📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2022 🏖 ☀

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had a sleepless night, as a result i’m very tired. currently on page 67, though most of the progress is from yesterday. enjoying it, but been sitting here trying to say something about it, and no sentences are coming out. sooo tired :yawning_face:

so i’ll just post this now

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4th July (Day 4) :sunny: :cat2:

Home post :books:

Well, about that catching up business… I read a page of 海辺のカフカ today. Got a big deadline tomorrow, will be giving a presentation on my research (which is exciting and daunting at the same time) - and I just can’t bring myself to focus on the reading. I feel so anxious. In times like these, I feel very guilty for dedicating any time at all to Japanese (or anything else that doesn’t relate to my work). So I guess I’ll resume tomorrow, once this is over.

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:lotus: Home post :lotus:

Jul 4

Today was a hard day with a stuffy nose and a concentration that was professionally evading my grasp. Nevertheless, I did manage to do some reading!

In the morning I read pages 56-64 of よつばと! and then in the evening I read pages 54-58 of FukaBoku. Technically, I read till the end of chapter 8 of FukaBoku (so page 68 or 70), but even though I understood most of it, I’ll go back over those pages tomorrow, since I didn’t look up some of the new words, so I’m not counting those :slight_smile:

I would’ve liked to have read more today, not even as some sort of overachieving goal, I just really like these stories and the process of reading and learning. But got to prioritize my wellbeing!

As a side note, and I don’t know if anyone even cares about it, but I find that I can’t be bothered to write which volumes I’m reading in every post, since it gets super repetitive. I might just edit the home post tomorrow to add what I’m reading, we’ll see!

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Home post :bookmark: July 4th :beach_umbrella:

Read about 神経細胞 on Wikipedia, until the part about glia cells. Inspired by @Zakarius.

:brain: :brain: :brain:

神経可性 - neuroplasticity. Can’t recall having seen the kanji in bold before. Doesn’t seem to be in any common words according to Jisho.

Was fun to review some of the stuff I learned from class last year.

Your emoji made me yawn :flushed: Hope you get to rest well! :zzz:

We had a yawnception spell in the previous challenge after I wrote that I got the urge to yawn when a character yawned in the book I was reading and then people replied that they got the urge to yawn too.

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Home post

I’m pushing it a little on time, so a quick update today:

I read Summer Pockets really hard again! 17,500 characters, again a new best. I paid attention to the time today and found that, with this VN (having gotten used to it for a long time), on a good day I can manage ~6000 characters in an hour. Trending upwards pretty nicely!

I hit another “ending” with a set of credits, but of course it won’t end here either haha.Launched right into another segment. This one’s the real end though, I verified with a Youtube video just to see what’s left and that video goes like 45 minutes. I think my version might add a bit to the epilogue, but still. Should be done tomorrow I hope!

I’ll wrap things up then, but I’ve really enjoyed this. Late in the game they crank up the Key emotional manipulation hard and I’m into it. Good stuff.

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:evergreen_tree: :books: July 4 :books: :evergreen_tree:
(home post)

Hotel :evergreen_tree: page 51 → 90 (40 pages)

My day didn’t go as expected and when I noticed my mind getting all tired, I decided to keep reading ホテル・メッツァペウラへようこそ instead of picking something else from my list of current reads, I read the first chapter of it on June 30th. And today I read chapter 2.

I read this manga completely casually. I look up nothing.

So far I haven’t missed much by doing that. Some words here and there. I don’t know what the hotel guest ended up calling Jun towards the middle and end of chapter 2, and maybe I’ll look that up at some point. But for now, I’m enjoying having a manga where I focus on enjoying the art and understanding as much as I can unaided. It makes it a very relaxing read and I can follow along what happens.

I’m actually enjoying the art more and more, the further I get in it. I found myself stopping to just look at panels to appreciate the art. It is nice to have something to read that I’ve decided I don’t care how much I do or don’t understand. It frees me, I think, to just relax and enjoy.

Plus, it is fun to read something set in Finland :finland:, sister country to Sweden :sweden:.

