I recently got into Bunpro as a way to review Japanese I’ve learned and to connect with other Japanese language learners. I’ve also coincidentally gotten back into reading and I was curious if there were any book clubs for 2025?
I haven’t read through all the threads just yet, but most posts seem like they were from last year or a while ago.
I don’t know of any book clubs, but if there are, I would also be interested. I recently got a hold of a Japanese copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (the 2017 Kadokawa Translation) and think I want to try read more books that are translations of stuff I read as a kid. I’ve found because I have a vague idea of what’s happening, I can still follow along even when I don’t know a lot of the words.
That might be interesting. I never thought of trying to reread books from my childhood like that before. I’d have to imagine that it’s probably a pretty high difficulty level just due to the nature of the book though! Where would you say your reading level is at?
Oh, I genuinely only understand about half of the sentences, but I am following the story easily enough (I reread the first 5 books in English a couple years ago). Narnia uses surprisingly few fantastical words though. I will say, I was caught off guard when I saw the Japanese word for air raid in Kanji (with Furigana - all the kanji has Furigana) on literally the first page but then it consistently says だいじょうぶ in Hiragana. Or it used the verb 輝いている three times, and the first time was in Kanji, and then the next two in just Hiragana. It has been a weird (and inconsistent) experience.
Interesting. I wonder if it’s a stylistic choice by the translator or if it carries some other nuance. Where did you buy the book off of? Just like an Amazon order or something?
Are you also on Wanikani? There are many active book clubs there, and even book clubs for playing through games!
I bought it in Foyles when I was last in London, but I have since learned you can get it from CDJapan for cheaper, but they have it listed as Na Runia instead of Narnia.
I think there are already so many bookclubs out there, that most people already have their set groups/sites. Wanikani and natively both have huuuuuuge bookclub sections with lots of variety. And if your books of choice arent getting one, you can probably still head over there to ask if anyones interested to join your informal bookclub.
It’s a lot of work to get bookclubs running and with two major communities already doing well, I think it will be hard for bunpro to get traction for their own bookclubs. There are just so many books we can read at once 
i guess in a certain way the choosing of the writing style for the same word can have the same impact as the use of synonyms and roundabouts as in other languages. As in an entire kana sentence or a full kanji sentence are not as easy on the eyes as would be a sentence with the apropiate distribution of both.
wanikani and (), whats the other one?, im curious.
Sorry I just typed “natively”, thinking everybody already knows
LearnNatively comes with a forum just like wanikani and it’s basically just book clubs, discussions about books and encouragement to read more. The main page https://learnnatively.com/ allows you to track your reading and watching.
looks pretty good, its like what to use before jumping to Bookmeter
Yeah, I understand that concept, but the ease of readability here is definitely more about assumed Kanji knowledge of reader (it’s a childrens book afterall) rather than quick legibility.
It’s mostly Hiragana, so it’s not about that flow you get about using both - because the vast majority of the time, they are using kana, even when they could visually break the sentence up more. There is very little kanji in the book, it’s just when they are used, they are used for more difficult words.
My best guess for why they keep the difficult Kanji in for the obscure words in is that Japanese has a lot of homophones, and keeping the kanji helps give context for what the word might mean.
Makes sense, written nihongo seems to me has many layers of meaning, thats why im learning it.
If you manage to learn the reason for these instances le me know the trivia.
I doubt I will ever know for certain, but I’m sure if I do, I’ll remember this thread 