📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

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Day 1:

日本語: I read a fair amount of 伯爵と妖精 29.
Read-aloud: We read two chapters of 7SEEDS.

中国語

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

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Home Post
Day 2 Done
Read the next stories in the Hikoichi book. Going to be rereading them all tomorrow.

Jan
Week 00
Week 01
Week 02
Week 03
Week 04
Week 05
Feb
Week 05
Week 06
Week 07
Week 08
Week 09
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Summary post
…and day 2 down!

today I read a chapter of よつばと4 with the little book club I’m in. It was, as usual, very cute and funny :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: Only a few vocab lookups needed, and most of those were ones that I realised that I knew as soon as I saw the kanji, so a nice chill read. Only one more chapter until we are done with this volume!

I also read volume 6 of 呪術廻戦, and then the first chapter of volume 7. In contrast to よつばと, still a lot of vocab lookups needed here, but I think I’m at least starting to break through the ‘reading a new manga series/writer’ wall. Volume 6 was way more exciting than vol 5 as expected. Despite my complaints last time, I am really enjoying this manga, mainly because of the wealth of really likeable characters (including more than one that I thought ‘ugh, I hate them’ on their first appearance and within the span of a few chapters was like " :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:omg I love them :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:") and the series general sense of humour. I have tomorrow and tuesday to finish off vols 7 & 8 before the free period runs out - they might be a bit slower going than these last two which contained a lot of fight scenes which were lighter on text…but should be just about doable! It will be tempting to just continue straight on with the series once I’m through the free ones…but I keep promising myself that I will try another novel so I should probably do that!

Very much same! I want to read the rest of the NO.6 series but I don’t think I’m good enough for it yet - I definitely limped my way through the first one looking up like half the words in each sentence which got in the way of my enjoyment I think. Will be interested to hear how you find orange as it’s also one that I’ve considered!

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Yesterday and today I read 海の見える理髪店 and actually managed to finish it :tada:
I chewed on this book for so long! If you’re interested you can read my review in The Naoki Prize Reading Challenge - #9 by NicoleRauch

Next up is the second chapter of 笑わない数学者, this week’s book club assignment.

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I have customs blues … my little box of comic books was denied entry to the US. I guess DHL is gonna try again … but not sure how long that will take … Anyone else had this happen with books coming from Japan?

Anyway, I slightly moped my way through another chapter of Way of the Househusband. Chapter 9, probably the cutest chapter in the whole book! And now there are only a couple bonus stories left. I’m starting to wonder if I want to get volume 2 :thinking: :thinking: :thinking:

Yes, thank you! :slight_smile:

Edited to add: since I’m home alone tonight I read Yotuba (chapter 33 plus a few pages of 34) while eating dinner, and brought my pages total for the day up to 40! :tada:

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Jan 2 update :snowflake: summary post

Ended up reading more of Kona’s Big Adventure yesterday (9 episodes!) and continued to episode 15 today. I stopped there because (slight spoilers) that’s the end of the backstory part of the story. Tomorrow I’ll get started on the actual adventure!

As a side note, I’ve been wanting to adopt a cat for a while now and this story is making me want to even more…

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I think I will continue soon gotta find out more about Nezumi - I still enjoyed it a lot and don’t mind the look ups much, especially because I thought the book worked pretty well as a vocab mining source. I also felt the “authors often use the same words again” effect kick in a little bit (though not as much as I expected considering I’ve already learned over 700 words from it :laughing:)
Hoping it will get easier and easier with time!
Something more straightforward in between for a change of pace will be nice though, I think.

I am now kinda wondering who you hated in the beginning? :eyes:

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Day 2 down! I actually got through TWO more pages of よつばと!because of a helpful grammar guide someone linked me today as well as someone pointing out that I was not reading the bubbles as complete sentences :laughing: Very proud of myself tonight!