I also played some Atelier Sophie today, but I think I’ve managed to finish a lot of the side character stories, so I’m getting less story bits right now (I’m not currently advancing the main plot because I want to finish other things off first). I hope to finish Atelier Sophie before July 15 when Loopers start, so I can free up my Switch playing time for the VN club. ^^

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:house:
5th of June

I’m currently in the library — just read page 76 to page 78 (21 — 22%) of かがみの孤城. I might read more later, but today I’ll be focusing on studying.

I learned the grammar form 〜分だけ today! That sentence definitely threw me for a loop until I looked it up, lol.

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Home post

REDC
Week 2

July 4
Final Fantasy 7: 50 min.

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:green_heart: July 4th :green_heart:

ジョジョの奇妙な冒険18

70 - 107

I actually read the whole Sun fight. I thought it was bad in the anime, but I liked it even less in the manga. Although I possibly have a personal vendetta against it since I played a quiz game that had the question, “Which rock is the fake rock?

And that was the question I lost on… Shoutout to Chelly for helping get it on the second try!

I feel like the characterization only Joseph and maybe Polnareff was consistent with the rest of the work up to this point as well.

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Jul 5, Tue of Week 2 of Summer :beach_umbrella: 2022

Yesterday, I read a finish JoJo Part 2 Vol 3 monochrome (of 4 volumes, and each vols are longer than colored counterparts) (around 7 chapters). The truth is, it took around 3 hours or something, and I researched places and names too.

  • JoJo has always been full of historical stuff. Part 1 is in the UK , and Part 2 includes multiple countries and World War 2 .
  • I stopped caring about the official English spellings (only references remain), so the ancient warrior bunch becomes AC/DC, Cars, and Wham! .
  • I have a place to upload some pic, but not necessarily sharing them – my personal git website.
Some pics

oh-no

Wham!

Also, just yesterday, I updated my Bookmeter’s planning.

Yesterday's research
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I have been unexpectedly low mental energy today. Like lie-in-bed-all-day-do-nothing levels of energy. I think it’s probably a number of things just coming to a head at once, but I decided to stop trying to muster up the will power to read more of 硝子の塔の殺人 (which is lovely fun, but requires a smidge of focus) and just jump start 本好き vol 1. Ended up reading the first 23 pages pretty easily, and the story seems fun. I’ve never wanted to die in an avalanche of books, but as a die-hard bookworm in my youth I sympathize heavily with it.

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July 4 :blossom: Home Post

I played some more バディミッションBOND today; just redid some investigation sections with different characters to unlock other side stories so not a whole lot to report. I have heard 単細胞(たんさいぼう) a lot today between ハイキュー!! and チェズレイ :joy: Definitely a favored word lmao.

I also felt like reading some (かぜ)つよ so I did :man_shrugging: They’re going through some drama right now, self-destructive practice habits abound :sparkles:. It’s a fairly smooth read at this point; they’ll definitely throw some specific words at me sometimes but it’s generally pretty good! Definitely generally easier than バディミッションBOND, I think that’s probably actually the hardest thing I’m reading right now :sweat_smile: but hey it’s fun so it’s all good!

That’s so valid, I wish you the best of luck!! You got this :muscle:

Ahhh I remember yawning then, and I yawned again this time :joy: it’s way too effective lmao

Oooh that’s so exciting, you’re getting so close :eyes: Definitely relate to going way too hard when I feel like the end is coming, no better way to push yourself to new limits I guess :joy:

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Home

I read the preview for 青春サプリ。この一瞬にすべてを.

I read 狼は嘘をつかない, the fourth story in 竜のかわいい七つの子. I already don’t like werewolves, but this one felt like it was actually about autism, and it was more of the “allistics make themselves feel good about all the ‘good’ they do for autistics” bullcrap, which makes it even worse.

