Reading Report: 22 January 2023
This week was a bit lighter on the reading side of things. I'm coming close to the end of あ゛, I've started reading あずまんが大王, and I read one (and the only, currently) volume of a more niche manga I wrote about below ↓↓Not included is about 12 episodes of Spy x Family which I thoroughly enjoyed but didn't write about because I just find summarising my thoughts about anime to be more challenging for some reason.
I'm also trying out a bit more life journaling with no specific focus. So that will be right at the bottom. Enjoy.
あ゛教科書が教えない日本語: 77 pages (up to page 262)
More history lessons and pondering about how Japanese developed and continues to develop presently. Some interesting notes: -Since kanji integrated into Japan in waves and across centuries, many kanji have their 音読み in a sort of 呉音/漢音 pairing. One notable thing is that among these pairs, one will often be voiced and the other will be unvoiced (although which is which depends on the kanji). Some examples are 馬 (マ・バ), 女 (ニョ・ジョ), 行 (コウ・ギョウ). -濁点 supposedly originated from 声点, characters which were placed at the corners of kanji to indicate their tone for Japanese readers of Chinese. Depending on which corner the mark was placed, the indicated tone would be different. There was also a nice chapter called "Who creates Japanese?". The chapter was in the context of the way Japanese developed in the post-war period and there was some historical examples of singers/songwriters who helped shape post-war Japanese. Of course the answer to the question is "The people", but there seemed to be a particular interest in the power of art and music to help shape language.
あずまんが大王: １年生
I started reading this series since my Yotsuba journey is slowly coming close to the end. It's been interesting to read another series with a different flavour by あずまきよひこ. It's also the first 4koma that I've read in my entire JP learning journey. The cast is really fun and most of the jokes are pretty simple and fun, although a handful have just gone over my head. I had a case of temporarily misinterpreting 私はさかな and the setting was a restaurant. It was funny mostly because it was such a classic situation and my brain managed to fall right into the pitfall (just for a moment, though!). My favourite characters are ちよちゃん and 榊さん, although ゆかり先生 is also very good.
サーシャちゃんとクラスメイトオタクくん: Vol 1
I've been very slowly reading this one for the last month or so. It's an ecchi gag manga about two middle-schoolers who bond over ero manga. The titular サーシャちゃん is a girl from Russia who moved to Japan and is 日本語上手 (and all that entails). The クラスメイトオタクくん is a shy boy who has a sort of childish pride in the fact that he reads adult manga in class, repelling all of his classmates, except for サーシャ. Most chapters deal with how their relationship develops, サーシャ trying to learn more about ero manga and Japanese culture, and simple gags.
Finally, general life stuff. This week we found a blue-tongued lizard in the backyard. We tried to relocate it but a few days later it showed back up exactly where we first found it. So, that's a new member of the family for as long as it wants to stick around.
I take care of a little bit of bamboo in the backyard (pic!). Some of the branches scrape against my window which causes an irritating sound. I had an overly complicated solution for holding them back but this week a simple solution came to me. So I got some jute string and tied it around the offending branches, preventing them (hopefully!) from reaching the window.
This week I decided to start putting in a bit more time each morning to cook an egg breakfast for myself. So far it's been going well, although I'm not really noticing any differences with my energy or anything. Tasty though.
Translation work resumed recently and it's been a bit slow going as I get back up to speed and restart my work brain. The deadline for the current project is this Friday, but my goal is to finish up before Wednesday because...
This Friday night is also the date that I'll be flying out to Japan. It will be my first time visiting Japan and it's very exciting. Every time I think about it I knock on wood furiously, hoping nothing causes the entire plan to go awry. I'll be overseas for a little over a week, returning on the 5th of Feb, but I plan to write a mid-week report so I don't appear to be gone for too long.