Aijin Wrote:Learning a foreign language is a great opportunity for people to get in touch with their inner-child

Is true! I'm even more motivated now, nyahaha! My inner child is not very good at hiding.

Seamoby Wrote:

Bokusenou Wrote:As long as reading material keeps your interest, I don't see how it can be a bad idea.
I read a lot of manga Japanese fables before I tried my first novel because I love manga and youkai-related things, and they really helped, but if I'd known about Aoi Tori Bunko then I would have jumped on it. The books seem well done and have lots of furigana judging by the previews, so I usually recommend them to people just starting to read fiction. I think there's even an Aoi Tori Bunko version of the Suzumiya Haruhi series, which are not the easiest light novels to read in the original version, which makes me wonder if they dumbed it down or just added a bunch of extra furigana...

Right, looking at the Aoi Tori Bunko books that I just bought, they are well-formatted, with well-spaced (not crowded) writing and generous illustrations. All kanji seem to have furigana, not just the harder ones. The ones I got have about 200 pages each, so there's plenty to read. I'm as giddy as a school kid.

Awesome! I'll keep recommending them then. The Aoi Tori Bunko site is really neat providing so many previews like that, heck, I wish Amazon.co.jp and Japanese non-children's book publishers had that much... (Amazon's getting better, but it still seems that about half the books I'm interested in reading always have no preview ^_^;, and the publisher's previews I've seen are always really small). Like Aijin said, reading children's books again is one of the joys of learning a new language (as I'm re-discovering with Portuguese), I read a novel about a bookstore recently, and, while the novel was OK, my favorite part was how it referenced a bunch of children's stories because the main character liked reading to children. After I read some of it, I would always go and read the (public domain) children's stories, and sometimes they would be referenced in a TV show or something. ^-^ My favorite was probably 泣いた赤鬼.

BTW, the Aoi Tori books listed in the link I gave are just the more recent ones in the series. There are many more in the series from earlier years. http://www.yesasia.com and http://www.bk1.jp both have them.

Not to mention Kinokuniya USA for those in the US. I wonder how long Aoi Tori Bunko has been in business?

Bokusenou Wrote:Not to mention Kinokuniya USA for those in the US. I wonder how long Aoi Tori Bunko has been in business?

They are published by Kodansha. The ones I got were earlier ones and they have copyright dates of 1981 and 1982.

If anyone has any specific recommendations from the Aoi Tori series I would be interested to hear them. Most of their books look a little too childish for my liking.

I did buy an Aoi Tori translation of Murder on the Orient Express (オリエント急行殺人事件) a while back, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. It looks good though - well spaced, full furigana, and it also has quite a lot of explanatory notes (in Japanese, of course) explaining the meaning of some of the more difficult vocab used.

If you like the Aoi Tori series, also check out the Kadokawa Tsubasa series of books (角川つばさ文庫) It is in a similar vein to Aoi Tori - books suitable for kids with furigana for all kanji. Just search 角川つばさ文庫 in Google, amazon.co.jp or bk1.co.jp.

Like Aoi Tori, most of their books look a bit too childish, but they do have a few good ones mixed in. For example, they do an easy to read version of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱) and The girl who lept through time (時をかける少女). When I say easy to read, I just mean full furigana and well spaced, afaik there are no changes to the text itself.

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I have the easy-to-read version of Haruhi, but ended up reading the regular version. IIRC the text has been simplified as well, probably since Kyon tends to use a lot of obscure 慣用句 etc with no context.

@NickT, thanks for pointing out the Tsubasa Bunko series. They have a cute webpage:

http://www.tsubasabunko.jp/menu/index.php

I've been reading Aoi Tori's series パセリ伝説 and loving it. If the concept of "an amnesiac 11 year old girl in rural Hokkaido gradually discovers her legendary-something role and unlocks her magic powers, as mysterious things happen around; also the powers of friendship and love" is at all appealing, I'd recommend it. The characters and story are lively. It's a little Harry Potter-ish. I'm enjoying it partly because the writing is easy enough that I can just *read* without constantly using a dictionary, but I can still learn a new word or two from each page. (For reference, I'm roughly JLPT N3 level.)

Lol, I have quite a bit of Star Wars right now. No furigana, unfortunately, so I'm sort of avoiding reading them in favor of manga (I sort of prefer manga anyway, but want to read at an adult level, so I'm sucking it up.) Anyway, I really appreciate the links above. I might try doing them as a transition thing. I have found that through just reading, I don't need furigana as much. Even if I just do manga for months and months, I'll still get there no problem (whether it would take more or less time, I don't know.)

I really envy Japanese people sometimes in a rather strange way when I see them reading. I always need a dictionary at least once a page, but, of course, Japanese people rarely if ever need one. It's a weird thing because I know that a good percentage can't read my language at my level (I think highly proficient people are quite common considering this is a monolingual community, but still... native speakers of English are on a different level - as are those of Japanese). I guess what I'm trying to say is I am envious even though I know that for them Japanese is all they know and it would be, for them, totally unreasonable not to be able to read, write, speaker and understand at a near perfect level.

@Cranks

Don't envy them, just learn more vocab !