ranting

It’s about werewolves, or rather, it’s about a woman and her werewolf son, and it feels a lot like an allegory for autism, and not in a good way, with how mothers of werewolves and mothers of autistic kids are all “I’m so heroic and strong for taking care of my [werewolf/autistic] child, they’re so difficult to deal with, look at me!” and sure they try to help their child, but it’s mostly so they can feel good about themselves, and it’s only incidental that they also help their child—although it’s often only for a certain definition of “help,” because they go to support groups, etc. where they bemoan how difficult it is to deal with their werewolf/autistic children and pat each other and themselves on the back and none of them ever actually listen to or consult with their children about what they want/feel/need, even going so far as ignoring what their children try to tell them (”Mother knows best!”). They just want to look like a good parent, not actually be one. Midway through, it transitions to the POV of the son, who’s now in college, and he’s been angry and frustrated for a while because his mother always makes it about her and making herself feel good with her manga and her lectures and her support group and never actually listens to him, and he finally yells at her and makes her listen to how he feels. I’d thought she’d finally see how she’d hurt him and start actually listening to him and stop making it all about herself, but oh, apparently that wasn’t actually what he’d wanted to say, he’d wanted to thank her, so he apologizes and does so. The story treats it as though it wasn’t just that he yelled at her that was in the wrong, it was that he felt that way at all. It felt very “After everything I’ve done for you? How dare you! You’re so ungrateful!”

And of course the mother’s one of those “I’m not putting him on any medication! I’m raising him 100% natural! Drugs bad!” types. I know with ADHD there’s this whole “Stimulants? What do you need stimulants for?” Uhhhh because our brains f-cking work different, which you’d f-cking know if you actually listened. But also just in general, there seems to be this whole idea among able-boded, neurotypical, etc. people that being on medication is bad unless it’s short-term, like when you come down with the flu or something. If you’ve got a disorder or a chronic illness or something, then you’re supposed to just “get through it on your own.” Yeah our brains can’t make the chemicals that would allow us to do that, that’s what the meds are for. Yours can. You don’t get to talk, or to dictate what we can and can’t do about our own situation.

And of course when he’s finally able to get the meds himself when he’s 20 (because you need permission from a parent or guardian when you’re a minor, and when he brought it up with her in high school, his mother flat-out refused to even consider it), he experiences side effects that are just as bad as what he usually goes through around his “time of the month” so to speak, just different. Drugs bad, so of course they can’t work! Like, yeah, not all meds are a good fit for everyone, that’s why there are a lot of different ones for the same thing, and, heck, some people can’t take them at all, but with these being the only ones in the story, on top of everything else? And it being at the end of the story, so he doesn’t even get to start to try to find something else to help, whether medication or coping mechanism (so, what, does he just keep doing what he’s been doing, not being able to have enough time to recover after his transformation because school only allows him two absences a month and he needs at least three days, and being unable to keep a job because of all the days he misses and the times he’s late, and being unable to make friends? But oh it’s okay now because he’s made up with his mother, who still doesn’t actually care about him, and now he’s probably made an actual friend, and she takes his mother’s side so that’s not exactly a good thing. That’s the exact opposite of a support system). Well, I can’t help but view sensei’s intentions badly.

So, yeah, screw that.

So, yeah. I did not like that one very much. Or at all.

After that, I had to read ch 6 of SPY×FAMILY so that wouldn’t be the last thing I read today. This is the first time I’ve seen 貴様 used in a non-derogatory way lmao that practically gave me whiplash. Anyway, this chapter was great.

Some vocab of note:

元祖 (がんそ) [noun] originator; pioneer; inventor; founder. I mostly chose this one because it’s the first time I’ve come across 元 read as がん.
著しい (いちじるしい) [い-adj.] striking; remarkable; considerable
産毛 (うぶげ) [noun] downy hair; down; peach fuzz; fluff. I never woulda guessed the reading for this one, not least because I’d never seen that reading for 産.
どうりで [adv.] indeed; it’s no wonder
架空 (かくう) [noun, の-adj., な-adj.] fictitious; imaginary; fabricated
報復 (ほうふく) [noun, する verb (自)] retaliation; revenge; reprisal; retribution
シラフ [noun, の-adj.] sobriety; soberness
代弁 (だいべん) [noun, する verb (他)] speaking by proxy; speaking for (someone else); acting as spokesman (for); representing (the views, feelings, etc. of)
八つ裂き (やつざき) [noun] tearing limb from limb; tearing apart; cutting (a person) to pieces

…I still haven’t tried changing the language settings on Netflix yet. I really meant to do that today, since I ended up getting really tired really early yesterday afternoon.

