📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

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I think an update is in order. I finished reading Yuru Camp vol 1 yesterday and I’m progressing well with Yoru Cafe, surprisingly well with 5 chapters read. Before bed I would read a chapter of Yoru Cafe, they’re not that big and I know most of the words. I try to read naturally without looking up anything during my read. Do I get everything, most certainly not, but I can look it up outside reading. I’m going through the vocab with koohi cafe. I have not generated all the cards yet there, still I’m over 75% of known vocab already. I think the key difference between books and manga is just the sheer range of different vocab, even if the word is only used once. You see lots of onomatopoeic words I added in my vocab list.

With Yuru Camp it’s kinda like same old. Published in seinen magazine, so expect kanji and very little furigana. I have seen it in names. So there I am looking up quite a few words or unfamiliar kanji. First that took a bit of time to get familiar with, then it balances out and becomes more comfy. I have camped regularly with my parents the last decade or so, but that’s always close by and with a caravan. Also with better weather. Still there is some beauty in it and I’ve become interested in the areas they visit in the manga. So I google mapped it to make sense of the scale and relative distances. They’re pretty close to Mt. Fuji after all.

Yuru Camp vol 1

I took quite a bit of pictures of it while reading, take a look in the details above. Of the main characters so far I guess I’m a fan of Rin (the dango bun girl) and Aoi (doggy girl). It’s been a pleasant read near the end of the volume and I think I’ll grab the next volume on kindle and read the continuation of the current trip they have.

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Yesterday, I only read like two pages of the current booklet in my graded reader volume, was planing to do more in the evening but watched TV with family instead. Today I read more, the current volume is the second non-fiction booklet of volume 2, level 4, this is unusual because all other volumes that I can remember only had one non-fiction one.

This one is called 東京を歩こう!and talks about Tokyo, surprise! The start of it had some intro and then some historical facts about how Tokyo became the capital and such. So most of the interesting words were the Japanese words for some historical events/policies I only knew the English word for before.

Historical terms!

征夷大将軍せいいたいしょうぐん = Shogun, or as my dictionary said: commander-in-chief of the expeditionary force against the barbarians :joy:

幕府ばくふ = Shogunate

はん = feudal domain (Edo and early Meiji)

参勤交代さんきんこうたい = Daimyos alternating Edo residence (one year at home, and one year in Edo/Tokyo)

鎖国さこく = national isolation / policy of national isolation enacted by the Tokugawa shogunate


My regular (English) reading have been nice. The first three days I did it (2-4th), I read a novel, maybe more short novel range. Stayed up a bit late on the last day of that to finish it. Yesterday I read a short story in the same series and in a bit I will start the second novel in the series. Seashell Cove Paranormal Mystery series by T. Thorn Coyle, can recommend. Very nice cozy mysteries so far.

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Read chapters 37 and 38 (34 pages) of ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 🛵 Volume 5. These were pretty wordy chapters (which I like) featuring some of the more technical aspects of the world that the story takes place in. Enjoyed it :smiley:. Also learned what the 黒潮 is.

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:four_leaf_clover::blossom::four_leaf_clover:
\huge\color{ #FFDE72}\mathrm{🌼Day 6🌼}
:four_leaf_clover::blossom::four_leaf_clover:

\small \color{ #C9FF72}\mathrm{★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★}

Today I translated 1 page of よつばと!I’m impatient to read more and faster but between uni and SRS I’m often pretty head-empty when I finally have time to read Japanese:/

\small \color{ #C9FF72}\mathrm{★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★}

Tooltip

The flowers above the “Day #” links to my post for the previous day, and the flowers below link to the next day, except for the latest day ofc, they link somewhere special :wink:

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Day 4 :tropical_fish: tiny update

Today I read a chunk of デスノート second chapter. People working at Interpol screaming at each other still is a harsh read for me, tomorrow I definitely will switch to something lighter (get it? light-er just like Yagami’s name, proceeds to nervous laughter)

:pleading_face::point_right: :point_left:

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Summary post :bookmark:

April 6th :seedling:

・薬屋のひとりごと (7% → 9%)

Yay, finally back on track with this book club. I’m still on week 2, while the book club is currently on week 6, so I have some catching up to do. Finished chapter 3, it was shorter than I expected. Thoughts: I like how we didn’t actually see Maomao do anything, but all clues point to her being the one who left that message behind for 玉葉妃. Will that Jinshi person find her? Let’s find out in the next episode!

I’m having fun with the irregular readings (if we can call them that), mostly for names and social titles. #funwithfurigana. Also lots of vocab that are new to me, haven’t read anything in this genre before (in addition to my vocabulary=lacking in general at the moment).

