just wait until you get into it 
was having some serious fun with grammar reading ahead 
looking forward to this club starting 
should be lots of great discussion!
5 Likes
Although this isn’t my first time reading I’m quite sure I haven’t been going at it right. What’s some good advice as to how I should go about this? As I understand constantly interrupting myself every time I encounter an unfamiliar word or grammar point isn’t a good idea. So, should I just read through say, 3-5 pages and then go back through them analysing the vocabulary and grammar, or is there a better way?
5 Likes
Different people will have different advice, so you’ll get a few different things to try.
For me, with manga, it worked to look up any unknown grammar. Some will be more common grammar and some will be less common. Over time, you get a feel for what grammar is most common because you see it over and over.
I don’t know how well this approach works with a novel, as you have a lot more material to get through. In that case, initially, it may be best to ensure you know enough grammar to get the gist of it.
Either way, I do think taking more time to get to know common grammar upfront will save you a lot of time later on, and make the overall experience more enjoyable. It’s just that upfront cost will be painful for many.
For words, we’ll have the vocabulary list to help with looking up unknown vocabulary, so that may reduce slowdowns. More common words are worth creating flashcards for (if you use Anki or another SRS application).
I have a list of words with frequency information for this volume, for the interested.
11 Likes
So, since I’m at level 30 (Although my community profile badge says 29 for whatever reason) I should know about 80% of the Kanji in the novel?
And as for grammar, I’ve gone through the basic and essential grammar sections of Tae Kim’s guide a couple of times but I might revise them again, any other resources I could go through in advance just to make things a little easier?
(Also, thank you for the work that went into that document, super helpful stuff)
3 Likes
There is no right or wrong way. Do what feels right for you, and try different approaches. Some people analyze each sentence until they’re confident they got it down right before moving on to the next one, some are content with understanding the gist, and maybe rereading later for a fuller understanding. And I’m sure many do either one or the other (or something in between) depending on mood, time, and circumstances.
I don’t know what your background in Japanese is, but when I first started reading I had such a small vocabulary that there was no way I could get the gist without looking everything up, especially in a novel where there aren’t images to help with context. If you’re reading in ebook form, lookups should be easy and not delay you too much, but even with a paper book you always have the vocab sheet to refer to. And of course you’ll have the book club to ask any question you like, once the reading starts.
10 Likes
Yeah, I never really had a vocab sheet at the ready before so I’ll definitely keep that one close, but generally speaking I think I’ll try going through perhaps a page or 2 and then going back and picking what I can apart. Undoubtedly I’ll spend less time doing so as time goes on.
5 Likes
It really also depends on your own level. If you know 98% of the vocab its no big deal looking up everything unknown (~2 words per page). If you know only 80% it can become overwhelming and maybe you should only look stuff up which is needed for rough comprehension.
And for grammar: on the higher levels sometimes it doesn’t even register as grammar since it just “makes sense” in context.
It really depends on a lot of factors like others have already mentioned.
If you look everything up you can also fall in traps like looking a word up and realizing 2 sentences later that the in universe characters also don’t know the word and you would have gotten an explanation in the book itself which would have been so much better for immersion ^^.
Not saying it did happen to me at one point or another (hem-hem)…
8 Likes
Once you complete level 30, yes. 80% of the unique kanji, which translates to 95% of the overall kanji usage (as many kanji show up more than once).
Personally, I liked Cure Dolly’s subtitled Japanese from Scratch video series. The first 20 to 30 videos can really help get you up and running, but the teaching method is fairly different from Tae Kim’s.
Otherwise, after we start reading and you start learning grammar that’s discussed in the weekly threads, you may want to return to Tae Kim’s pages and re-read them as a review.
6 Likes
If you look everything up you can also fall in traps like looking a word up and realizing 2 sentences later that the in universe characters also don’t know the word and you would have gotten an explanation in the book itself which would have been so much better for immersion
Yeah, just another reason not to pause at every unknown word then. I’ll probably just go with what I mentioned above, a page or 2 of uninterrupted reading then going back to analyse the text.
Once you complete level 30, yes. 80% of the unique kanji, which translates to 95% of the overall kanji usage (as many kanji show up more than once).
Glad to hear that, hopefully Kanji won’t slow me down much this time around.
The first 20 to 30 videos can really help get you up and running
Otherwise, after we start reading and you start learning grammar that’s discussed in the weekly threads, you may want to return to Tae Kim’s pages and re-read them as a review.
I’ll check out Cure Dolly’s videos (at least the ones that are about stuff I’m not already familiar with), and yeah I’ll keep both these videos and Tae Kim’s guide nearby as I analyse the text.
Alright, I somehow read through the first chapter and… I understood some things!! Guess I have no excuse now, haha. I’m joining!
12 Likes
I was also confused by that at first, but then I realised that the community badge shows the level that you finished. You are probably still learning the kanji of level 30 (just like I’m currently learning the kanji of level 39).
2 Likes
nope…just log out and back in …
6 Likes
Ha, that makes no sense, but you’re quite right 
. I’m pretty sure I didn’t log out and log back in 38 times before this, though 
2 Likes
Yeah I logged out and in again and now it’s showing 30 lol. I suppose it usually takes some time to update and logging back in just forces it.
2 Likes
No, it’s a glitch. You can observe that (if you don’t log out in the meantime) the moment you level up next time, it will stay at the same level (because you now logged out and back in), but if you level up after that, at that exact moment it will jump one level, but it will always stay at the level before your current one. (I recently realized that this is also true if you reset 
- I reset twice in short succession, and after the second reset it jumped to the level that I first reset to).
I already filed this as a bug with the team a long long time ago, but so far it has not been resolved yet. 
6 Likes
Oh I see. Well, I suppose it’s not a pressing bug but let’s hope they solve it at some point lol.
2 Likes
If you’re as puzzled by it as I am, you could ping them which might maybe increase the chance that it gets more attention
(I don’t mind even if you tell them that I sent you )
4 Likes
Lol I’ll do that then. Except I don’t know how XD
2 Likes