This week I had a bit of a false start but managed to pull it together in the end.

A while ago I got the first few chapters of 薬屋のひとりごと (the manga adaptation) for free on Honto, and I’d been sitting on it waiting for a chance to give it a try. I got about 20 pages in and decided to put it on hold for a while — a lot of the words that were coming up were totally new to me and it just wasn’t jiving with my reading approach. Apparently it was originally a web novel on ncode, so I might read it there instead in the future.

Bouncing back from that, I read vol. 5 of 古見さん, which had a few nice “aha” moments. There’s a new character who speaks some type of 東北方言, using わだす instead of わたし and occasionally ending her sentences with べ (which is like だろう). It’s pretty cool because I’ve already gotten somewhat familiar with 津軽弁 from Flying Witch (which is another of the so-called ずうずう弁 dialects) so I immediately understood her and recognized the characterization they were going for.

When I first started reading 古見さん it was definitely a bit above my level but at this point it’s very comfortable. I picked up the next few volumes to read while on my long flight tomorrow (I’m headed to Japan!)

I also watched two more episodes of とらドラ with j-subs. Comprehension still feels about 80%. Fortunately it seems like the subtitles act as an aid rather than a crutch; I’m finding more and more that they help but I don’t rely on them.