📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

Summary post

Day 15: January 15th

365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 13 min
Today’s color: 小豆色 (あずきいろ) - reddish brown

It’s azuki bean color! Apparently in ancient times, red was considered a color to ward off evil spirits, so on celebratory occasions, it was good to eat 赤飯 (rice steamed with azuki beans so it gets red) and ぜんざい (red bean soup with azuki beans).

A good word harvest today
  • 食用 (しょくよう) - for use as food; edible
  • 主流 (しゅりゅう) - (the) mainstream
  • 魔除け (まよけ) - charm against evil spirits; talisman; amulet
  • 厄除け (やくよけ) - warding off evil; protecting against misfortune (basically what I took from looking these up on Jisho is that anything X除け is like…repelling/warding off X, it’s pretty cool how many words there are that appear to work like that lol)
  • 定着 (ていちゃく) - becoming established (of a custom, system, etc.); taking hold; taking root
  • 欠かせない (かかせない) - indispensable; vital; fundamental; imperative; crucial; critical

まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 4 min

Actually both of my daily reads today had something to do with azuki beans lol. Today is 小正月 (こしょうがつ) - Little New Year. Apparently the Thing to Do on this day is eat 小豆粥 (あずきがゆ) and get some info on the weather/crop yields for the coming year via 粥占 (かゆうら) - rice porridge divination.

What else did I read?
じじ猫くらし
Amount read: 25 pages
Time spent: 30 min

Finished off this manga today the ending made me kind of sad because kitty is showing signs of aging :cry: Apparently the irl cat it’s based on turned 13 while the author was writing this book (there was a little afterword note in the back wishing him a happy birthday, it was cute :3)

My favorite word today is 神々しい (こうごうしい) - divine, sublime, solemn

Here is the kitty looking 神々しい

And here are some more good words
  • 心なしか (こころなしか) - somehow; somewhat; seemingly
  • ふかふか - soft (and fluffy) (e.g. bed, bread, baked potato or kitty)
  • 出しっ放し (だしっぱなし) - leaving something as it is (after taking it out or turning it on) (LOL this is definitely a word I need in my life)
  • 歳をとる (としをとる) - to grow old; to age

What manga will I start next??? I have too many choices because I bought too many and yet the one I want the most is still not here :upside_down_face: It’s literally not even published yet lol, I’m just impatient. I preordered it but it probably won’t be here until next week at least

I do not need a third “daily” book right now but this sounds amazing and I would probably buy it if it existed xD I like plants~

It is this one, 365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑! It’s a very pretty book, I like it a lot :blush:

Yeah I agree with @natarin! Seems like she’s basically like “how about that? how would that be? what do you think about that idea?” - that sort of feel.

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This is a veeeeey beautiful flower, I can guarantee, and it also smells super nice! It blooms in spring, and where I live we get it a lot, and it has this beautiful pastel pink colour, it’s really pretty. Like pocketcat said, it’s the one called evening primerose in English.
I looked up the 花言葉 for you, and according to this,

It has several interpretations

無言の愛 ; silent love; love of no words
自由な心; a free heart
固く結ばれた愛; a love of firm ties
奥深い愛情; a deeply profound love

I also loved the kanji for it: 昼咲き月見草

Aaaah, thank you for sharing all of that, it was as so nice to get to know about the flower! :star_struck: and 無常観 is such a fancy word, im loving it!

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Would just like to confirm that yes, especially in regards to swordsmanship and other weapons, any weapon name x-捌き(さばき)ー剣さばき、太刀さばき refers to handling, way of using and also testing. If you are talking kitchen knives and just Google or YouTube search 包丁さばき or 捌き方you will get what it’s about! Reading the rest of your messages, wow, what a way to refer to her perceiving the feelings! And I didn’t know about the cutting styles, so thanks you guys!

Thaaank you! I’m about to order some 366’s for this year, so, you know… I’m looking around :eyes: idk if the flower one exists, but for the time being, there is :sparkles:the internet​:sparkles:,for sure.

Ah, yes. A picture worth of the utmost reverence.

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Main Post

January 15th
Tried reading some more conversations on the VR Nihongo discord, this time no translator at all. I’m happy I was able to follow some of the conversations. One conversation was about Final Fantasy XIV. I think they were talked about what classes they played and what server they were on.

