📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

May 31

Read 3 level-three graded readers to celebrate the end of the reading challenge. One was a folk tale, and two were about different customs / cultural objects in Japan like natto and why people wear masks (written in 2016).

With that, my final count is…

Tadoku graded readers completed
44 / 44 level-zeros
14 / 14 level-ones
10 / 10 level-twos
6 / 18 level-threes

So I didn’t meet my original goal, but I made way more progress than I thought I would considering I mostly stuck to level-0s.

I also branched out and started reading more than just Haikyuu. I plan to continue reading Kiki’s Delivery Service. I’m having lots of fun playing Dragon’s Quest. And I can’t wait until the book club starts for Spy x Family. Looking forward to the conversation.

Plus I managed to write and translate a 2-page academic research plan for the MEXT application. Didn’t think I had it in me, but it was a fun challenge to take on.

Thanks to Windupbird for organizing the challenge, and thank you all for your participation, encouragement, updates, and general good cheer. This is a fantastic community to be in. :heartpulse: :durtle_love:

:sun_behind_rain_cloud: Apr :cherry_blossom:
01 02
03 04 05 06 07 08 09
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 :birthday: 30
:tulip: May :seedling:
01 02 03 04 05 06 07
08 09 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31
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May 31st (Calendar Post)

ハピネス => 139 pages (55 min)

So I decided to go ahead of the bookclub and started reading Happiness as my main manga - the story seems interesting and I wanted something with a darker vibe than what I’ve been reading lately for a bit of variety.

This was a really fun challenge! There was one day I thought I wasn’t going to be able to read anything, but thankfully I barely made it. Thanks to @windupbird for organizing this event. It was nice going through this thread and learning about what everyone was reading.

Some compiled final stats during this callenge:

Total manga pages read: 4306
Total Light Novel pages read: 181
Total time spent reading: 6309 minutes (105 hours)
Average time spent reading per day: 105 min

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Home

I’m still so tired today, despite how much sleep I got yesterday. Ugh. And of course it’s the kind where I will at times get overcome with a vague dizziness, which is never fun. Although that could be from lack of food instead… I did sleep through dinner yesterday evening, after all, and I haven’t been particularly hungry today. I did make sure I ate a proper dinner today, though! (And lunch, though I did eat lunch yesterday.)

My ひだまりが聴こえる drama CDs got here! The site I originally tried to get the first two on (originally it was just gonna be the one, but if I got another I’d qualify for free shipping) turned out not to have them in stock. So I checked at Mandarake again, which is more expensive only because of shipping, and they didn’t have a single store with both. So I ended up getting all 5, because two orders would be cheaper than however many, and also cheaper than Amazon (which doesn’t even have the first two available for international shipping anyway). So it was a pain, but I finally got them! I haven’t decided yet if I’ll read the volume and then listen to the CD, or if I’ll read the chapter and then listen to its corresponding track, but it’s still gonna be a little bit before I get to it anyway. For now I’ll just be ripping the CDs and syncing the tracks onto my phone in preparation.

Today I read the previews for: 恋と毛玉とお隣さん; part of the かくりよの宿飯 manga; and かがみの孤城, novel and manga. That novel seems like a relatively easy read, at least as far as known and easily-picked-up-without-consulting-a-dictionary vocabulary goes; I did have a bit of difficulty distinguishing what was present and what was flashback/exposition, although I assume there’ll be less of that after the first chapter, after we get into the story itself.

I read only 2 pg of 海辺のカフカ. After reading those previews (the one for the かがみの孤城 novel was 40 pg long!) and ripping all the ひだまり CDs and getting them organized, I was pretty tired.

Some vocab of note:

至福 (しふく) [noun] beatitude; supreme bliss
脱走 (だっそう) [noun, する verb] escape; flight; breakout; fleeing; desertion
色男 (いろおとこ) [noun] lady-killer; sexy guy
百鬼夜行 (ひゃっきやこう) [noun] nightly procession of monsters, spirits, etc.
様子見 (ようすみ) [noun] wait-and-see
否応なく (いやおうなく) [adverb] whether one wants to or not; without choice
矢継ぎ早 (やつぎばや) [noun, な-adjective] rapid succession (e.g. questions)

I wonder if かがみ (鏡, mirror) comes from 影見 (かげみ), since aside from “shadow,” 影 can also mean “figure; shape” and “reflection; image,” and え-row sounds often shift into their corresponding あ-row in 訓読み compounds (like 雨 in 雨垂れ [あまだれ] or 酒 in 居酒屋 [いざかや]). I had the thought today when I learned that a full-length mirror is called a 姿見 (すがたみ).

