📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2022 🏖 ☀

Read ~7 pages more of 十角館の殺人. It’s definitely at cruising altitude now for difficulty, although personally I’d bump it a bit up from 30 just for the vocab stretch in addition to not being written ‘simply’. It will be interesting to see how it changes once it has ratings from across the book club.

It’s getting interesting but I’m just not in much of a mood for reading anything today, so I’ll be leaving it at that. I have 23 pages left in the reading and over a week to complete it so not worried.

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August 11 :blossom: Home Post

Played more バディミッションBOND today, and… ahhhh??? :joy: I’m getting close to the end now and I can definitely feel it, things are off the rails and my feelings are everywhere lmao, but it’s a great time! I did two whole main story sections though I think they were on the shorter side, but they sure weren’t lacking in content :eyes:

BOND is ruining me (for real spoilers in the blurred parts)

Like… every time I think I finally know what’s happening, and every time something even wilder gets thrown at me :joy: So… the code wasn’t in ルーク’s head. Or well kind of? It’s not in the person we know as ルーク’s head :joy: So the main scientist dude’s son was named ルーク, and the code is in his head, and he has immunity to the mind control stuff, but it’s not our ルーク… it’s アーロン. ファントム tried to threaten the code out of ルーク’s memories by mind controlling アーロン and setting his room on fire (way to use past trauma ouch), but アーロン wasn’t affected… because he’s actually ルーク. :flushed: Which is wild already, but it’s all even more tragic than I could’ve imagined! So they knew each other as kids at the lab which I suspected, but アーロン was ルーク and ルーク went by ヒーロー which… yeah. But look how cute they were!!

アーロン was such a soft quiet boy :cry: Anyway they were friends, and then the explosion happened and ルーク/ヒーロー got badly injured but the country was still super messed up from war so no hospitals would take him, so アーロン/ルーク took him to the リカルド embassy to get help, ang here’s where it gets really ouchies. ハスマリ, the country the lab was in, was super war-torn and dangerous, but アーロン/ルーク and his dad were just there doing research and were going to go back to リカルド where they were from since things were getting bad. But アーロン/ルーク… he took ルーク/ヒーロー to the embassy and told them he was from リカルド, that he was ルーク, son of the scientist there doing research, and that they should take him back to リカルド, and in doing so left himself all alone in ハスマリ with no way of getting out, just forced to starve on the street, and that’s just a lot?? I have a lot of feelings about it and so does ルーク (man I don’t know how to refer to them anymore :joy:):

These last couple sections were generally really rough, especially for ルーク :sweat_smile: his “dad” turned out to be evil and repeatedly threatened and manipulated him into giving the code, and when he found out ルーク didn’t have it he said he was totally worthless and threw him down a garbage chute :sob: There was a whole like dream sequence with his spirits totally crushed and him not even remembering who he or anyone else is, and all the UI got really dark and wonky too, like with ルーク’s name being blurred out up there, and the hero gauge all cracked and colorless:

But in that sequence he met with each of the other members of team BOND and for each of them had to pick out from a set of silhouettes which was the right one based on the description, and it was all tied to like character development and how far they’ve come and just :') that part was really sweet actually. But yeah a lot of it was really dark, like this flashback of ルーク’s dad hypnotizing him every night to get the code:

バディミッションBOND doesn’t mess around! That got really long and blurred out whoops, but so much went down I just had to throw it somewhere :joy: It’s too late in the game for non-plot-relevant goofs rip

Omg an absolute classic :joy:

Oof that’s rough, I’m glad you’re doing better! Sending well-wishes :grin:

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:sunny: :beach_umbrella: Memoria’s Summer Readin’ :beach: :sunny:

August 12th:

24 pages of 好きっていいなよ this morning. Mei went on her first date with Yamato. This manga is too cute… Getting my reading done early again because there’s a special event at work this week. It’s the one week where I actually have to do a late shift. Thankfully I’m off tomorrow so I can sleep in and watch the Genshin Impact special program :upside_down_face:

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:books: :video_game: :thong_sandal: :sunny: August 11

I mentioned in a previous post that I’d unfortunately broken the tablet I used for most of my JP reading. After some investigating it seemed likely that the actual LCD screen was fine and only the digitizer had been damaged, so I ordered a replacement for like 15€ and today I spent way too many hours actually doing the replacement. I didn’t really have the right tools for a job like this and having to use a heat surce when it’s already 37ºC outside is not nice (and I burned my finger a bit ;_;), but in the end the tablet seems as good as new and I was able to read ビブリア on it once again ( 29% → 32% )!

