I was just reading another post where someone says that books by "Murakami Haruki" are his level, and I got to thinking:

How do I know if it's my level?

Is there anywhere online that I can go to see previews of Japanese books and/or Mangas.

I'm not above just snatching the whole book online, but I'd be perfectly happy with a preview to know if it's going to be something I can read or not.

Amazon.co.jp has the same "Look inside this book!" feature as Amazon.com. The selection appears to be a little bit more limited, but here's the first hit for Murakami Haruki (looks like a collection of English short stories he translated with audio CDs):

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/reader/475741...eader-link

Here's another one that looks like an original story:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/reader/416750...eader-page

And this one looks like a kid's book about ... crabs?

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/reader/416750...eader-link

Just look for the same orange "Look inside this book!" arrow wrapping around the upper right corner of the cover image in your search results, and click through a few pages to find the content. I'd post a link directly, but the Amazon URL has Japanese characters and my browser is not cooperating.

Delina Wrote:Amazon.co.jp has the same "Look inside this book!" feature as Amazon.com. The selection appears to be a little bit more limited, but here's the first hit for Murakami Haruki (looks like a collection of English short stories he translated with audio CDs):

Hm, thanks, but all 3 of those give me an error. I even tried going back to the amazon page and click the 'この本の中' link and the image of the book and it still gives me an error.

I've also found that Amazon tends not to have many previews like that. Google Books doesn't seem to have much for Japanese, either.

sometimes http://www.ask-digital.co.jp has previews

http://www.jpqueen.com has previews for manga

For this specific case, http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=2510 includes a post by me with a couple of first-paragraphs from Murakami and others, and there are a few more at the bottom of
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~pmayd...anese.html (I see that I haven't made the webserver DTRT with the encoding there so you might need to tell your browser it's Japanese if you get mojibake).

Sorry about the links - they must be session-based or something. I just searched for 村上 春樹 on amazon.co.jp and they came up in the first page of results, or were linked in "You might also like..."

pm215 Wrote:For this specific case, http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=2510 includes a post by me with a couple of first-paragraphs from Murakami and others, and there are a few more at the bottom of
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~pmayd...anese.html (I see that I haven't made the webserver DTRT with the encoding there so you might need to tell your browser it's Japanese if you get mojibake).

Thanks!

And thanks everyone for the tips!

Of course, this just confirmed that it's still way above my head, but hey! I'll get there eventually.

pm215 Wrote:For this specific case, http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=2510 includes a post by me with a couple of first-paragraphs from Murakami and others, and there are a few more at the bottom of
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~pmayd...anese.html (I see that I haven't made the webserver DTRT with the encoding there so you might need to tell your browser it's Japanese if you get mojibake).

It's nice of you to post these online and I hope you will continue to do so. That said, looking at your transcription of the first paragraph of スプートニクの恋人 there seem to be a few typos:

Quote:22歳の春にすみれは生まれて初めて恋に落ちた。広大な平原をまっすぐ突き進む竜巻のような激しい恋だった。それは行く手のかたちあるものを残らずなき倒し、片端から空に巻き上げ、理不尽に引きちぎり、完膚なきまでに叩きすぶした。そして勢いをひとつまきもゆるめることなく大洋を吹きわたり、アンコールワットを無慈悲に崩し、インドの森を気の毒な一群の虎ごと熱で焼きつくし、ベルシャの砂漠の砂嵐となってどこかのエキゾチックな城塞都市をまるごとひとつ砂に埋もれさせてしまった。みごとに記念碑的な恋だった。恋に落ちた相手はすみれより17歳年上で、結婚していた。さらにつけ加えれなら、女性だった。それがすべてのものごとが始まった場所であり、(ほとんど)すべてのものごとが終わった場所だった。

なき倒し→なぎ倒し
ひとつまき→ひとつまみ
つけ加えれ→つけ加える

mystes Wrote:It's nice of you to post these online and I hope you will continue to do so. That said, looking at your transcription of the first paragraph of スプートニクの恋人 there seem to be a few typos:

Thanks. I've corrected them (in the forum post and the web page). I typed that one out in a bit of a hurry for the forum post and didn't really bother to proofread it (although my proofreading in Japanese is pretty poor anyhow, especially for something like the Murakami which is still a serious stretch for me).

(Thanks also to you and wccrawford for the encouragement -- it's only a little tedious to transcribe these things, but sufficiently so that it's nice to know I'm not just typing into a void :-))