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Best novels/books for beginners - Hirakana - 2013-04-18

I'm pretty much a complete noob to Japanese, at about 650 in RTK, however I want to organise some supplies for when I go full on AJATT-ing. I have my *ahem* sources for anime and film but I have to buy manga and books so I want to make sure I'm getting my money's worth. Currently in my basket are some Yotsubato and Death Note (not exactly beginner's material, but I like it) and I'd like a recommendation on an easy light novel or manga to read, preferably light novel. Thanks.
I'm fine with pretty much anything except long, boring, difficult, philosophical prose.
EDIT: Title is meant to be novels/manga -_-

Best novels/books for beginners - egoplant - 2013-04-18

Anything that's slice of life. 4-koma manga like Azumanga Daioh or K-On seems to be pretty easy. Easy light novels are Ore No Imouto and Kimi No Tabi. I hope you're learning words with those kanji as you're going or you're gonna be waiting quite a while before you read anything at all.

Best novels/books for beginners - SomeCallMeChris - 2013-04-18

A lot of people start with キノの旅 but to be honest, I'd check the wikipedia pages for anime where you've seen the complete series already, and see which ones were originally light novels and pick one. The familiarity will make reading much easier, even more so if you can get an English translation and do side-by-side reading; which does increase the cost, having to buy two books, yes, it might be a good idea for your first few books.

This is also why many people do Harry Potter - they know the movies, they own the books, the Japanese version of the books is not super-easy but knowing the material makes it a -lot- easier.

Knowing how a scene plays out can make a seemingly ambiguous sentence crystal clear. Whether or not the sentence is -actually- ambiguous or it's a vague understanding of the grammar at fault is immaterial. Read enough such sentences and your ability to grasp the most likely meaning will improve.

Best novels/books for beginners - Hirakana - 2013-04-18

egoplant Wrote:Anything that's slice of life. 4-koma manga like Azumanga Daioh or K-On seems to be pretty easy. Easy light novels are Ore No Imouto and Kimi No Tabi. I hope you're learning words with those kanji as you're going or you're gonna be waiting quite a while before you read anything at all.
I don't want to start a fight, but I'm perfectly capable of deciding how to learn Japanese myself, thanks. I asked what books I should read, not how to learn Japanese.

Best novels/books for beginners - egoplant - 2013-04-18

Hirakana Wrote:
egoplant Wrote:Anything that's slice of life. 4-koma manga like Azumanga Daioh or K-On seems to be pretty easy. Easy light novels are Ore No Imouto and Kimi No Tabi. I hope you're learning words with those kanji as you're going or you're gonna be waiting quite a while before you read anything at all.
I don't want to start a fight, but I'm perfectly capable of deciding how to learn Japanese myself, thanks. I asked what books I should read, not how to learn Japanese.
I recommended you books. I'm just letting you know that you won't be "reading" for a while if all you've done is RTK. Kanji are not words. Have a nice day.

Best novels/books for beginners - chamcham - 2013-04-18

Any book by mori eto (森絵都).
Try Rhythm, Goldfish and Colorful (note: the book names are in katakana).

There is anime movie called "Colorful".
It is based on Mori Eto's book.

Best novels/books for beginners - howtwosavealif3 - 2013-04-18

I like mori eto. It's easy to read but it's good stuff. I personally LOVED LOVED LOVED eien no deguchi. I highly recommend it if you're a girl and if you feel old. If you're not a girl but wonder what it's like to be a girl (not sure how this sounds ) then check it out. She writes books for children and adults but I've enjoyed reading both types.

also I like honda takayoshi so i'mma reocmmend him. I really like his writing style. It makes reading japanese so enjoyable like any good writer should. It's compatible with me, can't guarantee it for you but nonetheless i want to recommend it.

OTSUICHI's writing style is easy to read too.

there's also books with furigana. those are obviously easier since you don't have to look up anything readings-wise. If you have a japanese book store nearby... you should check those out too.

