📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

Summary Post

May 3
Final Fantasy VII


This post is probably going to be huge so I think it’s best if I divide the replies so it doesn’t get too messy. Hoo boi, here I go:

Replies
Daisoujou

Yeah I think this could be a nice experiment. I guess it comes down to the old need to have everything perfect, I feel very uncomfortable with uncertainty sometimes. I managed to work a lot on my perfectionism with these challenges, I remember being annoyed when I missed a day and then by Winter’s challenge I was fine with it. Now I need to work on being fine with not doing things optimally.

I think it’s not so much that they’re not working per se, only that I think they’re taking an extra effort that could go to just relaxing my approach and going through more things in the meantime, with a bit more varied context and a fresh mentality, with no “x number of words max” per day “limit”. I guess I’m looking for a more comfortable approach. Making cards is not actually huge work because usually it’s only a click in Houhou or in Yomichan, but… I’m not sure, I guess the issue is that I burn out on SRS after a while, because it’s straining to think about what to add, what not to add, how many words, “am I doing enough words today? Oh I barely added anything today, oh today again, oh I already added 20 words so have to stop (Houhou sadly doesn’t have a new cards per day limit, that’s probably a big downside)”, and so on. Too much mental gymnastics and technicalities sometimes. I’ve been testing with JP-JP cards with Yomichan+Anki and I think these are working much better, actually, so that’s good, though still fairly limited for me because I don’t add cards whose definition I don’t understand fully. An approach could be to only add these types of cards whenever I can and leave it at that :thinking: that would also reduce the daily reviews and overall tediousness.

windupbird

It often does feel boring, truth be told. It can get so… lifeless. It’s of course probably not pointless, because the method definitely works overall, I’d say. It just seems to be sold as the only valid method to learn a language “properly”, often coming from the Japanese learning community. I sometimes browse /r/languagelearning and it gives me the impression that there are many people there who advocate for the “read, read, read a lot” approach, among other things, even if the SRS population is still very prominent, though not as noisy as in the Japanese community. I wonder what makes Japanese different from other languages, if it’s something inherent to the language itself or the population that learns this language in particular. Sorry this is a random train of thought :joy: .

I think so too. I left the language school back then because it felt a bit slow, but the truth is that even if it was slow we did reading, listening, writing and speaking, and it was a much more effective and varied approach, looking back. Over time I’ve come to realise that if I hadn’t left the school I would have achieved a much higher level by now, not worrying about trying to find the best approach or the best pace. Though I wouldn’t go back to the school now, I think I would benefit from returning to my mindset of back then of just keep going, however slow or fast, while maximising fun and curiosity. I’m not sure when the other mentality started to take place, probably when I started researching (and potentially misunderstanding) self-study methods in the online community.

That’s really reassuring :slight_smile: .

wiersm

Yeah that’s my thought as well. I’m not sure why I thought Japanese would be different, I suppose it just looks more intimidating than English ever looked for me :smile: . Probably because English already shared a lot of things with Spanish so I felt much more confident, whereas Japanese feels like a completely different beast.

natarin

That’s a funny coincidence :joy:

I like that reasoning. I’ve seen it before, people using SRS to acquire a first set of “critical” vocabulary and then off to the battlefield.

Do you still learn kanji like in WK or do you just acquire more vocabulary? Ever since I finished WK I’m not sure of how I should approach kanji learning, I’ve only been adding words while having a look at each individual kanji’s meaning and that’s about it, but no formal learning.

Honestly that sounds amazing. I hope I’m not mistaken, but I think I’ve seen you spend multiple hours many days with whatever you’re doing, simply because it kept pulling you in, and I always thought it was impressive. I wouldn’t be able to do that myself with my current approach because of that pressure you mention. English never felt like studying for me, either, because I never sat down to study it. I absorbed it in exactly the same way you are approaching Japanese, only over a long period of time.

I think this is really good advice, and reassuring at the same time, tysm! :wink:

omk3

It’s exactly the same for me. I encounter words from WK all the time that I don’t remember studying at all, and I burnt about 70% of them. Which is kinda disappointing if I think about the hundreds of hours it took me to reach Lv60 in total that could’ve been used to learn things more in context, but if anything I’m really grateful that at least the readings seem to have stuck very well, and now I’m able to guess correctly the reading of most words I encounter, if I know their kanji.

