Do iiiiiiiiit 
I’m honestly having to hold myself back from rereading it rn 
I’ve gotta catch up on my other series anyway
I’d be happy to mail my extra copy of vol 1, when the ones I ordered get here, if you’re interested
Good luck! Also that’s so cool you have a relative you can borrow stuff from!!
2024年5月6日
Started back up on 薬屋のひとりごと 2, and I’m finding it much easier (not easy) to understand. Reading Shirayuki definitely helped a lot tho (even seen a random vocab word or two I learned from it). The unknown vocab count is still really high, but I’m doing a lot better with the grammar and reading speed!
Just 8 pgs left till I’m caught up with last week’s reading
Oooh, that’s very kind of you! I may have to take you up on your offer. 
2024年5月7日
Got a JP Keyboard stickers set so that I can use かな入力 mode when typing. I’m slow as hell w/ it rn, but kinda enjoying it over romaji-input. We’ll see if I stick w/ it long-term. One downside: some of the English characters are on the wrong keys… not the end of the world, but definitely distracting… so I might end up getting a 2nd keyboard just for work.
Just curious, do you mean you looked up only 6 words or used a translator / checked an English translation 6 times?
Yuuuuuu all the way. I don’t like Sayaka much at all.
I get my reading out loud experience from some WaniKani book clubs. We have a Discord server where people will gather weekly to reread the assigned reading out loud. It’s been a while since I’ve joined regularly, but I still join every once in a while. Not every book club does a read aloud, and it can be hard to find one that fits both my interest and time zone.
Could be cool if Natively had something similar. Maybe Brandon would be interested once he adds a formal book club feature.
Meaning I looked at the translation for a specific page or panel 6 times, bc I wasn’t quite confident or was stuck.
Interesting… Was that your impression prior to reading her novels as well? Curious why you don’t like her. I also didn’t my first time around.
One thing that’s been interesting for me is I’ve tried drafting up a “contrasting ささ恋 and やがて君になる”, bc ppl keep comparing them (the anime is just about at the divergence point)… and it makes me feel a bit less favorably about the やが君 characters. (ささ恋 semi-borrows it’s starting hook, and character design for the main trio from やが君, but then immediately proceeds to have nothing in common with it). The two stories are so different that I wonder if it’s fair to judge them that way tho.
The 暁のヨナ club I’m in was from there 
(but we made our own server, cuz we wanted channels)
Yeah that could be cool… Someone did post for a read-aloud club recently, but their group records the sessions for ppl to listen to afterwards - on YouTube - a no go for me, even if the time had worked.
Yeah I’ve never been a Sayaka fan, and the novels didn’t change that (still haven’t read the third). I think it’s probably because she doesn’t feel genuine. She grows a bit later in the manga, but not enough to make me like her. Maybe this will change in the third novel, but being in her head (as first person narrator) in the first two made my impression of her worse, if anything.
Oof, yeah that would be a big no from me as well.
Hmmm, I think I get what you’re saying. Does the 2nd book overlap with the manga at all? Or is it like “everything that happens until the start of the manga”? The 3rd definitely seems the most interesting, if I were gonna read them… Which I still dunno if I want to at this point
The second book has a bunch of overlap with the manga, unfortunately. Whenever I do read the third book I’m sure I’ll post about it, but I think with how much retread the first two books have they aren’t really worth reading unless you love Sayaka.
Is it just reading, or also translating and commenting on the grammar/vocab? I’ve been doing that for Korean with a group of people on Discord, and that’s been super useful, so I’d love to find a similar thing for Japanese.
I definitely wouldn’t want to end up on Youtube though, that’s a no-go for me as well.
That sounds maybe interesting then. The first book doesn’t really interest me much now, cuz I get bored really quickly with backstory. Anyway will keep in mind. I suspect if I do read them at some point, it will be on a very random whim, in the far future 
With the Yona group, theoretically we read then strugglate, but we’ve gotten a bit lazy about that lately. Even when we don’t strugglate, words will come up (and we already have a vocab spreadsheet filled out)… I don’t feel like we talk about grammar so much tho
It’s case by case, as each group does their own thing. In the book clubs I’ve tended to join (novels) it’s reading, correcting kanji/vocab mistakes, asking for help on confusing parts, and discussing the story. No complete translation. In the manga group I occasionally participate in right now they read through once (each reader plays a part if there are enough characters in the chapter), then go through again to translate. Though I don’t stay for the translation part because it gets too late for me.