What to call it? :thinking: Chinese Tang Dynasty-inspired imperial palace kind of setting, especially with all the characters having Chinese names. And historical expressions(?), not necessarily dated, just very relevant to the setting. Like, five different words for “servant”? Check :white_check_mark:

I haven’t decided yet which one it is, but I’m having fun despite/because of the vocab. Probably both :joy:

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Home Post

The past few days I was pretty busy, but I managed to chip away on 沖で待つ every day, and today I finished it! I even wrote a short review here (tucking onto the book’s previous review in that thread ^^).

Also, I guess Belerith infected me with her French book :woman_shrugging: I tried the audiobook but could not make much sense of what I understood (vans, knights, and monsters? How does that fit together :laughing: Ok it’s a fantasy book about a girl who is able to jump to a different world as one can guess from the title, and she does so in the first chapter already, which I totally did not get with my small vocabulary :sweat_smile:). Today I read the first chapter again, using a dictionary this time, and now things are much clearer. Interestingly, the scene pretty much reminded me of 時をかける少女 (except that she lands in a different world) so I’m wondering whether the author knew that book? :thinking:

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april 6 :cherry_blossom: home post

Wow, two whole chapters of 極主夫道! I’m caught up with the club now!! I don’t know why this series motivates me to read so much compared to other books, but I’m not complaining. I’m still in the mood to read so maybe I’ll try to get through more 夜カフェ

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Day 6 / Calendar
Today I’ve read a page and a half of Yoru Café at an ungodly time in the night. Hopefully now I’ll have time to finish this weeks reading goal during the remaining 2 days.

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April 6th!

I read chapter 46 of Yotsuba today. It was a pretty funny chapter, though it did make me want some cup noodles…

Does anybody have a suggestion for a manga which is a similar difficulty to Yotsuba, but with shorter chapters? At the moment I often find I want to keep reading after I finish a chapter - but a whole second chapter is a bit too long for the amount of reading time I have. It would be nice to have something shorter to fill that gap :slight_smile:

(Home Post)

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It was such a wonderful day my nose was running the whole day. But even with me catching a cold I still spend lots of time on learning japanese and reading. In one of my manga magazines was a chapter from the beserk manga it was to my surprise pretty hard.

After that I read 1% of the No Game No Life novel it is very hard but I really enjoy reading it.

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Another sleepy day :sleeping::sleeping::sleeping:…so I chilled out and read some ギブン!Very much enjoyed spending some time with ridiculous gay music boys as they fail to communicate/have emotions etc etc.

Some examples of said cute ridiculousness


上ノ山くん’s extreme pout face.


Dissapointment


“Omg, my crush just fell asleep on top of me I might die”


Beyond the star eyes level of cute and into the “little fluffy puppies appear above my head” level

Also read a little bit of すべてがfになる and an even tinier bit of 三毛猫ホームズ but mainly today was all about them silly band boys :smiling_face_with_three_hearts::guitar:

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I relate to everything you said quite a bit. The brain draining part is real – if I could just go without the loss of energy feeling I could fill all my free time with many, many things in Japanese pretty easily, but after a certain point it hurts and I get sloppy. And wanting to reach it faster, yeah, so much. Like, I’ve actually made pretty remarkable strides in this time, but I managed to extremely quickly switch from being intimidated by all Japanese media to being annoyed when there is anything I don’t understand, heh (which is always, to some degree). My brain is always an enemy that way.

I must admit the one big difference is I’ve gotten lazy about J-J dictionaries. I made an effort into using them and still haven’t totally abandoned them, but they’ve largely been relegated to backup when I just think the English on Jisho seems off for the context I’m finding the word in. So many words I look up in J-J dictionaries have like 10 definitions, still using a bunch of words I don’t know, and it’s a bit of a drag to interrupt my reading so much or make my Anki cards take even longer if it’s not a super simple definition.


Summary post

I’m here again, trying to focus on Japanese and ignore everything else. While it was hard to do much yesterday, I don’t think anything is going to keep me from being extremely stubborn in the end.

Today was, in fact, quite good! I think it was only roughly two hours for me to read roughly 8000 characters, which is a nice little speed up for me. I always see these near the ends of routes. On that note, my bet is that tomorrow I finish this one. I’m still enraptured by the vibes, with the art, music, and voice acting, but this route has been a little more predictable I think. It basically proceeded as expected once the full situation was laid out. Which is fine; there’s enough character to keep me interested, and it’s not over yet so we’ll see if this stays true. But as of now I feel like Tsumugi’s route hit the emotions harder and Shizuku’s had a little more interesting complexity in its dilemmas.

Because I don’t have to hide it, have a picture simply of butterflies. They’re animated in game, so they look a little odd in a still frame. I don’t really feel like spilling out full spoilers right now, but it’s difficult territory to talk about or share spoiler free.

