📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

Haha, not at all. I’ve definitely been looking up a lot of stuff when playing so far…just using my phone which is more of a hassle!

oooh, that’s good to know! I’ll maybe give it a bit of a shot when I get there and if it’s too much of a struggle maybe I can save it as a little treat to come back for once I’m through the rest of the trilogy :slight_smile:

6 Likes

Home post

Day 18:

日本語: I read a fair amount of 伯爵と妖精 31.

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 lot of 孩子最爱读的中国民间故事.

22 Likes

Summary post

Day 19: January 19th

365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 14 min
Today’s color: 雪色 (せっしょく) - snow white (which is not pure white, but white with a hint of bluish grey)

:cloud_with_snow: :cloud_with_snow:
:snowflake: :snowflake: :snowflake:

I don’t really have much to say today
Snow is very pretty before it gets trampled into slush

Some good words
  • 雪白 (せっぱく) - snow-white; pure; immaculate
  • 純白 (じゅんぱく) - pure white; snow white
  • ほのか - faint; indistinct; dim

まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 5 min

Tomorrow is 二十日正月 (はつかしょうがつ) - which means the New Year’s festivities are really over, guys. Like, for real, time to pack up all those decorations and finish eating all your New Year’s fish. xD

What else did I read?
囀る鳥は羽ばたかない
Amount read: 4 pages
Time spent: 19 min

Didn’t have much time today so I didn’t want to start anything new - seemed like an excellent time to squeeze in this week’s book club reading though.

22 Likes

Main Post
January 18-19th
I don’t mind reading every day, but I may post lest frequently on some days.
I read some random things I came across on the 18th but the majority of my reading was trying to read messages on a game called Sky: Children of the Light. The people who made the game is ThatGameCompany (that’s their actual name) and you might know them from their other games Journey, Flower, and Flow. It’s basically a spiritual successor to Journey with an emphasis on interacting with other people. The game has a lot of players from other countries so it’s not that hard to find a Japanese Message. One message I read appeared to be a player celebrating because they got 1000 candles (the currency in the game). Sorry if I sound like a shill, I just really like the game.

Today I read Chapter 5 of それでも歩は寄せてくる. I could almost read Ayumu’s proclamation that he’s not going back to the kendo club without the translator. I felt really good about that.
I did get confused with the use of 「王」 and 「玉」. I assume they’re references to shogi. I feel it represents who goes first, but I’m probably wrong. What does it mean?

Picture for Reference

Thank you! I forgot to mention that it did feel pretty good to figure that out :durtle_noice:. Looking forward to more of those.

20 Likes

Not a shogi expert by any means, but 玉将 is an important piece in shogi - it’s like the king in chess. And this section of the wikipedia article about it I think holds the relevant information here. Apparently a 王将 is sometimes used, that works the same way, and the idea is that because 「天に二日なく、地に二王なし」 (there are no two suns in the sky, nor two kings on earth), the higher-ranked player uses 王将, the lower-ranked uses 玉将. Which I think fits with the context of the panel you mentioned!
So it’s a bit like playing black or white in chess or go, but with a bit of a status aspect attached.

I googled 将棋盤 and found these examples with the two pieces, so it's probably a common thing


Guessing it was about who goes first is definitely a good guess since it does mark one side or the other, but looking around it looks like going first is determined a different way.

11 Likes

January 19 :snowflake: Home Post

Well chapter 5 was pretty short, I was just casually working through it and suddenly it was over :joy: so another one down in a day then! This chapter was a great (if emotional) time; ジャビ just scaring the hell out of ビスコ for their reunion? ビスコ and ミロ becoming like mushroom partners and going off on a journey together? (what you mean the shounen protagonists are gonna be friends?? crazy)

I love ジャビ, I have a lot of feelings about him and his relationship with ビスコ, but god are his speech patterns weird :joy: I’m not experienced enough with dialects to be able to pin anything down concretely, but whenever I’ve looked things up it all seems to be different?? Like different dialects, some archaic stuff, really who knows with him. The ongoing adventures of 錆喰(さびく)いビスコ :sparkles: 25% of the way through, it’s official!

