☆８月２日☆
・ドラクエⅨ「星空の守り人」 (240:02 ⇒ 240:53)
Picked up a quest I can do in my highest-level grotto, but I haven’t been able to complete it yet. Both special drops are rare, which makes sense since they’re considered to be the birds’ treasures but is still annoying. The only thing I’ve gotten is a fowl fan from Botts auto-stealing it (not sure if that’s the common or rare drop; I forgot to check)
8月2日
読み終わった本： 漫画4巻、読み切り0作, 連載漫画3話
home post || 
natively
| status | name | natively lvl |
type | pages / characters |
time | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 第1話 |  |
月はタピオカみたいに | ?? | manga (連載) |
20 pages | 0hr50min |
Ok, this manga is not at all what I expected. Finished the first chapter today! I’m not sure what I expected, but… yeah we’ve got psychic mediums, reincarnation, tapioca, bunny and kitsune girls, cooking, Taiwan, death gods, you name it! For some reason I thought this was going to be a fantasy MMORPG thing but I’ve no idea where I got that from, haha. Anyway, I think it was about time for something other than slice of life so I’m here for it.
The most challenging thing here, aside from some vocab, is that there are Chinese words mixed in since they’re in Taiwan. There’s also some weird reincarnation name shenanigans with furigana that I don’t quite understand, but I guess it doesn’t really matter in the end. Aside from some specific vocab here and there, I’m not really having much trouble following most of the dialogue, which is good. Also finding it easier lately to handle long sentences, which is a welcome improvement.
Also in a good groove with WaniKani lately, and think I may have finally settled on a note taking app to track my progress and todos.
until my ADHD kicks in and I get bored and find another note taking app
Yeah, I was hoping they had an option for vertical reading as well. Poking around a little bit, they have the text formatted in a weird way where it uses a <span> to define each word, sentence, and paragraph. Then within the word span there are 2-3 versions that display depending on the kanji/furigana settings. It’s not quite as simple as just switching the text to a vertical layout, unfortunately. There’s probably some way to do it, but after poking around for a few minutes with an LLM and having some janky results I don’t really feel like figuring it out haha.
Oh, interesting! This feels totally different!
２０２６年８月３日(月)
 |
Book | Natively lvl | Pages |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
ギャルと恐竜 ５ | 16 | 145 - 160 |
 |
ケサランなにがしとスープ屋さん ２ | 17 | 59 - 72 |
 |
おじさまと猫１１ | 17 | 133 - 162 |
Finished reading Dazai’s 人間失格, which was thoroughly depressing and at times very resonant. Can’t say that I like his prose as much as I like Akutagawa’s, but it has a lilting lyricism that I’ve come to appreciate (his occasional run-on sentences feel like a hit-or-miss personally though). I think I’ll pick something lighter though for my next read…(definitely will hold off on reading more of Dazai for a while).
August 3rd
笠松紫浪 全木版画集
Read pages 114 - 121.
This one is quite different in style again - almost like a pencil drawing.
I really like the use of autumnal colours in these two.
Many of his 50s works focused on portraying the old pre-WII Japanese ways of life as they began to fade away from the rapid urbanisation, modernisation and Westernisation of post-war Japan.
夢遊病者の死
Read about a 1/3 of the way through - started on the next Ranpo story, being all about committing crimes while sleepwalking.
四畳半と三畳の狭い家が
Congrats!! Great milestone achievement!
31st July to 3rd August Update 
Read a total of 45 manga pages of へピネス２. It feels good to re-read stuff and also not sure about my schedule these days so not reading something new for the moment
Still doing the vertical Bunpro reading practice its tough 
黄昏のBAY CITY has become a favourite these days cause I am understanding the lyrics and even my ears are picking up the phrases without me having to parse every single point or vocab indivisually 
Read NHK web easy this time and enjoyed the slow reading 
Found this 羽田空港 and guessed the meaning and…it was correct ! 
well the airport was easy to guess due to sky harbour 
2026/08/02
Pages 54-63 of 人生全部賭けても、銀の魔女に勝ちたい.
