you need to tell amazon.co.jp that you live in japan, because they don’t have a licence to sell the kindle edition internationally. i used tenso.com to set up a legit and free shipping address in japan.
unless you change your main amazon account you’ll also need a second amazon account (with a different email) on amazon.co.jp, and you’ll need to set up your kindle (app or device) to use that account.
you totally can use your american or european or whatever credit card to pay though, they don’t care about that. and as others have said, you might need a vpn, but a free one will do fine ^^
I didn’t need a VPN so far, and I basically picked an address on a university campus (that a friend of mine attends). I’m not planning on buying anything from Amazon that would need to be shipped though.
For debit card I added my Revolut card and I also set up a Yen-based account there, because I think Revolut’s exchange rate would be way better than amazon’s.
Ok, so I finished chapter 1! I thought so far it was kind of cute, though I have seen the anime series, so I know the story so far. I’m hoping that in the next chapters, I will have to look up less grammar, because so far that seems to be the biggest obstacle in understanding sometimes what is going on just by reading.
…and when i say “been busy”, i mean that we’ve had almost a meter of fresh snow, very late in the season, and i’ve been busy hurtling down steep mountains at absurd speeds with two planks strapped to my feet
Same here, I’ve been busy with RL stuff so I’ve only translated up to page 10 so far. It’s been much more difficult than expected though, the last light novel that I read was easier to translate.
it is slow work, and therefore the story is unfolding at a snails pace. but it is fun, for a given value of fun. and i’m looking at the pictures more than i probably would otherwise.
i’m reminded of when i was sent to a boarding school at 15. i’d had 5 years of french at school, but had always struggled with that. in boarding school they were like, let’s have a chat in french, and decided that i ought to take the french class for native speakers. so here was me, never having had a passing grade in french, reading Rimbaud and Baudelaire and Sartre and Camus. making wild stabs at meanings and grammar points. and somehow managing to grasp enough of the books to participate in class…
and yeah, it definitely is fun
also, yesterday youtube suggested 2 videos with people commenting on やがて君になる, and i’m like, do i want to watch those videos? or read first? the choices!
and a last thing, why do the characters sometimes change font? like, in these three panels:
it’s like the font were bolded? does it indicate some kind of excitement? loudness? in any case i find myself struggling with that font. though that ought to get better with practice ^^
bit of a ramble, sorry. i hope you are all enjoying your reading?
I think it’s loudness/emphasis, like bolded words in English comics. Not that I’ve looked into it - that’s just how I took it as I read! That’s definitely a stronger font, at least
I can just imagine those girls being all loud and exasperated that Yuu isn’t talking about a cute boy…
The そ in that font actually more closely resembles how I learned to write it so I kind of like it!
I’d read chapter 1 before, so skipped the first week and made my first book club attempt last night. It went much better than what I remembered, probably because my Japanese practice has been more organised and regular in the past few weeks. Although my pace is still very slow, it’s good to see that kinda progress
i feel incredibly proud that i can actually manage to read anything! at first i thought i’d reached to far by trying to read already. the first few pages i was struggling to even decipher the kanji (and kana), and it felt like an endless stream of grammer and vocab to look up.
metaphorically, it felt like i had jumped into the deep end and then realised that i couldn’t swim.
but each reading session has gotten better, easier, faster. i can recognise the characters, even when they switch to the bold font. the grammar is coming together. sentences grow and make sense.
like i was drowning and then realised i could breathe underwater.
it feels great! …it’s still hard work, of course. i’m still missing a lot of vocab, and need to improve my grammar. but it’s working!
to stretch the metaphor a bit, i’m not drowning anymore, but i still have to learn to swim
…i know many of you are also still very much beginner readers. how are you guys managing? is the manga being kind to you?
sketch on last page of chapter 1, with handwriting
also, i said i could recognise the characters, but this handwriting is mostly beyond me. could someone maybe type it out for those of us who are struggling?
I finished reading chapter 2 and I just had one question.
Spoilers
On page 65, 佐伯 thinks to herself 「私にはどうしても言い訳めいて聞こえる」. I’m not familiar with めいて and just wanted to make sure I got the meaning right. Checking on Jisho, it appears that it’s most likely the て form of めく which means “To have the appearance of”.
In that case, would it be appropriate to read this as “That just seems like an excuse to me.” or more literally “In the end, to me, all I can hear is what seems to be an excuse.”
@Mrs_Diss that sketch at the end took me ages to figure out too. Really glad to heat that the reading is going well, though!
I’m going to finish chapter 2 either tonight or tomorrow, hopefully. I was going through my notes, though and there is one bit where I understand (I think) what is going on, but not sure why it is said like that. On p. 51 in the last panel 七海 says 仕事しょ仕事, which I took to mean let’s get back to work or something along those lines, but why say work twice? And what exactly is the role of しょ there?
Oh, I took the double wording as her being flustered because of the situation. Got a real “busy, busy!” vibe from that - like she wants to run away and get back to work because she made it awkward.
I thought so far it was kind of cute, though I have seen the anime series, so I know the story so far. I’m hoping that in the next chapters, I will have to look up less grammar, because so far that seems to be the biggest obstacle in understanding sometimes what is going on just by reading.