I think that’s a great way of expressing it. I feel the same, I learnt to associate many words with their meanings, but I never internalised the idea behind them. I learnt to “get correct answers in a software”, as opposed to learning words. And it’s because I never got emotionally invested in them, nothing happened with them, it was purely going through a word list. Though, again, at least a portion of them stuck after all.

That’s interesting! I think I’ve seen the takoboto list approach other times around this community, possibly coming from you, I can’t quite remember. Also thank you for reminding me I hadn’t installed it when I changed phone :smile: . I’ll keep the lists idea in mind.

You’re right. It’s reassuring to know that other people use other methods and still learn just fine, even if not in the most efficient way. I don’t care much for efficiency either, which is a contradictory thing to say considering my post from the other day. I guess I could say I care about not getting stuck in a place where I feel I’m not going forward, and it’s good to see that that’s not necessarily bound to happen at all.

Redglare

Yeah I think you’re right. I have been doing the same thing with the same approach for a long time and I don’t know what it feels like to change direction and walk a different way, especially when most people seem to be walking the other way ;-; . Though ultimately all paths reach the same point, even if some take a bit longer.

To be fair I don’t even know how it works myself either :joy: :joy: . I just add what I want, with context sentences in the backside in the case of Yomichan and that’s about it. But yes, I think it’s good advice to get rid of whatever that doesn’t seem to be working. I don’t owe these artificial cards anything, after all, they’re only a tool. I could aim for only a small number of cards when I feel like it, as you do, and leave it at that. Perhaps a break from SRS altogether is due for a bit nonetheless.

sycamore

That’s honestly a good and tricky question. The honest answer is that… I don’t really know specifically. I started learning out of pure curiosity. I thought it would be really cool to learn because I liked a lot of Japanese things in my childhood and still do to this day, so I applied to a language school many years back and got admitted. And I absolutely loved it, it always felt so much fun. It was never a specific thing that drove me, but more like… everything? It’s kinda complex to express, or I’m just very tired :smile: . It was similar with English, it wasn’t so much one specific thing but many at the same time. I wanted to watch movies, play games, read books, interact with the English and international community, and so on. I feel like with Japanese it’s similar, I want to be able to enjoy books, play Japanese games, connect with Japanese people, travel to Japan again, and a big etc. There’s a big aura that pulls me in and brightens my life a little bit, and it’s a struggle to put to words what exactly it is what I want to do. Is “everything” and answer? :joy: Video games are definitely a big factor, though.

Yeah it’s exactly the same with English for me so it doesn’t really bother me. I don’t feel the need to quantify my vocabulary, I don’t even know how many words I know in Spanish. It’s not something that I think is worth keeping track of :smile: . The number of words growing in the SRS is mostly so I could see that I’m indeed being exposed to a wider and wider range of vocabulary, but ultimately I’m happy deleting them at any time.

That’s one nice option, though I don’t usually feel like doing anything else when my energy has been spent scrutinising one thing already. Honestly I think I’m walking in circles to allow myself to drop the SRS and I’m trying to rationalise this a lot when in fact it’s so easy to just stop using it :joy: . I guess I was just afraid of doing so and not getting anywhere, but everyone’s responses are giving me a lot of hope.

I think it’s exactly because of not seeing Japanese as straining study that you all are improving a lot over time. I definitely need to return to that mentality :wink: . And also I hope I didn’t misunderstand the sarcasm, but I wish you very good luck with the JLPT! :joy:

GrumpyPanda

I think I’m starting to realise that overall I’m just burnt out of SRS and need a change of tactic, at least for a while. Replying to you all has made me realise that I’m trying to convince myself to keep pushing a study method that I’m not really enjoying very much, when I can just drop it and try something else for a bit. It has been very enlightening to me :slight_smile: .

Yeah definitely, I think I need to be more selective of what I add, but also most importantly of when I add it. Sometimes it’s a word that seems to be important or common enough to learn, but in a context I don’t care about. I’m just usually not inclined to let it go, because it feels important to know.

I think that sounds great, honestly. I think I’ve also had moments when I felt I enjoyed SRS a bit, but it might have been very dependant on mood. I would definitely benefit from adding less words, or better put, reducing or eliminating the pressure to add words overall.

