Don't forget, the drama scripts (either from dramanote or from bookstores) make for a great stop gap between mangas and light novels. If you can follow the drama with subtitles, you're likely able to follow the script.

As others have said, the Haruhi books are not the easiest. The sentences are long and elaborate. I've also read some 十二国記 books and they're easier then the Haruhi books, though harder than the simplest ones like Kino no Tabi. The most confusing thing about the 12 Kingdoms (十二国記) books is keeping track of all the names that the author invents for things. There are many names all using different and equally obscure kanji. She also sometimes uses some very old style court language that's probably hard to understand even for Japanese. That's the exception though.

Read keitai shousetsu as a step before light novels.

Nukemarine Wrote:Don't forget, the drama scripts (either from dramanote or from bookstores) make for a great stop gap between mangas and light novels. If you can follow the drama with subtitles, you're likely able to follow the script.

Oh yea, thanks for reminding me. I gotta read up on some scripts. I think I've found my problem with reading. I tend to copy and paste what I read into a reading log, using ms word,etc. It feels like work doing that. I should just read,read,read with no restraints. That way I can easily read 50pages+ a day of Japanese stuff(100 maximum, or just keep reading until I have to do something else)

I'm reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it's much easier than I thought it would be. From a language point of view there are so many more structures used so it's way more interesting and useful than manga (to me at this point).

It uses some kind of graded system of furigana too which is really helpful.

If you want to try a novel go for it. I put it off, thinking it would be too hard but I should have tried it sooner.

caivano Wrote:I'm reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it's much easier than I thought it would be. From a language point of view there are so many more structures used so it's way more interesting and useful than manga (to me at this point).

It uses some kind of graded system of furigana too which is really helpful.

If you want to try a novel go for it. I put it off, thinking it would be too hard but I should have tried it sooner.

Harry potter in japanese eh? Wouldn't mind reading that, like I wasn't really into harry potter stuff, kinda disliked it. But the thought of me reading it in Japanese would give me an awesome feeling.
I remember those books in English were huge, must be bigger in Japanese then

Jarvik7 Wrote:Read keitai shousetsu as a step before light novels.

lol. I've heard 2 sides to this. One was that it's at least promoting reading. The other is that they are really poorly written so people's japanese would get worse from reading it or at least feel irritated at the incorrect grammar/poor japanese etc.

I agree with the latter since they're crappy... story-wise, literary-wise.

ta12121 Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:Don't forget, the drama scripts (either from dramanote or from bookstores) make for a great stop gap between mangas and light novels. If you can follow the drama with subtitles, you're likely able to follow the script.

Oh yea, thanks for reminding me. I gotta read up on some scripts. I think I've found my problem with reading. I tend to copy and paste what I read into a reading log, using ms word,etc. It feels like work doing that. I should just read,read,read with no restraints. That way I can easily read 50pages+ a day of Japanese stuff(100 maximum, or just keep reading until I have to do something else)

Too bad you don't have a Mac!......haha.....

I usually take drama scripts and convert them to PDF.

Apple Mac OS X comes with a PDF viewer called Preview.

One of the features I LOVE about this software is that you can
highlight words in yellow in PDF documents(I think the keyboard
shortcut is Fn-Ctrl-H).

You can even add sticky notes to highlighted words (and I use it very often).

So as I'm reading, I highlight the interesting words and keep moving on.
Mac OS X comes with JPN-to-JPN and JPN-to-ENG dictionaries by default.
So I use the dictionary to look up unknown words.

What I found that works for me is to only read (roughly) 5 minutes worth of
dialogue at a time per study session. By "roughly", I mean I try to study whole scenes. Have one complete drama scene to study (instead of ending it in the middle).

I cut dramas into roughly 5-minute segments and I have my computer choose a random
segment each day. I study that 5-minute clip until I understand everything. These are for dramas I've already watched in Japanese. For new dramas, I watched them straight through in Japanese. And then they get placed in my study pile.

For me, reading 10-minutes of dialogue is too much.
So I cut it in half and it works better for me.

Btw, drama is very good for learning gitaigo and giraigo (i.e. words like "uki uki", "waku waku", etc). You have no idea how many of those words I've heard in real conversation with Japanese people. They LOVE to use them.

