📚📚 Read every day challenge - Fall 2022 🍁🍂

December 3 & 4

また、同じ夢を見ていた progress at 84%. Read volume 6 of Ponkotsu Ponko and that was basically it. :sweat_smile:

Going through the novel a bit faster now. Want to read another novel one yet though I’m unsure which one. I have a few I’m considering but not sure yet.

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Home post :bookmark:

:maple_leaf::fallen_leaf: Dec 4 :snowman_with_snow::christmas_tree:

・本好きの下剋上 14 (51% → 53%)

Just a tiny read! Busy busy… Found an interesting phrase tho.

青筋(あおすじ)を立てる
aosuji = vein (esp. in the head), so basically meaning this: :baka: :anger: :angrykoichi:

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Summary post

Meant to update this thread literally weeks ago, sorry! I got a bit distracted with family visiting as I was trying to finish up National Novel Writing Month :sweat_smile:.

I’ve been busy! I finished two Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling show translations (November 13, November 20) and one contract signing translation (which might be my favorite thing I’ve translated yet), and am currently almost done with another long show, which was on November 27.

For a photo, I’m going to share this one from the November 13 show, which was at KBS Hall in Kyoto (the prettiest pro wrestling venue in the world, probably):

This show was in Saki Akai and Yuki Arai’s hometown, so both members of 令和のAA砲 (Reiwa AA Cannon) spoke on the mic to the crowd after winning in the main event. Saki Akai is actually signed to DDT Pro Wrestling (where she is the sole woman on the roster), not TJPW, but she has been appearing in TJPW a lot this year after winning the tag titles.

Yuki Arai is also an active idol in addition to a young wrestler. She’s with the group SKE48. I know basically nothing about the idol world outside of wrestling, haha, but my understanding is that Arai is actually sort of a big deal as an idol. She’s actually taken extremely well to wrestling, so I have a lot of respect for her really putting in the work there.

I actually managed to get a tiny bit of 大海原と大海原 volume 3 read, but I couldn’t finish chapter 7 because I had to pivot very suddenly to translating TJPW again haha because they sprung that contract signing on us, and I really wanted to get it done before the show with the title match.

Reading in Spanish:

I finished Antes de Ser Libres and then I read a Spanish translation of the comic Redbone, which is written by Christian Staebler and Sonia Paoloni and illustrated by Thibault Balahy. The comic is about the band of the same name, which I admittedly know very little about! I don’t know a lot of music history, so I learned a fair amount as I read it. I picked up the comic because it seemed well within my skill level and is short enough for me to be able to easily finish it within the month, and sure enough, it was a great choice!

I’ll post a full challenge wrap-up post soon!

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:snowflake: :christmas_tree: December 4th :christmas_tree: :snowflake: (Home Post Link)

My new linguistics book arrived today (The Grabe & Stoller Extensive Reading one)! I’d been running into some dead ends on research papers to read, so this should give me some nice stuff to work on for a bit.

Extremely tired today though, spent a bunch of time outside yesterday and think I overdid it a bit :sweat_smile:

Read:

  • ホリミヤ ch 17
  • NHK News Web Easy: 調布市の神社に「ゲゲゲの鬼太郎」の砂の像ができた - since NHK easy includes jp → jp dictionary pop ups on words that kids might not know, I’ve been trying to use those first before looking stuff up on a jp → eng dictionary and actually totally understood one of those for the first time today. Maybe it’s time to set up yomichan in jp again soon… :thinking: also might check out ゲゲゲの鬼太郎, sounds kinda cute and probably on the easier side to read/watch.

Also picked up a good new word from this week’s ぼっち・ざ・ろっく!

Good Words

ホリミヤ
加工「かこう」ー processing, manufacturing
ガラケー ー dumb phone
否定「ひてい」ー denial, negation
避妊「ひにん」ー birth control

NHK
妖怪「ようかい」ー お化け・化け物・ かっぱなど

ぼっち
片言「かたこと」ー prattle, broken speech, child’s speech (subs had it as “robot speech”)

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:computer: Home :frog:

December 2

人間椅子 -

ジョジョの奇妙な冒険54
start - 30

Freaking Melone

December 3

No reading accomplished. I accidently stayed up too late replying to messages and then needed to sleep in order to do some morning stuff.

