AAAAA so many book clubs!! 
Thanks for bringing it up! \o/ We’ll start the last chapter of しろくまカフェ on June 12th, and people decided that no break is needed so the only thing is deciding the day of week 
I think Wednesday was a bit inconvenient, so maybe on one of the weekends? Also I guess we’ll want weekly threads?
Book clubs doing well, Amazon JP is sold out!
But that also means my order is “Arriving Jun 12 - Jul 9” so I might be a bit behind 
This looks really fun, I’d tried attempting to read NHK News every day but I usually don’t find it that interesting whereas this looks a lot more fun. I’ve been trying to listen everyday and found reading the Terrace House subreddit chat about each episode made it more fun to keep going even though I don’t understand much. This looks like that for reading but with vocabulary lists and cute cat pictures to stop me getting annoyed when I get stuck 
So 22 or 23 June would be the picks then? Since I assume Shirokuma will do the last chapter in a week.
I guess:3 I think weekends would be nicer to start a weekly thread:3
Lets do a poll then /o/ could you tell that I like polls
0 voters
Hey, welcome!
I love your username!!
Thanks! I like making up band names when I’m bored and this one seemed thematically appropriate 
One of the things I’d like to do is make a website for my fake record label so I can have a proper platform to release ‘music’ from my ‘bands’.
I’m in. I’ll be the most absolutest beginner ever, so if anyone is in doubt whether or not to join in, you can’t possibly be any worse than me.
I’m an absolute beginner also, we can be the worst together
And hopefully doing this will help us improve!
読みたいですよ！
I’m a new Japnese leaner and I’m excited to read this with you all
For the absolutely absolutest absolute beginner readers whose first read will be Chi’s Sweet Home, remember, the first chapter (of whichever manga you start with) is always the hardest. The second chapter is going to be the second hardest. Not quite as hard as the first, but still pretty brutal. The third chapter, as it turns out, is going to be the third hardest. It might even feel like the first or second hardest as you’re still getting used to everything.
The associated vocabulary spreadsheet will assist with words you don’t know, as well as words spoken in a babyish voice (notably from the kitten, Chi). However, this doesn’t help out at all with grammar. Even if you know all the words in a sentence, it may still be unintelligible until you know the grammar. Be sure to either look up grammar you don’t know, or ask in the weekly chapter threads, and chances are you’ll get a response giving a breakdown of the grammar involved.
In my earliest reading attempts (Sailor V, back before it has an official English release), I failed to make progress because there were too many vocabulary words I didn’t know.
Fast-forward to the proliferation of SRS flash card software and my learning many more vocabulary words, my second attempt was with a different series (Yotsuba&!), and this time I failed to make progress because there was too much grammar I didn’t know.
Both times, I let my progress stagnate rather than learning what I needed to and moving forward.
Finally, much more recently, I picked a comic (Is the order a rabbit?) that not only had a lot of words and grammar I didn’t know, but also lacked furigana readings on kanji, and this time I forced myself to read through one four-panel strip per day, looking up every kanji, and looking up every vocabulary word I didn’t know, and (as best I could) looking up and learning every bit of grammar I didn’t know. This has lead to an increase in vocabulary and the amount of grammar I’m familiar with.
This will be your first step down one of the many roads to learning Japanese. If possible, stick with it no matter what a little kitten throws at you!
People seem to have different opinions on what’s the best way to consume native media – looking up every single little thing, or just passively consuming as much as you can and trusting your brain’s language module to figure it out.
I think for now, I’m not going to go through and look up every vocabulary word and piece of grammar I don’t know. That might help me learn in the short term, but in the long term I think it would kill my motivation to keep reading in Japanese. Instead my plan is to go through things relatively quickly and try to get the overall meaning, and hope that by consuming a lot of media I’ll be able to pick up things over time.
This is what I’m doing on a few series I’m reading through right now. I usually pass over a word I don’t know unless I feel like I almost understand the sentence and that one word is keeping me from it. (I can re-read the volume in the future when I know more.) But when a word comes up a second time (still passing on it) and then a third time (really wanting to look it up about now) and then a fourth time, I finally look it up because it’s fairly important to the chapter. (And then I think, “Oh, that makes sense” as I recall the prior instances of it.)
I do similar for grammar. I read during a bus commute where I have no Internet connection to look up grammar, but if I repeatedly see something I don’t know, I’ll note it down to look up later. A lot of grammar I’ve gotten a feel for how it’s used long before I even know what it meant.
I think to look up every new word and every unknown grammar, you have to really like what you’re reading (which was the case with me parsing through volume one of “is the order a rabbit?”) But at the same time, I think of people who speedrun video games, replaying the same game hundreds of times to perfect the fasted playthrough. Speedrunners will tell you never speedrun a game you love, because it’ll drain all the enjoyment out of the game for you. You definitely don’t want that to happen with reading manga!
When I read Yotsuba, I look up all the vocab and grammar (and ask about anything I don’t understand on the Yotsuba bookclub threads). When I read Gundam mangas, I just read fast, looking up a few words here and there, and just enjoy the pictures and what little I understand.
I got this book back in December in the hopes that I’d one day be able to read it! I’m so glad that even though I’m super beginner (level 2) that there’s a group just for this book!
I will try to join this one, I already have the comics and I hope I will have more free time in the coming months.
If I can, I will try to make a kitsun.io deck for this, but that mostly depends on me getting some free time this week. Doing it later than that defeats the purpose of having the vocab in a SRS.
Do you guys tend to prefer buying ebooks from Amazon JP or EbookJapan?
Is there much of a difference in the apps and ease of looking up words in their software or is it largely the same?
I haven’t bought from either, but they should be the same thing. Same images, same resolution. (I buy digital from Rakuten Kobo.)
For Chi’s Sweet Home volume 1, that will be 704 pixel wide by 1024 pixel tall images, which is a bit on the small side, but the font is big and clear enough that furigana mostly legible.
The ability yo look up words directly from an e-manga is difficult due to all the text being images. You’ll have to type them into an electronic dictionary rather than getting an automated lookup. There will also be the accompanying vocabulary spreadsheet assembled by readers in the book club here.
I prefer starting on a day with no other book club 
But I have fallen behind on all of them so no longer important 
I plan on joining in on this rather than playing catch up. It is much easier, and starting from scratch, and I’ve read it before =P
And I’m the one who suggested it 
(I think… )
Omg my copy of Volume 1 has arrived! I’ve never done Wanikani book club before. So am I to read the first 4-6 chapters by the 22-23, or from?