During each drama season, I try to pick 1 or 2 dramas to watch with Japanese subs.
The other dramas I watch in English. Basically, I look for dramas with real-life
situations that I'm more likely to encounter.

So something like "Bloody Monday" I would rather watch in English.
But "Ohitorisama" is great to watch in Japanese.

PDF eh. hmm. As for the 5min videos, sounds like subs2srs. I'm just lazy to try to use that.

@chamcham - If you did that process in Transcriber or that program that uses .lrc files and hit the occasional hotkey, you could be adding timestamps to various areas of the file and share them so people could make decks from transcripts or read them as interactive multimedia texts in balloonguy's reader (which automatically highlights now)! ;p

ta12121 Wrote:PDF eh. hmm. As for the 5min videos, sounds like subs2srs. I'm just lazy to try to use that.

That's fine. Like I said, I do it because it works for me.
I don't use subs2srs or SRS anything from drama.

I simply have my annotated PDFs with notes.

The only things I SRS these days are gitaigo/giraigo and kanji.

ta12121 Wrote:

caivano Wrote:I'm reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it's much easier than I thought it would be. From a language point of view there are so many more structures used so it's way more interesting and useful than manga (to me at this point).

It uses some kind of graded system of furigana too which is really helpful.

If you want to try a novel go for it. I put it off, thinking it would be too hard but I should have tried it sooner.

Harry potter in japanese eh? Wouldn't mind reading that, like I wasn't really into harry potter stuff, kinda disliked it. But the thought of me reading it in Japanese would give me an awesome feeling.
I remember those books in English were huge, must be bigger in Japanese then

Yup the later ones are actually split into 2 physical books, you can pick them up from Book Off for 105 en for both tho.

chamcham Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:PDF eh. hmm. As for the 5min videos, sounds like subs2srs. I'm just lazy to try to use that.

That's fine. Like I said, I do it because it works for me.
I don't use subs2srs or SRS anything from drama.

I simply have my annotated PDFs with notes.

The only things I SRS these days are gitaigo/giraigo and kanji.

For me it's the opposite I srs a lot, don't read that much. But I do immerse myself a lot. Nowadays I'm getting into the habit of reading a lot as well. Soon it's going to be a lot of productions cards soon. Eventually I'll practice speaking a lot as well. Summer is here,so more time for this!

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:Read keitai shousetsu as a step before light novels.

lol. I've heard 2 sides to this. One was that it's at least promoting reading. The other is that they are really poorly written so people's japanese would get worse from reading it or at least feel irritated at the incorrect grammar/poor japanese etc.

I agree with the latter since they're crappy... story-wise, literary-wise.

They are heavily stylized, but so is every other bit of Japanese fiction (anime/drama/novel/manga) you'd consume. It's how people do characterization in Japan.

That said, keitai shousetsu do suck as literature. The plots are always cookie cutter rape, abortions, and suicide attempts. Then again, I think that "serious literature" takes itself far too seriously too.

They ARE easier to read than light novels and mercifully shorter too though, so it's worth reading a few popular ones as a stepping stone before a light novel or full blown novel. I think it's silly to slave over a novel that takes 10 minutes per page and furious dictionary use. Work your level up with progressively harder mediums.

You can have something to talk with schoolgirls about too When I was an ALT one of my students was reading a dead tree of 恋空 (which is about rape->depression->suicide attempt->bullying->teenage pregnancy->miscarriage) which I was reading on my phone during commutes at the time.

I wonder why 14 year old girls are so interested in rape and abortions. Maybe they imagine that that is what adult relationships are like?

Jarvik7 Wrote:I wonder why 14 year old girls are so interested in rape and abortions. Maybe they imagine that that is what adult relationships are like?

http://tinyurl.com/ygewul6 (maybe SWF* pic, just long URL)
Can you blame them?

edit: *by safe for work, I guess I mean that there's no nudity. Don't look when your boss is looking (why are you on RtK when your boss** is around?), but it's not a shock site or anything.

edit2: **I guess it depends on who your boss is. If he's a fan of Haruhi, then I guess it would be OK. Or, if you work in porn, then you might get weird looks for looking at cartoons***.

edit3: ***unless the porn company you work at deals in hentai. then they'd just shrug. it's "too safe" for the workplace

So are abortions like saying goodbye in Japan?

