Up way later than I would like so hopefully this will be a short report.

Throughout the week I listened to 今、出来る、精一杯, which apparently just came out recently and was recommended to me by the Audible newsletter. I didn’t read along with this one, just listened, and as a result I think my comprehension was lower than it could have been. There were definitely times where I was distracted or ended up spacing out and missing something important, but I found I was able to focus on listening pretty well while driving and washing the dishes. I listened to it at normal speed and I think it was about four hours. Pretty interesting book, lots of human drama and not much of a “plot” per se; the story is told from the perspectives of five or six people who come with a variety of personal struggles. The characterization was very believable and I enjoyed the rhythm of the dialogues.

Didn’t really watch too much anime unfortunately, though part of that is because all my currently-airing shows aired yesterday and today, and my sister was out of town so I couldn’t watch them with her. Will probably have a double load next week to make up for it. I did watch ep. 8-10 of ダンベル何キロ持てる and incorporated some of the moves into my workout routine, which is pretty fun.

I also watched (and subbed) サマータイムレンダ ep. 3, which wraps up vol. 1 exactly. Since I’m going over it so closely (not to mention listening to the audio) I noticed a few dialect words this time that I had missed before, like いっちゃん（一番） and おとつい（一昨日). Have I mentioned I love the way 和歌山弁 sounds? Gosh it’s so good. One little thing I thought was kind of interesting from a translation perspective is that Sou says 落ち着いて to Mio when she starts freaking out, and I know for a fact that “calm down” is not something that women tend to like hearing. I went with “don’t worry”, which fit the scene and would be taken in a much more positive way, I think.

For manga, I read 戦隊大失格 vol. 5 and felt a bit lost. I think I must have missed some key detail a while back, or maybe there’s some unreliable narrator hijinks happening. In any case I think the next arc is going to be pretty interesting.

Also read ゴールデンカムイ vol. 1 and 2. I’ve been interested in this one for a while and just have never gotten around to it, but good grief, I think that was the right move. It’s really pretty difficult and I bet I would have struggled a lot more if I’d tried reading it way back when. I was expecting a treasure hunt story and ended up getting a bunch of lessons about Ainu culture, Hokkaido wildlife (and how to cook it), and a bunch of history involving war with Russia. I’m really liking it so far but it saps my stamina pretty quickly.

Finally, I read vol. 27 of 僕のヒーローアカデミア. Eagle-eyed readers might notice that I’ve never mentioned reading the first 26 volumes and that’s because I haven’t. My sister started reading it from where the anime ended and I’ve decided to do likewise. This “first” volume was really great, definitely looking forward to reading more.