Fun words

人質(ひとじち) - hostage
遺言(ゆいごん) - will, last request
(おきて) - code, agreement
固唾(かたず)()む - to hold one’s breath (in fear)
(ぼそ)く - thin, feeble
葛藤(かっとう) - conflict, discord
道連(みちづ)れ - traveling companion, taking someone along (in death)
(くち)(つぐ)む - to hold one’s tongue, to shut up

19 Likes

Summary Post

Day 19: Today I finished volume 3 of よつば&!

22 Likes

:snowflake: Main Tracking Hub :snowflake:

1月8日〜18日

It never fails that, when I have to go on a short trip away from home for a few days, I not only scramble to read whatever I can to keep the streak alive, but I also fall behind on reading all the posts here. :sob:

Materials:
:white_large_square: TODAI
:white_large_square: Twitter (for those really desperate times)
:red_square: きのう何食べた?1

I downloaded the first volume of きのう何食べた? to read while I traveled. It’s about this guy who’s got a passion for cooking (and scoring deals at the grocery store) and his boyfriend (who seems like the opposite type of person). I haven’t looked any words up while reading so far. I understand the gist of what’s happening, but I couldn’t tell you everything the fellow ended up making in his first cooking scene. :sweat: I did get me thinking that a good idea for reading practice would be to follow recipes in Japanese, though.

For TODAI, I read an article about the potato shortage and how McDonald’s was offering smaller portions of fries because of it. That’s…all I can remember. It’s been a while since I’ve made an update, all right…

Though I felt like it was a little bare bones, I do think reading tweets in Japanese is decent practice. You end up coming across different speech styles, depending on the person writing the tweets. That said, if I spent less time on Twitter, I’d have more time to get through my backlog of Japanese books. :unamused:

I’m going to read some of 地球星人 before bed. Hopefully this gets me back on track. :crossed_fingers:

21 Likes

My condolences - this will be me shortly. I have little faith I’ll manage to keep up my article reading, book reading, and listening practice daily while visiting family. :sob: These posts will also more than likely get lost in the shuffle.

14 Likes

This morning I read sixteen pages of ちゃお. I’ve now completed 190 out of the 600 pages. It’s the first Japanese book (manga-style magazine) I’ve read, so I’m pretty happy with the progress. Some new words I learnt today:

目茶苦茶------めちゃくちゃ------absurd; unreasonable; nonsensical

姫------ひめ------young lady of noble birth; princess

バチバチ------crackling (of fire, fireworks, etc.)

19 Likes

Today’s article was 日本発「今年の漢字」が各国に広まった理由とその背景は? 中国辞書学会会長が状況を解説 - it’s about the kanji of the year committee basically

Some words I looked up

追加 - supplement (to something)
再構成 - reorganize
阪神 - Hanshin - a name for the area including Osaka to Kobe
反映 - reflecting light; influencing
成語 - set phrase
象徴 - symbolic representation
脱却 - to rid yourself of s.t.
華人 - ethnic Chinese people w/o citizenship living outside of China
華語 - same meaning of 中国語 but I have to wonder if there’s nuance here
華僑 - Chinese people living outside of China
有機的に - working in a coordinated fashion
春節 - lunar new year
対聯 - pair of hanging scrolls
漢代 - Han dynasty

I found out the kanji of the year for 2021 was 金 and it has been the pick 4 times now (this tradition started in 1995). I’m actually going to break this up and finish the rest of the article either tonight or tomorrow morning. I was not expecting it to be quite so difficult but when I started the section 漢字や漢字文化は極めて強い浸透力を発揮しつづけた my brain started to melt on all the new history and location words.

17 Likes

I’m curious how far are you into the story (e.g. which chapter?) I’m tempted to binge to catch up, but at the same time that doesn’t seem really sensible either :sweat_drops:

6 Likes

Hehe, I think I would’ve felt the same if someone was just a bit ahead of me :sweat_smile: But please don’t feel pressured to catch up with me (of course, unless you want to, and have the time/energy) – I’ll still be around if you’d like to discuss it later on :slightly_smiling_face:

Too bad this book, or at least the edition I’m reading, doesn’t have chapter numbers. I quickly flipped through it, and the one I read yesterday seems to be chapter 12, unless I’ve miscounted them.

5 Likes

I see, thank you for your response! That’s actually very interesting. Now I’m wondering if that adds a psychological aspect to the game. Does the player with 王 feel more pressured to win? Does a loss feel better if you had 玉? I’ll have to do some more research on it when I have time.

