What are you reading today?

Japanese Language Reading
21

Hmmm?

Yeah, this novel wasn’t even listed on Natively, I requested it :slight_smile:
I don’t know how the “official” decks are created, but someone there at JPDB must be a fan of the author, because they have published a few :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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22

I tend to read too many books at once. So for me “reading one book at a time” is an ideal which I almost never meet. The only time I pulled it off was when I read マリア様がみてる | L30 series for 2 months straight - and it’s the happiest I’ve been in my JP reading life (and not just bc I was reading マリみて). These days I’m a lot stricter about how many books I’m reading, but book clubs always throw a wrench in the works (so I am reading 3 novels, 3 manga, and a monthly manga magazine rn - instead of just a novel & a monthly manga magazine). If I’m reading too much at once, I start getting choice paralysis and anxiety.

Thanks for adding it then :slight_smile: . I looked at the page, and it sounded almost interesting enough to add to my list, but I wasn’t sure, and I have enough “definitely interested” that I decided not to

Hard to explain, but as an aside they haven’t added any in a year or two or so. I’ve been using https://jiten.moe/ and exporting decks from there to jpdb (you can also export to Anki format).

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23

Woooooow

If I’m not mistaken, you just gave me access to the deck for my novel I hadn’t found before.

Probably saved me 279 remaining pages in OCR shenanigans… THANK YOU !

Edit: unfortunately it doesn’t contains the novel sentence itself to put as example sentence so i’ll have to OCR still but this is great to have the right vocab and remove some parsing errors I was getting here and there.

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24

Personally I like to aim for two at a time: one harder one, and one easier one for when I’m procrastinating on the harder book. I don’t usually achieve this though :slight_smile:

They did add some in June this year (I check the changelog page occasionally for this). My understanding is that at the moment the only person who can add new built in decks is the site owner, and they (for various “real life”/“other priorities”) reasons have not been actively working on the site, though they are still around to fix it when it falls over. Plus I get the impression that what they’re interested in is more "can you do interesting things with the Japanese parser or with ML analysis of the database " rather than adding more decks.

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25

Yes, one needs an easier book for taking a vacation from the harder book! :relieved_face::laughing:

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26

Ooooh, I know what you mean! Somehow I got to over 100 on the wishlist and at a rate of 1 every 3-4 weeks… really gotta go through that list again and trim it: “almost interesting” should have no place there :rofl:

Okay, this sounded worrying.

But this made things better :slight_smile:
I am guessing the JPDB frequency lists are based on these decks? The more they add the better, even if it’s not the coolest thing to do.

This must be a pain :frowning:
You got it from somewhere other than Amazon, or is it one of those that they simply scanned and uploaded a pdf calling it azw (or whatever the Kindle format extension is these days)?
I ended up with one of those too…

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27
Text extraction shenanigans

Got it from Amazon (if there’s a way to get the raw text from a Bookwalker file it’s also a possibility) the other stores seems to sell only physical copies if I understand the legend well.
Unfortunately there are no more .azw3 in the kindle storage (or anything I can identify as a book-file ~ my android skills as a developer are a bit lacking) so conversion to epub is not an option. Text selection and pasting is blocked after a few hundred words…
Fortunately OCR is pretty good if the text size is large enough (2.5 screens / page) but it’s not painless. Maybe having a reader with a bigger screen to stream would be a good solution or to work from a video instead of screenshots…
That or I’ll find a file by other means but it not pleasant for content that I bought :frowning:

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28
If you have a Windows machine...
  • Get the 1.17.0 version of the Kindle desktop app for Windows, don’t let it update on its own. This version will download most Kindle books (some newer ones require a newer version of the app - tough luck, 'cause those can’t be deDRM-ed).
  • Install Calibre and KFX Input and DeDRM plugins.
  • Convert to whatever format you need with Calibre. I use epub for the e-reader, but if I want to create a deck in JPDB I’ll convert to docX and copy-paste the text from it to JPDB.
  • That’s it :slight_smile:
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29