Today I also came across まつげ, although with different kanji: 睫. Also, I already knew “eyebrow” is 眉 (まゆ), but not that it could also be 眉毛! Perhaps knowing the kanji will help you remember the difference between them? For some reason, I can often remember words/names better if I see them in kanji, even if I don’t know the kanji yet, though of course, I don’t know if you’re the same.

I’ll definitely be continuing next month, and also updating my home post to include a June calendar. This means I’ll need a new character for the bullet point for the books finished in June…

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I think まつ毛 sounds like 末毛 - that is, tip of the brows? Otherwise, まゆ is quite common. Knowing about 眉間(みけん) may help too (with the Kanji and implied reading).


Jun 1, Wed :cherry_blossom: calendar post

Expectations, Challenge Recap, and Way Forward

Apparently, it appears that I have a wrong expectation of :books::books: Read every day challenge. It appears to start from every day for 1 whole month as per Redglare - then upgraded to every day for 2 whole months by windupbird - and with an unmeasured break until the next season. I am just blind to seeing Jun and Jul too similarly!

Afterwards, I found Extensive Reading (and Extensive Listening) challenges. They appear to contain some relaxed yearly goals, like number of books.

However, I can’t find a way to settle in both places, by both of their conventions yet. Some time later, I found a third way - weekly goal setting. And it appears that calendar post can be adapted to that way too.

Indeed, I learnt more from a few months than a few years (which I’ve always do some half-assed reading), so I plan to plan weekly for now, seeing how far I can go. (Trying to keep it up for at least 1-2 years.)

  • Much of the progress is still vocabularies (many are genuinely new, others are inferrable), despite the fact that I complained much more about grammar.
  • Some thanks are given to Book Clubs. A lot of thanks would be to WaniKani Community itself, that I have always trust (despite some shortcomings of the app).

I have inserted my trimonthly plan in Extensive Reading Challenge, but not exactly sure whether it fits there. In the end, I might have to create a thread for myself (for my own public learning).

May (monthly) recap

This month, some listening restarted. Music, as well as songs I listened to in the past, is the one.

I’ve tried some serious anime listening, and make sure if I can identify every sentences. Not sure now this will turn out - continuing, adapted, or giving up?

Somehow, I got caught in managing Death Note Offshoot, until the end of Vol.2. It appears to be a good experience, as Death Note is not too difficult to me, nor too easy; and I can exactly keep the pace. (Though, I can usually finish a chapter in one sitting - indicator of relative ease?)

There are several books that encourage me to look up on related topics - including JoJo, Yuru Camp, Night Cafe. I will treasure that. When trying to look up on topics, I had to read Japanese articles (without Furigana), reminding me that I need to be a lot better. Nonetheless, Yomichan helps on laptop, and Akebi helps on mobile. (JJ dictionaries, and other resources built by natives, don’t appear to have a nice browser integration.)

June (monthly) plan

  • Anime as a sidetrack to manga. I will try to find live action, if possible.
  • Maybe Shogi, in Ayumu and March comes like a Lion. Will also check out Xiangqi (Chinese chess).
  • Find some nice public health and medicine ones. Badass surgery is not enough, need more of social management.
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Feels a little weird posting when I “finished” my challenge days ago and I don’t have time to write a real summary post at the moment but :joy:
I just wanted to say a quick congratulations to everyone completing the challenge today! :tada:
And a big がんばって! to everyone who’s still going! :tada:
You are all awesome, and thank you for joining in!! :heart:

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May 31 :cherry_blossom: Home Post

I was in an AI: The Somnium Files mood today so I just played a bunch of that. As is typical when I get into little language slumps, I started reading and was like “wow my brain isn’t doing this at all, there’s no way I can push through” and then I did and before I knew it I was all in again, who could imagine :joy: It helped that things got WILD, oh man. I think I’ve said the plot is really getting going like three times now but it’s really getting going lmao, I’m very invested :eyes:

AI: The Somnium Files stuff

Well things have not been going how I thought; I figured イリス would have the angst of her mom getting murdered since we saw that in our dream, but nope she’s super dead now! That was brutal! There are like different routes though so maybe different things will happen in those? I still don’t really think (ひとみ) is safe but we’re up to four dead so :man_shrugging: 応太(おうた) definitely didn’t do it, it makes no sense, but why him also? Why’s he still have both eyes? Many questions :eyes: Also very suspicious of the very specific kitchen knife his mom has but well, we’ll see if that’s relevant.