Yeah definitely, flashcards are very efficient and effective with the right method and the right mindset. It just seems so easy for them to be super boring, though ;-; .

MissDagger

That sounds extremely painful :scream: . I commend your dedication :joy: It’s so weird to think that these comfy tools haven’t always existed, now that we are all so used to them. I’m so grateful.

Thank you for linking this, I’ll definitely give it a read soon!

Yeah that seems familiar. I mentioned it in a reply before, but I get the impression that sometimes I was learning how to type the correct answer, instead of internalising what the words meant, so the natural progression was to forget a lot of vocabulary after a while.

This is definitely my experience as well. I burnt some words in WK that I kept having doubts about, and then I encounter them somewhere else with a very strong context and suddenly they click.

You are completely right. I’ve also mentioned it in another reply but I think I’m subconsciously looking for reassurance and validation to quit the SRS, perhaps temporarily or permanently. It’s definitely food for thought, thank you so much.


Okay that was a lot :joy: :joy: . Again thank you all so much for your input, I really appreciate it <3 .

On a side note, I mentioned Game Gengo the other day. Coincidentally, he released a video today with a list of video games currently on sale for the golden week (linking in case anyone is interested in any, again it’s a veeeery long video but there’s no need to watch it completely, can just skip to see if there’s anything that catches your eye, though the first minute and a half is important). So anyways, one of them was Team Zero Escape bundle, which grabbed my interest both from Game Gengo’s introduction of it and the price. If I remember correctly I’ve seen some of you play them, @natarin , ZTD is one of them, right? I know absolutely nothing about these games, but they seem interesting enough for a first contact. I… might consider getting it :eyes: . So uh, thoughts? Is the language there too obscure or difficult to get into, or is it manageable?

This is the pack (they can also be bought separately)

image

31 Likes

Just have to say that I had a particularly good reading day today! I finished chapter 1 of 夜カフェ2 then read chapter two in one sitting! (And at a fairly nice pace, too.) Then I picked up Asuka and read a chapter from ブナの森のアリア, in which a reclusive witch who seems to live with a talking wolf goes to a supermarket for the very first time. She cut her finger earlier while she was peeling potatoes, so when she sees a salesman pitching peelers (which she has apparently also never seen before) her eyes get all huge and adorable. So anyway, reading that chapter convinced me to grab the first volume on bookwalker (I couldn’t find it on paper, and there is something magical about being able to instantly read) and then I read 30ish pages of that.

I will try to upload a picture from the supermarket chapter later. :slight_smile:

P.S. I really wish I could justify getting a subscription to Asuka. Maybe someday …

28 Likes

I skipped yesterday (2nd March) and I’m going to skip today as well. Yesterday was a public holiday so I used that as an excuse to continue reading this new web novel that I found. I ended up staying up whole night still reading it and now I need sleep too badly to concentrate on Japanese practice. I thought this would be the challenge where I get a perfect score but ah well. :woman_shrugging:t5: At least, I got one full month.

22 Likes

Read chapter 2 of this today. The girls made their way to the school for the 合宿 and Kaho seems especially excited. They had a meeting about some stuff they’d like to do like play tag, have a campfire, etc so the next few chapters should be some fun slice of life stuff I imagine.

27 Likes
Replies

Haha, you know, I was thinking about language difficulty more than anything, but I still stand by it. I’m more than desensitized to crime and horror for entertainment – in a way I find old slasher movies and the like sort of a comfort pick for movies. I’ve not been saying anything about what I think, but it’s pretty good. I’m interested to see where it’s going. Feels like it’s written to be a warning about data security at times, but it’s all good :stuck_out_tongue:.

Yeah I feel you on that. It’d be unnerving for me to disrupt my routine at this point. Part of the idea came from me having that thought not too long ago that I wanted to try dropping Wanikani, and within a week I was just feeling bad about it. I don’t think it was even enough evidence that the new approach wasn’t working, I could just tell it made me more worried so that settled it. I think I tried it at the wrong time but, you know, it’s when things feel worse that you want to shake something up.