Even if you're a beginner i think to an extent you can tell what writing styles appeal to you and which writing styles are completely just torturous for you. Some things you don't even need to understand 50% of it to tell whether you hate it or not. Sometimes it's just obvious. Just go with your gut feeling and find the japanese authors that really gel well with you.

I actually made a bookshelf off the dokusho meter website lol.
http://book.akahoshitakuya.com/u/124681/cat
I chose one book by the author that i like with most of the authors's books that i've read. some authors didn't make my bookshelf lol.

Best novels/books for beginners - Aikynaro - 2013-04-18

Hirakana Wrote:
egoplant Wrote:Anything that's slice of life. 4-koma manga like Azumanga Daioh or K-On seems to be pretty easy. Easy light novels are Ore No Imouto and Kimi No Tabi. I hope you're learning words with those kanji as you're going or you're gonna be waiting quite a while before you read anything at all.
I don't want to start a fight, but I'm perfectly capable of deciding how to learn Japanese myself, thanks. I asked what books I should read, not how to learn Japanese.
You're being incredibly rude to someone who is helping you.


For manga, I've had success with: Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha, Pita Ten, Life, 魔法使いに大切なこと (aka Someday's Dreamers), 私がモテないのはどう考えてもお前らが悪い (aka It's Not My Fault I'm not Popular), Nanaka 6/17.
Of these, Life (ライフ) is probably the easiest. Highschool drama in general is pretty simple.

I finished my first novel the other day - 解かれた封印. It's a children's book with furigana for everything. Not exactly brilliant stuff, but simple.
霧のむこうのふしぎな町 is another I've had a fair bit of success with, and is actually quite interesting.

These are children's novels, not light novels - but I think children's novels are a more realistic place to start.

Best novels/books for beginners - Tzadeck - 2013-04-18

egoplant Wrote:Azumanga Daioh
One thing about Azumanga Daioh, though, is that it doesn't include furigana. It is, however, by far the best manga I've ever read. It really makes me laugh a lot. Though, there were parts that were hard to understand for cultural reasons before I lived in Japan (For example, when Osaka first comes Tomo says stupid stuff to try to get Osaka to do tsukkomi--"Osakans put Takoyaki in their bento, right?"--but Osaka doesn't realize and is bad at it. That's pretty confusing when you have no idea what manzai is.)

Best novels/books for beginners - uisukii - 2013-04-19

Hirakana Wrote:
egoplant Wrote:Anything that's slice of life. 4-koma manga like Azumanga Daioh or K-On seems to be pretty easy. Easy light novels are Ore No Imouto and Kimi No Tabi. I hope you're learning words with those kanji as you're going or you're gonna be waiting quite a while before you read anything at all.
I don't want to start a fight, but I'm perfectly capable of deciding how to learn Japanese myself, thanks. I asked what books I should read, not how to learn Japanese.
lol, what? Where in the world did that come from?

Theatrics aside, I'm going to put another voice of support in favour of the slice of life/school life genre. Generally speaking, a lot of the vocabulary is common and accessible (that is, you are probably not going to come across a lot of archaic, scientific or genre specific dialogue/patterns) and one of the reasons as to why these types of manga, etc/ light novels, etc. are popular as they tend to be generally mundane enough to relate to and ease into the narratives.

Edit: I'm just going to leave this here...

http://www.raw1st.org/

Best novels/books for beginners - Hirakana - 2013-04-19

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I didn't want to seem rude. Sorry, egoplant.

Best novels/books for beginners - RawToast - 2013-04-19

Quote:I'm pretty much a complete noob to Japanese, at about 650 in RTK, however I want to organise some supplies for when I go full on AJATT-ing.
Just a note, I picked up Yotsubato 1 when I had done ~500 words from core and the first TK section and wasn't ready for it. If you get the Yotsubato vocab deck though, you can make a good attempt at it.

I just pick up Yotsubato once every few weeks and try reading it, each time it gets easier. I'd have to do a lot of dictionary look ups to read the whole thing.

