📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

Read an NHK Easy article today!

From what I can gather, the penalties for cyberbullying in Japan have been made more severe, with the fine being raised from 10,000 yen to 300,000 yen, and a maximum sentence of 1 year in prison. Also the lawyers are worried about it? Maybe something about being worried how the law will be interpreted or applied to certain situations?

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Jun 14, Tue :cherry_blossom: calendar post

Week 12 of Spring 2022’s planning

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June 13 :cherry_blossom: Home Post

Well… it happened. I finished AI: The Somnium Files and I feel empty inside now :joy: This always happens, I’m like “oooh I’m almost done that’s exciting, I’ll definitely just be happy and emotionally fulfilled when it’s over!” and then I get there and I don’t feel like part of this world anymore lmao. Business as usual :man_shrugging: But yeah AI was absolutely fantastic, everyone who’s talked about it was completely right, I loved it a lot and had many feelings :grin:

Reading-wise it was a total success too! There were rough spots here and there, but overall it was a comfortable read and I definitely felt the emotional impacts of all kinds, from horror to anguish to goofs :laughing: I finished in a little under 60 hours which certainly isn’t native speed but not bad either, especially with my incessant need to click on everything always haha. So yeah, fourth game under my belt? Feels pretty good :grin: I’m excited to inevitably start something new! and play the sequel sometime once it comes out :eyes:

dumping my AI feelings

Hoo boy… today was a lot :sweat_smile: Sooo I was adjacent to what was actually going on? 伊達(だて) isn’t 瀬島(せじま)'s son but like… his body was! Man the body-swapping ended up so much more relevant to everything than I anticipated. That really recontextualizes everything huh? And 伊達(だて)… yeah I don’t know why I didn’t more directly grasp who he actually was but ouch! These relationships are complicated, oof. But they’re happy now at least mostly? Other than the people who died but well, as it turned out by the time we even started this story it was too late for them so… :man_shrugging:

アイボゥ… I knew the self-destruct feature was gonna come up (obviously) but not like that, not when we spent so much time establishing how she had endless backups and everything, that scene wrecked me! The flashbacks of all their memories and then 伊達(だて) saying he hated her for the lie… I cried for sure :joy: and then the end scene?? That whole sequence?? 41205 :smiling_face_with_tear: The big dance scene just… I’m so weak for that sort of thing, all the characters you’ve spent all this time getting to know and love together just singing and dancing and having a good time? To show how much they care about 伊達(だて)? They all put together this whole surprise for him :smiling_face_with_tear: All of them! Happy tears all over that one haha; I’ll be rewatching it for sure :blush:

I’m sure I’m forgetting things (there was a lot today lmao) but yeah it was an amazing experience! I absolutely adored it and I have many feelings about all of the characters, I wish them all the best :grin:

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Home

I read 5 pages of 明日をくれた君に、光のラブレターを, finishing the prologue! Midzuki actually has two friends: Kaito is her childhood friend since kindergarten, and she’s liked him for forever but has never thought about confessing since she didn’t want their relationship to change, and then around the beginning of their second year of high school, he and Ritsu started going out. Her childhood friend and her best friend… It seems Midzuki herself gave them the chance to start dating just by being around both of them all the time.

Every day after school, she sits at a window seat in the school library to watch Kaito at soccer practice. Since she found out he and Ritsu are dating 4 months ago, she’s always grabbed the same book to pretend to read: Natsume Souseki’s Kokoro. Today, she finds a letter addressed to her between its pages…

I played about 9 hrs of DQXI throughout the day. Apparently it’s “supposed” to take 100 hrs if you complete all the side quests and stuff, but it’s definitely gonna take me longer than that. Probably in English, too. Actually, I should get my ENG copy out and see how many hours I have on it so far and see how far I’ve gotten; I know I’m on Act 2, but that’s it. Anyway, I got Veronica and Senya/Serena to join, completed Samady/Gallopolis and had Sylv join (including placing first in both the Bronze and Silver Cups! I don’t remember when Gold unlocks), and made it to the port city of Daharune. Faris is kind of annoying, but I also can’t help but kind of like him.

Going around petting all the dogs because Eight can’t (though, well, it doesn’t look all that much more like petting them than doing the punch pose with Eight lol). (Also just because I like petting dogs.)

I also finally remembered to pay attention to what the descriptive text says for the “finish” option with the Fun-Sized Forge, and it does not say that you douse the item in icy water. It just says water. Which, yeah, is still bad (especially for the weapons; you should be definitely be quenching those in warm oil), but icy water is just bad for everything. More than bad. It’s a wonder none of the stuff El makes ever breaks.

