大海原と大海原 ・Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea (Absolute Beginners Book Club Starting in September)

Got my digital copy as well! Bought from Amazon.jp. Looking forward to read it along with you :slight_smile:

I was studying Japanese around 10 years ago, so I still remember some grammar and vocabulary that I’m refreshing with Genki now (was using Minna no Nihongo at that time). I’m still refreshing some katakana, but apparently it won’t stick in my memory as easily as hiragana, but I’m working on it!

Thank you all for this reading opportunity :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Checked out the first few sample pages and… yeah. Going to be my first book club and it seems really daunting but seeing some people posting similar experiences is reassuring. Anyways, guess this is at least going to be good motivation for improving my grammar.

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Expect to take a long amount of time for each page (especially in the beginning), keep at it, reach the end of the volume, and I guarantee you’ll be amazed at the progress you’ll have made along the way.

The best part about completing a manga volume is being able to go back to the first few pages, and see how much easier it is. Granted, it’ll still be difficult (you’ll have forgotten words and grammar), but the progress will be palpable. You’ll see things you recall struggling with, and find they’ve become at least somewhat recognizable.

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Continuing on what @ChristopherFritz said, in the beginning it will take a long time to get through a page, but that’s totally normal when transitioning into native material. Even the most simple mangas aimed at children will have grammar from N1 etc. What I personally find helpful is having a set time to work on my reading for the week. It could be something like Saturday mornings or X minutes per evening until you finish the weeks reading. It’s also 100% okay to take things slow. If you ever find that the pace is more than you can do in a week just slow down and do the amount that works for you. The threads and resources will be available and if you ask questions in an older thread people will still be happy to help.

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I’m considering joining it but I don’t have all the n5 level down by far. Also I don’t think I can afford to buy the book. .-.

Edit: Chefked the price for the digital version and it isn’t too bad. Still kinda worried I wont be able to keep up with the group and then I will have bought it for nothing.

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It is possible to join without a ton of grammar knowledge if you’re willing to do a lot of googling and asking of questions. When I joined the ABBC for Teasing Master Takagi-san I didn’t know a ton of grammar but thanks to the patience of the others in the club and a lot of googling I managed to muddle through (though to be fair I was continuing to read through articles on Imabi in that time too, so that certainly helped as I continued)

Also, I can’t comment on your financial situation, but a digital copy of the volume should work out pretty cheap overall (it often ends up being a lot cheaper than digital manga in English in my experience). Also as a general tip, Bookwalker frequently has free volumes of manga available (there’s the BookWalker Freebies Thread to help you find what’s free) - definitely worth looking out for as you can build up quite the collection just by grabbing free stuff

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Were you able to keep up with the group?
I’m going through Cure Dolly’s Japanese from Scatch bideos and reinforcing it with Bunpro. What’s Imabi?

This is awesome, thanks for showing me! Some pf my favorite manga that I read in English years back are in there and I’ll be grabbing them to read in Japanese as a long term goal!

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Hello :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: as @VikingSchism said N5 grammar isn’t required to join people just often recommend it since it makes getting through the book easier. If you do not have a lot of grammar knowledge getting through even a couple pages can take a lot of time and googling, but it is doable if you are willing and have the time to put in.

As for keeping up with the group, it is completely okay to read slower. You can do half the reading each week if that works better for you, or adjust in anyway that is best for you. Bookclub is completely voluntary and really just a way to help you learn so please do not feel too much pressure to “keep up” . As I said in a comment earlier, all the threads are left up along with the resources, so you can use them whenever you get to them.

In the end it’s totally up to you. If you think it will be too much for you right now, you can always read the book later and still have access to all the club resources, but if you want to give it a go I’d love to have you in the club! It may be helpful to look through the threads of previous absolute beginner book clubs to get a better feel for it.

