After feeling p discouraged by Kiki’s delivery service, I read half a chapter of Fushigi Dagashiya Zenitendou again and was pleasantly surprised by it because Kiki was making me feel like I can’t actually read books XD
I want to forge ahead with Kiki but it’s really tough for me, despite only being 2 levels above Dagashiya on Learn Natively. Tbf both have tonnes of vocab I don’t know, but Dagashiya is just a lot easier to face.
I wonder if part of it is that the Kiki copy I have has really small text? I wish I’d got a big text version intended for kids, it just makes it psychologically more comfortable.
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I’ll be honest, I feel like the Natively rating for Kiki is a bit deceiving. The grammar is mostly N3, but has some N2 thrown in there and the vocab is a bit all over the place. When I first tried reading it years ago, I was very solidly N3 level and I remember having a hard time with it. That being said, at that point I hadn’t really tried engaging with any native material and my vocab was extremely lacking. I think vocab will always be a bit of a struggle when starting a new series though, as you’re introduced to new writing styles or genre vocab. I do also think the lack of kanji makes it more difficult, as it can be hard to parse out words if you haven’t encountered them yet.
Anyway, glad that Fushigi Dagashiya Zenitendou was more enjoyable, and don’t stress too hard about understanding everything in Kiki!
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thank you nminer ;-; ganbarimasu!!
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Yea, I gotta agree with nminer, the book Im reading through is like a level 20? So really not that hard, but because in part of it probably being a book translated from German, and also a kids book, its using A LOT of casual grammar and vocab that, while it would be used daily in elementary school, is not that common in learn japanese books. I bet once the book is done, take a break for a couple months and if you were to read it again it 簡単になります。
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Thank you! The levels are not perfect I guess, so it’s important for me to keep that in mind when I’m reading so I dont give up
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LearnNatively is an amazing resource and the ratings are very useful to get a rough relative sense of difficulty, but I think the ratings tend to represent the “stretch” zone for someone at that level. Having read things from a pretty wide variety of Natively gradings at this point, from the 10s to the 40s, there is “hard” or “rare” grammar in basically everything. I’ve re-read things that I read as a complete beginner and have sometimes been shocked at how many grammar patterns I didn’t notice at the time, despite being quite a forensic reader.
Most important thing is to just keep reading and enjoying. Vocab is the real final boss anyway…
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I’m definitely being stretched D:
I took n2 this last December and while I don’t expect to pass, I think I will get just below a pass. It’s kind of rough on me then that something marked highish n3 is so hard for me… I’m like am I really just an n4 reader hhh… but yeah, it’s all subjective and it’s just a rough guide as you said
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I don’t think I ever thought it was BL or anything, because I’m quite familiar with Tumblr’s ability to make a given character or ship seem like a WAY bigger part of its origin material than it realistically is…but I can’t say it didn’t get my attention.
reading at work gremlin buddies 
Seems like a logical reason to me. I know I’ve realized part of why Conan takes me longer/feels harder than some of the other things I read is because it’s just so much more text per page than a lot of the more action-y manga.
Man have I been feeling that lately 
I think we have to keep in mind, too, that there’s a difference between like…studying something and having sort of a sense for it vs having really practiced with it and made it feel natural.
I know I get hit constantly by the “I know I’ve seen/studied this god I should KNOW it already-” frustration, but like. No matter how well you study, it’s always going to take time for things to really work their way into your brain. Which I try to remind myself of logically, with…mixed results. Reading like this is going to help to cement that stuff in our heads and give us real examples to reference, it just might be kinda rough while it does.
You got this, though! Kiki might be stretching you, but keep remembering that feeling from Fushigi. You know more than it feels like!
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I feel like something here can relate back to that speedrunning thread that was made. Like, yea man, confident enough to take the N2 and struggling with native children content. Shits wildin all the time. But I think this is great practice now since like, from my understanding N1 is all about reading and listening to new words you more or less dont know and trying to conceptualize them.
I actually went and read how they grade and its all user based so that alone gives some variation. Some people might be beyond its level or have a special interest in that genre, other people might have zero clue about it. As well, I think LN and Mangas are different as a whole. I would say my Zatch Bell Manga is easier than Pokemon when I was reading it, but I happened to know all the vocab and wasnt fighting with Pokemon names either. So really is just a ball park if you know the vocab or not.
my highlighter trick has been working for me so maybe if you dont mind marking a book up, give that a shot. One of those slows me down tactics otherwise I can kinda skim and understand but im not like, absorbing. Even then I gotta go back and re-read shit.
This is exactly what Im using the highlighter for too. That stupid grammar that I KNOW and obviously im reading it but just not like… understanding it? But yea, its been great to contextualize things. Definitely takes extra time but I wanna read this book and then get to like the 5 minute stories.