Ahh ok, I see! I wouldn’t say I actually enjoy SRS either so I can definitely understand that. I think I approached it from a different angle because your perspective isn’t as much a side of it that has bothered me. Like I do find reading occupies a different mental space when I’m doing it “to learn” but that’s really about the whole process, and I find it getting better as the reading gets easier. But the cards themselves don’t bug me much. Probably because I do the usually unadvised thing of adding somewhat recklessly. I have no procedure for selecting beyond how I feel at the moment, and I usually feel like I want most things that are in a suitable sentence. So for me the only hard part is when I have to cut myself off for the day, haha. I only had to think about getting enough words when I was new enough that i+1(ish) was hard to find. Now there’s way too much.

I will say, for whatever it’s worth, I get the ideas people have about just relaxing and reading and not overly forcing it with SRS, but I guess for me I feel like I’m going to enjoy my reading so much more as it becomes further from studying and takes up a lighter cognitive load. I keep doing SRS because I’m willing to believe it’s enough of a shortcut to that point that I’ll have more fun more quickly (stressing that I’m already having some) if I keep doing it. I find that my context sentences, the vast majority of the time, do take me back to the context it was originally used in pretty strongly and reinforce one dimension in which the word can be correctly used, so for me it doesn’t feel as out of context as a lot of people expressed, in sentence mining specifically. Wanikani words though? Yeah. Love-hate with those. I think I do need them to reinforce kanji readings, but I basically assume I don’t know any WK words at all til I actually read them.

So yeah I guess simple as it is, it comes down to if what you might get out of it is worth the amount it’s irritating you. And you seem tired enough of the SRS process that if you’re having a fairly good time just reading right now, which you seem to be, that seems like an easy call.

14 Likes

May 4, Wed :cherry_blossom: calendar post

Week 6 of Spring 2022’s progress

SPYxFAMILY plots and characters are crazy - I like it. I just quickly read 2 chapters (to see the mom), and 70 pages per chapter? That’s crazy.

Thanks. I might join in.

There is this , (and you can click your own to tick, not necessary to press edit :pen:); but yeah, it is less standing out than :white_check_mark:.

I never used SRS too; but reflecting on it, a large part is learning vocabulary roots; and more than that, a lot of rhymes. Though I tackled a lot of reading native English materials long before that. (In particular, a lot of encyclopedia articles and Wikipedia.) I also was an exchange student (pre-adolescence) in New Zealand as well.

I can easily say that I don’t believe in immersion alone; although of course, it is a big part.

Another part is grammar, there was being taught, as well as I owe a lot to my particular meticulosity.

Regarding the vocabularies, in the end, both quantity and quality are important. I can’t omit either. In my eyes, Anki, in particular, can help with quantity (and I also write my notes) and pinpointing what about to be forgotten, but that’s not the only way.

25 Likes

I think this basically matches my own experience. I have no plans to stop SRS anytime soon haha because I’ve already seen how much of a massive gain in comprehension it has given me. Simply nothing else works better for vocabulary acquisition, at least for me (and I’ve tried plenty of other strategies with Spanish, so I have other experiences to compare it to).

I think I’m pretty neutral on SRS as an activity. I don’t love it, and I don’t hate it. I’d rather be reading, but with as much work as reading is for me currently, it isn’t exactly the most relaxing experience. But SRS helps smooth things along so much that I feel like fluency is actually within grasp as long as I keep plugging away for the next several years.

I do think it really helps to SRS stuff directly from your reading, and to pull the context sentence along with it. I don’t stick at all to the i+1 rule haha, but I’ve noticed that many of my context sentences in Anki that had like 4+ unknowns when I added them are actually comprehensible to me now without look-ups because I’ve since managed to learn all of the words. It’s so extraordinarily cool to me to watch my own understanding develop in real time like that.

There are loads of words I’ve chosen to add purely because I found a sentence on twitter or in a youtube live chat comment that I really liked, and I wanted to use that specific sentence for it, haha. (I added 対決 so that I could use “イケメン対決だ(︎⁉︎)” for the context sentence, and I added 魔力 despite not having technically learned that first kanji yet because I wanted to use “ベルトの魔力がミサヲを狂わせる!” for my example sentence, despite not knowing that last verb either).

What I’ve found for me personally is that reading in context is great for solidifying meanings for me if I already know the word (so if I’ve drilled it into my head with SRS), but it’s not really enough for me to learn meanings from scratch unless I get absolutely massive repetition over a long period of time, and it doesn’t really get me to learn how new vocabulary is read because I end up just learning to recognize the word on sight and don’t pay enough attention to the reading when looking it up with Yomichan. So SRS is my only hope of gaining auditory comprehension of these words haha because it forces me to learn the readings.

