July 24
Book: 本好きの下剋上 ハンネローレの貴族院五年生3 L32 (367 pages)
Progress: 64% → 66%
Small read x 2 
Yes do this. Get the gains from the hard stuff and get the motivation from the easy stuff too!
7月24日
あしたは土曜日 春・夏 - 3 pages (43%)
Cutting it a bit close to midnight in the end, these are very dense pages compared to the rest of this manga ahaha
７月２４日
夏子の酒 1 pgs 307 – 316 / 451
Hope you get well soon!!!
♢７月２４日♢
Ended up mostly reading in EN today
・ドラクエⅨ「星空の守り人」 (234:17 ⇒ 237:07)
No actual progress today. The only grotto I did was the one I grind Quests 061 + 121 on, which is lv 33 and thus too low to get one with Excalipurr. I forgot I picked up a quest yesterday where I presumably just need to complete any water grotto. I don’t think this is one I’ve done before.
7月24日
読み終わった本： 漫画2巻、読み切り0作, 連載漫画2話
home post || 
natively
| status | name | natively lvl |
type | pages / characters |
time | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 70% |  |
恋より青く 2 | 20 | manga | 115 → 136 | 36min |
Today was a really good day! Woke up early and fertilized my garden, before harvesting a few Japanese cucumbers and making 酢の物. One of my favorite things about doing a summer garden is pickling cucumbers and I’m really happy to be growing this variety this year!
Anyway, I got some morning reading in during puppy naptime afterward, which was really lovely. I’ve been enjoying being able to read earlier in the day sometimes as I’m not fighting off being tired or going through the evening worrying about when I’ll make time to read. Finished off the chapter of 恋より青く I’d started yesterday, which means I only have 1 chapter left of 第２巻. Feels like this plot of this volume is a little less focused than the first, but I’m enjoying it nevertheless and this chapter was a good if predictable read.
My spouse and I went to the local Japanese grocery store, which is a bit of a trek but always absolutely worth it. We stopped in at the little bookstore inside of it for awhile, and I spent quite a bit of time reading manga titles in the JA language section. There were quite a few series that I recognized, including some from this thread! I can remember only a few months ago going into a Japanese bookstore and hardly being able to read one or two titles, and here I was actually browsing at a moderately paced speed! I was tempted by 4 volumes of 恋より青く, as well as all of 雨夜の月 (which I already own in English), and a bunch of 違国日記, but I managed to resist buying anything.
One of the things I love about this store is that they host little seasonal showcases where they import specialty products from a region in Japan for a month. This month they had a showcase of 福島県 (Fukushima prefecture), from which I got a few things that looked nice at random. Throughout the store I’ve gotten better at reading labels to help distinguish quality and differences between products, but I want to get better with food words so that I can really find the cool stuff during little popups like this!
Also did a bunch of other stuff and attended a soccer match, so it was a really fun day all around! Likely going to try to have a chores and chill day tomorrow, with some good reading of course.
This one is so fun, enjoy!!! Almost bought this one at the store today, too!
Agreed! Obviously it’s good to have the challenge to learn new things, but the easy stuff lets me get practice reading more “automatically” like I do in English.
2026/07/24
Two pages of 人生全部賭けても、銀の魔女に勝ちたい
２０２６年７月２５日(土)
 |
Book | Natively lvl | Pages |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
おじさまと猫１１ | 17 | 35 - 62 |
25/7/26 WK L:27 
26 : ジャム屋さん、第9話
Daily reading done
I’m loving the vocabulary and the language used to give insights into what this person’s childhood was like. I could have made more time to read today but I spent like 4 hours making wind chimes for my garden. Worth it, they sound amazing!
July 25th
笠松紫浪 全木版画集
Read pages 45 - 50.
Artworks
夜雨 不忍池 (1938)
I always love rain scenes, this is the same pond (Shinobazu Pond) he drew earlier but the mood is completely different in this one. I like the mysterious figure.