I also read 3 chapters of 青のフラッグ, which means I’m done with Volume 2 and onto Volume 3.

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Wow, that’s pretty impressive! I think I changed batteries twice and display once on an iphone, and that was the horror (I’m not made for handling tiny fiddly things…), so I feel for you! Happy to hear that you can read again :blush:

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:sunflower: Summer Reading Challenge July Recap :sunflower: :house:

Been away for a while so this is my first post this challenge. I didn’t have a lot of time to spend on Japanese but I managed to squeeze in a little reading time everyday while I was gone. Still working on getting back into the habits I had before leaving so I’ll try and post more for the rest of this challenge.

Short summary of the stuff I read in July:
Read 夜カフェ 1 chapters 12-13

Read Flesh&Blood 1 chapters 6-9
Probably one of the hardest things I’ve read so far, mostly the historical parts and nautical terms. Regardless, it was a fun challenge, I really enjoyed reading it and I’m excited to be continuing the series with the book club.

Started マグメル深海水族館 7

Read 夜の名前を呼んで 1
This was what I read on days where I didn’t have a lot of energy or time to read. It has mostly no furigana but there’s not much text on most pages so it isn’t too difficult. Super cute story so far and I really like the magical atmosphere and the art.

Read 准教授・高槻彰良の推察 1 民俗学かく語りき

Story description

After a mysterious event in his childhood, Naoya has become able to hear when people tell lies. Because of this he tries to keep his distance from people. In college he decides to take a folklore class, and ends up getting wrapped into solving mysteries of potentially supernatural origin with the class’s professor Takatsuki.

I found this one super interesting, more than just the cases they solved in general, finding out more about the mysteries surrounding the main characters drew me into the story a lot and made it feel easier to read.

Read 宝石の国 1 chapters 3-6

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:cake: :star2: August 11 :star2: :cake:
(home post)

Super Mario Odyssey :star2:
Night Café :cake: page 142 → 156 (15 pages)

Yesterday, I finished off the last of the city kingdom and all of snow kingdom in SMO. I’ll soon have run through the whole story and then probably the only next I’ll get to read will be the names of moons and the occasional NPC. Ah well, I am re-playing SMO mostly for fun, so it wasn’t like I started it thinking I’d get some good reading out of it. ^^

Read chapter 11 of NC. Now I know why the book (/series) is called Night Café. I think the most interesting thing I’ve noticed is that several chapters in a row now have just flowed into each other. Instead of stopping at the end of a day or after an incident have finished or such. The narrative is more integrated, so that is kinda nice. Although it means chapter endings are sometimes just in the middle of a thing. :joy:

Although chapter 11 finally ended at a true stopping point, and while I could now switch to my clubs (Loopers and Orange), I think I might just power through the rest of the book (2 chapters) today, and therefore have my first finished thing in August. I’ll see. ^^


Replies

This is so exciting! Good luck and have fun with it!

Oh noes. I’m still hoping I can avoid it, but I don’t expect so. :crossed_fingers:

Oh my, oh my. Keep sharing because I’m still reading. The story is wild!

Wow, I would have no idea how to do any of that. Well done, and so glad it could be fixed cheaply!

Oh, this sounds super interesting. I added it to my want to read list of book meter, because I need more things to read. :joy:

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:star2: Home :star2:

ジョジョの奇妙な冒険25

25 - 27

The day before yesterday because I was once again-
眠い。。。

Yesterday I got drunk and forgot to read. Whoops. I impressed the bartender though and didn’t have a hangover.

