Luna's Learning Log

Japanese
525

Been a bit bored while reading マリア様がみてる 28 フレームオブマインド | L29 so I started paying attention to Kindle’s time till end of chapter stat. Then it got me curious to see what it actually is. So I timed 5 pages, and got approx .38 pgs/min (22.8 pgs/hr)… Which is actually slightly on the slower side of where I was back in books 5-6. So if that’s generally accurate, it should take me about 11 hrs to finish the book. Kindle says I’m at 46% with 7 hrs left - which seems a bit slower than my projection, but makes sense bc b4 this chapter (which I’m more into), I was reading a bit slower and had a lot of interruptions.

I’ve been struggling a bit with interest in the side stories volume vs the main story. So based on @Makochou101 's summaries for vol 28, I’ll probably finish the Eriko story, and Kanako’s, and then start book 30 - while reading the rest of 28 whenever I’m in the mood.

I did spend a lot of time with jpdb this time around, and that’s definitely helped reduce lookups a lot! I’ll probably do less for 30, but I do wanna make sure to keep doing some SRS regardless, so my general vocab keeps increasing

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Watched 劇場版 美少女戦士セーラームーンCosmos 前編 | L30?? with EN subs. Think I would have gotten about 75-80% without the subs

Started watching 美少女戦士セーラームーン | L24 again. It’s a lot easier than back in June when I last watched it - tho I’ve been mostly hitting the more 日常 episodes so far. But still it feels more automatic/intuitive than before. Rei’s my fav character so far - and I especially enjoy her arguing with Usagi. Also the characters are so enjoyably dumb and ridiculous. And ルナ is wonderful of course :smile_cat:

Doing fine with マリア様がみてる 31 マーガレットにリボン | L29 which is side stories, but so far just the main cast. It’s like all the things you’ve wanted to see portrayed along the way. After this I’ll (probably) finish up マリア様がみてる 28 フレームオブマインド | L29 so I won’t have that hanging over me anymore.

Dipped my feet into お釈迦様もみてる 紅か白か | L28?? - it seems probably slightly tougher than マリみて. I’m thinking of reading it in publishing order with マリみて, especially since there’s at least one more volume of side stories… But I should probably wait till after, and read more of 乙女の港 (実業之日本社文庫 - 少女の友コレクション) | L33?? first

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Yay for Sailor Moon profile pics :blush:

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Yayyy!! It’s been a while since I’ve been an 暁 or an ルナ… So I figured it was a good time for a change. Well this is actually my first ルナ pfp… I wonder if I’ll find another someday

Everytime I hear her name in the show I’m like “yes? you’re talking to me? what’s up?” :sweat_smile:

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I have to say - I’ve enjoyed a decent amount of the “filler” eps, but it’s nice watching them out of order. I think if I had to watch in order I’d feel fairly frustrated

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Some filler episodes are great. Some are very obviously low quality to pad out the season. But if you want to know what’s going to happen next in the plot they are very frustrating.

One of my favorite episodes (or at least one of my favorite sight gags) is in a filler episode of Stars :grin: So it’s not so much that I actively don’t like the filler, it’s just that there’s a LOT of it, and I watched the first twoish seasons of the dub a lot when it was on TV and don’t have a lot of patience left for that filler :joy:

Me with Rei :joy:

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Reading has felt really scattered lately, in part bc of too many choices… so plan of action:

  1. Finish vol 31, then 28 of マリみて, continue w/ 32-37
  2. Read both 百合姫 volumes, if I haven’t finished already
  3. Read 乙女の港 with a vengeance
  4. Don’t read other stuff until steps 1 & 2 are completed!!

Of course I’m not quite sure where to fit in the EN books I bought (Class S, shoujo, and yuri history)

Tbh my real distraction is watching anime and being social, and work tho

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Finished vol 31, and 25% through 32 - not super crazy about it yet. (I held off on 28, cuz I got sick of short stories).

花物語 上 | L39 - got through 1 more story. My reading speed picked up from the horrifyingly slow 6 pgs/hr to the incredibly fast 7.8 pgs per hr :rofl:

I might go back to just using the physical book during lessons. I feel kinda rude looking things up in the dictionary right away when my teacher’s right there. And also, I’m losing the benefit of having someone explain the words to me in Japanese, when I do that. Otoh I wouldn’t have finished the story this week if it had been sans-Kindle (bc I would have asked a lot more questions)… but maybe that’s not such a huge deal? Occasionally it’s useful when the 読み方 is still ambiguous, or it’s just a really uncommon word.

