This one is in sale for 69 yen … (Nice)
(Not on natively yet)
And this one is also 99 yen offer.
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I just had a bad time with a モブ isekai’d in an 乙女ゲーム, so I’ll show restraint this time 
(especially since Booklive also puts this book in the 男性向け category)
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I mean for less than 70 cent of EUR I’ll add to the library.
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i restarted ユリ熊嵐 today.
it’s good, in the sense that i understand a lot more than on my first attempt. but also hard, a lot of kanji i’ve never seen before (feels like, though i at least attempted to read this once before), and the only furigana are on names. and even then, only the first time the name appears.
also, it has fanservice, which i’d forgotten about. not quite sure how comfortable i am with that. seems it’s only on the chapter title pages?
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Do you mean the novel or the manga? (There is also a anime).
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ahhh, the manga, in this case. i love the anime, so i picked this up ^^
it continues to be a challenge, with lots of kanji i don’t know, and only very scarce furigana.
also, first time i’ve seen あなた written in kanji 貴方! it was only once, in a moment of closeness between two characters, and i’m like, that’s interesting?! using kanji to make it contrast to how it’s used more commonly? i love this language 
all in all enjoying the read, though definitely the most difficult manga i’ve attempted so far.
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Started reading 日常の夏休み | L24 after finishing Orange last week, and I’m finding it a lot easier overall, just that a good portion of the words I don’t know seem to be uncommon (at least according to Innocent Corpus). There’s also a few puns in there that I caught onto.
I also finished ふらいんぐうぃっち 1 | L19 in a roughly 3 hour sitting before bed a few nights ago, and had pretty much no major hang-ups. It’s nice to be at a point where I can pick up engaging content mainly for leisure, makes for a great morale boost.
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I finished reading ちろり (series) | L18, a slice-of-life coffee shop manga set in the Meiji period. The setting means there’s some interesting Japan-meets-the-West going on with a variety of reactions to that from the Japanese characters, which was interesting, and there are lots of kimono for those who like that as I do. I could have done without the fanservice in the first volume, but it did mostly evaporate afterward, and I also found the ending chapter somewhat unsatisfying (it picks up one plotline that never really went anywhere and still doesn’t really go anywhere with it). But overall, it was a relaxing read with pretty art. As far as language goes, it’s quite easy for my level now, but it’s also nice to see there are now manga I can tear through almost as fast as an English volume, haha.
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The first two volumes were free, so I had a look… but I stopped after the first volume because it felt way too slow for my taste.
Are you referring to the first few pages? That felt more like an artistic choice than fan service (definitely didn’t get that “male gaze” feeling I get from shonen/seinen stuff). I guess there’s also the part where they are wearing 薄物, but I wouldn’t call showing arm outlines fan service 
I think it’s still safe to read for people who hate fan service (as I do).
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I thought that the scene of her getting dressed was very nice, and it didn’t give me fanservice vibes at all - what bothered me was the pages where she’s cleaning the floors and yeah, the way the 薄物 bit was done. It’s not fanservice in the sense of showing skin, that’s true.
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I’ve been reading 少年探偵団-対決! 怪人二十面相 10歳までに読みたい日本名作 | L21 and just started of with the second story.
First story: 1. Yeah, that was L21 alright. I needed to look up lots of vocab, but it wasn’t that hard! Pretty relaxing, easily finished in 6 days. 
Second story: First sentence starts off with N1 grammar. Of the first 7 sentences I had to put 3 into DeepL to get the meaning. The L24 books I read so far are easy in comparison. 
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I finished よつばと! 15 | L19 and チェンソーマン (11) | L25 this week! That’s two great manga series I’m caught up on (well, almost caught up for chainsaw man). I’ve also been reading 夜は短し歩けよ乙女 | L43, which I wasn’t really enjoying at first, but started to get more into yesterday. I just finished part 1 so I’m interested in how different the other parts will be! I also just started ビブリア古書堂の事件手帖 (4) ~栞子さんと二つの顔~ | L31, which opened with some major intrigue, so this might get more priority than 夜は短し for awhile 
Lastly, I bought スライム倒して300年、知らないうちにレベルMAXになってました 1 | L24 on a whim with some coins on a crazy Bookwalker sale, and I’m enjoying it way more than I expected. Art is cute, story is chill, and besides some RPG terms the vocab is simple too. Highly recommend (especially since it’s popular enough to go on sale all the time).
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not sure about this particular example, but - and I unfortunately don’t remember which book that was - I was reading a story with characters in different age groups… so there was a elementary student and a middle grader and a high schooler - and they used kanji in varying degrees. the elementary student mostly used hiragana when speaking while the middle grader used a lot of kanji but occassionally there were some katakana for words where the kid was supposed to have learned the kanji but couldn’t remember. I found this a really fun detail. I really don’t remember what book that was, though… maybe some short story. 
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I see 貴方 fairly often, but that’s because I read a lot of 本好きの下剋上 and that series uses it a lot!
Speaking of contrasting usage though, 本好き also uses お前 a bunch, but in a few instances it used 御前 instead to differentiate it since in those cases it was used respectfully like the old usage.
I really need to give that series a shot. Seems like it’s generally well liked and at a good difficult for me.
I’ve seen this fairly often in manga at least. Particularly, young kids who haven’t started school yet “speak” entirely in hiragana.
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funnily enough, i saw 貴方 in kanji the very next day in a song lyric* 
just finished the first volume of ユリ熊嵐. it continues to be quite difficult reading, to the point that i have to take regular breaks. i definitely got only rough outlines of the story during my first attempt, and i reckon there’s plenty i’m still missing.
the story is very different from the anime. we have mostly the same characters, humans and bears, etc., and it’s about the relationship between the characters. but beyond that it’s a different story, and i don’t know where it’s going.
i’m also wondering whether i should start something easier to read in parallel, but currently i don’t really have anything on my list. well, 宝石の国, but that doesn’t look easy either.
*edit: the lyrics also use 壱弍参肆, definitely a choice ^^
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Ha, no I wouldn’t expect that to be easy. I only read the first volume (and don’t plan on continuing because the art is so bland), but from what I remember from the anime it gets complicated.
Wow, never seen 肆 before!
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I read the first four volumes and I can also confirm that it’s not easy for a manga.
I remember some discussion about it on the WK forum, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in the wild (although I’m not sure).
I did look up the full list up to 拾 back in the days.
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So, not sure when I last wrote. I finished つれづれノート | L25 and そして、バトンは渡された | L29 (prefer the movie) and started コーヒーが冷めないうちに | L29 as well as tentatively 七回死んだ男 | L30?? (current pick of the natively mystery book club)
My CEO read コーヒーが冷めないうちに in translation recently and was all excited telling me about this cool Japanese book he read and asking if I wanted to borrow it. (Obviously I declined because I want to read the original. 
) So I figured, I might as well bump it up on my TBR. So far, it’s really up my alley and I wonder if there is an overarching story… that ghost is sus 
but even if not, it’s a nice read.
Some overall reading stats
So far, I have read 10 books this year already (in Japanese, English and German), plus 5 Penguin Little Black Classics (which are extremely short and I don’t really count). Leaving those aside, I am at a 50:50 ratio Japanese/Non-Japanese which is what I am aiming for, so I am happy. 
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I’ve just finished reading Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活 第三章 Truth of Zero (series) | L25??-28 and wow that was interesting. I will surely start reading the 4th chapter soon.
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Did you tell him that you plan to read it in Japanese or is that some big secret?
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