14 Likes

Summary Post

Day 33: May 3rd
What did I read?: ダイロクセンス Vol 1
How much did I read?: 8 pages
How long did it take me?: 25 min

We’re back, sort of xD Not as much progress as I would have liked today, but honestly I’ve been behind the whole entire day and now suddenly it’s 9pm somehow, idek. At least it wasn’t as bad as yesterday.

Today I learned that Rui has been on TV a lot recently (courtesy of Sumire’s boss, who also apparently knows who he is xD). I desperately want to see whatever show that was, like idek why but I want it so badly. I want to see Sumire react to it xD

This illustration was inserted into the chapter randomly and I thought it was so cute :3 (This is Rui btw)

Good words
  • たぬきじじい - cunning old man :raccoon:
  • 暇潰し (ひまつぶし) - waste of time; killing time
  • ただでさえ - even at the best of times; already; (even) under normal circumstances; in addition to; as it is​
  • 百聞は一見にしかず (ひゃくぶんはいっけんにしかず) - seeing is believing; one eye-witness is better than many hearsays; a picture is worth a thousand words
  • つべこべ - complaining; nitpicking
Reply/following the random train of thought with more random thoughts xD

I have a feeling it’s probably a little of both - the language has so much about it to learn (new writing systems, multiple readings per kanji, and then vocab and different grammar on top of it all) that I think it encourages people to look for ways to learn it in the most efficient way possible. Most people want to Get Good Fast. This is a huge generalization, but I also get the vibe that a lot of Japanese learners are a bit different from the bulk of other language learners in a way I can’t totally define (my first instinct is to say “nerdiness” but idk if that’s really what I mean :joy: I mean that in a fond way~ Like they enjoy optimizing stuff, systematizing stuff, making it neat and orderly. So SRS appeals to them. I feel like Japanese attracts that population, perhaps because it is relatively complex and challenging so there’s more satisfaction to be gained from feeling like you’ve “cracked” it)

31 Likes

Hello! I’m new to Wanikani and I just found this read every day challenge, I’d like to participate even if it’s late, but could somebody tell me where to find books to read in Japanese? I’m a beginner, N5 barely moving into N4! Thanks!! :smiley:

21 Likes

I like the Graded Readers. You can find them on Amazon.com. I also have a few books of “Learning Japanese With Stories”. Also from Amazon.

10 Likes

Hi, welcome to Wanikani and the forums! :smiley: For buying digital stuff I usually go for bookwalker, it isn’t too hard to buy from there and there’s a lot of manga you can get for free. I’d also recommend checking out the bookclubs, the Absolute Beginner bookclub is where I started out and there’s a list of books they’ve read and links to where to purchase those books in each thread as well.

14 Likes

Despite having several books to finish, I’m still on my Aozora kick. Tonight was one with a fascinating title, 悪妻論. 朗読 was by 西村 who has such a nice narration on everything he does. As for the reading itself - it an essay on “bad wives”, with such gems as:

人はなんでも平和を愛せばいいと思うなら大間違い、平和、平静、平安、私はしかし、そんなものは好きではない。不安、苦しみ、悲しみ、そういうものの方が私は好きだ。

悲しみ、苦しみは人生の花だ。

人間はみんな姦淫を犯しており、みんなインヘルノへ落ちるものにきまっている。

夫婦は愛し合うと共に憎み合うのが当然であり、かかる憎しみをおそれてはならぬ

だから、良妻などというのは、ニセモノ、安物にすぎないのである。

I was dying of laughter reading this prompting my partner to ask what I was getting into this time. Good times. I’m sure it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but I enjoyed it immensely. The grammar is definitely not what I’d consider easy, however, so you’ll probably want to be a seasoned Aozora reader in order to get your full set of giggles.

Anyways, learned an interesting phrase: 若気のアヤマチ - apparently it means 年が若くて血気にはやったための失敗. I wonder if people still use this phrase - it’s fun. Unfortunately 若気 has a secondary meaning that might be a slur and my IME doesn’t pull up the correct kanji for it when I try to write it, so I suspect not.