I really enjoyed this week’s story though, and did have a few “I just barely remembered that word cuz I saw it in マリみて” moments. It does make me think about my longer term reading goals… which so far has been like ソードアート・オンライン | L33 (comfortably) & 薬屋のひとりごと 1 | L38 … but I’d love to find, and get comfortable with, more stuff that has beautiful imagery and stuff like this. I’ll be curious to see how much of that I will/won’t find in Class S literature, as I slowly read more of that. I do feel like I’m starting to get better with the ultra-long sentences now, so that’s nice!

Edit: One thing that occurs to me is that like 花物語 is substantially harder/less accessible (for me) than 薬屋のひとりごと should be - particularly b/c 薬屋 has a jpdb deck, an official translation, and an anime I’ve seen. So maybe I should consider retrying 薬屋 sooner rather than later…

Anyway back to マリみて, so I eventually can read something else :stuck_out_tongue:

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Finished マリア様がみてる 33 ハローグッバイ | L29 & おにいさまへ... 3 | L25 and most of 百合姫2025年3月号 | L26?? (just have 陰キャギャル and 小春と湊 left), and got through 2 more chapters of 乙女の港 | L33?? finally!!

Most of that felt easy enough, with 乙女の港 being the really challenging one, basically due to kanji. 4-6 lookups per page is typical, but one page I got up to 13 even. Unlike マリみて most of it is either new or not very familiar kanji & vocab, so it feels a lot more frustrating. マリみて is mostly just me double-checking readings.

Speaking of マリみて I’m done with the main story now (but still have 4.5 volumes left). I know 34 is a bunch of side stories, and I’m not quite sure what the deal w/ 35-36 is… but it’s very tempting to pick up お釈迦様もみてる | L29 or otherwise read the remaining volumes at a more relaxed pace… let’s see how 34 goes tho.

I managed to get a copy of 白い部屋のふたり 山岸凉子作品集3 | L24?? and the language looks pretty easy (not to mention everything has furigana), so that should be a quick read. リボンの騎士 上巻 | L26 is also on my list to get to soon

Otherwise I’ve had a pretty decent time with 美少女戦士セーラームーン | L24 and started S2 now. I’ve been doing okay w/ 薬屋のひとりごと | L34 considering I haven’t been stopping for lookups - which makes me think I should stop being afraid of trying わたしの幸せな結婚 S1 | L30

I got more 吉屋信子 novels, and while I won’t get to any of them anytime soon I’m definitely excited to give them an eventual try

Been translating more マリみて reviews in lessons, and while it’s still really difficult at times, it does seem like I’m getting a bit better at it

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Gave up on 花物語 上 | L39 due to difficulty (one Kindle pg had 27 lookups!!), and starting 薬屋のひとりごと 1 | L38 in lessons next week. Tbh I feel like I could do it on my own at this point, but I remember last time I had a lot of trouble with comprehension. So it will probly be useful to be able to ask my teacher questions. So glad the jpdb deck is there!

Finished Yurihime March, and did a lot better with most of the comics, besides the annoying fantasy ones.

白い部屋のふたり 山岸凉子作品集3 | L24?? is going okay, haven’t gotten far in yet. リボンの騎士 上巻 | L26 is somewhat challenging, particularly b/c the edition I’m using is lighter on the kanji (tho I also have the digital, so I check it when I’m having difficulty). I’m not that into the story yet.

乙女の港 | L34 is going decently as well. Apparently it came out to L34 after my & @Azusa 's gradings. Which is encouraging, b/c it’s hard in the “takes me a while to get through” way, but not hard in the “I feel completely overwhelmed by this” way. It really makes me curious to eventually try SAO again, and see how hard that feels… but so many things I’m planning to read in the meantime.