Aug 3rd
俺の妹は悪女だったらしい | L30?? 17% → 23%
Reading without audiobook is about 3 times longer 
Today is the beginning of week 4 over at the Natively book club and for now it’s a very fun BL read.
Tomorrow will be a busy day and the first test to the whole reason why I joined this challenge.
 |
Book | Read | Edge | Pages | Reread |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
ひぐらしのなく頃に 第一話 鬼隠し編 (上) | 79 | 101 | 328 | Yes |
Coincidentally the same content as two weeks ago but we’re ready to for the full next section tomorrow that has been diligently worked upon.
8月3日 
home post 
読了2冊
\color{#faebf9}\textbf{book}: 天は赤い河のほとり 3 L24
\color{#faebf9}\textbf{pages}: 22（77ー98)
Day 34: 8月3日
Home Post
Another 8 pages of ふらいんぐうぃっち 2. I have a good rhythm going with Flying Witch at the moment!
I feel that I’d like to be a bit more confident about my reading because I keep finding myself looking up words that I know I know just to double check them. It’s no bad thing to double check at this stage of learning of course but at some point gaining the confidence to rely on myself is going to be an important step to take even though it will probably make things harder to follow along with.
Maybe I’ll have a try reading something with some easier grammar soon and limiting look ups as much as possible as a little test for myself. I do have another volume of スーと鯛ちゃん which would probably be a good one to try and get through on my own (and then inevitably go back and double check haha).
try this: read through a chapter once without lookups, letting the ambiguity hang, then read through again with the lookups. You’ll be surprised how much you’ll remember/work out through context and it reinforces meaning without having to go through the translation layer.
Aug 4
1 novel, 1 LN
| ? | Title | Type | Progress |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
薬屋のひとりごと２ | Lvl 38 novel |  14% → 16% |
The percentage completion of the entire story is a bit slow per day, but if I think about it in anime terms I’m basically going to be reading about 12 episode’s worth of content, so I just have to remind myself it’s a fairly dense work.
God, it’s so nice to enjoy reading the prose though. Sorry Shimizu-san, into the bin you go
8月3日
i just rewatched 王様ランキング (on top of my reading it) and it’s seriously underrated its so so good! Today I read the part where Boji is betrayed by his mentor (Domas) and it was so sad but so good too! Admittedly, i did more watching anime today than reading, but i also rewatched ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 第4部 ダイヤモンドは砕けない and part 4 is definitely the best one 
８月3日
夏子の酒 2 pgs 47 – 48 / 446
ARIA 1 pgs 1 – 42 / 322
Trying to read ARIA with no / minimal lookups!
Thank you, yes I’ll definitely put some time aside to try this at some point this week! I think doing reading exercises like this will definitely be a big help 
4/8/26 WK L:28 
35 
: ジャム屋さん、第25&26話
Daily reading done
Phoned it in yesterday, I had too much on and didn’t do any reading but I had a fantastic day so it’s all good. I read lots the day before and I did two chapters today which is great 
not sure where this story is going but it’s interesting.
8月3日
読み終わった本： 漫画4巻、読み切り0作, 連載漫画3話
home post || natively
| status | name | natively lvl |
type | pages / characters |
time | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 第2話 | |
月はタピオカみたいに | ?? | manga (連載) |
24 pages 1 chapter |
1hr05min |
Read the second chapter of 月はタピオカみたいに. Rather enjoying this series so far. There seems to be quite a few layers of plot development, which is nice to find at my level. It can be quite text dense at times, but it’s been pretty clear. Also some of the vocab I’ve just learned is getting immediate good use, which is just the best feeling. The art is rather nice as well.
You’ve got this!! 頑張って！
Ooh, this looks up my alley! I’m always itching for good sci-fi and it’s tagged iyashikei so… I’ll add it to the pile, I suppose!!! Not sure how I haven’t heard of it before.
