself, but I do know that the more CLAMP you’ve read, the more you’ll understand the little easter eggs.
I am back from my 3 day hiatus bc I went to Oregon, but anyways I did do a little reading while I was there: 10 pgs 王様ランキング and today I read 1 ep Satori Reader 明子の日記、留学二日目 and I still have to catch up with the absolute beginners club which I’m planning to do tmr (and search for a physical copy at some thrift stores)
Here’s a pic of a cute dog we found that followed us home 
(more pics on my study log later)
July 18-19-20
1 novel, 3 manga vol
| ? | Title | Type | Progress |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
清水さん4 | Lvl 25 LN |  19% → 50% |
 |
お兄ちゃんおしまい！２ | Lvl 20 manga | 7% → 100% COMPLETE |
- Finished おしまい２. Interested to see when they did the anime, they picked up a chapter from vol 2 and moved it to the end of the season and added a shitload of drama to what was something of a joke in the manga (very effectively I might add).
- Continuing Shimizu-san 4. I mentioned this in the discord but I’m effectively treating this as a time trial mode now, pretty much the only way to maintain interest. There’s an inherent satisfaction to reading and I want to read faster, and it’s not like I’m 100%ing what I read yet so there’s still some challenge to it, but the writing style can get very “X said “I want to go to the store”. It seems that X wants to go to the store” which kinda sucks tbh
- I technicallly started Sunny 16 v2 but since I only read the words ‘無理’ before stopping I’m not counting it right now.
7月19日
読み終わった本： 漫画2巻、読み切り0作, 連載漫画1話
home post || 
natively
| status | name | natively lvl |
type | pages / characters |
time | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.36% |  |
くまクマ熊ベアー 1 | 19 | light novel | 410 → 1146 | 0hr26min |
Had a really long day of work followed by some volunteering that was really fulfilling but completely exhausting. For some reason unbeknownst to me, my brain decided that during the 1 hour break between those two things that the reading I could mentally manage was to re-read くまクマ熊ベアー１, which I had read part of on a plane a few months ago. It’s super dumb and I hate the main character, which maybe was strangely why I felt I could try to read it? Because I don’t care if I understand fully?
Idk, I don’t understand myself, either. Anyway, should hopefully go back to a normalish routine tomorrow and maybe get some good reading time in.
Okay, my list of favorite Japanese phrases now is as follows:
- 庭いじり (puttering around in the garden)
- 飯テロ (terrorizing people by posting food porn)
- 積ん読 (buying books and not reading them)
Congratulations!! 
I recently opened up a children’s novel and it was so intimidating so this is super impressive to me!
２０２６年７月２０日(月)
 |
Book | Natively lvl | Pages |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
ギャルと恐竜 ５ | 16 | 85 - 94 |
 |
ケサランなにがしとスープ屋さん ２ | 17 | 29 - 42 |
♢７月１９日♢
Read:
・ドラクエ幻の大地 Quest 21~22
Milly has her memories because of the old 夢占い師. So how did she not recognise Terry. She does every time you encounter him in the game.
Played:
・ドラクエⅨ「星空の守り人」 (200:06 ⇒ 205:03)
I ended up breaking out my OG copy to see if I had any maps I could pass to myself for tantamounts and/or Excalipurr (and now a Cave grotto with 13+ floors). The first one I did was the highest-level one I had completed (Diamond Void of Regret Lv 79 a.k.a. 大いなる影のじごくLv79), and it’s actually kind of perfect. I mean, it doesn’t have Excalipurr as the boss, but it’s got Sir Sanguinus, one of the easier ones, and on top of the tantamounts I need, it’s also got MKSs and a wealth of Rank-D+ chests, including between 3 and 5 Rank-A! (Oh, yes, and “Nature [Cave] grottoes are the only ones with dirt floors” —then explain why I was able to get dirt from a Volcano grotto, huh!)
Also, either I misremembered facing Excalipurr and Greygnarl before or that was on an older save (or I deleted the maps, but I don’t see why??). Neither of them are in my Battle Records, and the one incomplete map I have can’t have either of them as a boss. I also did fight Yore, but not Tyrannosaura Wrecks. On the other hand, I’m only missing one story boss on my JP copy: the nameless king. I forgot I’d unlocked that quest.
2026/07/19
Pages 214-245 of 幼馴染は、にゃあと鳴いてスカートのなか
July 20th
笠松紫浪 全木版画集
Read pages 16 - 22 - oh yeah I was meant to be finding something by Ranpo to read alongside all the art wasn’t I? I’ll find something out tomorrow
Artwork
霞む夕べ - 不忍池畔 (1932)
I really like how the main subject of Shinobazu pond is mostly obscured by the tree but also how it is faded out to blue with the only other colour being the light of the lamps (the book mentions how this seems to be a homage to Hiroshige’s prints).
雨に暮るる塔 - 東京谷中 (1932)
夕空 日暮里 諏訪神社 (1932)
The version of this in the book is much darker, it feels some of the detail is lost a little with the colours being a bit more faded.
Replies
Cute little fluff ball!
Yes, like those!
Had a look and 巻積雲 is the scientific word for them (so, cirrocumulus), and うろこ雲 is the common/casual name.
I like the name Mackerel Clouds!
July 18
I played more detective games. After searching around the victim’s room for a long time we found a hint. The case gets more and more complicated. Three different events are somehow connected and we need to find the connection. We got back to playing Misty Online to talk to people and collect hints. A certain suspicous person appeared once again.
Day 20: 7月20日
Home Post
Read the second pigeon chapter of まいにち鳥びより that I wanted to read yesterday and as always with this manga I enjoyed it a lot despite it being a challenge to read! I was happy to see when I updated my progress on natively that I’m half way through it now!
I’ve been feeling that I’ve been looking up words way too quickly and it’s been a bit of a crutch, so I started to back down on that today and tried to see what I recognise on the page first before using the dictionary to go through each panel. In hindsight, probably quite an obvious thing to do when you’re learning a new language! Obviously I’m only level 9 on here so I have a lot more kanji yet to learn, but I was pretty happy that I did manage to roughly put a few sentences together. Still, a long way to go so let’s keep at it 
7月18日ー20日
I finished the first Narnia book!
From where I left off there’s a chapter of Lucy and Susan mourning Aslan before the stone table cracks, then they go to return the stone animals to life and go to the battle with the witch afterwards. Bit of a run on ending, one chapter barrels right into the next and then the fight is over about as soon as it’s shown because Aslan defeats the white witch and her army scatters. Last chapter is rescuing Edmund from certain death with the magic vial and healing a bunch of other people once Aslan scolds Lucy for not healing efficiently. Then they’re each crowned king and queen and rule happily for many years and as they grow they each get a title. Aslan walks off somewhere and the beavers explain that he disappears like that because he’s still a wild lion. One day years later they’re hunting the white stag and they find a weird tree made of iron. Edmund recalls that it’s a lamp on a metal pillar and they all stare at it for a minute before deciding to have one more big adventure and they walk off back through the wardrobe same time as they left. The professor gives them some parting words not to try the wardrobe again but that they’ll be back to Narnia someday.
What a strange old man, I wonder what his deal is?
I liked this a good bit and it wasn’t too hard to keep up with reading a chapter a day from it.