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Summary post

Day 2: January 2nd

365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 33 min
Today’s color: 薄紅梅 (うすこうばい) - basically it’s a soft pink, like the color of plum blossom flowers

Reminded me of this picture I took in Japan the first time I went, so here's a gratuitous pic

This went a little better today, but still had to look up a lot of words :sweat_smile: I do like descriptive words though, like I enjoy the exposure to more complex descriptors/language than the ones you typically get in textbooks and such. It adds a richness and dimension to “the world in Japanese,” if that makes any sense at all.

Some more interesting words
  • 紅花 (べにばな) - safflower (Carthamus tinctorius); dyer’s safflower
  • 紅梅 (こうばい) - red-blossomed plum tree; red Japanese apricot
  • 濃 (のう or こ) - prefix meaning “dark” (as in a dark color)
  • 聴色 (ゆるしいろ) - permitted color (a color that the “common people” can wear)

まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 21 min

Today I learned about 初夢 (はつゆめ) - the first dream of the year. Apparently, there are some auspicious omens you can see in your 初夢, as expressed in the following phrase: 一富士二鷹三茄子 (いちふじにたかさんなすび). It means “best is Fuji, second is a hawk, third is an eggplant” :mount_fuji::eagle::eggplant: One explanation for the :eggplant: is that ナス (eggplant) = pronunciation of 成す, meaning to accomplish; to achieve; to succeed in, which is my favorite explanation because wordplay xD

What else did I read?
囀る鳥は羽ばたかない Vol 1
Amount read: 11 pages
Time spent: 45 min

Went better than yesterday, but I can’t shake the feeling that things are just constantly flying over my head with this manga. Now I’m only 2 chapters behind :muscle: They are pretty big chapters though


I wrote this post before scrolling down lol, guess we all get to learn about this twice today xD
I also did not dream of anything last night :pensive: I’ll join you and @rikaiwisdom in the void

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Fun fact! This word can also mean ‘deep’ (like a deep flavor - 濃い味) or …heavy? not sure the English word. If someone has rather ‘intense’ features, I guess. Article on 濃い顔 - you can skim the headers and it’s basically all you need to know. :sweat_smile:

It’s one of the words in Japanese I find super interesting because it doesn’t translate cleanly into English but the concept it’s conveying makes perfect sense.

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Summary Post

Day 2: Today I read 6 pages of The Way of the Househusband! I love this manga dfjdskfjsdjf

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Almost forgot my reading today, but then my boyfriend unexpectedly needed help deciphering the Japanese instructions on a Gundam model kit! Still counts :sunglasses:.

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3rd January:

I decided to stop reading 地球星人 because I want to read it with the same pace with the book club, and started reading 嫌われる勇気 instead.

Total page: 8
Time: 25 minutes

Book content (Warning: Spoiler)

The book format is a dialog between a philosopher and a young man. The philosopher will introducer Alfred Adler’s psychology from their dialog.

The book starts with a claim from the philosopher that “people can change”. The young man doesn’t agree with this. Everybody keeps wishing they could change. Everybody is wishing they could be different. They wish they could change exactly because people can’t change. That’s his argument.

To support his argument, he brought up the case of his hikikomori friend. His friend wants to change. His friend wants to be able to go outside, but every time he tries to do that, he starts trembling, he starts feeling pain. He can’t change.

The philosopher argued that he can’t go outside because he doesn’t want to go outside. His past (whether it’s abuse, bullying, etc) doesn’t turn him into what he is today. Us human act with a goal in mind. In the friend’s case, the goal is “to not go outside”. Because of this, whenever he tries to go outside, there will be things happening to support this goal, e.g. uneasiness, tremor, physical pain. It’s not “He can’t go outside because he feels uneasy”, but “He feels uneasy because he doesn’t want to go outside”.

The philosopher then went on saying that the past does not define what we become. The meaning that we give to the past is the one that defines our life. Whatever events that happened in our past, we can choose what meaning we want to give them.