Some vocab of note:

あれよあれよという間に [expression] while looking on in blank amazement; while gazing at it in shock
おもむろに [adverb] suddenly; abruptly. Its original meaning was the complete opposite: “deliberately; slowly; gently.” I wonder how that turnabout happened.
率いる (ひきいる) [一, transitive] to lead; to spearhead (a group); to command (troops). Until today, I’d only known this kanji to have the “ratio/%” meaning.
吟遊詩人 (ぎんゆうしじん) [noun] troubadour; minstrel
百発百中 (ひゃっぱつひゃくちゅう) [四字熟語, noun] always hitting the bullseye; infallible
摩訶不思議 (まかふしぎ) [noun, な-adjective] profound mystery. I think this is also the first word I’ve seen that was this long where each kanji corresponded to only one kana.
目がない [expression, い-adjective] extremely fond of; having a weakness for; being a sucker for

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Day Something

  • ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 15巻

6/13
start- 14

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june 13 :cherry_blossom: home post

So in my June goals list I said this:

And that’s now checked off my list! I just reread through all that I read before: i.e., the prologue and act 1. The reason I wanted to restart was because about halfway through act 1 the difficulty jumps because Zelda appears and she’s a princess so of course she speaks like one. I think I like Link’s dialogue better :laughing:

But anyway, I wanted to start from the beginning to see if I could understand it a bit better this time. And I think I do! But it still took a while to get through. I’m kinda surprised I did it in one sitting

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These past few days I’ve been pushing myself to do some real study and my time/energy for reading has been down. I got through a few more lessons in the Sou-Matome N1 grammar book. It’s been years since I started this book and I’m still only in “week 6.” :frowning: I’ve gone so slowly and procrastinated so much that at this point I really have to force myself to look at it, because most of what’s left are expressions I’ve already encountered in the wild. But there are still a few unfamiliar ones mixed in, and being honest I know that even for the ones I’ve seen it would be useful to look at the usage and meaning/nuance. Somebody on Reddit described the Sou-matome books as review books rather than textbooks, and actually that makes a lot of sense for the way they’re written, and helped me understand how/why I should be using them now.

I’ve been reading バンギャルちゃんの日常, a manga/comic essay about the visual kei fandom. I’m a longtime VK fan and went to concerts all the time while living in Japan, so for me this is a wonderful, nostalgic, and hilarious look back at those fun and foolish days of youth. I think some of these experiences are probably common and relatable for anybody who was a hardcore geek in any fandom, but this is full of detail about the visual kei world during a specific time period. The text is super dense for a manga, and also in very small print because there’s ~so much~ (and forget about furigana, there isn’t any, it wouldn’t fit anyway), and it’s really tiring on my eyes even with reading glasses.

Bookwalker has coin-back on the manga ガイコツ書店員本田さん which I’ve been interested in reading, so I splurged. Now I’ve got even more stuff on my to-read pile.

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My brain isn’t cooperating lately. It’s been super hard to focus on novel-reading. Or maybe anything. I’m not really sure.

Anyway.

Last night I thought it was too late to watch more anime before bed, so I went back to Yotsuba again. (My lifeline!) And after having to push through in one spot I easily read 35 pages and finished the festival chapter! I was pretty proud of myself for being completely unfazed by the noun かけ声. (I understood it without even having to think about it!)

Today (so far) I read exactly 2 pages of 霧島くん. Everything felt kind of fuzzy, though.

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June 14

Read the next short story in Best Selection by Yuu Watase. Once again, the story was better than I expected it to be. (I seem to have paged through this volume throughly at some point.) Was mostly fairly easy and decided to trust I was guessing words correctly from context instead of looking them up each time. Also skipped looking up some words since I judged them unnecessary for understanding the story.

Made the reading much smoother and nicer. I look forward to finishing this volume so I can read something longer, but I’m definitely having trouble deciding between continuing Sailor Moon and reading (all of) Orange. Page-wise Orange would be shorter if I read all the remaining arcs of Sailor Moon, not sure how long the next arc is.

What do you guys think?
  • Sailor Moon
  • Orange

0 voters

Because polls are fun, right? :crazy_face:

お願いいたします :bowing_woman:

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Day Something

  • ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 15巻

6/14
15-64

This was about 1 arc/fight. I’m tempted to see if I could do 1 daily :thinking: That would have me reading a vol in 3-4 days instead of 7. I think I have the motivation, I just have to figure out budgeting my time

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:tiger2: :books: The June Tanuki Den: Date 20220614 :cherry_blossom: :raccoon:

No Longer Tanuki Progress: 20.54%

Think today is the most I’ve read so far, and probably the most Japanese I’ve ever read in one sitting.