雪霽の朝 ‐ 不忍池 (1938)
The same pond again but now after snowfall!
夕映え 福川清澄園 (1938)
I love how this one is framed by the leaves but sadly I couldn’t find a very big picture of this one.
花吹雪 - 上林温泉 (1939)
Shower of cherry blossoms! I like how cherry blossom scenes are usually warm-feeling but this one makes it feel like a cold spring shower.
二銭銅貨
Completed the mid-chapter.
July 23
I’m still on the Masquerade Lullaby case. After talking to countless people I slowly get an idea what happened. The case seems to be very complicated and confusing but maybe it’s not really the case. Maybe the solution is something rather simple.
Finished with some more of Sakaguchi Ango’s short stories:
- 行雲流水 - morbidly funny
- 風博士 - funny punchline, otherwise half the time it felt like reading someone’s deranged yet vain attempt to justify his hatred for his opp
- 私は海をだきしめていたい - awesome. my favourite of the lot
20th to 26th July Update 
- Kept the Bunpro reading practice active and have been able to read some of the N4 passages from lesson 1-3 without lookups
- Read あれは何？ and まだ ? when I didn’t have time
- Kept reading 1 page of はなにあらし１ (aside from 22nd july…busy day
) - Did a readathon update today - completed はなにあらし１
Now I will continue my weekly readathon reading update tomorrow on the POLL thread and tagging @lattepatatte cause…recruiter is readathon pal 
Tagging @pocketcalamity, @Redglare if they wanna oil up thier readathon gears for autumn readathon 
July 23
| Title | Type | Time | Progress |
|---|---|---|---|
 コンビニ人間 |
Novel | 8 min | 73/161p. → 77/161p. Dropped  |
 木曜日にはココアを |
Novel | 21 min | 0/164p. → 11/164p. |
July 24
| Title | Type | Time | Progress |
|---|---|---|---|
| 木曜日にはココアを |
Novel | 14 min | 11/164p. → 14/164p. |
July 25
| Title | Type | Time | Progress |
|---|---|---|---|
| 木曜日にはココアを |
Novel | 48 min | 14/164p. → 25/164p. |
Dropped コンビニ人間 and started reading another novel
While コンビニ人間 was quite manageable in terms of difficulty for me, just as I presumed, I didn’t enjoy the book so far due to various reasons. I kept forcing myself to continue reading it but at the point “that one” character was introduced to the story, I really didn’t have much patience left for this book let alone any patience for that character even though the writing does portray them as being an unlikable one. Decided to drop the book just right after said character got fired, so I’ll just pretend that this is the end and everything is fine (except things in the story are far from being fine, but, ah well.) 
Day 25: 7月25日
Home Post
It was nice to have a bit of time to properly play some Animal Crossing today for a few hours. I was initially planning to be chilled out with it and just accept the things I can understand and not worry about the rest but then I ended up doing lots of vocab and grammar look ups and it turned into a bit of a study session anyway so I decided to make it count as my reading practise for today.
I’m feeling pretty good about how many words were popping up that I was actually remembering from my Anki studies. I must have had a good nights sleep last night or something because my brain was working today! Although there’s still a long long way to go with the grammar study - I think I’m gonna look into the Marumori or Bunpro free trials soon, once I’ve got to the reviews only stage of the kaishi deck, because the self study is too often getting pushed aside 
My absolute favourite thing from the game today was learning that Blathers the Owl is called ‘フータさん’ in Japanese which is just adorable!
July 25
Book: 本好きの下剋上 ハンネローレの貴族院五年生3 L32 (367 pages)
Progress: 66% → 71%
I can join tomorrow! Last day of summer vacation :3 I’d be happy if I can do 2-3 hours tbh.
7月25日
あしたは土曜日 春・夏 - 3 pages (45%)
A lot of katakana this chapter, I should really stop putting off revising it again
Those cucumbers look great!