As far as 伊達(だて)… there’s definitely a lot to be figured out. There’s no way all these things being six years ago is a coincidence, and he just happens to also be missing an eye? Like we’ve never talked about why or how that happened, I guess because he doesn’t remember, but someone has to?? And イリス saw him in her somnium which doesn’t have to mean anything necessarily, but she also knew way more about the whole situation than she should have so who knows! I feel like his boss is perhaps hiding more than just “state secrets,” she seems weirdly like… melancholy about how supposedly unrelated the incident six years ago is to what’s happening now and also 伊達(だて)'s situation.

Basically I have so many questions and very few answers and I want to just keep going but I have to sleep at some point, rip :pensive:

And with that the challenge is (theoretically) over! I did complete my goal of finishing VLR and ZTD so yay! :tada: Looking back the only other thing I finished was ヴァニタスの手記(カルテ) but I was really focused on Zero Escape (and finals :sweat_smile:) so that’s not shocking. I’ve gotten about 15 hours in AI since I finished those, and I’ve started 海辺(うみべ)のカフカ with the bookclub, so I’ve certainly got things to work on. I think I did well with the Zero Escape games; very consistent improvement! 80-ish hours for VLR compared to like 100 for 999, and then down to about 30 for ZTD… I’d call that a successful challenge! :grin:

As always I’ve absolutely loved seeing what you all are up to; everyone’s accomplished so much! There’s a lot to be proud of in this thread :blush: Considering how much I babbled about AI today I don’t think I’ll be stopping my posts anytime soon lmao, I look forward to seeing you guys around in June or next challenge or whenever you feel! :grin:

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June 1

Read chapter 11 of Yotsuba& and I was laughing out loud through the whole chapter. Dad’s dance, Yotsuba drawing her dad and then deciding to add a beard to the drawing, and then the look at her sleeping dad. :joy: So many good looks in this chapter. Her panic eyes when wondering if dad would get angry, and then the look of Ena and the frozen expression of Fuuka about the mayonnaise/butter. Not to mention the poor postman/newspaper man and the person on the phone going “?!”.

I’ve always wondered why Yotsuba& was so recommended considering the summery most people give of the manga (a young girl and her every day life is usually what it boils down to). I don’t feel like anyone have ever tried to impress on me how funny it is. It is the kind of absurd situations you get with a child, because they will take you literally, or make leaps that make no sense to you because of vaster knowledge but when you think about it from the child’s perspective it makes sense. And then the surrounding characters are a mix of different people that just enhance the whole thing.

Also, forgot to mention (yesterday) Asagi’s appearance at the end of chapter 10. Stealing her mom’s いちご and then about to steal Yotsuba’s but then sees Yotsuba’s face and instead makes it into a silly this いちご went flying and now it landed back where it belongs.


I realized I forgot to thank @windupbird yesterday! Thank you! :tada: For making sure this challenge keeps going and for the wonderful calendar template! (Had to make my own for June, didn’t I? So I learnt there is a bit of work to even just adapting a previous one. Not having to make that for April and May was so nice. :blush: )


Already read a bit of non-fiction today too, and would have read some fiction in English except my ereader was out of battery. :low_battery: Hopefully later. ^^

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I haven’t caught up on recent posts here yet, but for those who are interested just wanted to quickly link the Japanese-Japanese (working title) Book Club thread that I just posted! (Gah, I feel so nervous!)

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Decided to continue with this, I’ll be reading No Longer Human each day for the challenge, not sure if I can complete it by the end of June for the Summer challenge to start, but we’ll see! (highly unlikely)
I’ll update my homepost with a June calendar. Looking at my emoji-calendar for this challenge it looks like there was a lot of foxes this time :fox_face: wonder what I should use for June :thinking:

Thank you @windupbird for hosting the thread again! And congrats to everyone was has participated, I like how much variety there is in everything everyone’s reading, always interesting to see!

And for those who are continuing:

:raccoon: タヌキ頑張って! :raccoon:

Onward to reading -


:tiger2: :books: The New Tanuki Den (it’s just the old one but now with more June): Date 20220601 :cherry_blossom: :raccoon:

No Longer Tanuki Progress: 0.01%
That felt like a lot more reading than just a fraction of a percent… this is gonna take awhile.

Verdict so far: that was pretty difficult. First time reading more… not sure of the word, but more literatesque Japanese over folktales and kids stories. The meaning of some of the sentences took awhile to work out due to the poeticness of them, it’s also a little heavy on the kanji, but not extremely so, thankfully there’s furigana for the more obscure stuff.