:penguin: :sob:
But I previously abandoned to install the kindle app on my machine i’ll try again in wine or a vm

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30

Run a Windows VM on it :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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31

Sounds optimal tbh

Galaxy brain moment: if you start a second, harder book, then the first book becomes the “easy” one

Ohhh including Frieren: Beyond Journey's End – Prebuilt decks – jpdb - I guess I’ll have to add that to my list of upcoming rewatches

To Jiten’s credit, they’re very active with adding stuff. The parsers seem to work a bit differently though (can’t say whether one is better than the other)

They have such a vast library I wouldn’t worry. It’s not going anywhere, they’re just not adding (much) new stuff. It’s nice that Jiten is around now tho!

I apparently am (only?) at 673 after 3 years… I definitely won’t be trying to tidy that… Ever :joy:

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32

灰と幻想のグリムガル level.13 心、ひらけ、新たなる扉 | L31 - I finished book 12. It was such a nice break, after vol 10 & 11. There were pirates & dragons, tho somewhat less romance progression than I was hoping for. The author did something at the end that reaaaaally threw me for a loop (major spoiler: at this point he’s removed my least favorite character (Ranta), and now my favorite character (Yume) from the party. Though in Yume’s case it is apparently temporary)

“Caught up” w/ 百合オタに百合はご法度です! ? 1 | L23 and 明日の世界で星は煌めく 3【電子書籍版限定特典SS付き】 | L28 book clubs (百合オタ book club has no schedule, and 明日の世界 I still have to read the current week’s chapter). 百合オタ is making me nostalgic for マリア様がみてる | L30 - especially the Touko x Yumi arc. I need to rewatch it sometime this year. And maybe I’ll reread starting in January, and make a yearly thing out of it :thinking:

I read one or two chapters digitally already, but otherwise will read the rest sometime soon. The cover is so beautiful :heart_eyes: It’s been the same 2 girls for all the covers this year - and I love that we get to see them move in w/ each other!

卍 (まんじ) | L40 - a book that is both 100% Kansai-ben and has an excellent audiobook. Rec’d by @bungakushoujo as basically old yuri, with crazy plot, bc I was looking for Kansai-ben, and it has an audiobook (on Audible or YouTube). The audiobook’s speech pace is pretty fast, so my comprehension isn’t ideal, but it’s enough. And my main goal is really just for the Kansai immersion anyway. I’m doing one chapter a day rn, so at this rate I’ll be done in about a month.

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33

25% into 灰と幻想のグリムガル level.13 心、ひらけ、新たなる扉 | L31 and it’s been a rather underwhelming start so far. Having left (major spoiler for end of vol 12) my favorite character behind in the pirate city, they’re on a 25 day journey back to Alterna with an annoying, eccentric guide who adds absolutely nothing worthwhile to the story so far. I really hope the author fast forwards through this part soon, or else I might start skimming. Anyway the beginning of these books tend to be a bit slow, so I’m looking forward to it picking up later.

Otherwise I’ve been almost all Kansai-ben lately:

  • 卍 (まんじ) | L40 (100% Osaka-ben novel) - husband finally confronted her about her very obviously budding affair with 光子 (みつこ). They’re both at odds. Apparently MC wouldn’t have an affair with a guy, but is fine having one with 光子. They’re barely discreet about it
  • 舞妓さんちのまかないさん 1 | L26 - Kyoto-ben. Very pretty, but I’ve been watching the drama mostly - which fills out or possibly changes a ton. Interesting seeing the dialect differences
  • Colloquial Kansai Japanese―まいど! おおきに! 関西弁 | L15 - great & fun Kansai-ben textbook in English
  • ラブ★コン 1 | L25 - Osaka-ben. I loved the anime a ton - really great, constant 漫才 style humor! I’ve been typing out a lot of the dialogue as I go, which is very useful for learning
  • セーラー服と関西弁 1巻 | L24?? - Osaka(?) - a Manga Time KR 4-koma I’m actually enjoying (halfway through). There was a scene early on where the 2 leads (who moved together from the city) got called out on trying too hard with their accent… but I couldn’t tell :sweat_smile: . I think part of what I like about it so far is that while it’s trying to be funny (with decent success), it isn’t trying to be cute. It’s more “school girls doing school things” than cgdct. Also the chapters are ~9-10 pgs, and go by quickly
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34