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January 2nd

Still keeping my reading small so I don’t get overwhelmed. Read page 1 of the Naruto manga. Really like that they have furigana in the book for kanji that I don’t know. I did recognize 分 and 今, although I still needed to use a translator to understand the sentence as a whole. I’ll definitely need to focus on learning grammar soon.

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Sorry to hear about your manga. I’ve had DHL deliveries a bunch of times from Japan to Canada (routed through the US) with no problems. Maybe they filled out the shipping/duty information incorrectly?
(Amazon Japan is a great place to order from as well, if you haven’t already. Those are delivered by Fedex here, not sure about the States).

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1月3日 ~ Day 3 / Back to Home

なぜ?どうして?みぢかなぎもん (1年生) - 4 pages (per question):
Question 3: “Why are rocks laid out under railway tracks?”

I wonder...

The narrator points out you can see rocks laid out under railway tracks at railway crossings and at the station’s home and ponders why that is so. Well, since trains are very heavy and go really fast along the railway and ground, it takes a lot of power so the rocks are used to help moderate that power even just a little bit.

The narrator provides an example of carrying something heavy - the more people that help carry the thing, the easier it is to carry. That’s because when many people are helping, one person isn’t burdened with the whole load. In that same way, when many rocks are laid under the railroad, the train’s weight is somehow supported. The rocks act like a cushion for the impact of the train on the ground and railroad and helps moderate the work the ground and railroad have to put in to supporting the train.

As for one part of a Bullet Train, they don’t lay rocks underneath but use a slab of concrete instead. That’s because a Bullet Train moves so fast that it can cause the rocks to fly off, so using concrete lessens accidents and vibrations.

Overall, I got the general idea of the explanation but had a hard time translating exactly due to subject confusion and not being used to seeing かかる used in another situation other than “taking something such as time.” If you look up the verb, there’s actually a lot of meanings for it. I got kind of overwhelmed and a little unsure of which meaning it was being used as sometimes. It was also my first time seeing the verb 敷く so I got confused when seeing 敷かないで and confused it for しか無い when looking it up initially. (This is why kanji can be really helpful!)

Already Learned Kanji

線路・せんろ・railroad
駅・えき・station
何・なん・what
重い・おもい・heavy
乗り物・のりもの・ride
走る・はしる・to run
少し・すこし・a little
和らげる・やわらげる・to moderate - Had no idea of this reading for 和
持ち上げる・もちあげる・to lift up
時・とき・time
人数・にんずう・number of people - This word was actually written in kanji with furigana, but I sometimes forget the reading when encountering it in WK.
多い・おおい・many
方・ほう・side
少ない・すくない・a few
済む・すむ・to finish
同じ・おなじ・same
重さ・おもさ・weight
分けあって・わけあって・for some (unspecified) reason
支える・ささえる・to support
働き・はたらき・labor
一部・いちぶ・one part
新幹線・しんかんせん・Bullet Train - Since I know the first and last kanji, I’d like to think I could recognize this word out in the wild.
早い・はやい・fast
言う・いう・to say

New Kanji

敷く・しく・to lay out
踏切・ふみきり・railway crossing
地面・じめん・ground - I know the first kanji but don’t recognize the second one.
掛かる・かかる・to take (something)/to depend on - I’ve never seen the kanji but it looks like it’s rarely used.
荷物・にもつ・luggage - Know the second kanji but forgot about this reading.
衝撃・しょうげき・shock/impact
板・いた・slab (of concrete)
飛ぶ・とぶ・to fly
事故・じこ・accident
揺れ・ゆれ・vibration

Question 4: “Why do Jizo statues have red bibs?”

What do you think?

The narrator asks the reader if they’ve seen those Jizo statues with red bibs along the roadside and invites them to inquire why they have them. The narrator first explains that Jizo statues originated from Buddhism. From a long time ago, people valued the Buddhist’s way of thinking that all life is important and must be protected.

Along the roadside that anyone can pass, people pay their respects by offering a prayer as they’re passing by. From then on, it was said that the Jizo statues would offer protection so when women bore babies or when raising them, they would offer a prayer to the Jizo statues to keep them safe. The red bibs that Jizo statues have are the same as what babies use, which signified their prayers that their babies would be kept safe.