It's more like good that there's someone who's better than you. You now can compare yourself to them and take them as an example of a kind of a reader you want to become.

Jarvik7 Wrote:I have the easy-to-read version of Haruhi, but ended up reading the regular version. IIRC the text has been simplified as well, probably since Kyon tends to use a lot of obscure 慣用句 etc with no context.

I own both the easy-to-read version of Haruhi, and also the normal version (I bought it before I knew there was an easy-to-read version), and I have just spent 15 minutes comparing the two. I couldn't find any differences, other than the furigana.

Would you happen to be able to point out any specific examples of where they differ? When you say 'obscure 慣用句', what kind of things were you thinking of?

I am currently 2/3 of the way through reading the 'easy' version, so I would be a bit gutted if I found out it had been changed from the original. Having said that, they look to be at least 99% the same, so its not that bad.

julianjalapeno Wrote:http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_SpJTRREPOsk/TA...sieowl.jpg

Three.

*golf clap*

Aijin Wrote:My personal opinion, as always, is that one should work with material that is at their level, and progress gradually, book by book, into harder material. This means starting with books written for children, and working one's way up to adult novels.

I have to totally agree with this, I'm near 5K in core vocab, but I find it comparatively hard to even read hans christien andersen's stories which have maybe 100 kanji in total!

I'd like to read my books which have about 1300 kanji in them, but even If I will know all the vocab, I guess Aijin's rule will still apply...there's no choice but to work my level up.

If I don't find even the easiest books I can find a piece of cake, then there's no meaning in talking about reading easy novels.

jettyke Wrote:

Aijin Wrote:My personal opinion, as always, is that one should work with material that is at their level, and progress gradually, book by book, into harder material. This means starting with books written for children, and working one's way up to adult novels.

I have to totally agree with this, I'm near 5K in core vocab, but I find it comparatively hard to even read hans christien andersen's stories which have maybe 100 kanji in total!

I'd like to read my books which have about 1300 kanji in them, but even If I will know all the vocab, I guess Aijin's rule will still apply...there's no choice but to work my level up.

If I don't find even the easiest books I can find a piece of cake, then there's no meaning in talking about reading easy novels.

Well, to be honest, unless you try, you'll never get better. I guess I'm weird jumping in at the deep end (light novels with some furi in .txt form), but I figure there's no better way to learn how to read what you want to read than by pulling vocab from the source.

I have some light novels, plus I think some of the .txt I have are children's novels. Next time I go to Kinokuniya (I live by one), I'd like to pick up a children's novel...then find the .txt, since it's easier to read that way.

it will take some time,but I'd say in 1 year. If someone does vocab+a sentence deck. They should be able to get to the 2000 common kanji or at least near it. As for the reading, you just gotta keep reading

nohika Wrote:Well, to be honest, unless you try, you'll never get better. I guess I'm weird jumping in at the deep end (light novels with some furi in .txt form), but I figure there's no better way to learn how to read what you want to read than by pulling vocab from the source.

Jumping in at the deep end often works for me. As long as the source material is enjoyable, there are few things more motivating than having all that stuff you don't yet know shoved in your face. Hmm, maybe I'm just stubborn...

astendra Wrote:

nohika Wrote:Well, to be honest, unless you try, you'll never get better. I guess I'm weird jumping in at the deep end (light novels with some furi in .txt form), but I figure there's no better way to learn how to read what you want to read than by pulling vocab from the source.

Jumping in at the deep end often works for me. As long as the source material is enjoyable, there are few things more motivating than having all that stuff you don't yet know shoved in your face. Hmm, maybe I'm just stubborn...

Same here! xD It's enjoyable, I like being able to read the novel (I picked it BECAUSE it was fun to me!) and I'm having fun getting recommendations and browsing Kinokuniya for what I want to read.

What's more fun than practicing on what you plan to read someday? True, I don't understand like any of the vocab and my grammar sucks, but for now, my focus is pulling vocab + increasing grammar. /While/ understanding some random things.

Ironically, I've found it works less for manga. So I've skipped manga and gone straight into light novels! Hah!

If anyone needs any more recommendations, I just finished reading きみにしか聞こえない from the Kadokawa Tsubasa series of books (角川つばさ文庫) that I mentioned before. I really enjoyed it.

If you want a quick synopsis in English, you can read it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calling_You...thology%29

The version I read, which has full furigana, has ISBN number 4046310189 (just google it).

If you prefer to have a go without furigana (I think it still has some, just not as much), try this version: 4044253021. This version also has a large number of reviews on Amazon - If you're still not sure read some of those.

Both versions on Amazon.co.jp allow you to look inside the book and read the first few pages.

In terms of level of difficulty, it was quite easy. Actually, I think this would be a really good choice of book to try to read as your first Japanese novel. Better than Harry Potter, which was the first one I read. I'd say it was about as easy as キノの旅, except with more furigana so a bit easier to get into. It is still a novel, though, so if you haven't read one before it will probably be a challenge.

EDIT: I would recommend against reading the "Plot" section of the Wikipedia link above, as it basically gives away the entire story. Also, the "third story" Flower Song (華歌) it lists was not present in the version of the book I read. Instead, it was a story called ウソカノ (usokano).