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Home Post

Day 3
カリスタルハンータズ :dagger::gem::gear:

Progress - read pages 11-28 [24%]

I was determined to get to the end of the chapter, but was falling asleep while reading and still wanted to post on the day I read something! Yay me! I did it! :joy: :raised_hands:t2:

Now for some sleep :sleeping:
Night all! And for my US friends , happy fourth of a July! :sparkler::us:

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Day 4 :heavy_check_mark: :cyclone:

~ 13-19%

The story is progressing slowly (or I’m just reading it slowly?), but it’s exactly the kind of slow build-up I was looking for. The eeriness is still only at the very edge of my vision, if at all, but I like the atmosphere a lot.

There was a part in my reading where I was sure the narrator was hallucinating or something. After rereading it a couple of times, I’m now convinced she was just talking about something that happened long ago. Sometimes the lack of actual tenses in Japanese can be frustrating…

I liked the phrase 形だけ. It is obvious in context, but it means, “merely for form’s sake”,
I also learned the word 小町 which doesn’t mean small town, but (town) beauty.
さるすべり is a funny name for a tree, and reminds me of “monkey puzzle tree”, although they’re very different trees. さるすべり is translated as crape myrtle. [1]
And I loved the word 草いきれ - strong smell of grass in summer heat. According to another dictionary, “sickening smell of grass”. A very useful word for all places that tend to get very hot, I thought.

In terms of cultural observations, I find it interesting how little the narrator seems to know about her in-laws. From what I’ve seen (in books and films, admittedly), the potential bride tends to get very closely examined by the groom’s family, but doesn’t she (or her family) also get to know about the family she’s marrying into? It seems bizarre to me that the narrator, several years married, (very mild spoilers) has never met her father-in-law, has no idea where her mother-in-law works or what she does, and neither her nor her husband (the son!) knew that his family owned another house next door that they had been renting out. Is that common at all, or just something to add to the feeling of alienation in the story?


  1. ↩︎

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

Day 5:

Good morning! (And good night?). I woke up at 5:30 just raring to go. Figured I might as well get my reading out of the way early, because I am distracted. I went to see an apartment yesterday and it’s official - I’m moving!! It’s been a long time coming, and it’s the first place that’s been cool with my cats. I’m gonna be all over the place for a while.

…But I’ll keep reading. I knocked 18 pages of ピーチガール out of the way this morning. At this rate I’ll probably finish the first volume sometime next week. I am once again a fan of the mc.

spoilery image maybe

Isn’t it nice when the girl gets to be the hero? Like, actually save someone’s life? in a shoujo manga!?!?!?

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:books: :video_game: :shallow_pan_of_food: :sunny: July 4

Finally finished chapter 11 of 夜カフェ. I’m hoping to finish it in the next few days as I really want to get started with ビブリア. It’s always nice to read something easier but I’m over it right now, I need something more interesting that makes me want to find out what happens next.

I also played バリバリ for an hour and completed another section. I had a lot of trouble trying to find the kanji 錆 in my phone dictionary but in the end it turned out it interprets the ‘yen’ bit as a ‘moon’ radical and I didn’t associate the two. Now I’m curious if that’s a common thing, but it had me thinking the kanji didn’t exist in my dictionary for a loong while.

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It is this way in Yuru Camp 1 too. I use here as a reference. Nonetheless, default font isn’t necessary using 教科書体 either.

Rarely, I might have to look up non-Japanese variants on Wiktionary as well.

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:sunflower: DAY 4 :sunflower:

I finished the last half of chapter 10, and then wprked through chapter 11 in 海辺のカフカ - Kafka on the Shore :beach_umbrella: (Advanced Book Club) !!

My goals of making it to America and catching up to this week’s assignment in the book club have both been realized!!

Heading into the city from the airport last night, there were fireworks going off from every direction in celebration of the 4th! :sparkler: :fireworks: It also kinda felt like a little “welcome back home!” and “congrats on catching up to the book club” to me–probably because I may have been a liiiiiiittle over-tired from 21 hours of consectutive travel haha

Thanks @windupbird for the luck!! Your sparkles really worked their magic!! 3 train and 2 plane connections, and they all couldn’t have gone smoother :star_struck::sparkles:

Hang in there @Greti33 !! I know right? Time is flying by :caught_durtling: It’s just my personal opinion, but I think chapters 9, 10, and 11 go by pretty quickly~ I hope they do for you too!!

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loved your rant! haven’t read that story, but i’ve encountered that trope before, and it makes me furious.

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