This week I finished vol. 3 of 甘々と稲妻, which has been a back-burner book for a little while now (languishing at about 50% read). It’s another series I started after seeing the anime (quite some time ago), and I’m to the point where I’m caught up with what was covered in season 1. It was pretty difficult for me to read when I first started due to having very little furigana, but lately I’ve been finding it much easier to follow. As a recipe-of-the-week manga, it’s got a lot of cooking terminology that I’m familiar with in English already, so I’ve been able to pick up words strictly in context without having to really look anything up.

I also finished vol. 7 of ５等分の花嫁 (really just the last few pages since I didn’t finish it last week). Vol. 8 came out on Tuesday so I’ll be reading that this week. It’s kind of thrilling to be able to read something that probably won’t be translated for quite some time (I think only up to vol. 6 has been translated into English at this point).

The majority of my input this week came from Persona Q2. I streamed the main quest for about five hours across three sessions, played four or five of the sidequests off-camera, and even did some research on a Japanese wiki for the game. I mentioned in #reading_chat how I’m finding it much easier to understand now than when I first started playing it, and just to check I went back to some of my early VODs — it’s really amazing how much of a difference there is. The pockets of dead air where I have to look up words were much longer and more common, and my comprehension was serviceable but I definitely missed out on a fair bit of nuance in certain places. I’ve been working steadily through N2 on Bunpro (should be finished with the lessons by the middle of next month) and I’ve been seeing one or two of those new grammar points every time I sit down to play so it’s really helpful for reinforcement. I’ll definitely have to find a new game to play once I finish this one up.