December 4

Doujin 122

  1. I bought a crapton of doujinshi totally forgetting that the main reason I don’t buy more is that I don’t have space…
  2. I’m mostly happy with what I got but I bought a few from one of my favorite artists and they’re kind of meh? Like one looks good and the kind of quality that I’ve come to expect from them, but the other 3 look boring. Also half of one has handwritten text and it’s not bad handwriting, but it’s just obnoxious since I hate reading handwriting.
  3. That 122 pages is all from 1 doujinshi, it’s a chonker about Jotaro and it was a fun read, but the end referenced Part 6’s end and I am still not emotionally ready. Thinking about the end of Part 6 brings tears to my eyes :sob:
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Dec 4, Sun of Week 10 of Fall 2022 :maple_leaf:

  • はたらく細胞 Vol.2 Ch.6

The big body continues to survive. So scary for the insides.

Interesting vocabularies
  • あばよ Goodbye. JJ dict (on Yomichan) says – (「さあらばよ」からか)
  • 誇示(こじ) ostentatious display. Proudness is individualized. Same Kanji as (ほこ)る, but I don’t remember seeing On readings before.
  • こまめ attention to details. Probably like ()(まめ) (small fine beans). (JJ dict suggests 小忠実(こまめ).)
  • 土壌(どじょう) breeding ground (metaphorically). Also means soil. And I completely don’t recognize the Kanji.
  • 芽胞(がほう) spore. Drawing (()) something new from scratch (for () readings). Yomichan suggests 胞子(ほうし)に同じ.
  • 冷却(れいきゃく) cooling down. I guess heat escapes (退却(たいきゃく)), and becoming of cooling.
  • 霧状(きりじょう) mist form, probably like aerosol.
  • 浸透(しんとう) feels like deep ((しん)) permeation (()(とお)る, 透明(とうめい)). First Kanji can be thought of 侵入(しんにゅう), but with water ((さんずい)).

Phrases

  • ()(よし)もない no way to know. (Also, (よし) as a vocabulary.)

Forgotten ones

  • うろたえる to be irresistibly (()えない) flustered (うろうろ). Kanji form is 狼狽(うろた)える with another vocabulary 狼狽(ろうばい).
  • 総称(そうしょう) a generic term

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Summary post

Here is my complete calendar for the challenge! Perfect score! :blush:

Oct
Week 39
Week 40
Week 41
Week 42
Week 43
Week 44
Nov
Week 44
Week 45
Week 46
Week 47
Week 48

= Japanese
= Japanese and Spanish

I made it! Both October and November were really hard months for me, between balancing depressing work stuff, keeping up with this daily reading challenge while also doing a month-long drawing and then writing challenge, trying to keep up with my regular language studies and also doing a conversational Spanish class, and keeping up with the Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling translations. But I made it!

I finished two books in Spanish: Antes de Ser Libres by Julia Alvarez, and Redbone, which I just talked about in my last post!

With Japanese, I think I read… two and a half chapters of 大海原と大海原 volume 3 :sweat_smile:? I also translated 9 TJPW shows/events (almost 10) in total. Here they are:

2022.09.24 TJPW AUTUMN TOUR ’22 (part 2)
2022.10.09 TJPW WRESTLE PRINCESS Ⅲ (part two) (part three)
2022.10.14 TJPW 夢プロレス-dream on the ring-
2022.10.21 TJPW CITY CIRCUIT AUTUMN~遠藤有栖地元凱旋興行~
2022.10.29 TJPW The Mountain top 2022
2022.11.06 TJPW AUTUMN TOUR ’22
2022.11.13 TJPW CITY CIRCUIT AUTUMN~荒井優希地元凱旋興行~
2022.11.20 TJPW AUTUMN TOUR ’22
2022.11.24 TJPW contract signing
2022.11.27 TJPW ALL RISE '22 (part two tbd!)

We’re actually coming up on my one year anniversary of becoming a fan translator! I found out at the end of last November that my predecessor Mr. Haku was leaving DDT/TJPW, and then I took my first foray into translating shows myself in December 2021.