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I’m not looking to mark my copies up - I buy them to have nice copies of my own, and also I grew up next to a library (and in a book-loving house) and have a DEEPLY engrained Do Not Damage Books instinct - but if I did I’m absolutely sure some of these would have the same phrases highlighted like a hundred times because my brain goes “C’mon I JUST saw that one like a page ago-” lol.
Also, for today’s update: almost an entire volume of Vanitas, sans the first 2 or 3 pages from yesterday. My brain hurts! But hey, progress 
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Yea, I get it. Im not gonna be marking up books I want to actively read and re-read like yotsubato, nichijou and maybe a few other LNs when I get to them (Overlord I REALLLY wanna read because I loved the fan-lations) But for my throwaway books or those im using just for practice then I have no qualms with it. My family is also crafty and has been begging me for books with Japanese texts so maybe Ill just pass it them to destory as they see fit to remake into something new.
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i think the problem with the rating of books like kikis delivery service is because most already knew the movie before reading. knowing the story well before reading something makes it way easier to understand, thus people rating it easier than it is.
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when i notice i looked up the same word multiple times over different sources, i bookmark it in my dictionary app. and later add it into bunpro, as it seems important enough and i already kinda recognize it ^^
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Finished 台所のドラゴン 3 just now and will be starting 骨ドラゴンのマナ娘 1 today for the wanikani book club going on. Yes, I did have to purchase it for the club. I need to do a book club for my bingo though and the odds there’s going to be one for a book I already own is low.
Sometime this week I should finally get new glasses. One of my eyes is becoming lazy for some reason and it’s made me have slight to severe double vision for a few years now. (I didn’t realize what was actually happening until it got bad enough) Today everything is just a little blurry. It’s incredibly annoying for reading though. I can’t wait to be able to easily read every day again. Some days the doubling is pretty atrocious.
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Ohhhh what kind of crafty stuff do they have planned for them? I sometimes watch videos of people re-binding books or otherwise finding ways to customize them, and some of them are pretty neat.
Also I realized my tone may have gotten lost, but the marking and highlighting sounds like a very good way to help your studying! I just don’t do it personally, hope that last post didn’t come across rudely.
I had been bookmarking things & adding them to an anki deck but not actually doing the anki deck because I can’t keep up with it on top of wk and bp…but I didn’t even think about adding the vocabulary through bunpro instead. Hm. I think I’ll take a look at that later, thank you!
I mean, the more books you own the higher those odds become… 
As for me - I only got through about half a volume of Vanitas yesterday, but I’m still pretty happy with that because it was a busier day overall. Also, I peeked into the next volume for a bit of motivation, and oooooh do I wanna see what leads to the panel I spotted!! Hopefully I’ll have the time today to make some more progress too 
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At the risk of a slight dox on my self but also because I gotta promote my little Grandma, she has her own youtube where she makes all sorts of things.
But my family does all sorts. My aunt wants to make a collage/spread of just random languages pasted onto a wall in her home and what have you.
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i make sure to only add those, that come with reading mode, so all the n-levels and a1. a2 to a5 already has sentences, but still no reading mode (i hope they’ll add it any day now ^^). the others just sit in my bookmarks, waiting to be added someday.
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yay! today i finished my 7 volumes of the puniru manga! it started out as an easy read in the beginning and ended as a very casual read, were i was able to just binge whole volumes.
now, onto horimiya with its 17 (
) volumes ^^
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Are your copies of that digital or physical? Just an fyi that the digital quality isn’t great.
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Hell yeah! My family isn’t particularly crafty, (although my mom’s always been good enough with a sewing machine to mend clothes or make a halloween costume) but my partners both dabble in a couple things - knitting, weaving, wool felting, etc.
I actually got a small drop spindle recently to try out and see if I liked it, since neither of them has spinning covered yet in the collection of “things the household can collectively do” and it seems like a good option for something to do with my hands when my brain just can’t focus on anything.
Yeah, I’ll have to go through and see what bp actually has available - but if it DOES cover some of the ones I made cards for, it’d be nice to actually be reviewing those. Thanks again for the idea 
And congrats on finishing puniru! I’m sure you’ll hit the same sort of stride with Horimiya, too
As for myself, I got through about another half a volume of Vanitas yesterday! That had me finishing volume 8, so I’m a few pages into volume 9 today. My friend actually warned me that I might wanna stop there and wait if I didn’t want to get emotionally wrecked in the next little bit…but I came into this series expecting devastation, it can’t stop me now!
Today’s a lighter day for classes, but I have a big pile of wk/bp reviews coming through - we’ll see how much time I wind up having to actually read. But I’m hopeful!
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