I know how important it is to practice Japanese via reading. I’m still a bit early in Wanikani, but I have a surprising amount of passive knowledge from Vocaloid/making English covers, so I decided to put my skills to the test.
I’m a huge fan of Project Sekai, and that game has years worth of story content put out for free in the JP app (which I already have and is easily accessible on Android via a 3rd party app store). So I figured, “why not try to read a chapter and see how it goes?”. So I read the game’s first chapter, the opening chapter for Leo/need.
There are a few things that made this a bit easier.
1: Voice acting. Hearing the words spoken makes recognizing words and grammar a lot quicker. There are a lot of words I might not recognize instantly in writing, but hearing them spoken aloud helps. If I ever want, I have the option to select between voiced and unvoiced scenes, so maybe in the (distant?) future I can try reading without voices.
2: I already know the story. I’ve read the first half a year of story content, and I know the material pretty well. The chapter I read was the origin story for Leo/need, which I’m already intimately familiar with. I can infer a bit of what’s going on solely from that. Which is helpful.
3: I already know the names and proper nouns. I feel like that might be a barrier to reading, especially early, but I’ve played Project Sekai since before its first anniversary (I joined 5 years ago this month) so I already recognize a lot of terms that might be unique to this game.
So, how’d it go?
Surprising well. And from the few things I looked up on Jisho, I might be able to read sooner than I thought. Some words I was already able to infer via kanji already taught in the first 8 levels, like 数年後 (すうねんご, number of years later). Two other words I looked up were both level 11 (昔) and level 13 (手伝う), which is a lot sooner than I was expecting.
And even if I didn’t know literally every kanji (I’m only missing one, in “meteor shower”(?)), I can infer the meaning from the rest of the statement.
There were also a surprising amount of times I completely understood the statement. A lot more than I was expecting, actually. The only word here I haven’t been taught via Wanikani is 部屋 (wow, only level 9?) but I already knew it. Key words like 学校 and 教室 have already been taught to me.
Reading aloud kind of helped with certain words here, but it’s kind of incredible how much I already know. And I’m still in the Pleasant levels. Granted, like I said, I’ve picked up on a number of words being into Vocaloid music （心配、～達、etc.) and to my surprise, I’m almost entirely following this already.
In short, even if you’re still at a low level, try reading! It might surprise you! I think I’m still gonna wait until around 10-15 to try again, but this was an eye opening experience.
(and maybe I should properly study for N4, since I only barely passed a mock N5 because I don’t study for tests specifically)
By the way, if there is anyone here who has read Project Sekai, what WK level / JLPT level would you recommend before trying to read this? Or read in general?
.