魔女の宅急便・Kiki's Delivery Service 🧧 Repeat Club

hello ppl
i got the Kindle format, i will be around. See you.

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I’m forcing myself to slow down and make sure I understand everything, personally. There’s only 6 pages with text in the first chapter, and I’ve already read two of them. I don’t want to go completely stop-and-go with it.

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I was reading it quite a time ago and I went so slowly I never finished it. ^^; I need more discipline… or at least find a better balance of time. :sweat_smile:

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I feel like I started at a bit of an advantage, as I already have a habit of reading a little bit of native material every night right before bed. I’ve got a bookshelf full of mostly unread manga built up from two trips to Japan and two orders to mandarake to work through.

I’m not usually so thorough with it though. I mostly just plow through regardless of comprehension unless I get really curious about something I don’t know.

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If anybody is reading ‘V3’, the edition in the OP of this thread, it would be great if they could add the appropriate page numbers to the vocab spreadsheet :slightly_smiling_face:

also if anybody is bored...

Originally there was pretty much nobody reading V3 so I wasn’t bothering with its page numbers. But, if somebody with V3 has the time and inclination…

I need the start and end page numbers for chapters 1 and 2, and for the other chapters I also need the pages where the following sentences occur:

Chapter 3 - ぶつかる風は強くなり、ほうきの房が川の流れのような音をたてはじめました。(nb)
Chapter 3 - キキはだまってちょっと肩をすくめました。(nb)
Chapter 4 - ジジはときどき風でもちあがるレースのカーテンごしに、かごの中をにらんでいます。
Chapter 5 - 女の人はそういいながら、首をのばしてあたりを見まわすと、いきなり高い叫び声をあげました。
Chapter 6 - そして、つっかけていたかたっぽのスリッパを、思いきり部屋のすみに足で飛ばしました。(nb)
Chapter 7 - 「散歩でもしたら?おともだちのねこじゃらしが、ほら、土手にいっぱいあるわよ」
とくりかえしました。
Chapter 8 - キキはまだうたがっていましたが、でもにっこり笑っていいました。
「はい、かしこまりました」
Chapter 9 - 「えーあー、あっ、そうです。あります、あります。いま町で評判になってる。。。」(nb)
Chapter 10 - それにしても、そうとうな量です。
Chapter 11 - キキは、こうして飛びながら、もやもやとしていた気持が、風といっしょにすこしうしろに遠ざかっていくのを感じていました。

(nb) means “natural break” - i.e. there is a break in the text after this sentence. I guess it will be a lot harder to hunt down the ones where there isn’t.

Let me know if the break sentence is the very last on the page or runs onto the next. Otherwise I’ll assume the split happens in the middle of the page.

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I’m only reading the ebook version so can’t help with the above – but this post reminded me that most chapters will be split over at least 2 weeks… It would be super handy if we could have the last sentence for each week’s reading, so ebook readers know where to stop each week! (The Kindle ebook doesn’t use page numbers) :pray:

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That’s why I have the sentences lined up :wink:

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Lol did not read all the words in that post sorry :woman_facepalming: (stopped at “I also need the pages where the following sentences occur” and turned brain off)

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So excited, I got my delivery in the post and now own my very first Japanese Literature Book.

Excitement and fear in equal measure.

First impressions:

  • Yay, a proper Japanese, back to front (for an イギリス人 at least), vertical texted beautiful book to behold (and one very confused boyfriend)
  • Reads page 1: Wow this is a big step up from graded readers
  • Thank you to whoever put the vocab together, I can’t imagine how I would look up the unknown kanji as a beginner and it actually means I can get the gist in a reasonable amount of time (going for gist/exposure not full comprehension is my aim just now)
  • Some furigana but not as many as I had expected, so better keep doing my WK learning for the rest.

Can I keep up with the group based on my current level of Japanese? A page a day whilst also having a full time job and keeping up with my WK review might be a bit optimistic - we shall have a go and try not to get left behind!

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The main deciding factor may be how your knowledge of and experience with Japanese grammar is. Anything you don’t know, you can ask about in the appropriate chapter’s thread (alongside searching if it’s already been answered), but if your grammar level is fairly low, expect to have a lot of learning ahead of you. (If your grammar level is high, on the other hand, reading would go a lot more smoothly.)

If you find you can’t keep up, I’ve seen mention that during the original book club, someone wrote summaries for each chapter. So, if fall behind, you may opt to read a chapter summary, and then move on to the next chapter. (Just one option.)

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Wow - I’m so excited that we’re doing this again. I started with the original group last time, but only got to chapter 4 before life took over. This time I’d love to try again!

I also was the person who started and set up the original vocab spreadsheet. So happy to see that people kept it up, it looks beautiful. Would it be helpful if I unlock it or did people already set up a copy?

Edit - I see that there’s a fresh spreadsheet already. Great :slight_smile:

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Hello! Really cool that you are back just in time for this.

We did already create a copy because it initially looked like we wouldn’t be able to get hold of you, but thank you :blush:

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Was excited to see あごをしゃくる pop up in my anki deck for chapter 2. A weird thing to be excited for, but I’m a big fan of Shakurel Planet. (Different Kanji, I know, but I feel like しゃくる and しゃくれる must be related somehow)

There were two volumes of manga released in the Shakurel Planet line, by the way. For some reason, all of the animals speak in a Kansai dialect.

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I’ve previously looked at (and possibly posted charts here) on how much kanji one should recognize in the Kiki books based on their WaniKani level. Today, while reading a few more sentences in chapter one, I happened to wonder what I could do to slack off about the opposite: how many kanji taught in WaniKani are included in the first Kiki book, as well as the first five?

Here are the resulting charts. They are arranged by level, so level 1 kanji are first, then level 2, from top-left to top-right, top to bottom. Note that is WaniKani-taught kanji appearing in the books, and does not include kanji not covered by WaniKani.

WaniKani kanji used in Kiki book one

WaniKani kanji used in Kiki books one through five

Aside from that…

Those are some impressive chins.

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Whoa! Those are some impressive charts! Were there many kanji in the books that aren’t in WK, or was that data not available?

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Another question might be, what WK kanji would be in Kiki if it wasn’t so full of hiragana? :joy:
I am starting to recognise a lot of words where WK has taught me the kanji that could be there.

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A couple of useful ways I look up unknown kanji, that you might find useful:

  • Using the #radical search on Jisho

  • Using the ‘Handwriting’ function on Google Translate - especially on the smartphone app, you just draw the kanji, and it’s pretty good at guessing, even if the stroke order is a bit off!

Good luck with Kiki!

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Also google translate’s camera function.

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There’s also SKIP lookup

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You can also use plug niai.mrahhal.net if you know similar looking kanjis.

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