I’ll check these out! I’ve heard a lot of great things about both of their authors.
I definitely plan to give both of these a read. I wasn’t aware that よるのばけもの was by the same author.
Loved this one. Might reread it eventually but probably not for a while.
I’ve never heard of this one, but I love the way you describe it and it sounds interesting. I’ll check it out soon! Thanks!
I knew before clicking the link, which book you are referring to. The description is very accurate. 
(Personally, I did not enjoy it, but I am in the minority. :D)
Can’t wait to see how you progress.
As for the recommendation you asked,
The next best thing - for a learner - after くまクマ熊ベアー (I read the whole thing, learned so much) is this imo: https://learnnatively.com/series/f1e504007b/
15 volumes, very easy. It’s romcom though, not strictly slice of life.
I’m almost done with that one, haven’t found the next series to read extensively yet unfortunately.
Thanks for the recommendation! Long series are exactly what I was hoping for. I’ll give this a good look through after I finish the books I’m on right now. Thanks!
Sorry for the bother/asking in this thread, but what is the bot you use? Sounds interesting!
Week 4:
また、同じ夢を見ていた:
93254字.
Finished. This was so good the second time around. Extremely worth the reread now that I’m good enough to treat it as lit fic instead of as Anki: Part 2.
ラブコメ漫画に入ってしまったので、推しの負けヒロインを全力で幸せにする:
51277字.
This is maybe slightly harder. Still very comfy, although I’m underlining at least double the words that I don’t know how to pronounce compared to また、同じ夢. Still, words that I can’t understand from context are very few and far between, so I can still picture the scenes well enough. I’m extremely not used to how dialog-heavy it is though.
Weekly Total:
144531字
Running Total:
448621字
Week 5:
クラスメイトの元アイドルが、とにかく挙動不審なんです。:
77927字.
ラブコメ漫画に入ってしまったので、推しの負けヒロインを全力で幸せにする :
57217字.
Weekly Total:
135144字
Running Total:
583765字
Just under a month to get 420k more moji in. Feeling good about that; as long as I don’t stop altogether, I should be fine. Although, I might cut down my reading time to focus on listening, as I do worry a little bit about that section of the test.
Week 6:
こぐまのクーク物語 クリスマスのおとまり会:
17454字
This is cute, but almost too easy. I’d even potentially say it’s too easy to be beneficial where I am, but since I’m a completionist (and the rest of the series is only going to take me a few hours), I reckon I’ll finish it.
星の子:
7004字.
Bought this a while ago, decided to bring it on an outing into a rural area with no internet. It’s readable without a dictionary, but not quite comfortable. I’m gonna shelf it for a while.
クラスメイトの元アイドルが、とにかく挙動不審なんです。:
53018字.
Finished the 5th “volume” of this. No complaints, although not particularly motivated to read volume 6 as it stands.
Weekly Total:
77476字.
Running Total:
661241字
Didn’t do a lot of reading this week. Over the last few days, I’ve been switching my focus onto listening in preparation for the N2. Lots of television, not so much reading. The TV feels super comprehensible and productive though, so I’m counting it as a win. I’ll try to pick up my pace a bit this week so I still meet the million chars in the next 3 weeks.
Week 7:
クラスメイトの元アイドルが、とにかく挙動不審なんです。:
35197字
星の王子様:
6485字
おまえをオタクにしてやるから、俺をリア充にしてくれ!:
6167字
Weekly Total:
47849字
Running Total:
709090字
Another light reading week trying to make listening more comfortable. Ended up reading 30k on the last day this week though, which is a new record for me and made up for a little bit of time lost on the days I didn’t read, so I’m happy about that. I’m pretty sure my speed with that idol web novel is now above 10k/hr, although I’m still very slow with anything else.
Week 8:
クラスメイトの元アイドルが、とにかく挙動不審なんです。:
16113字
おまえをオタクにしてやるから、俺をリア充にしてくれ!:
10790字
Weekly Total:
26903字
Running Total:
735993字
Stats seems super disappointing this week, but I was still reading, just mostly passages from shinkanzen master and practice tests that I can’t count easily enough to track. I also did nearly 24 hours of active listening this week, which is great, but also inconvenient to track in detail, so I didn’t.
After this test next Sunday, I’m going to hurry to the 1m moji mark and take a few months to do primarily listening and maybe go for just one book a week or less in that time. I’ve found a few youtube channels that I can understand well and that have hundreds of hours of content each, so it seems like pretty free gains that I could farm.
December 2023:
クラスメイトの元アイドルが、とにかく挙動不審なんです。:
30056字
Running Total:
766049字
I did very little reading this month. Prepping for the JLPT revealed some very obvious low-hanging fruit with regards to my listening. After a few hours of listening to youtubers speak, I realized that if I sit with any youtuber long enough to get used to their style, just about any content creator I find interesting can be comprehensible enough to be useful. So, since my last update, I’ve eeked out just over 126 hours of listening, with most of that being conversational youtube videos. This is something I recommend and will continue to pursue.
That said, I would like to finish the books I’ve started soon. I have 130k characters to go to catch up to the current chapter in my web novel, and about the same number of characters across other books I started.
Maybe in the new year I’ll learn how to balance 
One of my all-time favourites is おおかみこどもの雨と雪 | L29 . I also loved 博士の愛した数式 | L35 (but I’m not sure whether it qualifies as SOL 
).
Jan+Feb 2024:
クラスメイトの元アイドルが、とにかく挙動不審なんです。 :
64948字
こぐまのクーク物語 はじめての海とキャンプ:
15787字
四つ子ぐらし 2 三つ子探偵、一花ちゃんを追う!:
55266字
こぐまのクーク物語 フルーツまつり:
19616字
かのこちゃんとマドレーヌ夫人:
12242字
Total:
167859字
Running Total:
933908字
Double Update because there was nothing interesting to show for January.
I began reading some more furigana books from the Tsubasa Bunko collection, and I’m very happy with how casual the furigana makes it. Don’t need to stop reading to look anything up since the context is usually more than enough and the pronunciation of unknown words is given to me. Very streamlined process, very cool. I definitely recommend it.
Once again though, most of my time since the last update went to listening, clocking in exactly 200 hours of Youtube/TV of varying comprehension levels (though all of which I consider comprehensible enough to be productive). Over this next month I plan on spending more time in podcasts and videos designed for learners studying for the JLPT for a quick little detour into acquiring the vocabulary necessary for the test, as well as to just reap the benefits that come with engaging in highly highly comprehensible input.