:seedling: Japanese found in the tall grass :seedling:

Learnthings

端書き「はしがき」ー foreword; preface; introduction
前後「ぜんご」ー About; approximately (can also mean front and back / back and forth / before and after)
従姉妹「いとこ」- Female cousin, same reading as 従兄弟 but different kanji.
「しま」ー Stripe; bar; streak
美醜「びしゅう」ー Beauty or ugliness; personal appearance or looks
満更「まんざら」ー not altogether; not wholly (not usually written in kanji)
謂いわば「いわば」ー So to speak; so to call it; as it were (also seen as: 言わば)
通俗「つうぞく」ー Popular; common
些か「いささか」ー A little; a bit; somewhat (not usually written in kanji)
頗る「すこぶる」ー Extremely; very much (not usually written in kanji)
呟き「つぶやき」ー Murmur; muttering (not usually written in kanji this is starting to be a running theme)
払いのける「はらいのける」ー To ward off; to brush away; to fling off

New Reading
「ほとり」ー Side of a body of water, like lake/river bank or edge or shore, sometimes also seen as: 畔

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June 1st!

I read Chapter 64 of Yotsuba today. It was a super cute chapter where she was learning how to make pancakes. Her struggle to correctly flip one over was very relatable :sweat_smile:

(Home Post)

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We did the Summer 2021 challenge for 2 months too~ :beach_umbrella::beach_umbrella:

Summer 2021: June-July
Autumn 2021: September-October
Winter 2022: January-February
Spring 2022: April-May

If you’re wondering about the Winter challenge, we decided it would be fresh to start a challenge on the first day of the year instead of having it during Dec-Jan. 2 months on, 1 month break.


No longer tanuki :joy:

Btw, if you haven’t checked it out already, there’s a book club for 人間失格. It was read as a part of the Advanced Book Club last year.

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I’ll be watching your experience with a lot of interest! Reading this is definitely one of my eventual goals. Honestly it’s probably not impossible for me right now? I just don’t think it’s the direction I want to apply my efforts just yet.


About to go out so I’ll be brief, but I might as well check in while I’m here! Another 8000 characters read. As Shiki’s story has progressed to the real substance, a lot of her more annoying quirks and even things I didn’t enjoy when the story was focused on them have taken on some new meaning, so that’s neat. Each day the route grows on me a lot more.

And it’s found an excuse to make Ryouichi a central character while he teaches us how to sail. I love a lot of things about Summer Pockets, but increasingly above all else my thoughts are “forget all of these girls; Ryouichi is my best bro.”

Anyway, overall, I’m back in a time where I find the reading to be pretty smooth, so it’s going great.

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Hey everyone! I sort of dropped off the wagon at the beginning of May, and haven’t been reading for a while… only websites or dictionary entries to help me write for my Japanese class.

I’m in a very busy time right now, but a three-week winter break (I live in Aus) is coming up, which will hopefully give me more time to read! I’ll do my best to get back on track for the next challenge, and continue the habit :smile:

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Summary Post

May 30 - 31
Final Fantasy VII

June 1
Final Fantasy VII


Alrighty then! End of the “official” challenge :tada: . I’ll most likely write my conclusion post tomorrow, though I plan to keep reading and updating through June anyways. I want to tweak just a little bit my approach to the challenges so that I can keep doing them without burnout for a long time. More on that tomorrow!

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Honestly whenever you do hit me up. I’m not looking to do it right now (though will also be watching @Zakarius 's read with interest) but it’s a ‘in the future’ book for me.

Personal aside as to why it's not 'now'

I was actually really excited to read it “eventually” awhile back, as at the time my only friend IRL who also studied Japanese had read it and it was his favorite book. He raved about it, and I really wanted to read it and discuss it with him, but at the time I felt my Japanese wasn’t on par to do it. He passed away rather unexpectedly a few months ago though and while I think my Japanese is there now, the feelings are too fresh :frowning: But I think with a bit of distance I could read it and enjoy it, which I think he would appreciate.

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Home

This evening I kind of got sucked into making クールドジ男子 incorrect quotes, and then whatever I was doing during the day, so I didn’t read nearly as much as I’d intended. My hands kept getting all gross and sweaty, too, which didn’t help. Ugh, I hate summer. Anyway, I did, however, read 6 (I think? Unless I’m forgetting where I started) pages of 海辺のカフカ, finishing ch 1.

This is the first time my phone’s IME has suggested ゑ from え. Granted, it was me double-checking to make sure 末 on its own is read すえ since my default is still まつ, and not me actually typing, which may make a difference. But it still surprised me to see it lmao

Some vocab of note:

First, one I found in my phone that I forgot to put on yesterday’s list:
爆誕 (ばくたん) [noun, する verb] sudden emergence; sudden formation; coming out of nowhere; bursting onto the scene. This is a slang word.