3 Likes

:tiger2: :books: Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220120 :books: :raccoon:


Tanuki Scroll XX: お腹に忘れられたかさ :fish:

Read today’s folktale from Nagano Prefecture!

About a man who is positively parched and drinks some dirty water that turns out to have some mosquito larva in it. It gives him a bad stomach, so his friend tells him to eat a goldfish… because it’ll swim around in his stomach and eat the larva. So he does. (they just so happen to have a goldfish lying around)

It makes his stomach worse, another friend arrives and tells him he should swallow a bird to eat the goldfish. So he does. (this friend also happens to have a bird on hand)

The bird eats the fish but then starts fluttering around in his stomach making his stomach ache even more. Another friend appears and is like, “Hey, my uncle is great at catching birds I’ll go get him” um… The uncle arrives and enters the man’s stomach I um… with his trusty cap and bird catching stick, because he is a bird catching master what even

He catches the bird and … exits the man… but the poor guy’s stomach still hurts because the uncle carelessly forgot his trusty hat.

☆ Learnings ☆

New Words

幼虫「ようちゅう」ー Larva; Grub; Maggot
ボウフラ「孑孑」ー Mosquito Larva
ウヨウヨ ー Crawling with; In Swarms (onomatopoeia)
ガサガサ ー Rough (onomatopoeia) (It seems it can be used for both “rough to touch” and as in a “rough stomach” as it’s used in this story.)
さお「竿」ー Stick; Pole; Rod (I somehow missed this the first time and wrote “sword”)

24 Likes

Summary Post

January 20
君の名は , 9 pages.


21 Likes

So today I finished 君たちはどう生きるか and I’m feeling quite pleased that I got to the end with a vague understanding of the plot. This was the first thing I’ve read that felt a bit beyond me and I dipped to only really understanding 40-50% of it at times. But I’m looking forward to returning to it in a year or two (before the film comes out) and hopefully be able to read it more fluently next time.

Starting volume 14 of the それいけズッコケ三人組 series tomorrow which should feel like a welcome relief. Been following @Daisoujou 's debate about whether or not to put Ace Attorney to one side for a time and I’m definitely voting put aside, as much as anything for the sheer joy of coming back to it and thinking ‘this isn’t so hard after all!’

And in that spirit tomorrow I’m going to delete the save file on Pokemon Mystery Dungeon so I can re-start from the beginning but actually understand what is going on this time! It was the first game I tried to play in Japanese, more than 2 years ago and I got killed shamefully early and then couldn’t work out how to resurrect myself because I couldn’t read the menus properly.

24 Likes

Main thingy

Read another two (I think?) chapters of 時をかける少女 today. I don’t think my brain can handle much more if I’m as sleep deprived as I was today (oopsie). Maybe if I did it in chunks. Or I should just go to bed earlier for more brain power during the day. :sheep:

Spoilers (Ch 8/9)

As for chapter summaries, I’ll name them “My friends believe me now” and “the car accident (2nd revision)”. But especially the latter was something. I loved the teasing of her seat neighbor (forgot the name) because somehow she reminded me of annoying parents inquiring into your love life “oh no, I understa~nd. you don’t have to make excuses, ohohoho” kind of vibes, which I found hilarious (at least when I’m not on the receiving end). But sheesh the car accident was still tough. I probably only got half of it, but it still seemed a little graphic to me?! I kind of expected the car to narrowly miss them but then nothing more happening, but the description of the car crashing went on for quite a while. I don’t think I got everything here and maybe my brain filled in the gaps with a little too much imagination, but it wasn’t exactly what I expected from a children’s book :open_mouth:

22 Likes

Summary post

January 20 update:
Read 5 pages of 時をかける少女 today – presumably, chapter 13. I think I have an idea where the story is heading. I felt this way for a couple days now, and each new chapter strengthened my suspicions. I’m also kind of excited that I can make some predictions (even if I end up being wrong), because when starting this book, I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to follow the story to a reasonable degree. Expectations subverted! :durtle_durtverted_lvl1:

Oh, I felt exactly the same way! I couldn’t parse a lot of the details, but it sure seemed a bit too much.

22 Likes

Summary post :bookmark:

January 20

かがみの孤城 (下)
Progress: (26% → 33%)

Random stuff: Finally got to meet up on campus today, that was fun. Also unfollowed a bunch of threads, now forum should take up less of my time.

22 Likes