23 Likes

Thank you kindly! Those Graded Readers look great! :relaxed:

9 Likes

After ()(どく) series, you might take a look at Absolute Beginner Book Club’s Nominations, to see what is right for you.

8 Likes
rikaiwisdom replies!

Yeah it’s really just through vocabulary! Technically when I actually mess with jpdb it throws kanji cards at me, but the vast majority of the time I just get a general sense of the meaning and readings through words. It’s definitely compartmentalized differently than kanji I specifically learned through WK, but I’ve generally been able to get a good sense of them just through exposure in different contexts!

Aw thank you! :grin: Being able to shift mindset to just having fun playing a game or whatever else and learning Japanese as a result has really been life-changing. It’s so much easier to pick up something because I like it and want to see what happens than as a study tool. I do think pulling back on SRS and the like has contributed to that; it changed the dynamic for sure.

Yes yes yes!! I absolutely recommend them; I also really had no idea about them before a few months ago and they’re probably the best experience I’ve had with Japanese so far. The Nonary Games is a bundle of the first two, 999 and VLR, both of which I played over the course of this and the last challenge. I feel like they’re honestly pretty approachable; a significant portion of them are voiced, it’s VN-style so you can take your time looking stuff up with game2text and the like, etc. The language isn’t too rough either. I wasn’t a veteran reader by any means when I started (I’m still not lmao) and it was really manageable! The worst is really when people go off on random scientific tangents from time to time, but those are interesting to see and not super frequent.

I’m playing ZTD right now like you said and it’s structured differently, it’s cutscene-based rather than a VN, so it’s been a good different kind of practice! I haven’t played AI: The Somnium Files yet so I can’t speak on difficulty or anything, but I’ve heard really good things about it.

Anyway tl;dr I also started Zero Escape on a whim and I’m super glad I did, they’ve been a ton of fun! If you like mysteries and puzzles at all I’d definitely recommend them. I’m not sure what Final Fantasy is like language-wise so I can’t compare them directly, but I’d imagine if you can play that relatively comfortable then Zero Escape would be totally doable. So if they’re at all intriguing to you I’d say to give it a shot! Definitely not biased at all :joy:

14 Likes

That Absolute Beginner bookclub seems like the perfect place for me to start haha, thank you very much!! :smile:

11 Likes

Home

I read ch 7-8 of クールドジ男子. So it seems this uses a lot more fonts than I thought, because these couple panels alone use 4, and there are 3 others I definitely know I’ve seen as well (one of which I posted yesterday, where Mima says he wasn’t mistaking Hayate for a woman, is the most difficult for me to read. I am very glad there’s furigana on everything):

(Some of them are also different from the ones used in the version on pixiv; those are easier to read! But it is a pain to read on online, so I guess ya gotta make it easier somehow, eh)

Commentary, etc.

Ch 7 is set at the same time as ch 5 (which seems to be set the day after ch 6), the day that Hayate starts his part-time job at Mawarimichi. It follows Shun, who has no club activities for a while because of upcoming tests, so he goes straight to his sister’s shop to study because if he fails any he can’t be a starting member, but:

Also, we learn the name of Hayate’s university! 枸橘(からたち)大学, named after the trifoliate or hardy orange. Apparently it’s a good school, making him a book-smart dumbass lol. Which, his attitude toward tests, that if you understand the material in class then you’ll be fine, definitely supports that. He’s probably the type to barely study but still get all As and you’re just like, how. Anyway, Asami, Shun’s sister, asks him to tutor Shun since they’re not busy right now.

I feel like I’m most like Hayate. And with my crush on Mima, it’s probably little wonder I ship them…

Ch 8 continues from Hayate’s POV, and it starts out with him and Souma doing that dance where you’re both trying to pass through the same space but you both keep moving in the same direction and accidentally blocking each other. They finally manage to get past each other, and based off Souma’s expression, Hayate thinks he’s pissed him off, but he was just trying to hold in his laughter. (He also thought Souma was a high schooler, but no, he’s only a year younger than you lol) He goes to greet Mima next, and he thinks that, when he sees Mima-san, he can calm down ♡♡♡ And then upon learning that this is his first day here, Mima tells him, “じゃあ、頑張りすぎないように頑張ってください,” and Hayate thinks he’s cool as always, and then when he leaves he tells him, “また僕一人では行きづらい所があれば、誘わせてください” ♡♡♡ Yeah if they don’t have another “date” at some point, I’m definitely gonna be miffed.

