A few questions rolled up into one thread, I suppose. I am planning to take (and pass with flying colors!) the N4 exam this December. I'm wondering if there is any interesting native material to read or listen to at my level. Now I know that "interesting" is of course subjective. But more broadly I'm wondering what the first native material people on this board started reading, listening to and - most importantly - enjoying.

Where were you in the JLPT scale when you found some material that you could enjoy reading and listening to? Do you have any recommendations?

Some points of reference: I often read the NHK Easy News site. With Rikakun I can understand most of it, but it's still definitely a struggle. I regularly read English language news, so this is a good fit for me. I also have a great set of Japanese Graded Readers. These are enjoyable, but they are also not the kind of material that I would normally read in English.

Thanks.

I think the first native material I started with was manga. I'd have the manga in front of me, while having the English version nearby, and looked at the latter when I couldn't understand something. I could pick out words, and easy sentences at that time.

Bokusenou Wrote:I think the first native material I started with was manga. I'd have the manga in front of me, while having the English version nearby, and looked at the latter when I couldn't understand something. I could pick out words, and easy sentences at that time.

Thank you for your reply. I have no experience with manga. Can you recommend some?

My first picks were Dragonball and Yotsubato.
I always recommend Murakami's Norwegian Wood, too.

If you haven't read through here it's a list of manga sorted by ability level.

yogert909 Wrote:If you haven't read through here it's a list of manga sorted by ability level.

Perfect! Thank you!

sunehiro Wrote:My first picks were Dragonball and Yotsubato.
I always recommend Murakami's Norwegian Wood, too.

I haven't read Norwedian Wood, but I can't imagine it's even remotely on the same level as the other two things you mentioned.

I made a thread about children's books that is probably relevant. Of what I mentioned there ふたごの魔法つかい and ハンカチの上の花畑 are likely quite do-able at that level.

sunehiro Wrote:My first picks were Dragonball and Yotsubato.
I always recommend Murakami's Norwegian Wood, too.

I have Norwegian Wood sat on my shelf next to me.

Why, exactly, would you recommend that alongside Dragonball for someone around N4 level?

At N4 even Dragonball would be quite difficult.

NightSky Wrote:

sunehiro Wrote:My first picks were Dragonball and Yotsubato.
I always recommend Murakami's Norwegian Wood, too.

I have Norwegian Wood sat on my shelf next to me.

Why, exactly, would you recommend that alongside Dragonball for someone around N4 level?

At N4 even Dragonball would be quite difficult.

Yeah, I sluuuudgged through Norwegian Wood gruelingly at N2. People recommend weirdly hard things like that on this forum all the time--presumably on the 'just jump right in, you'll be fine' philosophy. It seems absurd from my own experience of facing that learning curve and what it was like.

Besides, there are way easier books. I usually recommend 西の魔女が死んだ or 窓ぎわのトットちゃん as good books for beginners--but not until someone is approaching N2 at the very least. They're both fabulous books too.

Norwegian Wood was the first book I read, and I actually finished the first part before I started reading DragonBall.
At the time I had just added 2000 words in Anki, and I was attempting N5 (but could definitely pass N4).
Indeed I agree there are easier books, so if you find it too difficult just drop it and try another one.

Talking about DragonBall, I found very easy, the first part in particular.
You just have to skip the hard parts, but I do this even today.

Maybe I just didn't know easier materials so I made do with the stuff I had...
Anyway I really enjoyed them, and they gave me very good bases.
So I think it's more like 'find something to read that you enjoy, you'll be fine'.

sunehiro Wrote:Talking about DragonBall, I found very easy, the first part in particular.
You just have to skip the hard parts, but I do this even today.

I suppose everything is easy if you just "skip the hard parts" ....

Honestly, I don't think there's much interesting material at the lower levels. Sure, there's what's considered to be "easy" manga, but the reality is, at N4, even those will be difficult. If something interests me, I dive into it, even if it's way above my level. I never mind crawling through a manga page by page, but that's just me.

I really like Read Real Japanese (http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese...1568365292). It's a collection of short stories from different contemporary authors. It comes with translations of difficult passages, a vocabulary list, and extensive commentary.

The level of the stories varies, you might find some very hard and others easier. But because they are all short, you can get though even the tougher ones in a reasonable amount of time. Plus it's a great introduction to a range of Japanese authors.

I'm an upper-N3. The easiest, most enjoyable materiel I've found is Yotsubato. I don't think there's anything really at the N4 level, but Yotsubato has a lot of physical humor (just looking at the pictures is funny), so I think you can pick it up and enjoy it. If there's something you don't understand, skip it mercilessly! This is your study and you have the right to veto boredom.

After that... I dunno, I think manga's probably my best form of practice. The pictures help you, and you can find really easy manga with furigana like Yotsubato, or more complex, furigana-less manga like Mushishi or Monster for when you're stronger at Japanese and want to be challenged accordingly. I think manga will test my abilities forever...

