📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

Ace! That’s really good to know - I’ll maybe give it a shot and see how I get on. Worst that can happen is that it’s too tough right now and I can come back for it later, which I don’t mind too much! And yeah…kanji in particular isn’t a huge worry (I’m one of those people who switched WK for a different method but sticks around here for the book clubs and forums lol) but going into a new genre with what I expect to have a raft of new vocab is a time that I definitely want to stick to things that I can read on the kindle hahah!

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OG

20th January - 6th Feb
お久しぶりー
This might be a little long… I expected to be heavy into ときメモ but I ended up spreading out and read different stuff. Honestly some days it was only a few sentences/minutes though;;

ジョンさん日本へ:Short, easy story about the mistakes John makes going to Japan and while he’s in Japan. Nice to see they laughed about it but man I’d be stressed/embarrassed in his position LOL.

このドア開けてくれよ: Finished!!! might have learnt 総毛立った, but my own 総毛 didn’t 立った while reading this… basically a short story hearing a ‘neighbour’ who is locked in, begging you to open the door. The narrator knows no one lives there, and it’s likely not a burglar bc the room is totally empty… they move out two months later without investigating. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t super spooky. Was interesting that I assumed the narrator was a man, but my coworker thought it was a girl :thinking:

New Vocab
  • 開かない: can’t open (didn’t know it was pronounced ひらかない)
  • 焦った感じ: feeling of irritation
  • 邪魔: hindrance
  • 異常: strangeness/abnormality
  • 見渡しました: looked around
  • ガチャガチャ: clank, rattle
  • 紹介: introduction
  • 位置的: location
  • 薄暗い: gloomy/dim
  • ついさっき: a little while back
  • 敷地: plot/site
  • 際に: at that/this time
  • 実際に: actually/really
  • 妨げる: to disturb/to obstruct
  • 総毛立った: hairs stood up (goosebumps)
  • 逃げ出す: to run away
  • 営業: business/trade
  • 明かす: to spend the night
  • 費用: cost
  • 引き払う: to vacate/move out
  • 泥棒: theif; burglar
  • 侵入: invasion/intrusion/trespass
  • もしかしたら: perhaps
  • 謂れ: reason; cause
  • 今更: now (when it is already much too late)

それでも歩は寄せてくる : I joined a different book club, and we’re going through this manga. It’s not exactly up my street, but shoji-focused vocal aside, it’s not too complicated to read. It’s free on Bookwalker if anyone wants to download it!

New Vocab

Chapter 1

  • そのうえ: additionally,
  • しかいない: have no choice but ~
  • 認める: to recognise/admit
  • どうやって: how
  • 引っ剥がす: to tear off/rip off
  • 心に誓った: promise to self
  • しかし: however/but
  • 一局: one game (shogi/chess etc)
  • きっちり: properly, without fail

Chapter 2

  • 穴熊: defensive opening in shoji
  • ワケない: there’s no way ~
  • 攻め: attack
  • 意識する: be aware of, pay attention to
  • ばっか: another way of saying ばかり - ~only
  • 一瞬: instant/moment
  • スキをつく: to exploit a gap, take advantage of carelessness (隙を突く)
  • 性分: nature/disposition
  • 普段: normally
  • 男前: handsome man/looks
  • 参る: to be defeated (new meaning! learnt it as to come via wk)
  • ~してたまるか: will not ~
  • ていうか: you say…
  • 攻めて: to attack
  • 崩されて: to be crushed
  • しまう: to do something by accident

カードキャプターさくら : We read though a little bit of this too!! God this was more of a struggle… I didn’t know Kero-chan used Osaka-ben which makes me love him even more… The art is so cute but the Kanji is hard to read quality-wise… another one free on Bookwalker atm. Might not continue because the vocab isn’t super useful (I’m not going to be showing anyone my 真の姿 anytime soon lol), but we’ll see if Kero-chan can keep me going.