Yeah, definitely none of that on this server. If anyone tried to pull that I would ban them so fast. (But I don’t think that’s a concern.)
Here’s the server if you’re interested. There’s not much activity outside of the clubs (by design). Oh, I’ll add that most of the clubs are tied to WaniKani book clubs, but not always. The manga group I’m reading with now is a group that likes reading together so they just always pick up a new manga.
I don’t think I’m brave enough to join a novel group yet (even in my lessons I’ve stuck with manga), but that’s sounds cool!
Interesting to learn that not all of the groups are tied to WK. The group I’m in is trying out a second manga (reading after Yona). Almost got to do 夏目友人帳 1 | L28 but おこしやす、ちとせちゃん | L18?? (about a penguin traveling around Kyouto) won out instead
And for the record, many people have joined the WaniKani forums just for the book clubs even though they never have and don’t plan to use WaniKani itself. This one group is just even more different because they don’t even organize their book clubs on the WaniKani forums, but since that’s where their group originated it’s fine.
Yeah, that’s one thing I appreciate - and sometimes find amusing - about the WK forums. Maybe I should spend more time on there. Actually I should spend it applying for a better job … but that’s a different story
2024年5月9日
Played a bit of SAO Hollow Fragment & SAO Alicization Lycoris yesterday. The sentences/grammar feel pretty easy, but Lycoris has a lot of unknown, in-world vocab. Hollow Fragment, so far the sentences are easier than I expected, but the mechanics descriptions (like the Hollow Area Implementation stuff, abilities, etc) are more challenging. Lycoris has the advantage of also having Kirito’s lines voiced, whereas HF is everyone but Kirito. Either is a good resource for me right now. HF the advantage is the menus & stuff. Lycoris the advantage is the much greater proportion of dialogue (tho the HF story is sooooo much better than Lycoris story). My laptop doesn’t run Lycoris quite so well, and the version I have on Switch is the EN localization, so no JP subs 
Been getting back to ツバサ -RESERvoir CHRoNICLE- | L25 and feeling pretty frustrated. Similar to Shirayuki, I have to check the translation very frequently. However unlike Shirayuki, a lot of the sentences are really abstract, so half the time I’m still confused even after checking the translation. Also the last few volumes are a segment of the story I’m honestly not that crazy about / that isn’t as enjoyable for me to read. I’m on 22/28, and kinda just wanna be done at this point. Also kinda wanna take another look at my gradings for it, cuz I’m feeling like the L25 rating is too low.
I’ve been very hit or miss on this chapter of https://learnnatively.com/book/04738a9ced/ … not sure if it’s just me being out of it or what… but it’s definitely been much less solid than last chapter.
君に紡ぐ傍白 1 | L21 is probably gonna become my next light read… either that or I’ll pick up 五等分の花嫁 | L24 again (reminder to self: I left off T the beginning of vol 2).
It would probly be a good idea to read the random SAO manga volumes - or even better, one of the side stories - I have, since SAO 28 is finally coming out next month. That will be the 2nd SAO LN I’ve read completely without translation (though I could sorta count SAO 3, since I only checked 3-4 times). I have kinda been wanting to read SAO Hopeful Chant (the Eiji-Yuna story that’s a prelude to Ordinal Scale) for a while, so that’s probly my best bet. It’s only 96 pgs, though sadly I can’t log it on Natively and I added it to the site finally (thx automated system!). I wish I could add all the SAO side story stuff as a series, but there isn’t really a realistic way to do that… I’ll create a custom list for them eventually. I debated whether to add them as LNs or short stories… but decided they’re LNs for convenience, and cuz they’re basically shorter LNs… maybe I should have added them as short stories tho. Hmmm
They arrived btw, so if you want that copy of vol 1 lmk. Otherwise I’ll offer it up in the physical media thread
If eefara doesn’t want it I would be happy to give it a home <3
Ahh, it’s claimed already sry
No worries. It’s super nice of you to offer it!