The word of the day is 一挙手一投足 (いっきょしゅいっとうそく), because I’m struck by what a big kanji monstrosity it is, even if they’re mostly simpler ones. In this context the meaning was along the lines of “one’s every action.”

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Day 6

こぐまのクーク物語: はじめての海とキャンプ: 64% → 70%

Busy day so read less than usual.
To decipher certain sentences, I used to type them out in a text document, then type out the meaning of different parts and words. Now I’m writing directly in the book using a pencil. This provides for a more smooth reading experience and allows me to go faster.
And what is your opinion about writing in books? I struggled to start doing it, as I wanted to keep the book in an “unspoiled” state.

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There is absolutely, 100%, without a doubt, no reason it would be problematic or something that should bother me to do in the slightest…

and I’m pretty sure I will never, in my life, do it. No matter what, it still just grates.

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Day 6

Today I read the second half of chapter 4 in 透明カメレオン!

HUGE TWIST that I’m not going to talk about, even under a spoiler, in case anyone wants to read it later :0!!

Tomorrow is one week down… that went fast?!

Today’s vocab:

• 尻餅 — (しりもち) to fall back onto one’s butt. Comes from the tradition of putting a bag of mochi on a baby’s bag when they first start walking (thus making them fall on their butt).At first I imagined someone falling on mochi so this is not my favourite expression
• 撥ねる — (はねる) to hit (with a car), run into
• 提げる — (さげる) to carry along
• 呻く— (うめく) to moan/groan
• 飛び退る — (とびすさる) to leap back. I didn’t expect this reading!

:cherry_blossom::house_with_garden: My Home Post :house_with_garden::cherry_blossom:

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This is me too. I don’t care what others do with their books one bit. I couldn’t do it myself.

I also pretty routinely give away books after I’m done reading them, so writing in them would be inconvenient for the next person.

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Hilariously, as someone with a literal master’s degree in books (master’s in library science, plus a graduate certificate in book arts that ended up only being like 12 credits short of a full MFA :sweat_smile:), I used to be the kind of person who couldn’t write in books, then I took a class in grad school that changed me, haha, and now I write in them all the time.

People during the Renaissance period used to write in their books constantly (in fact, if you didn’t, you weren’t considered to be truly “reading”, or at least you weren’t reading studiously), and one of my classes (on Renaissance reading) required me to do so, and I ended up getting so much more out of my grad school reading once I started (plus, class discussions and papers became way easier to write because I could easily flip back through my reading and see the parts that stood out to me), so I just kept doing it after that class.

One Renaissance reader marked up a copy of the First Folio of Shakespeare, and browsing through that copy of it, I found an answer to a question I’d had about a certain passage in one play that I hadn’t been able to find any actual published research on since I first started looking for an answer when I was 16. But thanks to this one reader’s extensive marginalia, that did for me what years of scholarly research could not do. So I’m in favor of writing in books. Future researchers will love you for it.

I also once bought a very cheap used copy of The Odyssey for a class in undergrad (because I’d left my existing nice copy at my parents’ house and suddenly needed it for a class), and the cheapest possible copy I could buy had loads of writing all over it from at least two previous owners. I was annoyed at first and found it distracting, but then I ended up having a great time getting into one-sided arguments with all of their bad opinions in the margins of the book. That was the first time I really wrote in a book I’d owned, since it was already marked up so badly, I didn’t feel any guilt.

So, yeah, as a librarian, writer, and bookmaker myself, I am 100% pro-writing in books. I’d recommend against writing in library books, haha, or I guess anything you want to resell for maximum value, but if you’re unlikely to get rid of your books, you’ll probably appreciate looking back on them someday and seeing your notes, and if you ever do end up getting rid of them, someone else might appreciate your notes more than you think :blush:.

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There’s a few that have shorter chapters and I have read them in past challenges before. Of the top of my head there’s Gal & Dino, Shirokuma Cafe and Ame to Kimi to.

In some ways they might be easier and in other ways they’re a little harder. The first one uses more slang, the second one has lots of different vocab and the last one has little furigana.

That said there’s always gonna be a rough patch at the start whenever you start a new series. I do recommend switching it up every now and then as you’ll note the difference when you come back.

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:shamrock: :blossom: :seedling: Link to Home Thread :seedling: :sheep: :shamrock:

I read a bunch of ハピネス the last few days (caught up with the club!) and as it’s pretty low on words so far, I’m thinking of just going ahead with it (ahead of the Absolute Beginner Book Club Schedule). I definitely want to read 夜カフェ with the book club but that doesn’t really fill the whole week :sweat: I could add a third book, but I feel like I would be spreading myself rather thin then :thinking: Ahhh I don’t know! It feels off to read ahead as I’m usually just behind on the book clubs :rofl:

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