Random words from convo

エクスパンション Expansion
クラス Class
タンク Tank
ロールプレイヤー Roleplayer
日本のサバー Japanese Server
アメリカのサーバー American Server
クリスタル Crystal (I assume the name of one of the servers)

Also I found this image

下

Thank you @natarin and @windupbird, that makes sense.

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Summary Post

Day 15: Today I read 5 pages of よつば&!

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January 15 :snowflake: Home Post

Alright, back to reading chaos mode :grin: I started off with ラストゲーム and read weirdly from like halfway through one chapter through halfway through another? I’m out of sync :joy: It was super fun and cute as always, very soft this chapter-ish actually. Aside from 相馬(そうま) telling 九条(くじょう) her heart feels weird around (やなぎ) because she’s in heat :joy: 発情期(はつじょうき), didn’t really expect to learn that word from a romcom but that’s 相馬(そうま) for you lmao

Also went back to 錆喰(さびく)いビスコ of course because I have no self-control. I’m very intrigued by some of the dynamics and interactions that are likely coming, ie. how in the world is ミロ going to react when he meets ビスコ given his perceptions of mushrooms, like is he gonna know? is he gonna be mad? :eyes:

Still getting used to being back in college environs; we’ll see how much I can keep up my reading once classes start up again!

Today's words

伽話(とぎばなし) - fairy tale
後退(こうたい) - retreat, retrogression (poor (やなぎ) lmao)
バレる - to leak, to be exposed
断続的(だんぞくてき) - intermittent (I love this word actually)
()(そな)える - to have both (insert gif here)
凄艶(せいえん) - weirdly beautiful

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Day 16: January 16

  • 君の名は。page 115-124

Tomorrow I will have read halfway through the novel… I started this year saying: “I want to read at least one novel!”, because I saw a lot of people on insta/WK forums saying that was the time they needed to finish their first novel. Then I started this channel with the idea to read at least one page every day of the novel. One page became two pages and two pages became the minimum with some days even reading up to 20 pages!

I think I will keep this pace until I’m done, and afterwards I will continue this challenge with reading some free manga and spending the rest of my Japanese time to learn some grammar (I’ve only really learnt N5 grammar and I know parts of N4).

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Home post

Day 14:

日本語: I read some of 伯爵と妖精 30.

中国語

中国語: I read an intermediate entry on Mandarin Bean and one page of 擅长捉弄的高木同学.

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Yesterday I read three pages from キャラぱふぇ, and today I read six pages from ちゃお. I actually learnt a new word in both Japanese and English- oneiromancy.

夢占い------ゆめうらな------oneiromancy; dream fortune-telling

にゃー (also にゃあ、にゃお、にゃあご)------meow (onomatopoeic or mimetic word)

ぽかぽか------pleasantly warm; nice and warm​ (onomatopoeic or mimetic word)

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:house:

Day 16. Read pages 178–181 of Kiki; two pages in the morning and one just before going to sleep.

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Weekly check in for January 16th:

Read this week:

魔女の宅急便 - Chapters 1 and 2

Thoughts:
Put the graded readers down for a bit and decided to pick Kiki back up after trying to read this in late 2020/early 2021. What a difference a year makes. I feel like its much much easier to read now and I’m seeing a lot of grammar points that I’ve studied from Tobira/Bunpro N3 crop up in the wild. I’m also not worried about reading a set number of pages a day etc as I want to get into the habit of just reading for fun, like I would in English.

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1月16日 ~ Day 16 / Back to Home

The first time in a looong time that I get to post on the same day that I read! Should really get back to reading なぜ?どうして? but reading Pokemon Special is still reading.

Pocket Monsters Special Volume 1 - page 90 of 200 (15 pages total - chapter 6)

Red finds Kasumi fighting off a Gyarados and assists her and catches it. He soon finds out it’s her Pokemon that was forced into its raging state thanks to Okido-hakase’s information. He believes Rocket-dan are the ones behind all the wrongdoings. When Red and Kasumi learn more about them, they decide they must defeat them at all costs to defend the Pokemon.

I like the way they introduce Kasumi as this badass trying to fend off this raging Gyarados that has clearly injured her. Again, Red happens to be in the right place and the right time. Apparently the Gyarados was originally Kasumi’s, but it was stolen and released to conduct an experiment on Pokemon evolution. I wonder if Red will return it to Kasumi at one point?

