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Read What is Appropriate to your Interests and Level — 18 Comments

  1. I certainly ran into the kanji issue playing Pokémon games. I thought playing a game with kana only would make it easier, but playing the more recent Pokémon Black/White that has a kanji option helped me understand WAY more of the dialogue.

  2. There is something to this, but I find it very difficult to judge the level of books in the main section of the bookshop. Not to mention whether they would be something I would enjoy reading.

    I recommend having a look at books packaged for children (rather than written for children). There are a lot of classics (Akutagawa, Soseki etc.) packaged as pocket books with suggested reading age written on the back. Some biographies of famous Japanese people I’ve read in pocket book versions have been very good too.

    Of course, it all depends on what you like to read. But with series like ポプラポケット文庫 or 岩波少年文庫 I feel there’s more chance of picking something that’s both good and appropriate for my level.

    • Thanks for the information about the pocket book versions! I actually don’t know much about them, but they sound like they could be a very helpful reading source to a lot of Japanese learners.

  3. I personally recommend a lot of the comics that are separated from the usual “comic” section of most bookstores (believe they’re usually in the “literature” section). ダーリンは外国人 and 日本人が知らない日本語 are a couple good ones that have a lot of kanji (with a lot of furigana, too).

  4. If you’re visiting or living in Japan, go to a manga kissa. As well as being a great place to just hang out and enjoy a variety of free drinks etc. you can look through as many different comics, magazines etc. as you like and form an idea of what you prefer to read without buying something that you then have to recycle once you’ve read or discarded it. They’re also a cheap option to stay at if you miss last train. They’re usually about 500yen an hour around here, so much the same as buying a coffee at Starbucks and sitting reading there for an hour, except the walls are lined with comic books. The longer you stay, or depending on the time of day, the price can be cheaper.

  5. I’m learning Chinese but this would probably apply to learning Japanese too. Sometimes, I like reading non-fiction books targeted at children, because they tend to be on interesting topics and you can learn something from them, while the language level isn’t too hard (although there sometimes is topic-specific vocabulary).

  6. If you can get the Japanese Graded Readers for cheap(ish), then that’s a great way to go! If in the UK, CDJapan works out cheaper for me if you buy them in bulk. You could also resell them after use.

  7. I think it’s different in your case. Since Chinese is all based on characters, anything you read helps to improve your knowledge of the language. On the other hand, Japanese book for children is mainly written in hiragana and katakana. Therefore, it’s cheesy and difficult reading.

  8. Am I crazy for aiming to Read Japanese philosophy /Philosophy translated into Japanese this Fall when I will likely only be level 35 ~ 40 by then? In my defense, I will have english translations to make sure I am comprehending it correctly… that kind of goes against the point of monolingual learning however… thoughts?

    I will probably have around 3000 sentences under my belt by then and around ~1000 Kanji. (I’m learning my kanji through immersion.)

      • I read it recently whilst listening to the audiobook at the same time. I think I was at around 2500 sentences and most of RTK 1 when I read it. I definitely didn’t understand everything but enough to (most of the time) follow the story and keep me interested. It really helped to listen to the audiobook passively (chapters that I had already read/listened to) as I was working my way through it actively.

        • Thanks :’) I’m probably going to start reading the Harry Potter books in May. I should be around 2300 – 2400 sentences by then, so yay!

          • Not to say it will be easy! If I can give any advice it would be to just keep moving forward.

            Here are some words that I think would help greatly knowing beforehand. Mostly locations and objects, Google images should help you understand them. 寮、手紙、扉、教室、廊下、階段、階段、談話室、杖、箒、小屋、鏡、透明。

            Good luck :)

            • Thank you so much! I spent all morning preparing flash cards for these. For the cards I couldn’t mine form Jalup, Manan’s Beyond Jalup, and The One Deck, I created picture cards as you suggested.

    • I think it’s fine to attempt it (though expect it to be quite difficult and come across a bunch of terms you aren’t familiar with).

      As for the English translation. If you are going to read it separately, I think it is okay (ex. you read the whole English book first, then read the Japanese version). Many people do this with literature (ex. they read the whole Harry Potter series in English a while ago, and are now reading it in Japanese).

      However, do not compare the two. Do not sit there on a page by page, sentence by sentence, or even word by word basis, and try to figure out the Japanese version by using the English version. That would be counterproductive, and would just be an extended J-E session, but worse, because you are using translations (which is even further removed from a J-E dictionary).

      As for Harry Potter, it has a lot of specialist vocabulary, but I wouldn’t say it is super hard overall (just don’t expect to understand the finer aspects of it unless you already know the story). I’d probably put it at around 3 stars.

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