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It is amazing to me that you can do something like that on your own; I get intimidated just replacing a sim card. Impressive!

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:tiger2: :books: The Tanuki Beach Resort: Date 20220812 :beach_umbrella: :raccoon:

吾輩は狸である progress: 2.31% :black_cat:

Wagahai-cat finds another cat sleeping is his spot, how dare!
(Then proceeds to describe the cat in poetic detail)

:beach_umbrella: Japanese found in the sand :beach_umbrella:

Lots of Meowords

瀟洒「しょうしゃ」ー Stylish; smart; elegant; refined
(that first kanji 瀟 is very 瀟洒)
浩然「こうぜん」ー Broadminded // and:
浩然の気「こうぜんのき」ー Universal life force; free spirit // and:
浩然の気を養う「こうぜんのきをやしなう」ー To enliven your spirits; to refresh yourself
小春「こはる」ー 10th month of the lunisolar calendar (Novemberish); late autumn
杉垣「すぎがき」ー Sugi (tree) hedge
枯菊「かれぎく」ー Withered chrysanthemum in winter
無頓着「むとんちゃく」ー Indifferent; nonchalant; unconcerned
佇立「ちょりつ」ー Standing still
琥珀「こはく」ー Amber
双眸「そうぼう」ー One’s eyes; pair of eyes
卑しい「いやしい」ー Humble; coarse; vulgar; shabby; greedy; lowly
険呑「けんのん」ー Risky; dangerous
傍若無人「ぼうじゃくぶじん」ー Behaving outrageously as if no one is around; acting without consideration for others
気焔「きえん」ー Boastful talk; high spirts (also: 気炎)
昂然「こうぜん」ー Elated; triumphant; proud
箆棒「べらぼう」ー Extreme; excessive; absurd; foolish; idiot
癪にさわる「しゃくにさわる」ー To irritate
寒竹「かんちく」ー Marbled bamboo
邂逅「かいこう」ー Chance meeting

Forms
瘠せる = 痩せる「やせる」(To get thin)
膏 = 脂「あぶら」(Fat; lard)

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Read Chapter 12 of よつば&! at the doctor’s office today. Found this chapter difficult to understand; I would normally say I’m looking forward to rereading with a dictionary, but I was also irritated by Jumbo’s infatuation with Asagi (am I misinterpreting how old each of them is?) and the general tone around bodies in bathing suits. To be expected, I know, but not my favourite chapter.

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Well, my health seems to be more or less completely restored, which means I’m working like crazy to make up for all the time I lost while ill. Which means that reading is suffering once again: I’m reading 十角館の殺人 at quite literally a snail’s pace (a sentence or two whenever I can find the time, so frustrating!), and as for Tsugumi, I just realized I’ve missed a whole book club week, and may very well miss the next one too the way things are going. But it’s okay - I’m sure I’ll be able to catch up sooner or later! I can see gloriously lazy reading days in the near future. At some point… :books:

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Home Post

This month, the two book clubs for Kafka and TUGUMI have been smooth sailing - Kafka getting ever more interesting, and reading TUGUMI feels like kinda indulging in the feels. And then there has been Flesh&Blood. While the first volume was mainly devoted to world building (which means 16th century European history :sweat_smile:) the second volume really picks up speed regarding personal and interpersonal :eyes: development. Interestingly, it is my slowest book (at ~8 pages/hour) but I enjoy it tremendously.
My current plan is to finish Flesh&Blood vol. 2 as well as Kafka part 1 until Monday. I’m ready to jump into F&B vol. 3 straight away, and I’m hoping to be able to finish it until August 27th, when the new ABC pick 狼と香辛料 will start. Let’s see how that goes :grin:

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Home post :bookmark: Aug 12th :sunny:

・ 本好きの下剋上 10 (19% → 22%)

I’d like to say I spent the afternoon decompressing but… yeah, not quite there yet. Will try to chill tomorrow, my calendar looks like chaos already, three things overlapping and whatnot :melting_face:

But yeah! Weekend! :durtle_noice:

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August 12th!
Today I read the final chapter of Volume 7 of Teasing Master Takagi-san - it was a super sweet story this week :slight_smile:
I also read the Chapter 17 of Happiness - that was… not sweet :sweat_smile:

(Home Post)

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Summary Post

August 12th
What did I read?: 猫には猫の猫ごはん Vol 1
How much did I read?: 54 pages
How long did it take me?: 34 min

It’s been a minute since I last posted here lol I’ve been listening most days, but honestly I did nothing yesterday. I was tired and just…didn’t feel like doing anything. Sooo I didn’t :upside_down_face: But today, I finished off this first volume. There were so many precious moments :pleading_face:

This is like my favorite panel, this little interaction is just so :pleading_face::pleading_face:

When Taiyou's reaction is EXACTLY my reaction xD

Could there be a more precious pair, I mean honestly

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:spiral_calendar: Day 42: August 11th :sun_with_face: :ice_cream:

spacer:ribbon: ふだつきのキョーコちゃん Volume 6 (58% ➨ 76%)

spacer:mag: 名探偵コナン Volume 11 (25% ➨ 42%)

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Glad you’re feeling better! You’ve got another week to catch up, so don’t sweat it. The prologue is lot rougher to read than the main story (once it gets over the setting descriptions) so don’t worry if it seems oddly hard right now.

As for myself I read another ~10 pages of the above book (same as omk3) and have about 10 more to finish the reading. I’ll have at least one grammar question for the club but I’m saving it incase something later in the chapter makes that sentence make sense :joy: We’ll see if I’m feeling like finishing the reading tonight or not, I’m still trying to take things easy.

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Home post

REDC
Week 7

8月12日
ルーパーズ


Loopers day! I thought I could finish the chapter but nope. Did about 6600 characters, finishing it tomorrow for sure. My reading speed doesn’t seem to go up (around 2400 c/h) because I keep looking up words and adding cards but honestly, at the risk of repeating myself and possibly being annoying xD, but I’m having such a blast adding words that the version of me that wrote being so tired of SRS in a challenge thread not long ago would be surprised. Swapping to a freestyle, personal, J-J anki deck was an amazing decision for me. I sometimes still have days when I don’t want to keep doing SRS and then Loopers’ new chapter comes in and suddenly I’m in love again because it seems to be at just the right level for me to increase vocabulary relatively comfortably. And I’m still keeping my decision of not adding words every day if I don’t want to. I still don’t feel the pressure anymore, and then I simply have a day where I add enough words for the next few days so it kinda balances out. These challenge threads have proven to be an amazing journey of self discovery for me for sure.

Anyways, boring SRS talk. VN so far so good. The right kind of difficulty is crucial, it seems.

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Makes me extremely pleased seeing all the positive reactions to the club, seems to be a big success so far :grin:


Since I’m already here, on my side I’m still going along with the usual. Agreed on Loopers – it’s a relatively easy overall read for me now, but it’s packed with new words to learn still. And plenty that seem more immediately useful than what I encounter elsewhere. I haven’t actually timed myself, but I’m pleased I’ve read every chapter in a day when they came up, and they’re never a terrible lengthy strain either (this week being the most at over 8500 characters, but I was done within a couple hours at most I think). It’s my day of building back confidence before Flowers hahaha.

Which actually hasn’t been quite as bad recently. It’s still a harder piece of writing, but I’m pretty confident I’ll get through Flowers fine. And I’m enjoying recent developments as a more main conflict is brewing! I’ll have to take the time to talk about this VN in more detail soon.

I also finished Azumanga Daioh volume 2! There are still frustrating strips I don’t really understand; one for example I could tell was making zodiac references but I was pretty out of my depths as to what they were saying. Manga is easier than ever before but beyond references I don’t know, I’m still a bit weak with it precisely because it tends to be so concise and slangy that mistaken impressions are easier than longer form writing. Still, I’ve got a pretty big attachment to the characters and I’m definitely going to see volume 3 through.

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