Vocab for Reference - New words are bolded

避ける・よける・to avoid (physical contact with)​
助太刀する・すけだちする・assistance (in a fight)
水系・すいけい・read as みずけい・water system or maybe water type
効く・きく・to be effective
宿り木・やどりぎ・mistletoe; parasitic plant → やどりぎのタネ・leech seed
今のうち・いまのうち・now while one still can
自己再生・じこさいせい・self-regeneration
傷・きず・injury
治る・なおる・to heal
釣る・つる・to catch
鞭・むち・whip
光線・こうせん・beam; light ray
仕上げ・しあげ・finish; finishing; finishing touches
生息する・せいそくする・inhabiting; living
盗まれる・ぬすまれる・to be stolen
強暴化・きょうぼうか・become violent
暴走・ぼうそう・running wildly
食い止める・くいとめる・to keep at bay
取っちめる・とっちめる・to take to task
世界的権威・せかいてきけんい・worldwide authority
進化形態・しんかけいたい・evolved form
凶暴・きょうぼう・ferocious
性格・せいかく・nature
破壊光線・はかいこうせん・destructive beam
焼き尽くす・やきつくす・to burn completely
超・ちょう・super-
自動的・じどうてき・automatic
揃える・そろえる・to complete (a collection)
自身・じしん・oneself
数日・すうじつ・few days
悪どい・あくどい・crooked; vicious; wicked
商売・しょうばい・trade; business; commerce
遣らかす・やらかす・to do (something negative); to make (a blunder); to commit (an error)​
秘密結社・ひみつけっしゃ・secret society
生体実験・せいたいじっけん・medical experiment on a living person or animal
情報・じょうほう・information; news; report; intelligence
強化・きょうか・enhancement
重要・じゅうよう・important
狙う・ねらう・to be after (something or someone)
ぶっ飛ばす・ぶっとばす・to knock (someone) to their feet; to knock down
黙り込む・だまりこむ・to say no more; to sink into silence
方向・ほうこう・direction
入手・にゅうしゅ・acquisition; obtaining
洞窟・どうくつ・cavern; cave
付近・ふきん・neighborhood; vicinity
現在・げんざい・present
探索中・たんさくちゅう・in the middle of searching
万一・まんいち・in the unlikely event that
抜ける・ぬける・to go through

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:tiger2: :books: Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220116 :books: :raccoon:


Tanuki Scroll XVI: 竹から生まれた女の子 :bamboo:

Read today’s folktale from Tottori Prefecture!

It’s the rather well-known story about a girl born from bamboo, I don’t think I’ve heard the whole thing before, so it nice to read the full story.

If I get the time later tonight I might try and game a bit in Japanese.

☆ Learnings ☆

New Words

大喜び「おおよろこび」ー Great joy; Overjoyed
やがて ー Before long; Eventually; Shortly. (Rare kanji usage: 軈て)
機織り「はたおり」ー Weaving; Weaver

Forgotten Meanings

ちがいない ー (for sure; certain; no mistaking it)

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Today’s reading was 12時間で家が建つ?米国で3Dプリンターを利用した家が建設される - about a 3D printed house in America.

Some words I looked up

非営利団体 - nonprofit org
中央値 - median
返済 - refund/reimbursement
ようする - to have/possess assets (there seem to be a bunch of definitions for this word, but that was the one which fit the context)
平米 - square meters
素材 - raw material
断熱材 - insulation

Also, I have to travel next week and traveling is usually when my daily routines fall to pieces. I suspect the weak point with this challenge for me is the finding of articles each day. So, if any of you have short/medium length articles that caught your eye, please feel free to send my way and I will take a crack at them next week. I don’t mind the topic (new things are good for expanding my 語彙力 (ごいりょく/vocab skills)! - but do ask it not be newspaper-y articles (ie, NHK, ANN) as I’ve had oodles of practice with those already. :sweat_smile:

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Home post

Day 9: I read another two pages of よつばと!

Today there wasn’t much text, but it felt nice being able to read two pages without spending 1-2 hours looking things up😛

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Summary Post

January 16
君の名は , 6 pages.


