📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2022 🏖 ☀

Home post

REDC
Week 5

July 30
Chrono Trigger
ルーパーズ


Turned out being quite a productive day. Played a couple hours of Chrono Trigger and read half of chapter 3 of ルーパーズ. Surprisingly I’m not especially worn out, I think I’m finally building a lot of stamina and resilience after all the fighting I do with the J-J dictionaries :joy: . But well I guess not only that, listening everyday as well and naturally increasing the amount I do lately has given me a lot of tolerance to “language learning” discomfort, which I’m really grateful for. Lately I can’t even describe it as language discomfort either, it went back to a sense of curiosity I want to know more about. Slowly increasing the vocabulary I know and also decreasing the difficulty of the content I consume I feel has been crucial. While I still bite off more than I can chew occasionally, I haven’t felt overwhelmed in a while. It’s so hard to choose fitting content that you’re interested in when you self study, though. But I guess now I’m becoming more and more able to judge if something is going to be worth the fight or if it’s going to be futile. Now what’s really cool is that things that used to be futile are becoming accessible and ahhh it’s a great thing.

19 Likes

Hey everyone!

I’m overly excited to report that I’ve acquired 19 new books! I finally ordered an Amazon.jp order of physical Japanese books and I have a BOOK HAUL of epic proportions!! (Can you tell I’m very excited? :joy:)

Obligatory picture

It’s mostly manga but I also got three novels.

More specific book breakdown
  1. Volumes 10-20 of 暁のヨナ (I figured why not reread but from where the anime leaves off)
  2. つぐみ and キッチン (yay Banana Yoshimoto + 1st book club book!)
  3. ゆっくりおやすみ、樹の下で (I’ve never actually done a full furigana novel, just four novels without it so I hope it’s as easy I expect haha)
  4. ホリミヤ (vol. 1)
  5. まいりました、入間くん (vol. 27)
  6. キングダム (vol. 16, 31, 46 because favorite arcs)

Anyway, that’s very fun! It was surprisingly cheap for the number of books - only about 10,000円 for 19 books - way cheaper than buying them outside of Japan!

And in actual reading challenge related news, I’m about 25% of the way through ティアムーン帝国物語 (4) which I’m enjoying a lot!

25 Likes

Home

Okay so part of me not reading much these past few days was that I was tired and/or my brain just wasn’t up to it when I had the time to, but part of it was that I was just writing a ton of fic?? Just today I wrote like 2500 words??? I dunno how many people would consider that a lot, but it definitely is for me. I’m not sure that I’ve ever written this much in a day before. (And this is two separate >1k-word fics, neither of which are even finished yet, and the majority of my finished fics are <1k words.) And over the past three days before today, I wrote something like 3k words. What is this.

I started ch 2 of 強者の同盟 and read 4 pages, leaving off on pg 24. Jungo’s family has a cat, and, like all cat owners, he’s got a bunch of pictures of it on his phone. He’s also got a bunch relating to club activities. In third year of MS at least, he wasn’t afraid to use his height and his standing as a top volleyball player and one of the few in the school who could make it to Nationals to, like, intimidate teachers and get what he wanted—though, in this case it was in order to protect one of his friends, Hacchi; no idea if he’d do it in other situations, too. But Hacchi (Hatta Chiiko) is the third main character in this story, so we’ve now met all the major players! Also, she calls him Takajun, it’s cute.

Some vocab of note:

食らう (くらう) [他ア五] to receive (e.g. a blow)
強張る (こわばる) [自ラ五] to stiffen; to become stiff

17 Likes

So I’m trying to read 闇祓 again, promised myself I’d try 5 pages a day. WHY IS THIS BOOK SO HARD. It’s the same author as かがみの孤城 but between the plot (which is pretty rough for me to read, emotional oof) and the writing style I swear I feel like my brain is broken.

Maybe someone sanity check me, but both of these sentences took me several re-reads to parse and that’s just plain unusual for me with a run of the mill novel at this point:

古参の社員が多いこの会社の中にあって圧倒的に若い管理職だ。

My rough attempt at translation:In a company so full of long tenured employees, they were overwhelming young.

