It wouldn’t feel right to just give up. In the first place though, I don’t think it’s as bad of an experience as some other people’s first books, the way they describe it is a lot more painful.
Time isn’t an issue, matter of fact I’ve completely slacked off on my WaniKani ever since hitting level 60, barely doing 100 reviews a day at this point. In any case I’m at the point where I need to read to learn, I don’t want to laze off and eventually think my skill is “Good enough”.
Honestly if I was reading on my own, I wouldn’t be trying to go faster, but it’s a good thing to get motivated by seeing you guys progress so quickly I think.
As for the difficulty, I refuse to limit my options haha, to this day I still have only ever read things above my skill level, I had decided that I’ll read what I want and I won’t curate things. I think going for easier stuff just wouldn’t be as helpfull too.
I appreciate it, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the 1st chapter tomorrow, might have a question too.
For what it’s worth, I’ve always read above my level, and still do. I’m not sure what my “level” is supposed to be, but I definitely need to refer to a dictionary quite often whatever I read, and there’s always sentences I have trouble understanding on the first read, and a grammar point or two I need to look up. Still, I enjoy what I’m reading, I understand what I’m reading (maybe I miss nuances, but that may be true in any language), and I learn from what I’m reading, so why worry about levels?
The thing about measuring by days is that you might read for three hours in a day, or for thirty minutes, depending on the book, the person and the day. I prefer to measure in pages per hour, which for me is about 25 unless the book is very hard or easy. I can read in Japanese for 3-4 hours in a day only very occasionally and trying to sustain that for more than a week is exhausting and crowds out eveything else in my life; averaging 2 hours a day over a long period is a major effort of willpower but I have done it before. More normal would be an hour or less a day, and there are plenty of days when I don’t read Japanese at all, or read very little.
(I’m not reading this specific book, this is all general thoughts.)
Yes exactly that! I read in English because I enjoy it, and I learned Japanese so I could read the tbings I enjoy, it would be a waste to just not read it. If it so happens to be easy, then I’ll be happy to enjoy the story without too much effort, but either way is a win for me.
I see, luckily I’m at a point in my life where I’ve only 1 obligation going for me, I am graduated from college ust studying for an exam so I can get credentials for my career choice. I can certainly make the time to read, for now though, I don’t think I can do a good measure on pages per hour, but maybe when I get further along in the book, I can try it out. Thanks for your insight
Oh wow, for me it’s exactly the opposite
Spoken language is still my biggest pain point, and the ご飯 book with its train-of-thought writing style and not using quotes on all spoken language made it way more difficult to tell what’s going on for me than in this book as it is written in a style that is more 3rd person view and more “textbook-style language” (don’t know if there is a proper term or description for that though).
Difficulty is so subjective! I found the ご飯 book a bit hard in the beginning, a breeze as it went on. I was fine with the spoken language there most of the time. Here the dialogue has a lot of dialect and I’m finding it way harder.
I think because I read a ton of Aozora short stories that style doesn’t faze me anymore. Rambling, stream of consciousness, sudden topic changes - short stories are full of those!
The dialect is also the hardest part for me. I’m grateful it’s at least a common one so I have experience with it. Whenever an uncommon dialect gets brought in I feel like I’m deciphering more than reading
I agree with this, but I don’t track my PPH and only somewhat did in the beginning. Harry Potter when I began, was ~15min/page and when I ended was around 5min/page. Then I remember starting 容疑者Xの献身 and I was back up to ~10min/page I guess I could try to baseline some of my books to see what my ‘general’ reading speed is now, but I admit I fell off timing myself because I found it stressful
Haha our protag went shopping for clothes and spends 70,000 yen on a pair of sneakers, wow Fun to witness how his new boss immediately sees through this but does not blame him. Instead he needs to pay back the money for the clothes - I’d have been surprised if he had gotten them for free, though, so this was expected. Plus he still got the 6000 yen change, which is nothing to sneeze at either as a compensation for the first day.
Boss seems to be really nice and seems to teach him well. Curious to learn more about his new job.
I actually think the Kansai-ben conversation was not that bad, but I have one question:
This is rather towards the end, when they are at the baseball site.
「金がほしくなきゃ、お前みたいなんが急に俺に連絡して こーへんもんな 普通。」
I think the meaning is: “It’s normal [for me to think] that if you wouldn’t need the money, then it were strange for a guy like you to quickly get in touch with me.” But I’m a bit lost regarding the rear end. Is it just こう変もんな - a strange thing? Or am I misunderstanding things?
I’m up to the end of chapter 3 and still having a lot of fun!
Same! I found that conversation pretty confusing but I guess part of it is that we’re coming in part way through.
Oh wow! I took all the work stuff and his boss totally differently, I’m so suspicious/expecting that they are trying to scam him somehow. It just all seems very manipulative to me, like the boss spots someone who is obviously not doing well, finds out he’s in a tough spot with money and then offers this job to him. To me he seems to have real confidence man energy. The money for clothes also seemed like a red flag to me, like this time what the protag was paid was enough to pay off ‘the loan’ but I totally wouldn’t be surprised if they come up with more ways to make sure that he ends up in debt to the club. Maybe I’m just a suspicious person
Oh, the whole setup is definitely very strange, I’m not denying that at all. I just said that the way that first night was described was fun and wholesome on the surface. I’m certain there must be darker things lurking underneath.
Oh, I’m absolutely expecting some nastiness here too I just wanted to say that so far he shows himself in a good light - that’s why I said “he seems to be nice”. I guess we’ll find out!
It’s going to be quite the shock if he does actually turn out to be a lovely guy just doing this young man a big favour. The rest of the story is just the protagonist making lots of money and buying a whole closet full of expensive trainers
I’ve got a question in the first chapter when the guy approaches our main character, he says "ぎょうさん紅生姜使うタイプなんやな” I can’t really tell what this means, is gyousan “a lot” or is it a name?
I did enjoy the very end when he punched the guy, it was kind of exciting. Oddly enough, the fastest parts for me to read were the dialogue parts. Kansaiben stumped me that one time but somehow the rest was relatively easy to figure out. I find it odd though that いい turns to ええ.
Anyway, things must really suck for our mc, Kouta. That’s a pretty terrible job hunting system, anything job related seems to pretty bad in Japan.
I think I’ve come to realize that a chapter a day would be too much for me, let’s just pretend I never said a 3 week goal. I’ll do my best to not be too slow though, 2 days is a good goal I think, 3 if I get busy.
Still kind of clueless on the overall story of the book though, but I like it so far. The writing style that you guys mention, well it’s not like I have experience with any other style in Japanese but this is a good way of reading I think.
Also the amount of vocabulary and kanji I didn’t know… hope that gets better soon haha
I guess I could try to baseline some of my books to see what my ‘general’ reading speed is now, but I admit I fell off timing myself because I found it stressful
Fun to witness how his new boss immediately sees through this but does not blame him. Instead he needs to pay back the money for the clothes - I’d have been surprised if he had gotten them for free, though, so this was expected. Plus he still got the 6000 yen change, which is nothing to sneeze at either as a compensation for the first day.