A manga box subscription based on reading level!

That seems expensive to me. Is this actually a good deal and I’m just mistaken?

I imagine you can get cheaper elsewhere if you know how, but when I ordered Yotsubato on Amazon, just the one volume set me back £15 with delivery, which is nearly $20, so for 4 volumes, it looked like a steal to me!

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For sure! Once it arrives at my igloo in this distant Canadian wasteland perhaps I’ll post a review.

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Cool, thank you!

But you could buy used and buy in sets. I just received 6 volume set of “judge” by {外海 良基} for 27 american dollars in “very good” condition. But i have bought first volume before to see if i like it and if it is not too hard for 9 dollars. but still…

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In case you’re just curious about what kind of stuff they’re sending and don’t just want to hear from that person specifically: I’ve gotten the first two volumes of orange, four volumes of silver spoon, イカ娘 and Handa-kun, three volumes of たいようのいえ, two volumes of nichijou, the first volume of 日本人の知らない日本語 and a volume or two of some other random series I can’t remember the names of.

(That’s with the “intermediate” subscription)

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羨ましい

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Oh wow, there’s a subscription box for everything xD Thanks for sharing this! I’m super tempted to try it out, mostly because it seems like it’d be a lot of fun to be surprised, and I don’t have many books anyway :slight_smile:

It’d be great to see the expand into light novels or novels/manga one day.

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Ugh, I know right? The one nearest me is at least a couple hours drive away and even that close is lucky compared to some people.

Living in a country with a store that specialises in Japanese books :sob: I never heard of Kinokuniya before, turns out they don’t even have a UK store! :sob:waahhhh

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Oooh, interesting, thank you. That seems like a substantially more varied selection than the website’s images might suggest.

I went ahead and paid for a one month intermediate subscription :o We’ll see how it goes!

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Get an Japanese Amazon account and buy manga ebooks for 400 yen a pop.

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yea that’s a good idea.

Say what now? Been thinking of picking up some Yotsubato… Reading pack you say?

Service sounds nice. But problem for me is if I start reading/watching something, I want to all of it. Reading random volumes of random manga sounds like a completionist’s nightmare.

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I’ve looked at both used and sets on Amazon Japan. Problem though, used only ships to Japan as they’re usually just sold by people, or at least third party sellers not wanting to deal with the hassle. Or, the sets doesn’t really seem like a great deal.
Which leads me to a question, that I’m not sure anyone would have a good answer to:
Fork over big money for a set from Amazon proper, or use a service like Tenso to buy used stuff?
Would the cost of Tenso service and shipping fees and everything just offset the savings of buying used? Or worse, cost more?

Only the first two volumes, and there are occasional mistakes, but overall they are pretty helpful.

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I’ve looked into this a bit. I think you still might save some money, but not much.

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Yeah as @seanblue said, pretty helpful. It’s just a grammar list with English translations or verb information basically to help walk you through it, but assumes enough of your own Japanese knowledge that it’s not a straight up translation. They’re meant to be charged, but you can get them for free from the site if you really don’t want to pay, and they come with an anki deck too.

I think it’s still worth having an English scan to hand just in case, which can be found online, as some of the mannerisms Yotsubato uses to speak can be quite confusing initially, but there are several videos online that will explain how to go about reading it.

Not really an option in the UK. I got an ad for this box on my insta yesterday and had a look
It’s $30 including shipping, which is a good deal here. Getting Japanese books at all in the UK is a bit of a struggle, there’s essentially no used market, and shipping from Japan can be insane even for tiny flimsy books.

I’m tempted by this box set but I have 3 books around that I still haven’t read properly so I can’t justify it.

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