My first book I read in Japanese was 小さな部屋で広く暮らす by Make My Room. It’s a non-fiction book about interior design made by an Instagram influencer written for adult native-speakers. It was a great mix of little blocks of text and large paragraphs with multiple clauses. I started when I was N4 and it was a killer slog at first. I looked up all words and grammar patterns and put everything I didn’t know into Anki. I was genuinely interested in it and while it was super hard for me, it wasn’t academic or unpredictable. I got through about half and then focused more on textbooks for a bit. After about six months, when I was at N3 level, I picked it back up and finished it using the above method in about 2 weeks. So rewarding to see how I had improved! I like doing hard things for the rewarding feeling. 😊 I think reading non-fiction is much much easier than fiction, especially when it has pictures or diagrams. It is much more motivating for me personally to do something very hard meant for native speakers than to read the staid comprehensive input learner stories.
i have the EXACT same goal in learning japanese as yours. i want to be able to just waltz into kinokuniya, take a japanese book and start reading immediately and understand everything without looking things up. i don't even want to pass JLPT N2 or N1 that much tbh (but i still have that goal bc i just wanna be able to say to people what my JLPT level is whenever they ask me lmao). but yeah. this video helps me a lot bc i see now that you were once at the level where i am now and it's no shame in admitting that. we all start somewhere! thank you for this!! oh and personally i used to write on the books i'm reading. but i don't like it aesthetically. i just hate how messy i make the books look with my handwriting. and it really distracts me from actually reading and understanding the content of the book. so now i use post-it notes or just write the vocab on a separate book dedicated for new words i stumble upon whenever i read. thus, the next time i find the same words still within the book, i just flip through the vocab book and use it as a "personal dictionary".
Ohhhh I love your approach with post it notes! And I loved the “waltz into Kinokuniya” part 🤣🤣🤣 that’s soooo how I feel now walking into any bookstore here in Japan 😎 endless happiness!
the thing that you want is way beyond N2 or N1. you will always come across some word that you dont know, even in your native lenguage. it is a good goal to want to minimize that thou.
ありがとうございます！！ I'm still very early in learning Japanese, but reading is one of my biggest goals. Seeing you flip through the book and talk about how long everything took you was very helpful for setting realistic expectations for myself!
My goal in learning Japanese is also to read native content! This video was very informative and looking forward to your upcoming videos regarding reading
WONDERFUL video. Question for your next video: nowadays, what's your current reading comprehension level? I mean: how many new words you come across per page? and how many of those new words you can tell their meaning from the context?
This is amazing... I have read Yotsuba! Manga in the same way you read Your name... Highlighting the words I didn't know and writing the meaning down and colour coding grammar and vocabulary.... I am so amazed and pleased that somebody else too thinks in the same process of learning to read Japanese... However in my case manga (with furigana)helps me more since I find them less intimidating than light novels.. and am also at N4 level so I would wait till N3 to dive into light novels.
I love this series of videos! ❤ becoming comfortable with reading in Japanese is definitely a process. And can be a very humbling one 😂 Reading has always been the main goal of mine with the language too so I feel lucky to have you to look up to on my journey 😊
To improve reading skills in your target language, try reading fiction or news. Immersive Translate is a helpful extension that translates and displays both languages simultaneously, unlike other translators that may not allow you to review the original text. It's been a significant help in my learning journey.
My first book was よう実, i remember after i read the first chapter i found a site that summarised the chapters and realised i had missed pretty much everything that happened 😂
I know exactly what you mean, I got this pretty recently with Russian this year when I tried reading for the first time 😅😅😅 it gets better!! Practice and patience 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🩷
Reading is my goal too! Thank you for the video! I bought about 6 light novel tankōban books in Japan as motivation, every day I wake up and see them on my shelf and remind myself how important this goal is to me. One day I will read them. Most of them are by yoru sumino if anyone is curious lol 😅
This is all very helpful. Looking forward to your video about the different type of book editions for learners 😍 Btw you can also install different keyboards on your phone to e.g. draw kanji on whatever website or app you're on. So you can switch between the latin alphabeth one, a drawing Japanese one and one with hiragana/katakana to kanji whenever you want to.
Merci pour partager ton expérience ! 君の名は est le 1er livre que j'ai acheté après avoir déménagé au Japon, mais malheureusement je ne l'ai pas encore terminé. Cependant, il y a deux jours, j'ai fini mon 1er œuvre - un fameux conte qui s'appelle 走れメロス qui se fait lire en école secondaire au Japon. Malgré toutes les difficultés, c'est une grosse réussite dont je suis vraiment fier. Et ta vidéo me donne plus de l'inspiration de continuer. J'ai hâte d'atteindre 10 livres dans pas si longtemps et puis irai encore plus loin dans le temps que s'en vient.