Kero Photos & 関西弁

Screen Shot 2022-02-06 at 21.11.57 HE’S SO CUTE…


Also wtf is this sentence ahahaha ええとえええ way too many えs.
Plus かっちょいい!!! :heartbeat:

New Vocab

Chapter 1

  • 闇の力: power of darkness
  • 真の姿: true form
  • 示せ: show!
  • 契約: contract (will be useful for law lol…)
  • 命じる: to order
  • 封印: seal
  • 解除: release (termination fo a contract)
  • 魔力: magical powers
  • 移し: shift/move
  • 戒め: caution/bad/commandment
  • あるべき姿: ideal situation/ perfect world
  • 暴れる: to act violently
  • ぬいぐるみ: stuffed toy (i used to have one of kero but i left it at my ex’s place :smiling_face_with_tear:)
  • 遅刻しちゃう: imma be late!
  • 家族構成: family structure/composition
  • バタバタ: commotion/kerfuffle
  • 怪獣: kaiju/monster
  • 闊歩: strutting (lording it over overs/acting as if you own the place)
  • 踏む: to step on; to experience
  • ハリセンショップ: osaka gag where they hit you with a huge paper fan

ときメモGS4:I played a little more! I decided to aim for Honda - I’ve played his route before so I know what’s going on, so I thought that’d be a good choice. I’ve put a bit of my playthrough underneath :arrow_heading_down:

screenshots & rambling

This is the main screen - I TL’d the stats for fun. I left 気配り as social a la the old fan translated games, but I didn’t know it meant care/attentiveness! We’re starting off with banging fashion sense and art skills, but our intelligence and social skills are lacking.

Honda shows up when you’ve got 50 for Knowledge so I’m going to hit the books. Technically it’s not the ‘luckiest’ choice to make at the moment which shows because most of my results are this lol :arrow_heading_down:

We meet Hikaru and Michiru and they name us Mari, and promptly invite us to a group LINE chat. We can send a sticker in response - small additions like this are cute imo~ I forgot to mention, while they call us Mari, I put my actual name down as セクシー lmfao.

ひかる: Hi Mari~ It’s Hikaru :notes: We can communicate more openly here than at school, so let’s talk a lot here too! :sparkling_heart:
Mari: :+1:
ひかる: Alright! Let’s get along here :heart:

We go to school with Ryota one day, and soil our shoes. Dude tells us to take ‘em off and them gets embarrassed over legs :joy: We apologise like a good victorian child, but he’s more worried we might be flashing someone LOL

セクシー: Ah, sorry, it’s not polite to point your legs out right…

I finally hit 50 Intelligence! Honda-kun bumps into us (his surprise animation has the ends of his hair curling up which is so cuuute~).

???: Sorry sorry! I surprised you right? Are you okay?

He introduces himself, and asks us where the windows are placed in this school. We answer the left correctly and his says his catchphrase ピンポーン!He says they’re all on the left side, because if they were on the right the light would come in from the right and make it hard to see.

Anyway, now that we’ve met him, セクシー gives him a call to arrange a date a the flea market. :telephone_receiver:

Hearing his lil’ こっちこっち is so cute;;

本多: Ah, over here!

Despite going shopping for clothes I had nothing with the lucky color so I just wore one of his matching items. I’m the weirdo for wearing it to a first date, but he’s weirder for saying the below imo ahaha

本多: Right! Actually, I’ve got the same clothes - let’s wear them together next time!

On the dates you can choose three options to comment. セクシー says setting a stall up might be fun, and it ends in a success o/

本多: From everyday items to antiques, it’s fun to see anything goes.

Let’s find some great bargains!
It looks like setting a stall up would be fun.
It’s an eco-friendly event!

That’s as far as I managed to get before having to hand over the Switch to my sister aha.

New Vocab

応募: application
物知り:well-informed person, extensive knowledge
活発: lively
あの頃: in those days
再開: reopening
鹿めっ面: short for しかめっ面をする, frown
含める: to include,
辞退しすぎ: too many resignations
改めて: once again; formally
展開: development

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Gotcha - then it might actually be right up your alley :blush: The book was generally well-received by the club members, too. And you can still ask questions in the threads or speculate about the case in the book club threads!

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Thanks for your answer. I am a total beginner when it comes to reading Japanese so I have been focussing on manga. However, reading all the daily updates on novels read may have tempted me to start a novel before I am ready. Now I have a goal to work for before I start.

I can’t access Amazon.jp at all and I have tried numerous times so I searched it on Bookwalker now that I know the full title and cover.

A new site. I checked it out but I had to google it to see how it works. Apparently, there isn’t an English version of the site? So I can’t use it for now but I will keep it in mind because I am intrigued by the 2-day sales. I like having options when it comes to buying books.

hahaha! I thought so too! I’m reading this book right now, in fact.