Rn my priority is finsh 乙女の港, and then お釈迦様もみてる | L29 (9 vols left, and similar to マリみて). Plus w/e Class S club votes in. After that, I might like to pick up 声優ラジオのウラオモテ #06 夕陽とやすみは大きくなりたい? | L28 as a break. Those will definitely be easier to read now! It’s so hard to decide tho, cuz I’m really in more of a novels mood lately, but those take longer (manga = 45-90 min per volume, unless there’s tons of panels per page. LN = 9-10 hrs or so, depending on difficulty)

Started that flowers playthrough again. It feels pretty good… definitely harder reading on my own tho (which I will eventually do)

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I added it… And then my reviews count went up to like 526 :sob: I’ve gotten it down to 433 now tho

And then I went and started a new book: カヌレ スール百合アンソロジー | L24?? . It’s easy tho, and the chapters are like 10-20 pgs, so I’m just reading a chapter at a time, when I’m in the mood. Will be funny if Class S club ends up voting for it

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I’m a masochist, and joined a new scanlation group :upside_down_face: So have started translating 【第1話】はっぴー・どーる・でいず｜カドコミ (コミックウォーカー)

Thankfully the schedule is casual (since it’s brand new), and it’s definitely making me read this comic much more closely than I normally would. I think it will be good experience, and (from a language perspective) hopefully worth the time I put in (which I need to figure out a good balance for).

Otherwise I’m 67% through 乙女の港 | L34 and have been getting in about a chapter a day. It’s feeling a bit easier to read now, but still a lot of energy. Should be done Monday or Tuesday

薬屋のひとりごと + Utena ep 5-6 reviews are down to 115 due. It’s been a bit tedious, but I’m sure I’ll appreciate it on Wednesday when I start it in my lessons.

Something occurred to me, which is that I can screenshot + Google Lens to copy text from 花物語, and do 1 story at a time. So it’s tempting to try looking for some of the easier ones (like ダリア, which may have inspired a certain character in マリみて), and use that to pre-study. It won’t be perfect with the recognition I’m sure, but it should still help a bit. I could also finally learn how to convert Kindle to ePub/PDF… But that’s effort lol

Otherwise I finished a bunch of books over the last few days:

It’s funny, it doesn’t look like a look, but when you account for the length of YH, plus the panel density of リボンの騎士, it adds up

Current reads:

For my next historical book, I’m thinking of 乙女手帖 | L30?? (1950s iirc, but full furigana) or からたちの花 吉屋信子少女小説集1 | L30?? (seems like a normal reading level, and doesn’t have uncommon or pre-modernized kanji, at least in the portion I scanned). I really wanna read 屋根裏の二処女 吉屋信子乙女小説コレクション (吉屋信子乙女小説コレクション 2) | L30?? but not willing to deal with the pre-modernized kana & stuff rn. I do eventually wanna get around to reading more authors who aren’t Yoshiya, but I have multiple books of hers now, and reading within an author can definitely be helpful.

There so many manga I wanna start, but I’m waiting till I finish any current read first

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Finished 乙女の港 - which feels like an accomplishment! It’s my second L34 book (tho to be fair the other is SAO, and most of those are L33), which is the highest I’ve completed so far.

Translation

Managed to get through p17 (of 33) translated, and am getting a bit comfier with the English side of things, except for a few strange sentences or “this just doesn’t” work spots. On the other hand, the handwriting is killing me :sob: I get like 90% of it, but then there will be those 1-2 characters that I’m just lost on. I’m just noting them down for now, and will ask for help later I guess (want to get everything collected first, so I’m not asking too repeatedly in the same place). At this rate it will be a week or so before I finish the whole draft.

In general I’m worried about the time & energy translation takes, but I’m sure that will improve as I go. I do at some point need to decide what a good limit per day is tho. Maybe 1-2 hours. Also I feel like LN translation (specifically マリみて) would probably be easier in many ways. So if I do keep this up in the long run, I may want to transition to that someday, since there’s still some untranslated volumes.

picking up 花物語 again

Picked up one of the stories (ダーリヤ) in 花物語 上 | L39 b/c it possibly was the inspiration for a certain character in マリみて, and the writing level is (relatively) easier as the book goes. In practice that means 10-11 lookups per page. Since I had to reschedule my JP lesson for this week (meaning I won’t be doing 薬屋のひとりごと 1 | L38 till next week), I’ll make a deck for this chapter, and see how much it helps. Part of my incentive for this is that it’s boring af doing the deck while not yet reading something. Which I guess means I could use it for 声優ラジオのウラオモテ #06 夕陽とやすみは大きくなりたい? | L28 after I’m done with this story… Or the next 少女革命ウテナ S1 | L31 episodes

Assuming it does, this might be a good long term project… But it might conflict too heavily with doing 薬屋. So maybe I’ll just stick to this and コスモス (one of the more yuri-esque stories in there apparently)

That said, I read through the first page or two of 薬屋のひとりごと 1 | L38 last week, and while there’s more lookups than I’d like (tho less than I was worried), the sentences don’t feel hard, the way they did in 2023-2024. So I’m optimistic.

