(Back up) Floflo.moe - A WK-friendly website for reading

By the way, I don’t remember if it was requested before, but would it be possible to add the actual frequency of word in the book next to their id or something in the vocab list?

I would use that to read along with the frequency 1 list, add words with frequency > 1 (plus those that I find interesting anyway) and ignore the rest.

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Btw, I don’t know if you wanted to include other options aside from Amazon, but I did find this book on CDJapan: CDJapan : Toki wo Kakeru Shojo (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) (Kadokawa Tsubasa Bunko) Yasutaka Tsutsui, Hiro Kiyohara BOOK

So is the general consensus that 時をかける少女 is easier than 魔女の宅急便? I already bought 時をかける少女 and might try reading it in a few months after some time to relax, but I’m curious what to expect.

In the same vein, I wonder what’s considered the absolute most easiest text on floflo ?

I started to read Snow white, because it was in the “easy” section and I thought knowing the story in advance would help, but holy crap, this is really freaking hard, probably way to hard for my level (according to jcat, barely N4), I’m getting crushed… Maybe I should retreat back to graded reader and nhk easy for a while :sob:

Here’s a wall of text.

Well it’s easiest in the sense that it has the least words. I took a look in and I definitely think トキメキ図書館 is the easiest.

Not super surprising. I try to grade categories objectively using the data I have, but a lot of words doesn’t necessarily mean a hard book. Now that the parser is more accurate I can probably start doing word density, which is probably a better indicator of difficulty.

Anyway, there’s two things besides length to consider when choosing a book: 1) subject matter and 2) length.

The first is important because it tells you whether the books needs to whip out advanced grammar or specialized language to explain what it needs to explain. One thing to note is that Japanese children aren’t retarded, their brains just aren’t developed. A fairy tale will not hesitate to pull out N1 grammar if it needs to but it might not use a compound sentence if it didn’t need to. Again, this is because what’s hard for children isn’t necessarily what’s hard for foreign language learners.

The second, length, is important because it tells you how often you’ll need to learn new words in a book (density, in other words). Snow White only has like 800 words so it looks easy, right? But it’s probably between 10-20 pages. That means you have to learn new words every single sentence, and that you probably won’t use it more than a couple times.

On the other hand the Aoi Tori Bunko (tokimeki, ojou-sama tantei Alice) books tend to have about 3,000. Your knee jerk reaction would be to go for the 800 word one, but remember that the former is 800 words over about 15 pages and the later is 3,000 words over 200. Guess which one is easier. And then there’s the fact that those Aoi Tori books are original works made for children. Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo wasn’t made for children. It’s a novel for adults that was adapted for children, but if it deals with complex subjects, as I imagine it would, then it can’t help but use advanced grammar and terminology when it does.

Anyway, in short, the easiest books are Aoi Tori Bunko books. They have the lowest density and the simplest subject manner. In fact, I’m very confident that they’re easier than Majo no Takkyubin.

@Arzar33 there’s probably only like 300 grammar points in the Japanese language. I covered N4-N2’s grammar in about half a year so if you want to see major improvements in your reading just get a book like Kanzen Master and cover 2-4 points a day. Two points will take likely 20-30 minutes tops. As a general rule it’s much easier to improve your grammar than it is to improve your vocabulary.

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Or try some easier manga? You could try reading よつばと with that book club. Or join the the beginner book club and read Aria the Masterpiece with us in 3 weeks.

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@Raionus I have another suggestion to get on the backlog / poll list:
魔法少女育成計画 (Magical Girl Raising Project)

Here’s the English summary from Wikipedia:

A popular social game known as the Magical Girl Raising Project has the ability to grant players a 1-in-10,000 chance of becoming a real-life magical girl. Each of the magical girls possess unique abilities and earn Magical Candies by protecting people and performing good deeds. However, at some point, the administration has decided that sixteen magical girls in a certain city is too many, announcing they will cut the number in half by having the magical girl with the fewest Magical Candies each week lose their powers. As the rules of the game become more twisted, the girls eventually find themselves dragged into a life-or-death battle against each other.

And in Japanese for those much more skilled than me and can read this without looking up every other word :sweat_smile:. I don’t think this summary contains plot spoilers. Sorry if I’m mistaken!

人気ソーシャルゲーム「魔法少女育成計画」には、プレイヤーの数万人に一人を常人離れした身体能力と可憐な容姿、人間にはない特殊能力を持つ「魔法少女」にする力があった。しかし、N市に16人もの魔法少女が密集したことにより、その土地の持つ魔力が不足するため、魔法少女を半分の8人まで削減することを運営側が宣言した。

突然の事態に戸惑いながらも目標をこなしていく魔法少女達。しかし間もなく選抜試験は「脱落者は命を奪われる」死のサバイバルゲームであることが発覚し、生き延びるために協調を訴える者、他者を蹴落とさんと暗躍する者、自らを犠牲に隣人を守る者、様々な思惑が絡み合い、魔法少女同士による殺し合いが始まる。

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What do you guys do when you get a word like かける that has a million meanings. Do you just trash the word since you have no way of knowing which definition will be used in the context of the book anyway?