Wouahou bravo pour les 10 livres c’est déjà incroyable !! Trop contente que ma vidéo t’ait motivé, je te souhaite une grande et belle réussite dans tes objectifs de japonais ☺️❤️
Thank you so much for this very helpful, informative, motivating and inspiring video again, dear Ally 🫶 Seeing your first book with all those notes and markings reminded me of my first book in English. And you are absolutely right. Reading in a another language is very painful at the beginning but one day, if you push through, you come to the point where it makes no difference anymore if you read something in that language or your native language. And that’s the moment when it really is fun 🤩. I experienced that as well many years ago with English and I hope one day it’ll be the same with Japanese. One follow up question though: between reading kind of „graded readers“ like satori reader and your first book, did you read any manga books? I was wondering if reading manga before reading a whole book could be like a stepping stone 🤔 Because there is less text and might not be as overwhelming as hundreds of pages with just text. Do you have any experience with that? Or do you have an opinion on that? All the best to you and until next time 👋🏻, Cindy
Merci beaucoup pour ta vidéo !! (Je me permets de t’écrire en français car j’ai vu que tu étais francophone 😊) J’ai essayé comme toi à plusieurs reprises de lire des livres mais n’ai jamais réussi à en voir le bout, cette fois je veux vraiment y arriver et ta vidéo m’a motivé! J’avais une petite question, quels crayons utilises-tu pour surligner les mots sans que ça traverse les pages?
Coucou et merci de ta question !! J’ai utilisé principalement les surligneurs mildliners, qui ont des couleurs pastel qui ne traversent pas les pages 🤩😉
My first book I read in Japanese was 小さな部屋で広く暮らす by Make My Room. It’s a non-fiction book about interior design made by an Instagram influencer written for adult native-speakers. It was a great mix of little blocks of text and large paragraphs with multiple clauses.
I started when I was N4 and it was a killer slog at first. I looked up all words and grammar patterns and put everything I didn’t know into Anki. I was genuinely interested in it and while it was super hard for me, it wasn’t academic or unpredictable. I got through about half and then focused more on textbooks for a bit.
After about six months, when I was at N3 level, I picked it back up and finished it using the above method in about 2 weeks. So rewarding to see how I had improved! I like doing hard things for the rewarding feeling. 😊 I think reading non-fiction is much much easier than fiction, especially when it has pictures or diagrams. It is much more motivating for me personally to do something very hard meant for native speakers than to read the staid comprehensive input learner stories.
i have the EXACT same goal in learning japanese as yours. i want to be able to just waltz into kinokuniya, take a japanese book and start reading immediately and understand everything without looking things up. i don't even want to pass JLPT N2 or N1 that much tbh (but i still have that goal bc i just wanna be able to say to people what my JLPT level is whenever they ask me lmao). but yeah. this video helps me a lot bc i see now that you were once at the level where i am now and it's no shame in admitting that. we all start somewhere! thank you for this!!
oh and personally i used to write on the books i'm reading. but i don't like it aesthetically. i just hate how messy i make the books look with my handwriting. and it really distracts me from actually reading and understanding the content of the book. so now i use post-it notes or just write the vocab on a separate book dedicated for new words i stumble upon whenever i read. thus, the next time i find the same words still within the book, i just flip through the vocab book and use it as a "personal dictionary".
Ohhhh I love your approach with post it notes! And I loved the “waltz into Kinokuniya” part 🤣🤣🤣 that’s soooo how I feel now walking into any bookstore here in Japan 😎 endless happiness!
> i don't even want to pass JLPT N2 or N1
This is much easier than reading novels bud.
the thing that you want is way beyond N2 or N1. you will always come across some word that you dont know, even in your native lenguage. it is a good goal to want to minimize that thou.
ありがとうございます！！ I'm still very early in learning Japanese, but reading is one of my biggest goals. Seeing you flip through the book and talk about how long everything took you was very helpful for setting realistic expectations for myself!
Thank you so much for your feedback, I am super happy that you liked this video!!
My goal in learning Japanese is also to read native content! This video was very informative and looking forward to your upcoming videos regarding reading
Thank you so much!! That gives me a lot of motivation to produce all videos I’ve planned for this series!!
WONDERFUL video. Question for your next video: nowadays, what's your current reading comprehension level? I mean: how many new words you come across per page? and how many of those new words you can tell their meaning from the context?