What do you normally do in English? Do you read lots of novels? The sheer stamina that reading novels in Japanese takes makes that daunting...but you can find short stories, I guess! I've heard some recommend Murakami for Japanese beginners and I've heard some Japanese high school students say he's way hard, so I dunno about him. I've never made it very far with Murakami's works myself. I'm reading Alice in Wonderland right now and that's been great. It's kind of long (I've been working on it on and off for a month now) but I can understand most of it, or at least understand what's going on thanks to having read the English version before. I've also heard that anything Miyazaki adapted into a movie - Kiki's Delivery Service, the Girl who Leapt Through Time, Howl's Moving Castle - is a fairly easy to read and enjoyable Japanese novel in its original format. Worth noting, Howl's Moving Castle was a series written by an English author, so the Japanese version is actually a translation. It might be easier to read because of that, I think, since it comes from an English mindset. But it's super long so I haven't picked it up yet, too scary. ...sorry, none of this is N4 level at all! Just look into it later I guess.

I don't remember exactly when I started trying to read Dragonball, but I don't think I'd been studying for all that long at the time. There was also a baseball manga called Major I used to read that I thought was super awesome, and I think I'd been in Japan and studying Japanese less than 6 months at that point. I was probably around 3kyuu level (old 3kyuu), and I remember being able to read enough to enjoy both of them at least.

I think Dragonball is about as easy as you are going to find for interesting native material. If you can't understand enough of that to enjoy it, you should go do some more studying first.

Where can you find Dragon Ball manga online?

learningkanji Wrote:Where can you find Dragon Ball manga online?

It's against forum rules to say that type of thing.

(2014-08-09, 10:04 am)Melamelachan Wrote: I really like Read Real Japanese (http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese...1568365292). It's a collection of short stories from different contemporary authors. It comes with translations of difficult passages, a vocabulary list, and extensive commentary.

The level of the stories varies, you might find some very hard and others easier. But because they are all short, you can get though even the tougher ones in a reasonable amount of time. Plus it's a great introduction to a range of Japanese authors.

I have heard great things about the "Real Japanese ".  How many shorts stories are included in this collection ? I am thinking of getting my hands on this.


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(2016-04-19, 2:24 am)Subscription Wrote:

(2014-08-09, 10:04 am)Melamelachan Wrote: I really like Read Real Japanese (http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese...1568365292). It's a collection of short stories from different contemporary authors. It comes with translations of difficult passages, a vocabulary list, and extensive commentary.

The level of the stories varies, you might find some very hard and others easier. But because they are all short, you can get though even the tougher ones in a reasonable amount of time. Plus it's a great introduction to a range of Japanese authors.

I have heard great things about the "Real Japanese ".  How many shorts stories are included in this collection ? I am thinking of getting my hands on this.


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Somewhere around 8 as I recall although I can only think of six at the moment, but it's been a few years since I read or listened to it. The table of contents should be around on the amazon site or wikipedia or something.

It's a moderately sized paperback, but half the pages are the English translation notes, so you're only getting roughly half of a modest length novel in Japanese text - broken up into short stories of course.

I found it extremely valuable in developing the ability to actually read, comprehend and enjoy Japanese prose. Also the accompanying CD is pretty useful. I listened to all the stories a number of times which helps cement the vocabulary and sentence patterns, and develop listening comprehension a bit.

I know that the original questions is old (and that Ariari is now aiming at the N3   ), but I would recommend taking a look at the なぜ?どうして? series. The theme is "answeing questions kids often wonder about", i.e. why do we yawn? Why doesn`t the spider get stuck in it`s own net? Who was Isaac Newton, etc.

They are aimed at school kids from first to sixth grade, and maybe first grade material corresponds to N4. There is a couple of books for each school year and there is a natural progresseion built in from year to year.

I have read some of them and I plan to recommend them fron now on, everytime something about doing Tadoku comes up on this forum

Here is links for editions aimed at first graders:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4052031458
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4052034090
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4052039076

(2016-04-19, 4:54 am)Hinsudesu Wrote: I know that the original questions is old (and that Ariari is now aiming at the N3   ), but I would recommend taking a look at the なぜ?どうして? series. The theme is "answeing questions kids often wonder about", i.e. why do we yawn? Why doesn`t the spider get stuck in it`s own net? Who was Isaac Newton, etc.

They are aimed at school kids from first to sixth grade, and maybe first grade material corresponds to N4. There is a couple of books for each school year and there is a natural progresseion built in from year to year.

I have read some of them and I plan to recommend them fron now on, everytime something about doing Tadoku comes up on this forum

Here is links for editions aimed at first graders:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4052031458
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4052034090
http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4052039076

Love that this thread is getting activity again. I sure wish I knew about なぜ?どうして?  a year ago! I also wish I had tried reading dragonball a year ago.

I just discovered a new resource for easy reading called Matcha. They have articles in 日本語 and やさしい日本語 (Easy Japanese). The only bad thing is that articles don't match in a sense that the Easy Japanese equivalent of the article is written later so there is a delay.

More info in how to use the site/review: http://nihongo-e-na.com/eng/site/id660.html
やさしい日本語 (Easy Japanese): http://mcha-easy.com