Beware, for the harbingers of cuteness have arrived, searching ceaselessly for our wallets. And they won’t stop until they have collected a couple of our souls. Heed my call, my brethren! Stay strong! :horse: :crossed_swords:

Yeah, same! I’m making sure I still put in the effort in trying to understand everything, but it’s a nice help nonetheless. I’m glad that you too find it a bit more difficult though, it’s reassuring! :sob:

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Summary post

Hopefully, it’s time to turn my recent struggles around

So today, maybe just because recent issues made me want to shake things up, I got in the mood to experiment. I’ve never been able to decide just how much I should value monolingual dictionaries or when to go for them, since more often than not they contain so many words I don’t know and balloon out my time spent looking up any given word. But today, on a whim, I re-enabled what I have on Yomichan, just to play around with trying to read them. It slowed me down considerably between setting it back up, spending more time trying to read them, and then having to fix Anki cards I make to just have what I want… but I did find that, occasionally, they worked for me.

More to the point, I had one instance in which they saved me. 青息吐息 (あおいきといき). This 4 kanji compound, on Jisho, is defined as “deep distress.” And perhaps if you know the kanji, you can guess further because there’s “breath” and the sort of “emit from the mouth” type one. But the definition is only deep distress, and that doesn’t really make any sense in the context I read it in! The Japanese dictionaries I was using define it more precisely as the sigh that you breathe in a time of such difficulty/distress. That one makes sense. So… I made my first monolingual Anki card too, on a whim. Made a few of them, when the definition seemed simple enough. Good idea for better definitions and a bit more nested reading practice? Bad waste of time to balloon out Anki time and require me to not have a memory slip on the Japanese in the definitions? Who knows! We’ll find out maybe eventually! Most of my cards were English today still, but not all.

The reading itself didn’t go too far, but I did do it for ~90 minutes, and the characters today were thankfully easier to talk to. What I want to share today is a kanji joke:

You need a bit of context, but they talked about that chessboard with the single pawn surrounded by enemies, describing the pawns as 歩兵 (ほへい, footsoldiers), and I apologize for not remembering the exact wording, but the knights have swords, 剣. They color coded those as the two characters (成歩堂 and 御剣) to make a joke about their relationship that isn’t actually written in the text at all, just implied through the coloring. Kinda neat! If my memory doesn’t fail me, in the English translation they had to just directly go “that’s kind of like you two, huh?” but it felt a little more out of place and random without the kanji connection.

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Yay! I also have most of my anki cards with Japanese definitions now…with some exceptions :sweat_smile: Sometimes it’s a long winded explanation in the Japanese dictionary and I think “this is exactly what the English word means, just save myself some reading time” and other times it’s stuff like 鰯(いわし)(sardine) where the English word and a picture seem more apt than “ニシン目のうちイワシ類の海魚の総称。また,マイワシ・ウルメイワシ・カタクチイワシの総称。全長15~30センチメートル。水産上重要な魚類で,多獲され食用のほか,飼料・肥料ともする。” :stuck_out_tongue:

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Very cool! Yeah that’s totally understandable, I came across a few words already that were such easy concrete things that I just didn’t bother trying much with the Japanese.

I need to add pictures more. I’ve almost never done it, except when I came across テングザル , almost certainly not an important word, but I absolutely had to make a card for it both because I think it’s really cool that it’s “tengu monkey,” and because I now have a card whose back is just this picture, and it makes me laugh every time:

Hidden for impact

Tenguzaru

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Summary post

January 16 update:
Read 10 pages of 時をかける少女 today. Halfway through there was a scene (lasting about 2 pages) that I could barely follow, to the point that I tried returning to looking up every word – which didn’t help much, so after a dozen or so words I just gave up. I think I got the general idea right, judging by the ensuing discussion between the characters, but I feel like this particular bit was wasted for me in terms of both educational value and entertainment.

As a general observation on my experience so far, I think this book is really too much above my level, at least vocabulary-wise. I’m still enjoying the story, so I’m going to finish it, but once I’m done, I’ll either try reading something a lot easier, or maybe play with the idea of pre-learning vocab with Koohi.

Oh, and there’s also an upcoming book club on Death Note, which I’m looking forward to. Not sure yet how participating in a book club feels, but from what I’ve so far, clubs seem to aim for the middle ground between the two reading approaches that I’ve tried with 時をかける少女, i.e. thorough analysis vs just reading lightly without trying to understand details that are not immediately clear. Since these two are pretty much the extremes, I bet there’s a lot to try in the middle of the spectrum.

Congrats! That sounds like an important milestone. I’m nowhere near the level to effectively use monolingual cards yet, but I think they must crank the immersion level up a few notches :durtle_noice:

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