肩幅が広くて声も大きく、いかにも体育会系といった雰囲気に気後れするものを感じ、営業現場のたたき上げの課長から見れば、企画部出身の自分は生っちょろい存在だと思われそうで、鈴井は最初から彼には苦手意識があった。

His shoulder were wide and his voice loud, his gym bro air was daunting. From the point of view of such a man who raised himself up through the ranks at work, Suzui from the Planning Department, was overly carefree. Suzui knew from the start they would have a rough relationship.

Do I have some sort of block with this book? Is it the writing style? Am I going crazy? :exploding_head:

ごんぎつね is probably my favorite Japanese children’s story. Definitely gave me feels.

18 Likes

July 30 :blossom: Home Post

Well I got really invested in バディミッションBOND and ended up playing later than I should’ve (whoops lmao) so I don’t have time to dump my feelings right now but I have a lot of them! It was a great reading day and a lot happened, but I have to go to bed now :joy:

Glad to see we all have good taste :laughing:

19 Likes

:spiral_calendar: Day 30: July 30th :butterfly: :hibiscus:

Looks like today gets to be my primary book club day this week. That said, I’m also making up for little reading time during the past week.

spacer:sparkles: キラキラ100% Volume 3 (38% ➨ 50%)

👧 からかい上手の(元)高木さん Volume 5 (24% ➨ 31%)

Considering the aspects Chi inherited from her mother, I’d hate to see what Takagi was like that this age.

image image

spacer:broom: ふらいんぐうぃっち Volume 11 (71% ➨ 83%)

spacer:bust_in_silhouette: シャドーハウス Volume 1 (15% ➨ 23%)

spacer:ninja:t2: くノ一ツバキの胸の内 Volume 3 (52% ➨ 67%)

spacer:tangerine: orange Volume 1 (76% ➨ 100%)


Replies

Imagine reading a series in a monthly comic book where it’s one month between chapters!

Or for those of us reading Flying Witch, waiting a year for each volume.

Or for those of us reading Yotsuba, waiting three to five years for another volume…

(It’s probably no coincidence that all of my book club manga nominations have been completed series!)


Edit: It’s always interesting to see how my post titles change from preview to posted.

image

image

21 Likes

:green_heart: Home :green_heart:

ジョジョの奇妙な冒険22

64 - 140

I was able to push myself a lot yesterday :slight_smile:

I am not a fan of the Seth (and/or Polnareff) chapters lol. On the bright side, a certain spoilered character doesn’t use advanced Japanese, so he’s usually easy to understand at least. I’m excited to be done with them soon, hopefully today.

18 Likes

I’ll give it a try, but bear in mind I haven’t had my morning coffee yet, so take everything with a grain of salt.

I think you’re just overlooking a word here: 管理職

My rough attempt at translation: In a company with many senior employees. (he was an?/ there were?) overwhelmingly young manager(s).

I’m losing a little who is who here. I’m assuming Suzui is from the Planning Department and the other person is the section manager, but not confident. Also not confident who has the loud voice etc. Is it the section chief or Suzui? Also who has the 苦手意識. Other than that, all is clear :sweat_smile:
Yomichan says 体育会系 means sports-minded. So my attempt: With wide shoulders and a loud voice, and indeed a daunting sports-minded air, from the point of view of someone who rose through the ranks in the company to be section manager, he seemed to think of Suzui from the Planning Department as half-hearted/naive, and. as for Suzui, he knew from the start he would be hard to deal with/not good enough.

Not a straightforward sentence by any means. I hope context clears it up.

4 Likes

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

Day 31:

Played some more Zero Escape, which means I’m officially halfway done with the challenge :confetti_ball:

Next time I’ll try to find a different hook for the game… I’ve been trying to power through the escape room segments without texthooker, but I’m missing tons of information. @natarin @Scylie I picked the room where サンタ is because you guys enabled me and I have no regrets :relieved: Funky little dude who should borrow a sweater from someone before he catches a cold.