I’ve watched the 1964 film adaptation - it was okay-not-great (but but but… Ayako Wakao!!! :grin: ), hopefully the novel will be better. In any case, if you don’t know the full story yet… you’re in for some wild developments :wink:

As for me, I’ve finished 薄闇シルエット, a few thoughts here.
Currently I’m 10% into 朝が来る, another where I’ve watched the film adaptation first. Too early to comment on it, but I did like the film. After three novels by Mitsuyo Kakuta, the change to another author has been… painful. As expected, really :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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35

I couldn’t find a clip from it, but not surprised. Did they keep the Osaka-Ben, or is it in standard? There is a 2023 version, but there was barely any dialogue in the preview clip on YouTube

So I hear. So far it’s been tame, but I’m only 20% in

おめでとう！ I still can’t tell if that book would actually be interesting to me or not 笑

Yeah, it can be really weird switching sometimes, can’t it

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36

I’m not qualified to answer that! :rofl:
My understanding of dialogue in recent films is poor enough, but with older ones it’s even more difficult. The older they are, the worse it gets - usually I’ll just catch words rather than full sentences :frowning:
I do vaguely remember I caught even less from it compared to others from the same period, maaaybe them using a dialect played a part in it? :man_shrugging:

Thank you! Sorry that summary wasn’t more helpful. When in doubt… skip it! :slight_smile:

Completely different style of writing and sentence construction.
I think I’ve seen in ~35 pages more "when something"時 and more “something or other”(に)なる than in the whole previous book :exploding_head:
Hope I adapt soon 'cause I don’t want it to take me all of September to read :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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37

Ahhh I’ve watched one or two really old ones, so I totally know what you mean.

I think it’s more a result of me not having read anything in that sort of genre… So I don’t really have anything to function as a signpost, to give me a clear idea. In the same way that コンビニ人間 seems maybe interesting… Though I’ve read enough reviews of that to know I don’t want to read it :joy:

And yup, there’s more than enough other books I have or really want to read already. Good luck on the adapting

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38

Reading One Punch 34 today and Chainsaw Man 22 tomorrow!

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39

My history of japan podcast talked about two things recently that seemed up my alley and would be interesting to look at and I spent a little time trying to read them:

  • 樋口 夏子 - one of the first women to be published as an author in the meiji era, had a tragically short writing career but published 21 short stories and a whole bunch of poetry. Unfortunately for me, her bend is towards classical literature, and (at least according to podcast host) are hard to find modern japanese versions of. That means old kana aozora time! I tried reading a few but got shut down pretty hard. Maybe I’ll take another look when we do the aozora advent calendar this year, but really not in the headspace for these right now. (one of the ones he talked about directly does have a modern version, though: わかれ道)
  • 子連れ狼 1 | L24?? - He framed this series as one of the examples of how depictions of samurai were transitioning from a very real former social and political class with all of the baggage that came with this in the pre wwii era into the kind of crazy chanbara type action characters they start to be portrayed as post wwii. It has some of those elements, and has a cult classic film series adaptation, but still is supposed to have a kind of darker undertone and point to some interesting underlying social stuff. Sounded up my alley, the whole series is free to read online on sukima’s website, also decidedly not L24 :sweat_smile: Gave up on this pretty quickly, maybe I’ll check out the films instead. The action paneling, while impressive, is also kinda hard for my more modern manga reading eyes to follow
  • Still chipping away at 一度読んだら絶対に忘れない日本史の教科書 | L31 - made it up to the 律令制. Says something that an actual history textbook is the easiest thing I’ve been reading lately :laughing:
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40

Ongoing:

These are all a few pgs to a chapter per day. So no so bad

Book Clubs:

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