Flowers and dango offerings as well as paper cranes and toys were placed before the Jizo statues. When babies died, their red bibs were tied around the Jizo statues in hopes that they would be guided to the land of paradise (Sukhavati or Amitabha’s Pure Land, according to Buddhism).

There was only really one sentence that I had trouble with because there were two words that I wasn’t sure of the meaning of (I assumed おがん was a polite way of referring to cancer and おかれ was a polite way of referring to a man). (I’m still waiting for my husband to wake up from his nap so I can confirm the real meaning, but I think I got it now.) Otherwise, I thought it was a nice story and it answered a question I had once or twice while living in Japan. Since religion is something a little complicated of a concept for little kids to explain, I’m surprised that it was explained in a way that was simple but easy to understand for that age range.

Already Learned Kanji

要る・いる・to be necessary
考え方・かんがえかた・way of thinking
物・もの・thing
全て・すべて・all
生き物・いきもの・living thing
守り・まもり・protection
助ける・たすける・to help
古く・ふるく・a long time ago
大事・だいじ・important
来る・くる・to come
誰も・だれも・anyone
通る・とおる・to pass through
人々・ひとびと・people
通りすがり・とおりすがり・passing by
行く・いく・to go
その後・そのご・afterwards
命・いのち・life
守る・まもる・to protect
生む・うむ・to give birth
子育て・こそだて・childrearing
無事・ぶじ・safe
同じ・おなじ・same
亡くなる・なくなる・to die
連れる・つれる・to bring someone along

New Kanji

お地蔵さん・おじぞうさん・Jizo statue
涎掛け・よだれかけ・bib - It literally means something that catches drool.
道端・みちばた・roadside - Actually not too difficult to guess since the left kanji does mean road.
仏教・ぶっきょう・Buddhism
於かれましては・おかえれましては・in respect for
拝む・おがむ・to assume the posture of praying
願う・ねがう・to wish
願い・ねがい・prayer
御供え・おそなえ・offering
折り鶴・おりづる・folded paper crane
玩具・おもちゃ・toy - I don’t think I’ve ever seen this written in kanji.
置く・おく・to place
極楽・ごくらく・paradise

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There is a version available that has all the furigana written next to the kanji.

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I read four pages of ちゃお. I came across a few proper nouns which I had to look up by their radicals at Jisho.org.

Some new/interesting vocabulary for me-

お陰で----おかげで----thanks to …; owing to …; because of .
野獣----やじゅう----wild beast; wild animal; brute

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Day 3: January 3

  • 君の名は。page 18-19
  • Queen’s Quality page 105-135 (end of ch 3 and part of ch 4)

I love it when I get around 80-100 pages into a manga and suddenly reading seems to be so much easier! Most of the common words in the manga came up enough for it to stick and around this amount of pages I’m beginning to get used to the writing style of the mangaka :blush: I think I will only finish the first volume this week of Queen’s Quality and read the rest later, so I can just enjoy it instead of speeding through the other four volumes in two days besides my fulltime job xD

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Home post
Day 1 - 3 log
Only been reading yotsubato so far

  • Day 1 - pages 3 to 17 - 6 cards added
  • Day 2 - pages 17 to 29 - 4 cards added
  • Day 3 - pages 29 to 50 - 5 cards added (first chapter finished)

I’ve really been wanting to get the most out of yotsubato this time as previously I always read it in a more extensive reading sort of way rather then an intensive one. So now that I’m back learning again I’ve decided to fix that so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on easy to learn vocabulary.

I’m doing this by putting words (with context sentences) in to my anki so I’m taking a bit longer to read things then i normally would. But plus side is, is that there are words that I swear where not there before! :sweat_smile:

I’m hoping I get to a volume I haven’t read before (by or before the end of the month) so things get a bit more interesting.

Anyway that’s all for the update. Hope everyone’s reading is going well!

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