Best novels/books for beginners - tokyostyle - 2013-04-19

egoplant Wrote:I hope you're learning words with those kanji as you're going or you're gonna be waiting quite a while before you read anything at all.
No one should ever be concerned about perfect comprehension. It will come but it doesn't seem to come nearly as fast as anyone wants it to. Defining reading as being only perfect comprehension is the kind of mental trap that is completely useless for beginners.

Some people may love grinding Core 6k using an SRS but there are those of us who love grinding crap we barely understand and letting the important words reenforce themselves. When it comes to gaining effortless fluency one system doesn't appear to be much better than the other as long as you don't burn out.

Best novels/books for beginners - pauro02 - 2013-04-19

I suggest that you watch Japanese stuffs rather than reading.. And try to familiarize with words.. I suggest watching animes, because most animes are dedicated for teenagers or early adult people.. So if you want to have an idea of how these age group of people uses their language, its best to watch anime. P.S Japanese people uses their language differently in so many cases like respect, age groups, and gender. Smile) ganbatte kudasai ne soshite nihonggo no benkyou o benkyoushite kudasai!

Best novels/books for beginners - Growl - 2013-04-19

Sorry, not trying to be stupid here or anything, but summarizing, what are the novels/titles? I just want to copy, paste on Amazon or google and buy.

Best novels/books for beginners - egoplant - 2013-04-19

I'm not sure why you'd want to buy them, you're just making it harder on yourself.

Best novels/books for beginners - Stian - 2013-04-19

pauro02 Wrote:ganbatte kudasai ne soshite nihonggo no benkyou o benkyoushite kudasai!
Interesting... hmm...

Best novels/books for beginners - pauro02 - 2013-04-20

nihongo = 日本語　＝　にほんご＝　ニホンゴ　happy?

Best novels/books for beginners - squarezebra - 2013-04-20

Sorry for highjacking the thread; i didnt think it was worth making a new thread for this.
Following a link that may have been posted somewhere in this thread I happened upon a Raw novel in JPEGs... I was wondering if anyone knows how to compile them to put on my ipad as a book?

Best novels/books for beginners - tokyostyle - 2013-04-21

^ I use a comic book reader, specifically Comic Zeal, for this purpose.

Best novels/books for beginners - sherlock - 2013-04-26

Regarding Life (ライフ), is this the one that was made into a J-dorama?

squarezebra Wrote:Sorry for highjacking the thread; i didnt think it was worth making a new thread for this.
Following a link that may have been posted somewhere in this thread I happened upon a Raw novel in JPEGs... I was wondering if anyone knows how to compile them to put on my ipad as a book?
Maybe you can try converting everything into a PDF document?

I used to read a lot of manga when I was starting out with Japanese. When I switched to novels, I found myself getting headaches easily. I guess I really can't get used to reading tategaki for a long time Undecided

Best novels/books for beginners - visual_jei - 2013-05-04

If you have basic grammar structures in place as well as a kanji bank of the first 300+ high frequency kanji, a good place to start are mangas/novels that spawn from popular children's movies. When I first started out with the first few chapters of Genki, I was able to get through the movie manga set for Studio Ghibli's "Ponyo." It was so simple and the pictures were enjoyable. I think that set was 5-6 books, very easy to get through.

If you're a beginner and you want to jump into "light novels," I'd suggest children's novels such as ones that are written from Disney movies. These are structured like young adult light novels but a lot easier to read. The plus side is that you may have watched these movies already, know the storylines, and there are high frequency kanji as well as furigana all over the place.

Have you ever opened a real light novel? It's a lot harder than you think. Many of these are written with no furigana for Japanese elementary kanji (which is in the hundreds).

I agree with many many who are recommending the shoujo genre. I think Marmalade Boy is an easy series to read and follow.

I've also written some opinions what I recommend for early Japanese readers here: http://lostteacherinjapan.weebly.com/blog.html