This week I finished 京都寺町三条のホームズ vol. 4, which means I’m finally actually caught up with the anime. Probably won’t be reading vol. 5 until next year though, unless I complete the rest of my goals early. It’s not difficult per se; the writing style is enjoyable and easy to follow along with, and the words I don’t know tend to have furigana (a nice coincidence) so I can look them up easily, but the sections with long temple names are a slog and it seems like there were way more of them in this volume. In any case, it ended nicely so I’m glad I have the next two books ready to go.

Despite wanting to read something a little easier next, I had already decided to read 蒲団 by 田山花袋, basically just to dip my toes into 文豪 with a somewhat short book. I’m only a few pages in right now so I don’t have too much to say besides that I’ve noticed he uses a lot of weird kanji and furigana (whether because this is an old book or for creative reasons; I’m leaning towards the latter because of one example in particular — 他人[ひと]の所有[もの]).

Finished Planetarian, which is a fun milestone considering that my introduction to Japan in general came from Katawa Shoujo way back in 2012. I enjoyed it quite a bit. There were some annoying sections with a lot of military terminology kanji soup but the majority of it was pretty smooth and I was able to coast through the entire final chapter without pausing to look anything up, which is always nice. Reading this has confirmed that I definitely have a long way to go on my reading speed, since it took me almost three times long to read as the average on VNDB, but I’ll get there eventually.

Since my copy of Monster Hunter Stories 2 has finally arrived, I imported my progress from the demo and I’ve been playing that a bit today. Planning to put at least half an hour in per day. So far nothing really jumping out at me in terms of difficulty or whatever; it’s been smooth sailing just like the demo.

I only ended up watching two more episodes of Fate/Stay Night this week. which I’ve discovered is actually Unlimited Blade Works (WHOOPS, guess that explains why Rin is so much in focus). Didn’t expect the big Archer reveal and a lot of the monologuing went right over by head but I got a copy of Realta Nua off ebay so I’m sure all will be made clear in due time.

Finally, I read vol. 6 of トニカクカワイイ. 制服姿司 is too powerful for this world.