For games, I redownloaded Animal Restaurant and restarted with the language set to JP. That one has a lot more reading than say ねこあつめ. I also found a new game, Tsuki’s Odyssey. It’s cute, the vibe kinda reminds me a bit of Animal Crossing, though this is much more of an idle game (you can’t even fish for long before they stop showing up). And even with the language set to JP, there are still a few things in ENG that are clearly not supposed to be. That, plus the description for tuna being ピアノとマグロの違いって何? makes me think this was made as an English game. But it’s still cute, and it’s still practice.

Puns! (may need to view full-size)

I also played a bit of ゼルダ無双. Keeping everyone pretty much the same level is going much better this time around. I may only be two missions in, but the first time, I didn’t even bother trying to learn to play Impa and Zelda until their challenges, so they were well behind Link already. Also, I don’t have as much difficulty reading all the battle-related vocab as I thought I would. I don’t always know how the kanji are read when there isn’t furigana, but I can generally infer the meaning from at least one of the kanji and/or the context.

Some vocab of note:

モテる [一, intransitive] to be popular (esp. with the opposite sex); to be well-liked; to be pampered, spoiled, doted upon, etc.; to be welcomed
日替わり (ひがわり) [noun, prefix] daily special
誤解 (ごかい) [noun, する verb] misunderstanding
着せ替え (きせかえ) [noun, する verb] changing clothes (on someone else, e.g. a child or a doll). ねこあつめ’s daily password.
翡翠 (かわせみ) [noun] kingfisher. jade (gem). lustrous color similar to that of a kingfisher’s feathers. ねこあつめ’s daily password.
さばさば [adverb, する verb] frank; candid; easygoing; laid-back
手が回る (てがまわる) [ラ五, intransitive] (usu. in the negative) to leave nothing undone; to give good service; to attend to everything; to see to something properly

29 Likes

May 3 :cherry_blossom: Home Post

I played some more ZTD today! Reading time has been been pretty hit or miss with the end of the semester, but I’ve been fitting it in wherever I can :grin: gotta get my fun in somewhere!

28 Likes

April 3rd (Calendar Post)

私の拳をうけとめて! => 61 pages (84 minutes)

Only 3 chapters left in this manga!

Fun panel of the day:

ぐしゃぐしゃ

31 Likes

Day 33 :heavy_check_mark: :milk_glass: :japanese_goblin:

告白 ~ 20-24%
ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 30 pages

In 告白 the switch of narrator has been a breath of fresh air so far as far as difficulty is concerned. The student does include actual dialogue once in a while, the sections are shorter, and the descriptions feel clearer. I also already know the current narrator’s name - the teacher’s name I didn’t learn until almost after she was done speaking. On the subject of names, the teacher made very specific reference to two students who she named A and B. I have no idea why she would do that, as her descriptions of them were so detailed that no classmate of theirs would be left in the dark as to their identity. The only one not knowing is the reader. Now the student does refer to A and B by name, but it’s still not clear who is A and who is B. On the other hand it seems there’s at least one character in the book who knows less than the reader, so that’s some comfort at least. :sweat_smile:

I also read 30 pages of ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 - I don’t know how I always manage to leave chapters unfinished. They are quite long, and those with ねずみ男 tend to be wordier than others, but still. One of these days I’ll read one from start to finish. Probably.
The backgrounds continue to delight me, and the youkai are very cool, but the fact that the target audience is mainly schoolboys is painfully obvious at times. This story for example featured quite a lot of toilet humour.

Fun words and expressions from ゲゲゲの鬼太郎

口車に乗る - to fall for someone’s smooth talk, to be taken in (“get on the mouth car”?)
大船に乗る - to rest easy, to be in safe conditions (“board a big ship”)
話に乗る - to jump at the chance, to accept an offer, to show interest
美食家 - epicure, gourmet
天然記念物 - protected species, natural monument
イチャイチャ - flirting, making out
絶交 - breaking off a relationship

toilet related vocabulary (basic, but new to me)

大便 - feces, excrement (in contrast to 小便 - urine)
便器 - toilet bowl, urinal, bedpan
肛門 - anus

Nice panels

image
image
image

29 Likes