I’ve grown a lot over the course of doing these challenge threads this year! This was my fourth read every day challenge. I don’t really need the challenge to motivate me (at least, not with Japanese), because I’d be doing the translations regardless, but it has been fun popping in and out and showing you all bits and pieces of the weird and wonderful world of Japanese pro wrestling.

Thank you all for your support and encouragement!

I’m switching gears and am currently doing the listen every day challenge for the off month in December, but I’m hoping to be back for the read every day challenge in January! :blush:

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That weird moment you realize the challenge is over but you’re still in the Read every day challenge grindset…
I guess I had a lot of success this time, but it was mostly done in the month of November. October was a bit of slog but I am happy to have made the progress I have. I could read 10 pages in about 20 minutes, so while not the progress I was hoping for, I am getting a little quicker. I am not trying to be a speed reader, I just want to enjoy the story. Audiobooks helped me out a lot this time around, but I think my speed independent of those is fine as is. Yes it adds about an hour+ to the expected reading time, I am enjoying the ride.

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Home

Today I read SPY×FAMILY mission 18 and 君に届け episode 5. Today’s 君に届け chapter had more handwritten stuff than usual, and I, uh, skipped over it. Some I could read, but the rest I didn’t have the energy to sit there trying to decipher it.

Some vocab of note:

誰彼かまわず (だれかれかまわず) [expression, noun] anyone and everyone; anybody at all

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I need to read ~40 pages a day (not including the Advent challenge) to finish all by books by EOY but 29 is all I could manage today. My head hurts and focusing is rough. New Year’s eve 2020 I did spend like ~7 hours reading, though, so hey, maybe that’s forecast for me again this year :upside_down_face:

I’m finishing up 異世界の名探偵 - I know who did it, now it’s just a matter of the detective giving out all the hows.

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December 4 :maple_leaf: Home Post

I think I’ve made it out of the mental fog era, had a much more normal reading day today! :tada: I finished volume 19 of ブルーロック and started on volume 20, I’m really getting to the end of it now :eyes: it continues to be a wild time, it’s more soccer danganronpa than ever, broadcast and all :joy:. I’ll have to start figuring out what to read next, like I have any shortage of things I’m already in the middle of :laughing:

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December 2-4 :heavy_check_mark: :tophat: :rose:

叙述トリック短編集, 5-15%
ユージニア , 32-40%

These last three days I have been keeping up with my advent reading, and surprisingly I managed to finish this week’s Eugenia chapter last night. I had written before how I like focusing on one book at a time, yet since November I’ve been juggling several, and it has mostly worked out great. However now I also made myself read two different books a day (the advent book + book club), and it’s harder than I expected, because I find it takes my brain some time to switch from one to the other. Especially these two books, Eugenia and the narrative tricks, they’re both mysteries, but their approach couldn’t be more different. Both need the reader’s active participation for full enjoyment - you need to constantly watch out for clues - but the writing and the clues you need to watch out for are so different that it felt really jarring moving from one to the other.

The other mystery club book is much simpler in its approach, so I expect less friction. I also really want to start おいしいごはんが食べられますように with the informal reading group. We were supposed to start today, and I was sure I couldn’t finish Eugenia in time, but I have, so I might start reading that today, or get 体育館の殺人 out of the way first. I’d never planned my reading so carefully before, this is getting crazy. :crazy_face:

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Home Post

Day 25 Progress:
お隣の天使様 三冊 - 86.00% → 94.13%

Had to deal with a pretty rough reading session today. You start feeling a little confident in your reading and then hit like five different N1 level grammar points you haven’t learned yet and suddenly you’re taking like twenty minutes for five or six lines…

On the plus side, I’ll be able to finish the volume tomorrow and it looks like there are some real juicy developments next volume!

Word of the Day: 魅了みりょう - fascination or charm. Any word ending in 了 is always funny to me because of it’s insanely common usage as a past tense particle in Chinese so a lot of words like this come across as very bizarre to me (especially 完了 and 終了)

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Home Post

Continued to read every day. Admittedly my choice of books was a bit one-sided though :grin: :see_no_evil: Will do better this week, with all the new (and old) book clubs!

