I just started reading real Japanese material. I am starting with manga and I am having some trouble with the manga I am reading I have seen the anime I fully understand the story its just some of the words I do not understand. When you guys read do you stop to take notes or do you keep reading even thought you don't understand some of the words and just come back to them later. I have not been reading at all and I hear that it really helps your Japanese get the the next level and that what I am looking for. Can you guys help me out? Thanks in advance.

[Zgarbas]

It depends. Sometimes, if I get the context I don't bother with individual words (especially if they're obviously in-universe technical jargon), other times I get the time to look up the words...especially if I see them pop up repeatedly.

Since this is your first manga, and you already know what should be said, I'd recommend going through the first few chapters without looking up anything unless you really can't understand it. Just get used to the reading itself first, and once you have a good pace start bothering with the details.

@Zgarbas
Yea I have read about have of it without looking any words up and thought maybe I should go back and try to study some of the works that I did not know.

I have quite a systematic approach to studying manga, but does require you to own the physical copies (and not mind scribbling all over them).

I have 3 stages to studying manga:

Preliminary stage:
I boot up my computer, get the raw manga (for kanjitomo) and translated version up on screen and start up kanjitomo (for manga without furigana).

Stage 1: Word hunting.

I open up the physical copy of the manga and start reading. When I come across a word I don't know, I grab a pencil and write a number next to the word (for reference), I then look up the word using kanjitomo and rikaisama, and find a blank space on the page to write the number, furigana and meaning in a condensed format. I carry this on until I feel I have enough new words for the day.

Stage 2: Mining

Boot up anki and start adding all the new words you have come across, I use example sentences from the manga when I can, but If I find the sentence has too many words I am not used to or it is too colloquial, then I grab a example sentence from http://tangorin.com/ . If you can add a picture of the sentence in the manga then go for it, but I find it a bit of a pain and takes up too much time.

stage 3: re read!

Now I can step away from the computer and actually enjoy life. When ever I feel like reading I pick up a manga that I have been referencing, and read through it. Any words I don't recognize I just look at the border and read the definition I wrote down. When I feel I know a word well enough I rub out the translation (this bit is important). Slowly and surely you will have many annotated mangas in your collection that you can soon read without any crutches.

Rinse and repeat.


Problems I have had:
Some manga have so many words I don't know that I run out of spaces to write the definitions. If this happens I leave the word and add it when I have learnt another word enough to rub it out.

Getting sick of the manga. This method has you reading the manga over and over again, I have two ways to get past this:

1)I have quite a big manga collection so I switch to a different manga each day. This also has the advantage of having a large annotated library, so you can pick any book for stage 3 to read that day to fit your mood.

2) I also only pick manga that I know I love and will never get sick of (bit obvious this one)


And thats it!

P.S I have a cold so if it sounds like I am drunk or crazy in any of this, don't worry it is just my annoying leaky sinuses doing that.

I like Babyrat's approach, above, too, however, here's Stansfield's Kanji Reading Method (patent pending ):
1. Open up your physical copy of, preferably furigana rich, Japanese manga.
2. Open up your free of charge, sometimes possibly shamelessly stolen but usually just honestly fan-translated copy of the same manga in English (it's not theft if you already bought the Japanese version, and the translation is fan-made), on any electronic device.
3. Try reading the Japanese version. Whenever you can't understand something (no matter how small a detail), automatically switch to the English version, read the full page in English (or, if it's really a lot of text, half a page).
4. Back to the Japanese version, carefully read the same page in Japanese, identify the words/grammar that gave you trouble.
5. If you find an unknown word you really like, and that seems like a word that's gonna pop up a lot in this manga, look it up on jisho.org, then take out a pencil and write it down in your notebook, along with its reading and meaning.
6. If you still can't understand some Japanese text, just skip it, forget about it. This is not gonna be a common occurence, usually the English version will help you understand both the grammar and the vocab in the Japanese sentences, even if you couldn't figure them out before.
7. Whenever you get some free time and nothing better to do, whip out your notepad and study your notes.

Note: this method works best if you have a pretty good understanding of Japanese grammar; that eliminates a major obstacle in reading comprehension.

I generally read a book as well as I can, then go back through and have a vocab adding session. If there are a huge number of unknown words, then I might work on the book a page or two at a time, but usually it's easy enough to just reread again afterwards.

Wow, I was going to come to the forum today and ask about reading methods, but I see that what I've been doing (evolving approach of whatever works) is not so crazy.

For example, I read Audition by Murakami Ryuu in English (I had already seen the movie a few times) and then went through the native text and pencil marked each work I didn't know the pronunciation and/or meaning of, then handwrote these into Anki using Mazec handwriting recognizer on a tablet, then Rikaisama, and later I switched to EPWing2Anki. I plan to re-read the book once I've reviewed most of the vocab in Anki.

For Kitchen, by Yoshimoto Banana, I read the English first and then just read throught he native text writing down words I saw popping up again and again whose meaning I could guess but not the pronunciation.
There are two stories in that book, which I finished today. I tried to just read through the whole second story in the native text and then speed read the English version afterward to fill in details I had missed and to gauge how well my comprehension was (half-decent).

For manga, I just watch the anime and then read the furigana manga and I look up words on the spot when they are bothering me.

I might try to do something more thorough like Babyrat's approach at some point, but I don't have a large collection of or familiarity with manga at this point.
I'm not sure I have the patience to use someone else's prescribed method to the t (well, I did do Heisig's method) because I'm so eager to just open that book!

On that note, let me get back to my Tadoku materials, I'm starting Kira Kira Hikaru by Ekuni Kaori today.

I look up words I don't know and words I'm iffy about. Which means it takes over an hour to read 10 pages. One could also take into account the difficulty of the material I'm reading (Norwegian Wood) and think it's acceptable. I'm fine with it because: (1) I can't go back and read material a second time like some people, and (2) I need new words for my Anki deck anyway. The longer you read the author the more familiar you get with their writing style and the less you look up. The more books you read the more they become easier from the get-go regardless of the author. As someone who wasn't reading "real" Japanese books this time last year, and now reading Murakami, I'm happy with my progression.