Got you!! Thank you for your question, I’ll definitely answer that and even show you guys! 😍
This is amazing... I have read Yotsuba! Manga in the same way you read Your name... Highlighting the words I didn't know and writing the meaning down and colour coding grammar and vocabulary.... I am so amazed and pleased that somebody else too thinks in the same process of learning to read Japanese... However in my case manga (with furigana)helps me more since I find them less intimidating than light novels.. and am also at N4 level so I would wait till N3 to dive into light novels.
I love this series of videos! ❤ becoming comfortable with reading in Japanese is definitely a process. And can be a very humbling one 😂 Reading has always been the main goal of mine with the language too so I feel lucky to have you to look up to on my journey 😊
Thank you for your kind words ❤️❤️ so happy you like this series!
To improve reading skills in your target language, try reading fiction or news. Immersive Translate is a helpful extension that translates and displays both languages simultaneously, unlike other translators that may not allow you to review the original text. It's been a significant help in my learning journey.
My first book was よう実, i remember after i read the first chapter i found a site that summarised the chapters and realised i had missed pretty much everything that happened 😂
I know exactly what you mean, I got this pretty recently with Russian this year when I tried reading for the first time 😅😅😅 it gets better!! Practice and patience 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🩷
Very inspiring! Thank you Ari!
Thank you so much for watching!! ❤️❤️
Reading is my goal too! Thank you for the video! I bought about 6 light novel tankōban books in Japan as motivation, every day I wake up and see them on my shelf and remind myself how important this goal is to me. One day I will read them. Most of them are by yoru sumino if anyone is curious lol 😅
Good luck in your studies I hope you can read them very soon!!
May (Japanese studying) vlog please 🥺!!! How did u annotate so well??? Do we need to annotate so well like u, too???
I did make a Japanese study focused vlog! It’s out of the channel 😍😍😍
This is all very helpful. Looking forward to your video about the different type of book editions for learners 😍
Btw you can also install different keyboards on your phone to e.g. draw kanji on whatever website or app you're on. So you can switch between the latin alphabeth one, a drawing Japanese one and one with hiragana/katakana to kanji whenever you want to.
Absolutely!! Thank you so much and noted about the next video 👌🏻 I’ll be producing it soon!
Thank you, Ali! Love the series and am looking forward for more videos on the topic of reading! 😊
Yayyy I’m so happy you liked it thank you!!
Thank you so much Ari❤
Merci pour partager ton expérience ! 君の名は est le 1er livre que j'ai acheté après avoir déménagé au Japon, mais malheureusement je ne l'ai pas encore terminé. Cependant, il y a deux jours, j'ai fini mon 1er œuvre - un fameux conte qui s'appelle 走れメロス qui se fait lire en école secondaire au Japon. Malgré toutes les difficultés, c'est une grosse réussite dont je suis vraiment fier. Et ta vidéo me donne plus de l'inspiration de continuer. J'ai hâte d'atteindre 10 livres dans pas si longtemps et puis irai encore plus loin dans le temps que s'en vient.
Wouahou bravo pour les 10 livres c’est déjà incroyable !! Trop contente que ma vidéo t’ait motivé, je te souhaite une grande et belle réussite dans tes objectifs de japonais ☺️❤️
Good luck! 🎉❤
Thank you so much for this very helpful, informative, motivating and inspiring video again, dear Ally 🫶 Seeing your first book with all those notes and markings reminded me of my first book in English. And you are absolutely right. Reading in a another language is very painful at the beginning but one day, if you push through, you come to the point where it makes no difference anymore if you read something in that language or your native language. And that’s the moment when it really is fun 🤩. I experienced that as well many years ago with English and I hope one day it’ll be the same with Japanese. One follow up question though: between reading kind of „graded readers“ like satori reader and your first book, did you read any manga books? I was wondering if reading manga before reading a whole book could be like a stepping stone 🤔 Because there is less text and might not be as overwhelming as hundreds of pages with just text. Do you have any experience with that? Or do you have an opinion on that? All the best to you and until next time 👋🏻, Cindy
Merci beaucoup pour ta vidéo !! (Je me permets de t’écrire en français car j’ai vu que tu étais francophone 😊)
J’ai essayé comme toi à plusieurs reprises de lire des livres mais n’ai jamais réussi à en voir le bout, cette fois je veux vraiment y arriver et ta vidéo m’a motivé! J’avais une petite question, quels crayons utilises-tu pour surligner les mots sans que ça traverse les pages?
Coucou et merci de ta question !! J’ai utilisé principalement les surligneurs mildliners, qui ont des couleurs pastel qui ne traversent pas les pages 🤩😉
Et voilà
Maintenant j’ai envie de reprendre le roman que je suis en train de lire en japonais depuis des années 😂
🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳 *sorry not sorry*