Thanks, guys
:-)

I use to go to a Japanese class ran by some older ladies, it was really meant for people that had no Japanese but I was almost N2 and found textbooks boring so one of the ladies started bringing in the Asahi paper and we would do that reading.

It was VERY common that even these 50-60 yr old ladies would have to sit there and discuss it. Sometimes there was a kanji reading they didn't know, but often I would pick something and ask what this was referring to. The 天声人語 is a very good resource for testing if you can follow complicated passages because often times it won't directly say in the sentence what its talking about. It was common to read through most of it and then get to the end and it would say something and I would ask "Is this referring to these prior sentences or ?" and that would be when they had to completely re-read the passage and maybe even discuss among themselves to figure out what the sentence was referring back to.

So I'll add in my thumbs up on 天声人語 being a very good resource for N2 and N1 learners looking to read more advanced stuff and get exposure to some concepts they might see outside of N1/2 textbooks. That said, the passages vary from author to author. Some writers are way more literary than others and so it can be difficult, others are easy reads save for the kanji you need to look up.

They are great for history sometimes. I still remember reading one that talked about how there use to be numerous different types of words for "fires" because in the old days much of Tokyo/Edo was wood houses so they created different words for "fires that break out." Today they just have one or two words for it.

Also sometimes you need to know people's names. Sometimes a kanji compound in the piece I wouldn't get, only to learn it was a person's name.
Definitely read it though.

Thanks for the heads up, vileru. I had heard of the column, but I assumed that something like that would also be behind the paywall, so I never checked it out. I couldn't find it in my Japanese news reader app, so I searched the iTunes store, and came across a very interesting app called たて書きコラム. Basically the app takes a whole bunch of most recent editions of freely available columns from the websites of newspapers (ranging from such giants as Asahi and Nikkei to regional papers from all over Japan, from Hokkaido to Yaeyama) and converts them into vertical writing. It was most likely originally designed to accommodate people who are used to reading their papers vertically and don't like the fact that web editions are horizontal, but it may also make for great advanced reading practice, with more than 50 latest columns all in one place.

vileru wrote:

Thank you for mentioning that app, vonPeterhof! Its formatting is much better than Asahi's, and the columns from other newspapers are a welcome addition too.

I was also glad to see a 河北新報 column included. I often walked past their offices when I lived in Sendai, where they're headquartered.

In fact, the name of the newspaper is itself a cultural reference, which is a nice coincidence given the discussion above. During the Meiji era, the Tohoku region was disparaging referred to by the phrase「白河以北一山百文」, which can be translated to something like "North of Shirakawa (a town in Fukushima), there are a hundred sentences for one mountain." This is a literary way to say there's nothing remarkable in Tohoku. In reply to this phrase and the attitude behind it (Tohoku was, and still is to a lesser extent, viewed as backwards and unsophisticated), a newspaper concerning Tohoku was born and named 河北新報 or "News North of the River," obviously referring to the phrase about Shirakawa. It was the perfect retort, especially since those from Tohoku are considered quiet and reserved (imagine a quiet, bullied kid suddenly replying with the ultimate comeback that leaves the tormentors ashamed and speechless). If you're curious to learn more (in Japanese too!), definitely check this out.

Ohhhhh, interesting! (I live in Fukushima, so this made me lol)