I’m also reading よつばと！① at the moment. The artwork and story are just the best 
never thought I’d learn the word セミ・cicada in Japanese lol!
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Yay!! How far along are you?
Yess the artwork and story is so cute, especially all the antics of Yotsuba, セミ is such a fun word to say 
Let’s do our best!!!
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I bought the physical book and I’m reading it outside of the reading challenge trying not to use a dictionary, so it’s a bit intermittent & I don’t fully get all the words, but the contextual learning is immensely good. Trying to read it to myself out loud. Currently up to the part where she’s running away from 恵那 thinking that she’s a 悪い人 
would be glad to try to keep up with you, that’ll keep me motivated!
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Jan 13
Last Post・Next Post・Home Post
| Title | Type | Progress | |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
【推しの子】1 | Manga (digital) | 127 → 220/220 pg  |
 |
気になってる人が男じゃなかった VOL.3 | Manga (physical) | 107 → 176/176 pg |
Managed to finish up both my in-progress reads from yesterday! Yay! (Did I do it at the cost of reading my LN today? yes, yes I did..)
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1月13日
| Status | name | type | pages read | time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 43% |  ちいさな森のオオカミちゃん 1 |
manga | 50 → 74 | 52min |
Read a full chapter of オオカミちゃん today after some grammar studying. I found this chapter funnier and more entertaining than the first two. I think I went into this one thinking it’d be more plot-driven, but it’s more a collection of cute vignettes. Not terribly gripping, but the level is just right for me and the cuteness makes up for it.
Is it me, or does anyone else find themselves laughing out loud more when reading in another language? Maybe just because I’m taking more time to appreciate it? In any case, it feels a little incredible to be comprehending something enough to laugh at it…
Thank you! I took the day off to rest and recover, and I’m feeling much better now!
Ahhh THANK YOU for reminding me of this series! The original was a favorite of mine when I was younger. I remember them being funny and really well written! I’d totally forgotten I’d acquired a copy of ペーパーマリオ カラースプラッシュ after seeing it was a good game on the GameGengo Games for Studying Japanese list. I went through a period of stockpiling stuff I’d “eventually” want to interact with in Japanese and it seems I’ve forgotten half of it. 
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Is it me, or does anyone else find themselves laughing out loud more when reading in another language?
I’ve found this to be the case as well - though that’s partly because my taste in books is very different in Japanese than in English lol. I mostly read serious, heavy books in English but my Japanese book taste is mostly light-hearted yuri and isekai books 
I totally agree that understanding enough to be able to laugh (or cry.. or both) at what you’re reading is super exciting!
I’d totally forgotten I’d acquired a copy of ペーパーマリオ カラースプラッシュ
I adore that game! Despite never having played it - I don’t have the right console for it - I used to watch the playthrough over and over as a kid, I was obsessed. If you ever get around to playing it I want to hear all about it 
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Ha, that’s definitely part of it. I mean, I’m reading silly entry level books right now, but I do feel like I might not laugh out loud as much if I were breezing through it more quickly in English. With manga I feel I always have to slow myself down; I get too excited about the story and skip over the details of the art sometimes!
Looking forward to advancing enough to read more of my fav light-hearted yuri in Japanese. Any recommendations of ones on the easier side? I’d like to read はなにあらし as I’ve read it in English and enjoyed it. 徒然日和 seems doable too, and I haven’t read it before.
I’ll keep you posted! 
It might be a minute, since I just spent 1hr22 playing Pokemon (instead of going to bed) and I’ve only just received my starter Pokemon and had my first battle! 
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I can only recommend books I’ve heard about since I jumped into reading at an N2-ish level on Natively, but there are a couple of yuri manga on the easier side that I’ve heard good things about:
These are a little above the level of the books you shared, but they might be good ideas for later on if you’d like to try something more challenging. 少女終末旅行 in particular sounds beautiful and although I haven’t read any manga, I’ve been contemplating trying it out myself 
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2026/01/13
One chapter of Blue Lock
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January 10
Still playing 英雄伝説 碧の軌跡 and did even more boring quests.
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I’m trying to do that as well, it’s hard tho because I want to know what every word/grammar/vocab is doing in the sentence. I hate this ambiguity but I know this is for the best since the last time I tried to read it using intensive reading, it got really annoying look up everything and I burned out.
You’re like 24 pages ahead of me! Also I would love to read it with you!! It will keep motivated as well
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January 14th
Read the short story: 毒もみのすきな署長さん by 宮沢 賢治
Felt a bit like a folktale story. Have one more short(ish) story I want to read then will look for something longer.
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また同じ夢を見ていた: 15 pages, 72%
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WK Level: 15 
15/1/2026 
あいちゃん2 
14 
15
あいちゃんとよつばの人格はちょっと等しいと思う！日本の生活は楽しみそうですね。夏祭りへ本当にいきたい！
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January 14th 
安達としまむら 第三巻 - 25 pages (72% → 82%)
The story is so adorable I kept tearing up while I was reading this 
Hopefully I’ll finish the volume in the next day or so! Also eagerly awaiting my order of isekai LNs arriving
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(reply failure… 
)
Continuing through the Higurashi novelization.
56 old review sentences and 38 new ones for adding new cards.
Putting every new kanji in a Kitsun deck and setting them as “i know this but…” on JPDB does the wonder of keeping the vocab and sentences chronological… Thanks to the sentence extraction automation the result is that I’m reading the chapter almost sentence per sentence and almost in order and ohhhh boy it is a lot more pleasant than before.
Also something incredible starting to happens is that the number of unknown words is getting low enough to understand the gist on the first read sometimes (also it helps that a good chunk of the vocab is two known concepts mashed together… duh!).
I’m starting to believe that going through the book this year is doable.
(Oh the hubris…)
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1月15日 | : 7 manga vols | Prev | Next
毎日優しい朝日新聞 - 15日連続く
- Decided to read a piece about a Hokkaido only form of 競馬 called ばんえい競馬which involves pulling sleighs. Apparently it got popular during Covid since they put it on the internet.
| ? | Title | Type | Progress |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
隣の席のヤンキー清水さんが髪を黒く染めてきた2 | Lvl25 LN |  4% → 6% |
- No time to read anything this morning, work has slammed me off my feet, but read a little bit yesterday of Shimizu-san 2 to finish out the prologue at least.
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1月14日(水)
薬屋のひとりごと5 LN
32.42% → 35.25%
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