Did you find a special version?? My physical copy is about the same size as a volume of Vanitas or Mushishi
I meant the filesize of the digital version, 137mb instead of the usual 80-90-ish I’m used to. And it costs 750yen instead of 480-ish
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Hmmm. A 24 on Natively is probably my upper limit, but maybe it will be easier with the group.
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Well if L24 is your upper limit, then I’d say this is a great opportunity to push past that limit with the help of the club!
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I just bought this book on a whim at a local Kinokuniya. It’s still in it’s plastic cover, so I’ll crack it open when this club starts. Looking forward to this!
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Vote on our schedule!
Vote on the Schedule!
- Read 2 chapters (~25 pages) a week, for a total of 9 weeks (the last week, we read chapter 0 only)
- Read 3 chapters every two weeks, start with Ch 1 on week 1, then 2-3 on week 2, 4 on week 3 etc. (one week 1 ch, another 2 ch) - total of 11 or 12 weeks
- Read 3 chapters every two weeks, same amount of pages per week. Cut chapters in half (week 1 ch1+ half of ch 2, week 2 half of ch 2 + ch 3 etc) - total of 11 or 12 weeks
- Other option (please comment)
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I will leave the poll open for 2 weeks, as we have time to start. If anyone has other suggestions, feel free to share in the comments. You can vote as many options as you would like.
As a reminder, we want to of course be welcoming to beginners who are maybe joining the club for the first time. So even if the majority votes for 2 chapters/week, if we still have some users voting for a slower pace, we will slow down to accommodate them.
Also, the schedule can always be adjusted halfway through - we can also make a new poll if users feel like we are going too slow/fast!
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How about reading a single chapter for the first few weeks (e.g. for 3 or 5 weeks), and then 2 chapters per week? That would give beginners some time to get used to the writing style and grammar, before transitioning to a faster speed. It’s something we do in a lot of book clubs.
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My first book club and I’m really looking forward to it!
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Welcome to the club!
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私も
And here are some required characters
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Made a draft vocabulary sheet for the first chapter here, copying the style from some other book clubs. Please contribute and feel free to suggest improvements!
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Awesome, I think that will be really useful (especially for the newer members of the club), mind if I like it as the vocabulary thread for the bookclub in the main post? 
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Not at all, that’s what I hoped for!
The poll is still running, but just a head’s up that we have around 30% of the voters who would like a slower pace then the 2 chapters a week… I’m really favourable to @TobiasW’s suggestion - we could take 1 chapter a week for the first 3 weeks, then 2 chapters a week for the rest of the volume. This would result in us taking 10 weeks to read instead of 9, so not much of a total time difference to be honest. It might be a bit of a jump from 1->2 chapters a week, but it gives time for newer members to get used to the story We can always try it for a few weeks and readjust the schedule if needed, of course. Let me know what you guys think.
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I think that’s the way to go, personally. 
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Wanted to prepare a bit more, so I added chapter 2. I’m not sure what’s the usual policy on repeat words – in this case I included repeats from chapter 1 due to the proposed schedule having one week between reading those, but it adds to the spreadsheet length, possibly making it less useful? What do you think, should repeats be included for chapters 3 and beyond?
Also not quite sure what to include and what to leave out. So far I’ve erred on the side of inclusion.
Should we include a column with WaniKani levels? Might make it easier to make a copy of the spreadsheet and eliminate everything below your level, for instance.
In general, it’s like this manga has a built-in SRS for a lot of really useful everyday Japanese. For everyone who is going to be reading at this level for the first time, keep at it! The repetition will make those words sink in faster than you think.
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We try to avoid repeats as much as possible, but it’s not the end of the world if some slip in.
When I was actively contributing to spreadsheets (I’ve admittedly been less active in doing so lately, mostly because I’ve spread myself so thin across a number of clubs and my own reading), my policy was that if I had to stop and think about it or if I had to look it up, I added it. For the lower-level clubs, I had the additional policy of adding it if it had kanji regardless of if I had to look it up or not. But erring on the side of inclusion does make it easier and more accessible, anyway, so I think going that route is best.
You can if you like. The idea has definitely been floated before, but I think the primary reason it hasn’t been done is it adds another hoop/thing to check for those looking to contribute, so it’s been left out to keep that barrier as low as possible to encourage more contributions.
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I think it was brought up in one of my book clubs. I didn’t like the idea in the end, because of two big reasons. One is of course what you’ve brought up, if you put in a word, now it’s another thing you need to check, and it does take a second or two to do so.
However the second issue was my bigger issue. There are two main ways you can determine the “WK level” of a word". One is, you can look for the vocab on wk. But wanikani isn’t an endless source of words, especially slangy ones, so at most 20% of the words on a given week got a level like that. The second is the level of the highest level kanji that is in the word. This way was both way less useful, and way more tedious to fill in.
So you either go with a method that only fills in 20% of the words, or you go with a method that is more effort for less benefit.
Though you could certainly automate either method. Have a big list of wanikani kanji/vocab and their levels, and then make a formula that takes the inputted words and finds their level. That could work, but I really don’t see the benefit.
Edit:
Oh no @ChristopherFritz liked this comment, I’m giving him ideas instead of letting him play TOTK
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Nah, I’ve already implemented the ideas in the past. It’s fairly trivial (although a bit lengthy) to have a formula that returns the highest WK level needed to recognize all the kanji in a word in Google Sheets.
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The schedule has been updated in the first post to reflect what we discussed above. The transition between weeks 3 and 4 might seem a bit daunting, but bear in mind that we can always adjust/adapt the schedule further on if people are having difficulties with keeping up!
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