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Chatting about book stuff

I think I’ll be reading pretty much the same books you will except I don’t have おいしいごはん on the top of my reading list. :joy: Instead I’ll probably be reading 犬神家の一族 with the 金田一耕助 reading club around that time.

I’ll be a bit busier that month than usual with our local carnival stuff, but I think that’ll be manageable. And it’ll be over by the 20th, anyway.

So a February start should be fine as long as we don’t exceed our usual pace by too much!

I should be able to fit in between 30-70 pages a week, though I’d prefer to err on the lower side for the duration of February. What’s your happy weekly amount? :slight_smile:

Also, do you have a preference in regards to which forums we use to chat about Seven? I think I’m leaning towards natively, if largely because that’s where we first talked about reading this book together.

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Book talk

Oh gosh, ~30 pages a week is totally fine. I’ll take a look at the book later and see how it could be broken up. Since it’s only available in paperback we should also (I think) have generally similar if not the same page counts.

I can’t remember if we talked about it first here or on Natively, but I’m happy for either :slight_smile: I’m sure the Natively forums could use a bit more life though, so let’s pop it in there!

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:tiger2: :books: The Tanuki Autumn Onsen :hotsprings: :raccoon:

20221205 - 吾輩は狸である progress: 89.33% :snail:

Didn’t have much time today to get reading in, but I managed to get a little further along this eternal conversation.

:fallen_leaf: Japanese found under the leaves :fallen_leaf:

Meowords

泰然「たいぜん」ー Calm; composed; firm

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December 5th

:snowflake: :christmas_tree:Home post:christmas_tree::snowflake:

Card Captor Sakura volume 2 or Aria: the masterpiece volume 2 – progress report

Yesterday: Read up to page 121 of Aria: the masterpiece volume 2, finished chapter 13.
Today: Read up to page 159 of Aria: the masterpiece volume 2, finished chapter 14.

After yesterday’s failed attempt at starting to read chapter 14, I put in some more time today and finished said chapter. Weirdly enough, this may be my least favourite chapter so far and I can’t really put my finger on why. Was it the fully Japanese themed island all of a sudden in midst of a heavily Italian inspired setting that only had some Japenese elements in there (Akatsuki’s clothes, rice for dinner, lamps looking a bit like Japanese rain charms etc.) that was kind of jarring? Was Akari’s and Alicia’s trip mysterious and at the same tame rather uneventful? Was my mood and/or mental fatigue worse today? Whatever it was, at least the art was as pleasant looking as always.


Word or expression of the day:

雨やどり - (あめやどり) - taking shelter from rain​

Honourable mention(s):
茶目 - (ちゃめ) - playful, mischievous​
紅葉 - (こうよう) - autumn colours, leaves changing colour

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First post in December I think.

1-2/12 didn’t read
3/12 7 pages Spy Family
4/12 4 pages Spy Family

5/12 16 pages Spy Family (to end of mission), 16 pages かみさまがまちがえる, 24 pages シャドーハウス (both chapters), 54 pages Orange (finished letter 17 and volume 4, finished letter 18), 9 pages おばちゃんたちのいるところ (finished story 3), 25 pages Cells at Work (all last week’s reading, started this week)

Had a few days of minimal reading leading up to the JLPT and departure for my trip. I made up for it today with a massive amount of reading, helped by the fact that I’ve flown 9 hours west so have had a really long day!

I’m still behind with the IBC but otherwise I think I’m up to this week’s reading on all the other clubs.

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:books: 12月04日
うたわれるもの

:books: 12月05日
うたわれるもの


Was too tired to update yesterday and too tired to add much today D: .

I’m in the process of increasing my Anki workload again for a bit. Now that I’m consistently waking up early, doing Anki in the morning feels much better than later in the day like I was doing before. I want to give my Japanese a big push again, at least in terms of vocabulary, so I’ll soon be doing SRS diligently again with 20 items a day, like I was back then with WK. It’s been a while but currently I feel like committing strongly for a bit. Sometimes I really get tired of SRS and can barely stand it, but right now I’m in a “love phase” I guess? Might as well make use of it while it lasts. Which honestly, I hope it does, cause the commitment I had with WK was nice and i liked it. I really haven’t done SRS that much since then, but it’s great when it clicks.

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