I am casually reading すしのサイエンス.
Even though biology is my educational and foundation for my professional background, I have zero Japanese vocab in 生物学; so I take a page a day just to absorb vocab and try to understand the topic fundamentally.
However, this is just for fun (knowledge and for preparation of sushi) and does relatively nothing for my overall goal of improving general Japanese conversation.
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Well of course, but they’ll run out eventually, won’t they? And they can’t be disobeying the doctor…
I dunno, I think that depends on how often sushi comes up as a conversation topic for you. You never know what vocabulary is going to be helpful!
(Just like how wanikani teaching me vocabulary like “victim” and “suspect” wouldn’t be very useful…unless I happen to read murder mystery manga for fun and profit 
)
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*hides bat * Ah yes…of course.
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I have several manga volumes I bought over the last year that are still sitting there:
- よつばと！ 1-15
- しろくまカフェ 1-4
- 葬送のフリーレン 1-2
This year, I’m gonna commit to finish all of those before buying more 
I feel like Frieren is going to be more difficult for me at my current level, but the other two I’m able to read mostly for fun without a ton of lookups
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On a recent trip to Tokyo I did a book off tour to try and find all the shirokuma cafe books. I eventually found them all and was chuffed. They are beautiful. I have read two pages hahahaha. However I learned a lot form them two pages. Crazy how well I have memorised vocab from it. I am definitely going to including an hour of it into my study each week. For now.
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I kind of wish I didn’t notice this post.
I own all of 狼と香辛料, only read 5 out of 15 or 16.
I’ve read up to volume 5 of 葬送のフリーレン, but own up to 10 I think.
I have 1-4 of 幼稚園ワーズ, and have only read 3.
I’ve got all of ホリミヤ, but again, only 3 read.
My wife has all of よつばと, and I’ve been meaning to read more than one of them.
There’s a few others that I own only the first volume of, but I buy them out of excitement, then put them on my shelf so they can collect dust
I keep thinking, “Hey, if I buy one, it’ll motivate me to read the others.”
If you’re wondering, it’s not an ideal tactic…
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Oh I totally do the thing above where I get into a series, buy all that’s available and then stall out on actually reading it for ages.
Also I confess grave mistakes were made today when I noticed 放浪息子 on sale on bookwalker for 30 yen a volume (14p in my money), so I bought all of that and between my coins I only paid £1 in the end. For 15 volumes. Good deal, but bad for the backlog!
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Gold star!!! gold star for you!!!
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Random ramblings to myself:
I have been managing to read a little most days. A very little. But it counts!
I have read 7 books since I started this thread! Before starting this thread I had only read and completed Yotsuba 1 and a bunch of graded readers.
Now I have also read:
Yotsuba 2 and 3
Fushigi Dagashiya Zenitendou 1
Nyan nyan Tantei
Nandakanda Tantei
Flying Witch 1
Creepy Cat
I am currently reading:
Kikis Delivery Service
Fushigi Dagashiya Zenitendou 2
Shirokuma Cafe (Ichigo I think?)
Corpse Princess 1 (on Bookwalker bc it was free and I wanted to try reading on my phone).
When I read Yotsuba 1 I think it look me like 2 ish hours? I noticed now a chapter of Yotsuba takes me around 12ish minutes, and a book is 7 chapters, so now a volume of Yotsuba should take me about an hour and a half. Still very slow considering I read manga at a rate of 20 minutes per volume in English, but it was cool to be able to note tangible improvement as my brain gets better at processing Japanese.
My goals going forward:
- Finish Kikis Delivery Service (book club)
- Finish other books already started before grabbing a new one off my shelf (so I wont start Yotsuba 4 just yet even though I already own it), with the exception of Corpse Princess because I’m reading that on my phone and I want to be able to always have something physical to read as well.
- After I finish those, I’d like to read at least one book a month. I’ll probably stick to mostly manga volumes since they have less words so it makes the goal a lot easier to achieve.
- I also want to give away books I don’t think I’ll read again. I’m not going to set a number, but I hope not to hold onto things unnecessarily. I will probably keep most things though… haha
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Finished 見える子ちゃん 2 and 台所のドラゴン 2 today. Going to work on よつばと! 16 next that I didn’t get around to during my Christmas break. 
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I resited the urge to buy more books, and Only got more postit flags and a pen from the book store.
Yes that is volumes 1-20 of Fairy Tale for 1000 yen 
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The heart attack you just gave me thinking this was your latest haul 
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I’ve been doing pretty okay with my reading the past days.
I started on the Howl’s Moving Castle cinema comic, but quickly realised it’s absolutely above my level, so it’s going on the “try again in the future” pile. Instead I started on the Spirited Away アニメ絵本, which is much more my level though still challenging. I’m about a third of the way in so far 
I also started reading some English books again for pure relaxation; my to-read pile there has been building up for a while and I want to tackle it. However, I realised that the book I started on is literally missing about 50 pages. It ends mid-sentence. So I’m looking at how I can get the rest of it before I can move on to the next book in the series…
To my shame I do have to admit to buying more books. Only three though; struggling at the Howl’s Moving Castle comic made me realise I really, REALLY want to read the original novel so I checked and the trilogy was less than 20 euro’s… so I couldn’t resist. Naturally they are arriving in reverse order, so I can’t even get started on book 1 while waiting for the other two to arrive…
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I can’t even be mad because I LOVE the original books. Tbh you can probably read all three over like 3 days (the second one especially is quite short). When you read them please let me know what you think! I absolutely adore Diana Wynne Jones
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In English or in Japanese?
