You may know that I've had one goal (of many) for myself since arriving in Taiwan. That is to be able to read Japanese comic books which have been translated into Chinese. You may recall a picture from last year of a comic book store that basically has rows and rows of Japanese comics and people can either pay to take some books home to read and then return, or just stay in the shop reading as much as they want and just pay by the amount of time they were there.
Well I always wanted to be able to do that. I remember about half a year ago, I picked up a comic book and was sad to see that I still couldn't really read it. Of course I could read a lot of the basic things, but there were also a lot of specific vocabulary that I just didn't know. Well today I was in a second hand store, and saw some comics. I checked them out and i was surprised to see that I could actually read them. To be honest they were a bit too easy and as such I didn't want to get them because I figured it would be a waste of my time, time i could better spend on reading something harder. However I decided to get them anyway, mainly because I figured I deserve to at least see my goal through by reading some comics, but also because it was a charity shop.
Yep, the whole reason I was at this shop is because it is a essentially a Goodwill/Salvation Army type of shop. It's run by Taiwan's biggest charity organization. A friend had told me about this place and I was excited to go check it out, finally getting to it today. They had some pretty nice things which were obviously for cheap prices. Things that I have always needed but i kind of learned to do without, like an air filter, or a space heater. Now at least I know where to get some cheap items if I end up wanting those things. And I'm not ashamed to admit that i wouldn't mind buying some clothes from them as well.
So giving to charity motivated to pick up these comic books. That and when you buy comic books there you pay by the weight, so these five only cost me 50 cents. I figure it's something i can throw in my bag and read when on the bus or subway, or when out waiting for friends, basically those times when i don't feel like getting out my textbook cause it's hard to take notes or look up words. Also with a comic i don't need to know everything, I'm ok to just guess and move on.
That being said, reading some of the first one on the subway ride home, i thought I understood it all, but when I got back home I saw that online you can read an english translated version for free, and.....the English version seems much different from what i was reading. Granted you have to change some things between cultures and with the space constraints so maybe the English and Chinese translations are a bit different, but still one of us is wrong. So I think I'll just stick with my Chinese version, and stay away from the English version. Or rather, the Chinese "version" that is in my head due to what I understand and what I'm guessing.
Oh and in the background is a puzzle that I recently finished. I could say that i did this puzzle with a friend who complained that the previous puzzle we did was "too easy" only to this time become upset at the difficulty of this one and gave up, leaving me to do the most difficult parts on my own. I could say all that, but I'm not going to do that, because I am a nice person.
