I just finished Chapter 1! It definitely helped to pre-study a bunch of the vocab so I wasn’t looking at the sheet TOO often, and I also have the Audible audiobook that I paused and played a LOT (at 0.75x speed!) to help me pick up the rhythm of the sentences.
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That’s awesome! Do you use Japanese Audible for that? I have a UK subscription, I wonder if I can listen to Japanese books… 
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Yes unfortunately you’d either need a Japanese subscription or to buy it outright from audible.jp or amazon.jp. There are basically no Japanese books in the English-speaking marketplaces ):
Nice! Interesting to hear about the audio approach as well.
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There are some loooong sentences.
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Welcome to Japanese literature. 
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It reminds me of some older English-language novels I’ve read, which have these sentences that seem to go on forever, as if the author forgot how to use the period punctuation mark, resulting in a string of descriptions and activities, where by the time the sentence ends, I’ve forgotten where it began, only to realize I’m not actually at the end yet, and I wonder if I should start over, or just keep going, or do something else instead.
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When I started reading Japanese books, I actually checked out the Japanese translation of a book by the German author Thomas Mann, who is infamous for his half-page-long sentences… I was very disappointed to learn that the translator had turned them into normal Japanese sentences 
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It’s interesting to see how the original translation of Kiki’s handles some things (which is part of why I’m looking forward to the new translation). Here’s an example of two Japanese sentences becoming one English sentence:
Japanese: おや、居間から家族の話し声がきこえてきました。どうやらお茶の時間のようです。
English: From the living room came the sound of lively chatter and clinking of tea cups.
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Now that’s a free translation, losing quite a bit of character in the process. 
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this is far above my ability level, but the book cover was so pretty I couldn’t resist buying the book and joining…
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very clever
After doing some reading, and re-reading, of the first pages, I realized that I was completely confused about the story because I had misunderstood where the author (is it always like this?) would insert descriptions about the speakers.
For example I thought it said (not verbatim):
[Kiki says things], an annoying child says [...], a man says [...]
This implied Kiki had a sister. Later the story mentions that we’ve only met 3! people in the family. Re-reading the pages made me realize that it actually said
[Kiki says things], an annoying child said. [...] a man said. [...] (said by kiki's mother)
In fact Kiki has no sister at all! Not sure if that counts as a spoiler 
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I would love to be able to listen to the audio book.
How did you buy the audio book?
I have an account on Amazon.jp that works for buying Japanese books, but when I tried to sign up for Audible.jp from there, something went wrong.
I located the Kiki audio book on Audible.jp, and I was able to listen to an audible sample from the first chapter, but when I tried to buy the book I got this message:
“This title is not available for you.
Sorry, this title is no longer available.”
Any idea what’s going on with that?
I don’t know too much about the how foreign books work on Audible (I think you have to have a separate Japanese account). But there is another option I’ve come across called audiobook.jp.
Disclaimer: I haven’t used it so I can’t vouch for it. But from what I’ve read its fairly easy to get working as someone living outside of Japan. This book is available here: 新装版 魔女の宅急便 | 日本最大級のオーディオブック配信サービス audiobook.jp.
Again, I can’t vouch for it since I haven’t used it, and the app has bad reviews on android which gives me pause.
It would be nice if it was good though because would be a hassle to log in and out of my audible account (which I use often).
If anyone has experience with them, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
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I was just thinking about this the other day. When I saw this post yesterday I read the sentence I asked about and it didn’t make much sense out of context. So I just picked up the book now and read the first three pages (which includes this sentence) to see if it made more sense in context (it did). I understood almost everything in those three pages with no dictionary lookup and I read it relatively quickly. It really is amazing the difference 2.5 years can make.
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Using the audible book is a great idea! Would help a lot with not having to draw out the whole kanji in google translate every time there’s one I don’t know. A lot easier to just hear what it is since I often know the word and just don’t know the kanji yet.
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Maybe they’ve got some blocking happening based on the region you’re in? Happens to me a lot trying to access stuff from US companies. Could try a free VPN to change your location to Japan and see if that does anything.
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Just a guess, but you may need a JP address… if you have a Tenso account you might be able to use that.
Good point! Forgot about that as well…!
Is the voice actor/person reading the book the same (based on the sample) the one you are using from audible?
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I don’t have it on Audible, but according to the description it is the same narrator, publishing corporation, etc. From the samples, they sound like the same narrator.
I just bought it on audiobook.jp. It was super easy to create an account and do it. They don’t need an address or anything.
The audio book was provided in mp3 files separated by chapter which is pretty convenient. Seems like it works well to me. It obviously doesn’t save your place like Audible, but there are probably some mp3 players that will do that for you.
I don’t think I’ll bother with their mobile app. I’ll just move the mp3’s over to my phone 
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