I wouldn't say that pic is SFW though, at least not in English speaking workplaces.


Do your webbrowsing at home, work is for Anki.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Do your webbrowsing at home, work is for Anki.

I have some seriously NSFW sentences in my deck

Just make sure they are monolingual, no one will notice

I picked up this the other day

http://www.amazon.co.jp/村上朝日堂-新潮文庫-村上-春樹/dp/4101001324

I was looking for a different Murakami Haruki short story book but was in a rush so just grabbed any and it turned out to be really good. It's really really short stories / essays, they're all about 2 pages long so it's perfect for the train / waiting at the station.

So when you guys are saying light novels do you mean these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_novel

I was assuming short books or non-serious books, didn't know that ライトノベル was actually a particular kind of book.
It's easier to read than I thought it'd be too.

caivano Wrote:So when you guys are saying light novels do you mean these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_novel

I was assuming short books or non-serious books, didn't know that ライトノベル was actually a particular kind of book.
It's easier to read than I thought it'd be too.

Yeah. I was introduced to them because I wanted specific ones that are extensions of my favorite animes, but they never got translated. They're pretty much my main motivation to learn Japanese, since almost everything else I like does eventually get translated, even if unofficially.

wccrawford Wrote:

caivano Wrote:So when you guys are saying light novels do you mean these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_novel

I was assuming short books or non-serious books, didn't know that ライトノベル was actually a particular kind of book.
It's easier to read than I thought it'd be too.

Yeah. I was introduced to them because I wanted specific ones that are extensions of my favorite animes, but they never got translated. They're pretty much my main motivation to learn Japanese, since almost everything else I like does eventually get translated, even if unofficially.

Still, most translations, especially unofficial ones, are subpar.

I think this is the 恋空 novel:

http://ip.tosp.co.jp/BK/TosBK100.asp?I=h...=1&SPA=200

First lines:

「あ〜！！超お腹減ったしっ♪♪」

待ちに待った昼休み。
美嘉はいつものように
机の上でお弁当を開く。

Tobberoth Wrote:Still, most translations, especially unofficial ones, are subpar.

Sadly true. And the more Japanese I learn, the more I realize why.

Still, it comes down to the simple fact that there are only 24 hours in a day. If I could get -everything- I wanted in English, even with bad translations, I'd probably just do that. What motivates me is that I can't.

As a side benefit, I can (or will be able to) read/watch things as they were meant to be. And converse with people who I wouldn't have been able to otherwise.

I've actually learned some surprising things from my language partner... Like when I was telling her I ate Chinese food for dinner, and had trouble getting across the idea that the restaurant cooked it and I bought it and brought it home to eat it. Seems to be something that isn't done much there? Or at least, something that her friends and family don't do much. She's from another generation, so that's a bit of difference, too.

wccrawford Wrote:Still, it comes down to the simple fact that there are only 24 hours in a day. If I could get -everything- I wanted in English, even with bad translations, I'd probably just do that. What motivates me is that I can't.

I agree it's extremely important to find things you couldn't get any other way.

It's worse now that almost everything can be found on the net, the translations are available right away in most cases. When you had to wait months or years for a translated version, being able to understand the original even a little bit was worth the effort. Now for manga/anime fans it's just too convenient to rely to translations so you have to find something else for motivation.

Codexus Wrote:

wccrawford Wrote:Still, it comes down to the simple fact that there are only 24 hours in a day. If I could get -everything- I wanted in English, even with bad translations, I'd probably just do that. What motivates me is that I can't.

I agree it's extremely important to find things you couldn't get any other way.

It's worse now that almost everything can be found on the net, the translations are available right away in most cases. When you had to wait months or years for a translated version, being able to understand the original even a little bit was worth the effort. Now for manga/anime fans it's just too convenient to rely to translations so you have to find something else for motivation.

Translations are usual available within the same night the anime/manga is released in raw-form. I prefer just to watch stuff in raw now. I'd rather understand it fully in Japanese, then just read an English-translated version(not saying it's bad).