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

Learnthings

文房具「ぶんぼうぐ」ー Stationery
耳垂れ「みみだれ」ー Ear discharge
「うみ / のう」ー Pus
耳殻「じかく」ー External ear; auricle
大袈裟「おおげさ」ー Exaggerated; grandiose (more common to see as: 大げさ)
念入り「ねんいり」ー Careful; scrupulous; elaborate
偽善「ぎぜん」ー Hypocrisy
悪計「あっけい」ー Trick; plot; evil scheme
惚れる「ほれる」ー To fall in love; to be charmed with
ふざけて「巫山戯る」ー To joke; to jest; to kid around (kanji form hardly used)
脂下がる「やにさがる」ー To be complacent; to look self-satisfied
伽藍「がらん」ー Temple (usually a large one); monastery
幽か「かすか」ー Faint; dim; weak; slight; vague (also seen as: 微か)
若旦那「わかだんな」ー Young gentleman
感懐「かんかい」ー Impression
数倍「すいばい」ー Several times over/more/larger
難解「なんかい」ー Difficult to understand
薄氷「ほくひょう」ー Thin ice
付合「ふごう」ー Accession
五里霧中「ごりむちゅう」ー Completely at a loss; in a maze/fog; bewildered
痛手「いたで」ー Serious wound; hard blow
「むち」ー Whip; lash; scourge (more common to see as: 鞭)
或いは「あるいは」ー or; either
邪慳「じゃけん」ー Cruelty; hard-heartedness
観察「かんさつ」ー Observation; survey; watching
適した「てきした」ー Suitable for; adequate for; appropriate for

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I selfishly chose Sailor Moon so that there’s more of a chance of us reading Orange around the same time. :sweat_smile:

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Although I didn’t vote, I was thinking the same. Maybe we’ll need a little Orange reading group or something =D

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@MaraVos and @ChristopherFritz

The three of us seem to be interested in a lot of the same thing! (2023 for Ouran! :tada:) I’m game for that idea of reading Orange together/at the same time. Do you know when your reading schedules might have some open space for Orange? If we can find a rough time, I could set up a book club (if we want) and see if there would be more people interested. We don’t have to have a weekly schedule, roughly reading at the same time would obviously be fine. :3

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Any time can work for me. I’ve delayed starting it twice (related to other things I was reading), so at this point, it’s best for me to just start at any time!

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Let’s see what MaraVos says, and then let’s pick a time. :smiley:

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I’d be interested in joining you too :slight_smile:
Orange has been on my list of things to read for a while!

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Summary post :bookmark:

June 14th :seedling:

・SAO Progressive 1 (19% → 30%)

Reading in the morning proved to be effective! Probably spent 3 hours. After that I got absorbed in trying to figure out a formatting technique for a couple hours (ft. the poll thread) and then got too tired to read again. Will try reading in the morning again tomorrow.


For those interested, here’s the results of said formatting technique. A list table!

List of books I've read
Year Books
2020 [1]
2021 [2]
2022 [3]
Sum 28 books

  1. 2020
    Jan
    Feb
    Mar
    Apr 氷菓
    May SAO 1
    Jun SAO 2
    Jul SAO 3
    Aug SAO 4
    Sep
    Oct 本好き 1
    Nov 魔女の宅急便・SAO 5
    Dec SAO 6・本好き 2
    Sum 10 books
    ↩︎
  2. 2021
    Jan
    Feb 博士の愛した数式
    Mar 本好き 3
    Apr コンビニ人間
    May
    Jun 本好き4・SAO 7・すべてがFになる
    Jul SAO 8
    Aug 冷たい密室と博士たち
    Sep 本好き 5
    Oct 本好き 6
    Nov
    Dec 本好き 7
    Sum 11 books
    ↩︎
  3. 2022
    Jan かがみの孤城 上
    Feb 本好き 8・笑わない数学者
    Mar
    Apr 本好き 9
    May 薬屋のひとりごと 1・薬屋のひとりごと 2
    Jun かがみの孤城 下
    Jul
    Aug
    Sep
    Oct
    Nov
    Dec
    Sum 7 books (pr. June)
    ↩︎
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june 14 :cherry_blossom: home post

Got a lot of reading done today!
神々のトライフォース: 19 pages (started Act.2)
夜カフェ: 2 whole chapters!

Yes I know I said I dropped 夜カフェ but I suddenly had the urge to try reading it again

With 神々のトライフォース, I think I liked Act.1 better than I’m liking Act.2, at least so far. It’s mainly because I’m not really a fan of ガンティ. It’s not b/c she’s original to the manga, b/c I don’t really care about that. I’ve liked a lot of the changes made! And I like the idea of Link having a traveling companion! But so far I don’t really like ガンティ’s personality very much. She seems a bit out of place too, like she belongs in another manga? Who knows, though, maybe I’ll grow to like her!

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It has been a while since I’ve looked at any NHK Easy articles, but I was wondering if this was related to Hana Kimura’s death, and sure enough…

I think this is the first time I’ve read one of these articles knowing far more context about the situation than was covered in the article.

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