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Yes - though it was taking me a long time to get through two pages, I did some reading every day and managed to get through chapters in time, though before long I started to speed up considerably, and now for Takagi chapters it doesn’t take very long at all

I’ll let Imabi itself explain, but long story short it’s a grammar resource that is very comprehensive. Has a reputation for being dense and confusing (I didn’t find it so bad, but your mileage may vary)

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You’ll figure out your own approach as you try this, but often one of the most recommended skills to gain in addition to actual understanding of the language is being able to tolerate ambiguity. I joined the book club when I was relatively far through Genki 1 but still doing it (so not finished with N5 either). People in the book club seem patient enough to walk through explaining absolutely anything you want, and definitely take advantage of that, but all I wanted to add to what’s already been said is that there’s some value in figuring out what bits you can and moving on, even if perhaps totally understanding a panel is just too far beyond you right now. I spent my first week or two pretty much just figuring out how to better parse “real Japanese” into its components and getting a crash course on how different colloquial speech looks. I didn’t understand a whole lot, and it’s not doubt a lot better, but I’m still working on understanding more.

Anyway, point is, while you’ll no doubt be trudging through panels slowly for a while, I don’t think keeping up is necessarily a concern if you can devote a little time to it, because sometimes something might just be too many layers of new things to be worth your time to dissect right now. Do your best, when it happens maybe try to identify bits of grammar or individual words you have learned (which does wonders for helping you to remember them better in the future), but maybe give yourself some lenience too. It’s going to be a real struggle, moving to reading always is, but since you’ve been doing some studying, I don’t think this could be too early, unless it’s discouraging. Just watch for that and try not to worry, no matter how hard it feels.

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So I’m looking at this book in the Book Walker App on my phone and the free preview is showing up in English. Anyone know how to change this? It’s Japanese on my pc so in theory I could just use that but having both options would be convenient. I looked at app settings on my android but couldn’t find a place to switch languages.

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Hello :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: if the preview you are seeing is in English it’s because you are looking at the English translation of the book. Since you downloaded the app from an English language app store it automatically will take you to the English store. If you purchase the book on your computer in the Japanese store you will be able to download it to be read in the app.

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I checked with some of the freebies I grabbed, that’ll do it, thanks! I think I will take part in this book club because I want to get to reading manga and having friends and more advanced people along the way will help! I’m going to wait til closer to the bookclub to buy it though.

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I’m glad I was able to help and welcome to the club!!

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Oh man… I was too late to the party and now I can’t find any physical copies of the book :sob: I have too much screen time already in my life so I’ll have to skip this one but it looks great (I’m getting too cheerful reading よつばと! all the time so I would enjoy some gloomy stories :grin:). Hope you’ll all enjoy it! And to all of you who are thinking about joining for the first time, I highly suggest it. In worst case scenario, if you feel that it’s a bit too much at the moment, then you’ll just get some extra motivation for those grammar books (or whatnot).

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I’m sorry you weren’t able to find a physical copy. :sob: I didn’t realize how in short supply they were until after the club had been decided on, but thank you for the encouragement!!

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Hello everyone! I will be uploading the vocab sheet for this bookclub next Friday! However, since we have a lot of members for which this will be their first club I wanted to make a post on how the vocab sheets work.

The sheet will be a google sheet with a link in all the threads. Each chapter will be a new page in the sheet and it will have columns for kanji, kana, meaning, page #, and notes.

1.Please put words in “dictionary form” this means if the word is a verb that is conjugated put it in its base form so 食べた (in the manga) would be entered as 食べる in the vocab sheet. If you think it may be helpful you can put “in past tense ta form” etc. in the notes, but this is not a requirement.

2.For meaning please only put the relevant meaning for the sentence it’s found in. This means if you look up a word and it has many possible meanings only enter the one (or two) that makes sense based on the context of the manga.

3.Please try to keep the entries in order that they appear in the manga.
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4. Only add a definition if you are certain that it is correct and please use definitions from reputable dictionaries like Jisho.
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5. Any one is welcome to add to the sheet. It is a group effort that can help benefit club members and others who might read the book later. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: The sheet will be filled out as people read along, so it is not something that will be complete at the start of the club, nor at the start of the chapter.

I hope this helps all the newcomers and I look forward to reading with you! Please let me know if you have any questions!

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Thanks for this! I’m looking forward to it!

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Thank you for this! I’m super excited to be joining my first book club here :bug:

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@Jorlp @MothKau Welcome to the club! I look forward to reading with you both!

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