I usually just learn first meaning unless it’s a verb. Then I just trash it.

Anyway, kinda just wanna collect some data from whoever’s looking at the thread. I mean, I guess I have google analytics for this but w/e

What kind of books are you guys using my site for?

  • 0 - 1000 words
  • 1000 - 2000 words
  • 2000 - 3000 words
  • 3000 - 4000 words
  • 4000 - 5000 words
  • 6000+ words (mad lads)
0 voters

Are you guys interested in using the Aoi Tori Bunko books. They’re the easiest, least dense novels, and also what I used to get into novels

  • Yee
  • Nee
  • I’m not interested in kiddy books >:[
0 voters

You could try checking out Satori Reader. They have some free articles/stories available and you can click on any word and it will tell you the dictionary form with definition and which form is being used in the sentence, and sometimes there are extra notes about how things are being used, for example:

気持ちよさそう
The base words here are kimochi-ii (“good-feeling”) and the suffix sou (“seems to be”). Using the normal rules for attaching the sou suffix, we would expect kimochi-i-sou, but there is a special form when attaching ii to sou, which is yosasou. So, this entire expression means “seeming to be good-feeling.”

I think having that extra context right there as you read is really helpful when you’re first getting into reading and makes it less overwhelming.

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I decided to read Obaa-san to Kuro Neko because I got impatient waiting for my books to arrive :stuck_out_tongue:

I intend to read Kiki’s Delivery Service, but mostly because the book club did it - I anticipate it being difficult.

I also bought Ojou-sama Tantei Alice because it looked a good compromise between easy / interesting (it seems to be missing a ‘difficulty’ tag, btw?). I’m not sure how well I’ll handle the grammar in a detectivey book, but that’s the kind of book that looks most suitable for me. Tokimeki Toshokan has fewer words, but looks kind of boring; I’ll try that if I can’t handle Alice.

Also, dang, it’s really nicely illustrated!

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I usually check the Japanese definition. In a lot of cases, the Japanese is more concise (it’s just that there’s no exact match in English, so many “definitions” are used to cover everything).
It’s, of course, not the case of かける, which has a billion definitions in both languages.

If there’s a definition I like, I’ll add the word and learn that definition. Hopefully I will still get the rest through reading the definition when answering.
If no definition seems useful, I will usually ignore. Maybe it will show up in another book; if that’s the case, I’ll probably add the word anyway.

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Oh nice. I own like six volumes from that series - it’s actually not that bad for a kids series. Except for the second volume, which is an abomination that should’ve never been let loose on this earth.

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My wallet weeps

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Thank you very much @seanblue and @Asterlea and @Raionus for your awesome answers and advices !

I’ll try to slow down a little on WK (more than 2 hours everyday right now, it’s too much) and focus more on grammar and reading. I have already the N4 Kanzen master book, but slack on it… Also Satori reader looks really great and close to my level. And finally I ordered Aria the masterpiece, the topic on the forum is shaping up to be very motivating !

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@Raionus I’m a bit confused about the way leeches work.
Right now, it seems that when I fail a leech, it just bounces it back to review (so that I have to review it again and again until I get it right) we should be much faster if I was paying more attention.

My understanding was that it would be bounced back to lesson the first time it’s detected as a leech (i.e reset).
So, does that mean that it is back to lesson stage, but immediately put in my queue?
If that’s the case, I feel it would make more sense to put it back in the review list (or even in the leech list, which still seems empty for me), so that I can check it more carefully at a different time… Maybe make a mnemonic or three, as well.

I have a special SRS level 0 which has an instant timer. I can’t know for sure without looking at the words in question, but I imagine that’s what you’re experiencing.

In order to be marked as a leech (either the first or second time around) an item needs to have at least 8 reviews total and needs to be below 67% (I think?) accuracy. There’s another way to get marked a leech but I imagine this is the most relevant. Anyway, when it gets set as a leech the first time your accuracy gets reset so you’d need to fail it a bunch more times for it to get auto-ignored. It definitely shouldn’t be auto queued.

Ah, I see. I guess it was just SRS level 0, then.
I feel like I have failed those words a bazillion times already, but I guess 1 bazillion < 8, maybe…

Ah, I’m looking at the tables and I think something is wrong with the formula. I’ll fix it soon

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Is there a way to edit a card during review ?

Quite often, when I fail a card at review time, I would like to be able to immediately add a mnemonic or fix a little the definition to be easier to type (some of them are quite long), or add synonyms, but I’m not sure if it’s possible right now.