And now from today:
溺れる (おぼれる) [一, intransitive] to drown; to nearly drown; to sink below the surface (of water)
遺伝 (いでん) [noun, する verb] heredity; (genetic) inheritance

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Oh wow! Feel free to check out the book club threads, and if you have specific questions you can still ask questions there! I’m sure that many of the participants are still monitoring the threads.

No, absolutely not. The style is a bit different, e.g. nno quotation marks for direct speech, long sentences, unusual vocab and kanji, but with enough patience for lookups it’s totally doable.

(I read the first part with the club but I was very slow reading it so I deemed that it’s not a good usage of my time, and I dropped it. Maybe I‘ll pick it up again next year or so…)

@pocketcat

Answer to personal details

I‘m so sorry for your loss! Totally relatable that you wouldn’t want to read the book right now. But when you do eventually, I‘m sure it will be a great way to remember him.

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June 1 :cherry_blossom: Home Post

More AI: The Somnium Files, of course :grin: and what a day it was. Some of my questions were answered, and some were very much not :joy: wild all around!

AI stuff

Well some of my structural questions have been answered; I “finished” my first route! :tada: It’s definitely not actually over, just locked for now, but progress is progress. So yes, it is more like VLR and the like where you hop between timelines and oh things sure do happen differently. イリス and 応太(おうた) are alive! For now anyway :sweat_smile: And イリス still lost an eye so things aren’t great exactly, but at least marginally less horrific so that’s nice.

But my first route… a lot happened. I met 89 which just. There’s a lot there huh? I have no idea what to make of the whole scene with (ひとみ) being murdered by someone who’s supposedly been dead for a year, and where 伊達(だて)'s boss shows up, and also it’s the scene from his first somnium way back when, like?? And then the video of his boss killing the guy from the Diet? I… hm. I have more questions than ever :joy:

On a lighter note, アイボゥ punched a window and well:

So hey not all is grim!

Reading-wise it’s still been really great. Voice-acting is a definitely a big boost in that department, so it’s nice having basically every word read to me :joy: A difference I suppose it that I haven’t been using game2text or anything since I can’t bring myself to play it in windowed mode, so it’s just been looking stuff up from listening and that’s been totally fine which is also nice! There are lots of dumb language puns which are always fun :grin: all in all a good time!

Ryouichi true route?? Just sail off into the sunset haha

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Will do! With all the things I’m juggling, and it falling into a pile of probably hundreds of things that I “definitely want to do sometime in Japanese,” if I take ages and you decide to do it sometime, feel free to reach out to me too, haha. That situation is heavy, so sorry to hear about it, but yeah, with time I think reading it will be a really meaningful experience.

Glad to hear that, thanks. I didn’t know about the lack of quotation marks – while that’s not something that’ll keep me away, I can already see myself fumbling to realize what’s going on for the first half of the book every time it does it :sweat_smile: .

If only! Gonna throw Shiki overboard and just keep sailing. I guess Key does the side friend characters well. Some day I want to get to Little Busters and it sounds like a huge part of why that one has the legacy it does is just how much people love the friendship within it.

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Thanks! Didn’t know that there’d been a bookclub for this, I’ll have to check it out!

Judging from the updates you share, I think your level of reading is quite a bit higher than mine, so I think you’d be able to! But yeah, it is a bit of a commitment, I could wait until my reading is better for smoother reading but nahhh.

I’ve read it in English, but I’ve always wanted to see how it comes across in Japanese, since a lot of nuance is always lost in translations no matter how good they are. I’ve read the Junji Ito version too, which, while amazing… isn’t quite the same :rofl:
Also seen the Aoi Bungaku* anime series with it, so while I know what to expect… it doesn’t really help with understanding the language at all. But so far I’ve been able to recognise all the kanji (though recall is a bit slow for some) and the obscure stuff is, from what I’ve seen so far, either in hiragana or has furigana. The sentence structure is completely not what I’m used to though. But if your grammar is solid (which mine is not) then it’d probably be a much easier read.

*I’d recommend this a watch as it is probably one of my favourite anime series I’ve seen, and also covers the story Kokoro by Soseki Natsume, which is also on the “want to read” but that is probably getting ahead of myself now :thinking:

Reply

Really sorry to hear about your friend, I think it’d be a good way to remember your friend by when you feel up to it, it’d be a meaningful way to connect to them again. But it is ultimately a rather depressing read, so it’s not exactly the best of stories to be reading with it being so soon. I hope you manage to read it at some point!

Thanks! I’ll most likely be voicing my language woes on my updates here as I gradually lose my grips on comprehension :laughing:

And thanks to you all for the interest, now I have additional reading motivation! :books: :muscle:

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