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Ah, it’s a sister company of Bookwalker, by the way. I have no idea if that one has an English version or not though (I assume it wouldn’t, but who knows).
Both sites have very similar libraries and books discounted on one site is usually discounted on the other as well. In this case, though, the discount on ティアムーン帝国物語 is specific to Booklive.

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Summary post

Day 37: February 6th

365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 28 min
Today’s color: 白梅色 (しらうめいろ) - a very pale, almost white, pink

We had the color of red plum blossoms, now we have the color of white plum blossoms! I spent way too long trying to puzzle out the meaning of a deathbed poem that 与謝蕪村 (よさぶそん) wrote about white plum blossoms :upside_down_face: In the end, I don’t think that I was very successful.

Good words
  • 白梅 (しらうめ) - white plum blossoms; white Japanese apricot; white-blossomed plum
  • 俳聖 (はいせい) - famous haiku poet
  • 純粋無垢 (じゅんすいむく) - pure and innocent; immaculate​
  • 楚々 (そそ) - graceful; neat
  • 純潔 (じゅんけつ) - purity; chastity
  • 仕える (つかえる) - to serve; to work for; to attend
  • 押しなべて (おしなべて) - in general; on the whole; for the most part; by and large; almost all​
  • 洋の東西を問わず (ようのとうざいをとわず) - in all parts of the world; in all countries; anywhere in the world; both in the Occident and the Orient
  • 神秘性 (しんぴせい) - mystique
  • 明くる (あくる) - next (day, morning, etc.); following​
  • ずがない - unthinkable; extraordinary; preposterous; cannot be
  • けり - 1) indicates recollection or realization (i.e. of hearsay or the past); can form a poetic past tense; 2) indicates continuation from the past to the present
  • 辞世の句 (じせいのく) - farewell poem; death poem; poem written during one’s final moments
  • 最期 (さいご) - one’s last moment; one’s death; one’s end

まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 7 min

Today’s reading was about 余寒見舞い - if you still haven’t replied to any 年賀状 (even though it’s after 立春), there’s still time! lol. Send a 余寒見舞い while the weather’s still cold.

What else did I read?
海のどうぶつが可愛すぎて!
Amount read: 6 pages
Time spent: 38 min

Today I learned that sperm whales and humpback whales sleep vertically, and only half of their brain sleeps at a time :flushed: Whole new meaning to “sleeping with one eye open.” Apparently seals can also do that??

Good words
  • ダイオウイカ - giant squid :squid:
  • 深海 (しんかい) - deep sea; depths of the sea; ocean depths
  • ナガスクジラ - fin whale; finback (whale); razorback whale
  • 天敵 (てんてき) - natural enemy
  • ドヤ顔 (ドヤがお) - self-satisfied look; triumphant look; smug face; shit-eating grin
  • コククジラ - gray whale
  • 横倒し (よこだおし) - falling over; toppling sideways
  • 生態 (せいたい) - mode of life; ecology (can also mean an animal’s territory)
  • フジツボ - acorn barnacle
  • こそぐ - to scrape off; to shave off​

Yay!!! :clap: :clap: :clap: Congratulations! :partying_face: I remember trying to read Kiki as my first ever novel and giving up very quickly hahaha I still haven’t gone back to it :sweat_smile: I wonder if it would seem any easier

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Summary Post

Day 37: Today I read 11 pages of よつば&!and finished chapter 25!

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Home post

Day 36:

日本語: I read a fair amount of ミステリークロック and a bit of 機動強襲型令嬢アリシア物語1.

中国語

中国語: I read an intermediate entry on Mandarin Bean, one page of 擅长捉弄的高木同学, and a bit of 孩子最爱读的中国民间故事.

And this marks another successful week!

J A N
:books:
:clinking_glasses:
:woman_cartwheeling:
:roller_skate:
:parachute:
:dog2:
:hamburger:
F E B
:books:
:lotus:

Yay, a fellow Mandarin learner! For my reading I’m using ebooks from my local library system.

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February 6 :snowflake: Home Post

A very late post today; I was busy and tired basically all day so I just read a bit of ラストゲーム to keep up the habit. It did remind me how much I’ve enjoyed it though, so I might need to start incorporating it into my reading more often again :eyes: It’s always nice going back to ラストゲーム after reading like 999 and realizing how much easier it feels, very validating!