Otherwise 6 eps till I’m done with 美少女戦士セーラームーン R | L24 . I don’t like this season too much (at least the main eps), so I tend to do jpdb reviews for a lot of the episodes… My review accuracy rate goes down when I multitask like that, but it really helps with getting through overwhelming review quantities.

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ソードアート・オンライン プログレッシブ9 | L34 - 20% left, and it’s been surprisingly easy. Honestly it doesn’t feel much harder than マリみて for me. Which is to say that マリみて、乙女の港、花物語 portions have definitely paid off, in terms of stamina & acquired vocab. (And of course I’ve already read a lot of SAO, and I think this book may be the easiest in the Progressive series)

Ironically レトロゲ(1) | L27 is still something I can’t understand without translation… So an L27 manga is harder for me than an L34 LN :sweat_smile:

Anyway, I can get through an LN in a day or two at this point, and it seems like the L30s are starting to open up for me, so I’m excited about that!

行進子犬に恋文を 1 | L23?? has been pretty easy

I feel like I’m spending too much time on Reddit lately, and I’m gonna start trying to read on Note more instead. That doesn’t feel so exhausting anymore. Will try for Yuri, class S & shoujo history probably. Or maybe just look up whatever I happen to be reading. Idk possibilities are endless

Also I plan to actually read the extra columns in the back of Yurihime from now on.

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Finished translation for chapter 1 of Doll Days. Waiting until that’s published, before I start the next chapter

I did end up checking the translation a few times in later volumes, and there’s probably some parts where my comprehension isn’t totally accurate, but overall not bad. The military vocab is annoying, but I’m sure will be useful at some point

Finally started 薬屋のひとりごと 1 | L38 but it went a lot slower than I was hoping (.18 pgs/min, 10.8/hr), in large part bc I was drained by lesson time. But also reading aloud is much harder. I’m gonna have to grade jpdb more strictly… tho I haven’t gotten to much of 薬屋 cuz I’ve been doing new cards from the ダーリヤ deck I made instead, and I’ve barely done any either way, cuz I’ve been reading manga or watching SM instead

Anyway, I need to finish more things before starting new ones. For now I’ll delete the non-ダーリヤ decks, and aim to finish that story this week. In general I’m feeling overwhelmed with reading too many things, so here’s what I’ll finish in the next few days:

I think after that I should get through the rest of お釈迦様もみてる | L29

Dropping (temporarily):

Goal is to not start anything new, finish these 4, then resume お釈迦様, and maybe pick the other manga back up, one series at a time

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Finished

Dropped 紡ぐ乙女と大正の月 1 | L29 (but it felt easy enough). Picked up 東方酔蝶華 ~ロータスイーター達の酔醒 1 | L28?? (feels easy).

Can’t up with a plan for more 花物語 - reading specific stories that were mentioned in an article, in order of shortest to longest, whenever I’m in the mood:

  • 忘れな草 (not mentioned, but I’ve seen referenced I think) 42 min
  • 紅薔薇白薔薇 22
  • コスモス 23
  • 緋桃の花 26
  • 雛芥子 57
  • 白百合 1 hr
  • 福寿草 1 hr 6
  • 露草 1 hr
  • 燃ゆる花 2 hr 36
  • 釣鐘草 1 hr 32

Read レトロゲ(1) | L27 ch 1-4 in my lesson today, just to go over everything again. Turns out I retained a lot, but also still had some spots to ask my teacher comprehension questions, and a decent number of vocab (even came across 2 words he’d never heard before). I read quickly enough, but not necessarily always fluidly (i.e. without pauses)

Jpdb - dropped 薬屋のひとりごと deck, instead an doing Sailor Moon S deck (by frequency), and making a custom deck for whichever 花物語 story I’m on at any given moment

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Upcoming manga reads (one at a time, items removed as I finish):

  1. 白い部屋のふたり 山岸凉子作品集3 | L21
  2. 明日もまた勇者のとなり 1 | L25
  3. 神さま学校の落ちこぼれ 1 | L25
  4. 愛蔵版 天使禁猟区 1 | L24??

At random/possibly shelve:

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