BU$TAFELLOWS 💰 (Visual Novel Book Club) // Completed

I just wanted to say I won’t be able to participate in this, because my phone (on which I intended to play it) … well… I can hardly do WaniKani reviews on it any more (or anything for that matter)
It’s a little hard to explain … let’s just say it/the screen is broken ^^’

I hope and wish you all very much fun with the VN though! :smiling_face: :smiling_face:

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Oh no! That sucks! D: I hope you can get it repaired/replace it.

We’ll still be in the threads if you get around to reading it later. :slight_smile:

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I guess that’ll have to wait until I get a new phone :see_no_evil: which… may be some time :see_no_evil: :sweat_smile: :see_no_evil:
but yeah I just hope it doesn’t stop working altogether, that would be really bad right now :see_no_evil: :see_no_evil:

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What version do most folks have by the way? I got the ‘deluxe’ edition which came with a little magazine (which is marked spoilers so I haven’t read yet), a drama cd and a soundtrack cd. Probably makes sense to do once we’re through the game but happy to upload pictures etc for folks that don’t have that version if that’s something people would be interested in?

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Waw that sounds cool! Definitely post pictures, you can put them in the “details” tag so they are only visible if someone chooses to click on it :slight_smile:

To start to figure out how our speed is working for us, I have two polls below. One for those who’ve already finished reading chapter 1 (and prologue), and one for those that haven’t. Please answer as soon as possible. Even if you think you’ll finish the reading tomorrow, do answer the not having finished poll right now.

If you finish the reading and the polls are still open, feel free to vote in the having read poll too.

This is to give me an idea of how much effort this have been for people, while also acknowledging that our weeks are variable and sometimes work/holidays/stuff got busy, and sometimes they don’t. Pick the option that best fits, and if you truly feel like no option does, please comment below and let me know what is missing. I’ll adjust the options going forward.

We’ll be doing a lot of these polls to figure out how much time to give each chapter/part. So bear with me, and do the poll clicking please. :blush:

Finished reading chapter 1: How did reading one chapter over two weeks feel?
  • Too much time left over (had plenty of reading time left that could have been used to read more)
  • A little time left over (a little faster wouldn’t be a problem at all)
  • Just right
  • A tiny bit less than wanted (spent more time reading than is usually available)
  • A lot less than wanted (spent a lot of more time reading than is usually available)

0 voters


Not finished reading chapter 1 yet: How is it going?
  • I think I can finish on Thursday or there about
  • I will be behind on Friday, but I think I can catch up during the chapter 2 reading
  • I will be behind on Friday, and I don’t think I can catch up, please comment below with more information
  • I have no idea

0 voters

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Chapter 2 is here:

The consensus from my poll in the above post is that most people find the time for chapter 1 about right or only leaving a little time left over, we’ll read chapter 2 over two weeks too, unless someone comes back to me early this coming week saying chapter 2 was significantly shorter.

EDIT: I will keep the polls open in the above post until tomorrow. Please vote if you haven’t yet, so I can have as many people as possible who are reading the VN actually get their voice heard on speed. :slight_smile:

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I was torn between “I can catch up in chapter 2” and “I will not be able to catch up.” It’s hard to say for sure when I don’t know exactly how much of chapter 1 I have left. It has been slow going for me, but I’m also relatively new to native reading and it’s definitely above my current reading level. I’ve also had more time to read now, over the holidays, then I will after new years. That said, I also got pretty far behind in my book club and have spent a bit of my Japanese reading time catching up with that, so once I’m back on track with that, I might be able to find more time to devote to Bustafellows. I optimistically chose that I’ll be able to catch up during chapter 2, but we’ll see. If not, I might get the game in English too and read as much as I can in the two weeks and then catch up with the English text using it as listening practice. Or I might just be behind and enjoy having these threads when I get to them.

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Around 6% on the front page, or you can count which choice you are up to. I find the interval between the last choice and the end of the chapter a little long, though.

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Thanks for the detailed comments! It really helps.

And I’m gonna be honest. I’m gonna be so busy from middle of next week and two weeks forward, that I’m probably gonna get more behind. :sweat_smile:

If you’re having trouble with any specific sentences, please ask in the threads. You can even take screenshots with the switch and transfer those to phone/computer and post. Just put them under a detail tag (found under the cogwheel) and tell approximately where it is.

We definitely have some readers who are very good at Japanese grammar and such. :slight_smile:

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Haha lol. Yeah. It’s probably going to take me a bit to catch up, if I do… my title screen still says 1%. And I haven’t really been accurately tracking my time but I’ve put in at least 5 hours so far. Probably more.

Thanks! I definitely will. Right now it’s more Kanji look ups that are making my progress slow. My grammar level and what I can figure out grammar-wise through context is MUCH higher than my Wanikani/Kanji level. I’m hoping that there will be more dialogue as I get farther in because I’m able to move through the voiced parts a lot faster than the unvoiced parts.

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I hear you on that. Totally the same for me too. It helps so much knowing the reading, well… if I can hear it correctly. xD

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I have never had good luck with these things, but I think I’ve seen some other WK talk about using OCR to good effect. The google translate app lets me open pictures, so on my phone I can something a bit jank like screenshot my screen to open in the app and touch to select/copy/translate

demo

There are probably some others with a better mobile process out there.
I think I also heard from someone that they were using their pc’s handwriting recognition to handle kanji lookups which sounded interesting, but something I’d probably also have 0 luck with.

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Thanks! I’ll experiment with that.

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@Rinibunny413 : I successfully used several times this website: https://kanji.sljfaq.org/
It can even recognize my mouse drawing (important setting, “ignore stroke order”, unless you know them of course)

Screenshot

Then I click the kanji I meant and it sends me to: WWWJDIC: Kanji Display

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Windows 10-11’s Japanese Microsoft IME has handwriting recognition.

Of course, smartphone’s IMEs can always do that pretty well and not caring about stroke order. In particular, I use handwriting Google Keyboard on Android all the time (finger writing), and it appears to be much better than Kanji pad on my dictionary app (Aedict).

Google IME on PC is supposed to be based on mobile counterpart, but I can’t find the handwriting part. Perhaps it has been removed like a year or so (as I have heard from Linux’s mozc).

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Wow thanks for that, didn’t know about it! Works great!

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season 2 has been announced! Coming out in May!

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Thanks for the tips everyone!!

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Chapter three is here. I’m posting a bit early (depending on where you live), because of the busy-ness I’ve mentioned before. It should clear up after this week, so hopefully I can catch up with the reading after that!


Once again, I want to know people’s thoughts on how much time was needed to read chapter 2. Since the poll came up only today, I’ll keep it active over the weekend.

How did reading chapter two over two weeks feel?
  • I can handle a faster pace
  • Just right, or close enough
  • I had to work really hard to finish reading in time
  • I didn’t finish in time
0 voters

Don’t feel bad if you’ve fallen behind. It happens. Even when you lead the book club. xD

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