Fun words

さぞかし - certainly, surely
言語道断(ごんごどうだん) - outrageous, preposterous
(まん)(いち) - if by any chance, in the worst case

Congrats to everyone finishing up their reading projects, you’ve all been absolutely killing it!! :tada:

Yeah it’s wild, I feel like it’s just a different sort of weight? Idk it might depend on the person too, I could see if you’re like a super visual reader then having to parse out sentences might interrupt that, that sort of thing. Definitely feel it with those kinds of descriptions though :joy: I also think it just makes me spend more time in situations and with characters so I have a deeper connection earlier in the story, if that makes sense!

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Yesterday I read 大聖堂 (and almost finished this week’s assignment! I could not put the book down because it was so gripping).

Today I decided to change my reading plans a bit. There is a Japan Film Festival coming up (Feb 14 - 27) and they show the movie しあわせのパン. I bought the book a few years ago by accident (I mistook its author 三島 有紀子 (Mishima Yukiko) for the author 三島 由紀夫 (Mishima Yukio) whose books I was looking for, and I grabbed it in passing at BookOff without really looking into it :woman_facepalming:) but anyways! This time I want to read the book before watching the movie :grin: The book has 200 pages, that means if I read at least 10 pages per day, I can make it in time, at least for the last day of the festival. The good thing is that I own a paper copy so I can make this my sauna book as well :+1:

I started reading it this morning and read the (short) prologue. It’s quite an easy read so far, and I think this challenge should be doable.

EDIT: I added a thread for the film festival, so we can maybe discuss some of the movies we watch, and give recommendations.

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So update time for me: Homepost 29d

First things first. I missed a day :sob: . The move of my parents took longer than expected and after 14hours of moving furniture around I simply had no energy left to read anything in Japanese…

Other than that I’m still keeping up with all the update posts in here and im especially proud of our members who finished a big milestone by finishing the first book or manga!!

What have I been up to:
Kept going with solanin. Made good progress thus far but currently I’m not too sure I like the direction it is going in. Lets see how it will resolve. If I keep going at my current pace I should be done with the main story right around next weeks update. Will definitly let you know my thoughts afterwards. @vonnutje I reached the panel you were showing last week. Poor katou just can’t win in janken XD…

Also kept reading slam dunk. In regular volumes I probably finished about 2 (have the new version with 20 volumes instead of 32 in total). The complaint I had last time basically vanished. It is still pretty wordy but the new conflicts get mostly resolved on the basketball court and holy moly do I get hyped every time it happens. The panels are superb and the last time I felt this hyped for sports was probably while watching some Haikyuu. Totally do net regret having picked up slam dunk.

Other than these regulars I dabble in some news articles here and there on Todai on my smartphone, or look into your recommendations in this thread to try and see what I want to put on my never ending 積読 list. Every time I do this I also try to read a page or two of the material to see if it fits.

I hope this week will be smoother sailing and I don’t have to fight as much to find time to read japanese.

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Awesome it’s an online film festival I will watch some of the movies if I don’t forget about it.

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Monobeno
I read one third of the second chapter. It’s slowly getting easier and easier to read it. Of course it’s a rather easy visual novel Maitetsu from the same company is way harder.

Yamada kun and the Seven Witches vol.2
Just read the next 50 pages.

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:house:

I took it easy today and only read one page of 銭天堂. From tomorrow onwards I’ll try to read it in whatever spare time I have — it’s a fairly low effort read, so by doing that I should be able to read at least a few pages each day.

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I’m continuing with the same blog, today’s reading was 『昔は出来た』
Musing on her daughter joining school clubs and her own reactions behind the scenes.

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:tiger2: :books: Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220207 :books: :raccoon:


Tanuki Scroll XXXVIII: いろりの精 :teapot:

Read today’s Hyakumonogatari, from Gifu Precture!

About the spirit of a hearth.