19 Likes
long reply

Well, if the monthly magazine had a few series I was following and it was the quickest way to get the latest chapter… I could see myself subscribing. Because it would still be better than waiting for the manga volume if I was that invested. xD

At least both Yotsuba& and Flying Witch are both slice of life, so cliffhangers and overarching stories aren’t left hanging, no? (I haven’t read Flying Witch yet, so not as sure about that one.) Obviously, one would want an eventual satisfying ending, but it isn’t as problematic if every story is self contained. /She says and still she wishes she could have the next volume of the Hotel manga because it is so sweet and wholesome and fun. So who is she to talk? xD

Honestly, I mostly read completed things, because with those not finished yet, you’ll never know if they will be completed. Not as big a problem with slice of life (depending on how it is set up), because there isn’t an overarching narrative you want an answer to. But anything story focused?

There are reasons I never got into popular shounen series, first because even the manga chapters often began to feel like filler episodes after a while (can’t resolve the plot too quick! Then you need to come up with more plot!) And second, because the more popular they got, the more they just continued and continued and seldom does something sustained by popularity get a good end, because they tend to end when the popularity goes away (and it will, it always does) and then it abruptly ends because the publisher doesn’t want it anymore… So you’re left with either a rushed ending that doesn’t conclude this epic saga that has been going on for ages; or you get no ending at all.

4 Likes

Unless my memory fails me, I don’t think there are any major cliffhangers between volumes (or maybe once? Thinking of the basketball scene here…) but of course we are gradually introduced to the world with its people and places, and those often reappear in later chapters and develop further. If that’s what you call an overarching story, then there are quite a few. (But it’s not like “How will it continueeee :cold_sweat:” but rather “Oh hey, they’re back! :hugs:” if that makes sense)

4 Likes

I wouldn’t necessarily call that overarching story. Orange is a slice of life (kinda) that very much have an overarching story. (In fact, it wasn’t until I was finishing volume 1 I could really see how it might be called slice of life because the story seemed so important.)

I’d put Orange on the story heavy slice of life side.
And the other side is where things never change at all (I can’t come up with a manga example for this, mostly because I don’t enjoy this at all); a pure slice of life side one might call it. (Examples would be most American sitcoms. Things happen in an episode and by the end they are back to the status quo, and next episode it is like the previous one(s) never happened. Also a lot of children’s cartoons work like this.)

Most slice of life will fall somewhere on that spectrum. School Rumble (which I’ve only seen the anime of) falls somewhere in the middle, but that is more because of reader/watcher hopes/wants, than it actually developing its story. It is far too easy to get invested in any of the main characters managing to actually confess to those they are interested in, but the anime never lets it happen. So at the end of most episodes (or 2-3 episode arcs) we’re back to square one. Very frustratingly so in School Rumbles case. (Which made me check on the ending for the full manga run and decide not to bother…)

This is just my perception of the genre though. And while I like the genre, I like it better towards the story side of the spectrum, where there are developments as the story progresses and where callbacks can and will be made. Where there is a progression of time and changes that come with that. Which sounds like what you described for Flying Witch, and it makes me excited to get around to the 3 volumes of that I already own. (So much good stuff to read. :pleading_face: )

And then there is Orange that is almost more a story that has slice of life elements or a slice of life structure. Although I’ll see if I still feel the same a couple of volumes from now. ^^

5 Likes

Oh, I see. Yeah well then, Flying Witch doesn’t have that.

Detective Conan? (where they are still in first grade after 1000 (!) anime episodes :rofl:)

I am not a manga person, but I can highly recommend Flying Witch! :blush:

4 Likes

:house:
31st of July

Read from page 132 to page 135 (37 – 38%) of かがみの孤城. I also did some Tobira readings today.

New word of today: 躊躇ためらう (to hesitate). Why don’t I know either of those kanji :joy:

16 Likes

… 10,000? I still have to convert money to make sense of it, but 100,000 would be… like, close to $1000, wouldn’t it?

While it’s super episodic, there is still an overarching plot.