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I’m a bit late to this BBA meeting (Book Buyers Anonymous) but I’m quite sure I most certainly belong in this thread since I own over 1050 physical books in Japanese and around 120 of them are textbooks, dictionaries, kanji and grammar resources though I’ve only really read about 50 of the books I own including a few of the textbooks (don’t even get me started on my English TBR pile though it is considerably smaller than my Japanese one) 
Did I also mention I have 2 orders awaiting pre-orders with at least another 50 books across the 2? Then there are the games in Japanese across PS5 and Switch/Switch 2.
Plan for this year is to reduce my manga TBR pile down by at least 170 since it’s currently over 250 on my shelves
Next year will be starting on my Kadokawa tsubasa (green) bunko, aotori (blue) bunko, TO junior (turquoise) bunko and shueishamirai (orange) bunko books though there are a lot less of those in my collection.
I do employ this, just not in the way it’s usually advised. It depends on my mood and enjoyment of the text involved.
For immediate re-reads, I only do this with textbook stuff or grammar example sentences that I an seriously struggling to understand.
Usually though for standard manga and novels, I’ll read through a story the first time looking up whatever I feel the need to, then I’ll wait, usually around 6 months to a year before picking it up a second time, reading through again and looking up anything I still feel unsure about.
If I need/ want to read it a third time, I usually wait at least a year or more til I know my level of understanding as a whole will have improved before re-reading.
E.g. I read through Sandland and Flying witch for the second time about a year and a half ago, read through Sandland for a third time a week ago without having many look ups and I’ll be re-reading through Flying Witch again from the beginning in the next month or so after the most recent volume gets here.
I use this method more for seeing progress than for active study since I tried it previously for study purposes and it killed my motivation entirely. Seeing the progress I’ve made does help me continue to be motivated, especially if I’m not seeing much progress by other means.
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Whew! Finally someone doing worse than me. 
Surely you meant this year?
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I’m sure there is someone worse than me out there…. Maybe 
Nope, Manga this year, 3-4 volumes per week for 170 volumes is about 6-10 hours of reading per week in addition to my listening, language exchange, lessons and casual anime watching since I also work full time
Next year will be my reading war against my bunko shelf since there are 50 of those across the different brands. That would be reading 1 per week and I know a few of those will take longer than that for me to read (Genji monogatari, wagahai ha nekodearu parts 1 & 2, Bocchan and The reason I jump)
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Bruh where is your bookoff? Mine NEVER give that kinda deal (granted im city adjacent so lots of tourists in/near mine.
Ive been a bit busy with mixing up my studying style and the like so I havnt been doing as much reading these past few weeks. I had taken a break from the Ramen Manga so Ill probably kick back into that starting next week. Im also applying for Grad school, got past the first hurdle and so my entrance exam is on the 25th. If I get in, Ill be doing PLENTY of reading for my textbooks alone. Ill also have to take the train for like 2 some odd hours into Tokyo every few weeks so that train ride will be filled with either reading or listening. Ill make some headway into my reading then for sure.
Keep going everyone, by zyzz we all gonna make it
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As birb parent would say, gold star for you! Personally both Frieren and Witch Hat Atelier are on my “temptation” list, but I’m probably safe until the next time my friends and I wind up in a bookoff…
I tend to buy stuff out of excitement too, but I will say - although perhaps I shouldn’t, given the goal of this thread - that it does also simply bring me joy to see them on the shelf, even if I know I’m so ridiculously behind on reading.
Yeahhhhh I think we’re all a bit weak to this one. Very weak to this one, even. Perhaps this is even super-effective against some of us.
Hey, a little at a time builds up! Your own post shows how much longer your ‘already read’ list has gotten, which I’d say counts for a whole awful lot
Man, that’s an even better deal than when I got Fairy Tail. Props to your self control!
I would celebrate this as well…except that I expect this may simply be a glimpse into my future, albeit with fewer textbooks and more manga
As for reading, while I still haven’t had much time available I DID receive a motivation booster - I decided to start attending some free, volunteer-run Japanese classes at the local community center.
Other friends of mine have been going for a while, but I was resisting because I really didn’t want to give up my Saturday mornings…but I’ve really been having trouble focusing/keeping on top of studying, so time to resort to external forces!
Anyway, I went on Saturday to sign up/have my first class, and after the introductory stuff, the teacher had me read a passage from one of her textbooks to do the comprehension questions and see where I was at.
The motivation was multi-layered, because:
A.) I looked at some of the words and went “Hey wait, why is this in hiragana, I know this in kanji (and would be able to read it)”
B.) The words that WERE in kanji I think I knew in their entirety!
C.) When I finished reading (which went very smoothly!) and started the questions, the teacher was surprised that I was answering most of them without needing to really re-read anything.
Honestly, I think I kinda needed this, because when things got busy last month it wasn’t just my reading that fell off, it was my wanikani/bunpro schedule too (I’ve been on vacation mode to avoid burying myself). So that’s gotta be my priority for a day or two yet, to get those off vacation mode and back to cycling.
But by GOD I’m gonna get back on this horse.
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