☆ Learnings ☆

New Words

いろり「囲炉裏」ー Sunken hearth; a traditional sunken fireplace
きちんと ー Properly; Neatly; Precisely; Orderly
ぺっぺっ ー Spitting (onomatopoeia)
むくむく ー Rising up (of smoke for example)
「やり」ー Spear; Lance; Javelin (I’ve heard of Yari before but never had a kanji to link it with)
やっこさん「奴さん」ー A samurai’s attendant. Also a popular type of song and dance from the Edo period.
介抱「かいほう」ー Nursing; Looking after

Forgotten Readings

倒れるたおれる」ー to fall (over or down); to collapse


頑張って! Good luck when you get round to it! I’ve been wanting to play some of the Yakuza games in full Japanese but I don’t think any of the ones I have let you change the text to Japanese.

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Main Post

Finished reading through volume 6 of Spy x Family today. It’s a pretty strange one, as the mission brings them to a underground tennis tournament :rofl:. The start of the mission outline was probably the roughest patches of reading in a while, but I just accept that atm, as long as I can grasp what’s going on and understand the normal conversations that’s okay. Rest of the volume is a lot more readable, with maybe an exception near the end of the volume where Lloyd is monologuing through most of it. Though those sections are also getting easier to read. Looking on the list of words I searched, I think I found a few interesting ones like いずこ being used instead of どこ and a very different reading of 懐 (ふところ) with a different meaning than I’m used to. Took some photos, which you can see below.

Volume 6

This volume ends on a cliffhanger, so I’ll just dive right into volume 7 tomorrow. :eyes:

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Summary Post

February 7
「餃子といえば宮崎だ!」 新“ギョーザ日本一の街”のヒミツ


Today I didn’t feel like reading the book at all. I was busy for a while after lunch and was too lazy afterwards to sit and read. So instead I would do what any sane person would do: right, read an article about gyoza.

I have to say, when the article starts with this, you know you’re done for:

※注意:おいしそうな写真があります。ごはん前、ダイエット中の方はご理解のうえお読みください

So, naturally, now I want to try miyazaki gyoza. There weren’t too many pictures of the actual gyoza, but the article was cool nonetheless. I’m someone that gets super bored while reading news, but wanted to give them a try regardless because they’re nice study material. I was already going to give up after browsing so many boring headings about good old coronavirus and other things I don’t have any interest in, but then I found 暮らし in the categories and had a look. Looks like something that could contain more chill, fun and varied articles, like this one, so good to know for future reference.

But yeah now I want gyoza. I really like gyoza ;-;

Also learned its kanji, 餃子.

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Thanks for the heads up! If it doesn’t slip my mind; I’d love to see some of those.

Thanks!! Oh yeah, I haven’t looked into if I have to buy separate versions or what. I’ve played pretty much the whole series so I’m aching to try Lost Judgment, but now I can’t bring myself to do it in English, so it makes a great long term goal. I expect it to be pretty hard, though…


Summary post

About an hour, 1600 characters, 125 lines on Summer Pockets (rounding slightly). Not quick, but it’s all good! Today had a whole bunch of new, pretty useful looking words to teach me, but was easy on the actual comprehension difficulty, so fairly optimal learning material. This is very much a whole lot of nothing but chilling VN so far, but I like the way the protagonist just wanders around, bumping into things to do. For something aiming to capture the feeling of summer vacation, it’s fitting. The only major difficulty today was simply that the MC came across a candy store (teaching me about 駄菓子屋 and 駄菓子 along the way), and while there, starting listing tons of types of candy. I mostly skimmed that portion for what the dictionary easily found and left the rest alone. I get the point.

There’s the shop! This particular sentence was, to my knowledge, my first encounter with も…ば…も. The meaning was pretty intuitive immediately for the sentence as a whole, but it took a little searching to discover exactly what the grammar point was, since it can fool you into looking conditional. I doubted if I’d be able to self study and find answers as well as I have been, so that’s another thing to celebrate.

That’s about it for developments today, though I’ll add that the store is run by an elderly woman and I always love Japanese stereotypical “old woman” voice acting, so that was a fun treat. And I finally got to put Wanikani’s かき氷 lesson to use after all this time!

Interesting new words: ノーヘル is short for (riding a motorcycle etc) with no helmet. But メット is also short for helmet. Someone, please standardize your abbreviations. :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh, and I love that fake Coke logo back there. My favorite I’ve come across in another VN is an obvious Wendy’s sign that said “Meddy’s Hambubgers.”

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What reading was that? :thinking: ふところ is the only one I know for that word. My dictionary does have ほほ as well, but I never saw that, so it would be interesting to see in context.

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