… Is he really still in grade one? Even if he had a case every day (which, wow? Super busy xD), way more than a year would have passed already. Also, seasons. Seasons are a thing that happen, aren’t they? :sweat_smile:

7 Likes

Yes you’re right ahaha! I was tired and accidentally added an extra zero. :sweat_smile: :woman_facepalming:

4 Likes

home post

I’m nearing the middle of 鹿の王 volume 1. It’s interesting and not hard to read in terms of grammar, but there’s just a LOT of vocabulary. At 150 pages it doesn’t feel like the frequency is really going down, and logically I know this is because the introduction/setup part always has a lot of vocab, and in a 4-volume book that means the entire first volume is probably crazy vocab. Even knowing why, it’s tiring.

This morning I saw Bookwalker is having more promotions, including one for free first volumes of “manga so beautiful you’ll fall for it in one glance.” So I got the first volume of 岩元先輩ノ推薦 to try. It’s by 椎橋 寛 and it’s about a school for people with supernatural powers in the 1910s. It has full furigana and the difficulty level is IMO similar to 暁のヨナ。 And the art really is great. Giving out the first volume free was a good idea. (I think Young Jump is doing the “beautiful manga” promotion on several platforms right now)

18 Likes

So I suspect that is actually singular because the previous sentence was describing an older colleague of Suzui’s.

Hahaha yup. It’s very hard without (and even sometimes with) context. This one I’m largely sure that the sportsy/loud voice/broad shouldered person is the section manager and Suzui suspected upon initially meeting him that they would not get along, but the sentence also seems to say that the section manager was inclined to not like Suzui because he was 生っちょろい and came from the planning department. I think it’s the switching between viewpoints which gave me whiplash reading it.

Thanks for giving it a shot! I’m glad I’m not alone in finding these a bit tricky.

Probably because it’s usually written in hiragana :sweat_smile: When I see those kanji my instinct is to read it as ちゅうちょ because 躊躇 is read that way. It also means hesitation, so no change in meaning.

4 Likes

That is a delicious-looking pile!

2 Likes
I could start today's manga reading, or I can reply to things.

At the end of each volume of the series Detective Conan, the mangaka has a drawing of himself having been murdered in a different way. The series has been running since 1994, and is 101 volumes long and still going. As the mangaka’s about to hit 60 years old in one more year, I’m hoping he already has pre-drawn-out story arcs to tie up all the story threads that have been running for decades, just in case he doesn’t survive long enough to draw them up! At the very least, I believe he’s said he knows how everything will end. So if he’s written that down, and maybe storyboarded some of it, something else could mimic his art style (and hopefully someone his writing style?) and finish up the series if anything happens to him.

The Japanese novel series Guin Saga comes to mind. Over 120 books in the series had been released until the author became ill and passed away at age 56. I had seen the 26-episode anime, and wanted to know more about the main character’s (in-story) origins, but it looks like the main character’s mysteries will never be revealed. There was enough material to publish a few more books the author had written, then another author took over the series and it’s still going.

Another case is The Familiar of Zero, a light novel series that was still unfinished at 20 books when the author passed away at age 41. Another author took the original author’s notes and finished off the series across two final books.

It’s for these reasons that I typically aim for completed series unless it’s a slice-of-life series.

It probably sounds a bit bad to reduce these authors to a single work, but especially if it’s a long-running one, this is what we will know about that person though. We don’t know the authors personally, but we do know their work.

Hopefully some authors who face this will discover they actually have enough fans that they can publish online using financial systems such as Patreon (or perhaps Pixiv has similar financial options?)

As much as I enjoyed the series (manga), the ending definitely felt rushed, disappointing, and there’s no way Tenma’s bright enough for where she is.

Not only that but there’s a one-month time skip in volume three.

Screenshot_20220731_083450

(It was literally the last chapter!)

My internal reconciliation is that we’re actually seeing cases from many parallel worlds that each have the same “storyline” cases, but the rest of the cases are specific to each parallel world =D This also explains the discrepancies between Ai’s sister in the manga and anime!

5 Likes