Beginner Japanese Book Club // Now Reading: 気になってる人が男じゃなかった // Next 葬送のフリーレン, then ウスズミの果て

Me too, looking to buy よつばと now! Really should have looked how much things cost before I voted. よつばと is quite reasonable on Amazon UK but Girl Who Leapt Through Time is currently going for 50 quid for a used paperback! Must be more reasonable elsewhere considering you can pick up books so cheap in Japan and shipping doesn’t cost that much.

I came over to Japan for the weekend for a vacay, so the timing was perfect for me to buy Yotsubato. I bought the first five volumes for now. I suspect it’ll keep us going for a bit. If we go really quick, I have a Kinokuniya near my home anyway.

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Yep, I agree. Can I make it official?

How do you guys want to approach it? Shall we read 1 or 2 volumes? How many pages should we try to read per week? The first volume has 224 pages. 20 pages/week would probably be too little, am I right?

Any suggestions are appreciated :slight_smile:

Yeah I think it’s safe to say よつばと!is it, I’m all for making it official now!

Hmm yeah, considering it’s a manga, it should be pretty reasonable to at least double that and try to do ~10 pages per day or 40-50 pages/week

You can make a poll for the # of pages too if you’d like :slight_smile:

And maybe keeping it at the first volume for now and seeing how this book club takes off, and maybe once we’re into volume 1 we can all decide again if we want to continue with the volumes or do something else – but that’s just my input, I’m down for anything!

I have the first volume of よつばと!, but can’t read crap because I haven’t spent nearly enough time in Genki as I should…it’s depressing.

5 pages a day would put us at 35 pages assuming you did it everyday. For me personally, I am not sure I have enough free time in the day to do 10 pages, even if its a manga, since it still includes looking up words and grammar. Plus, I still need time to do WaniKani and study Genki.

I vote for 5-6 pages a day and then after a few weeks do a vote if it’s too little, enough, or to much. I would rather error on having more time initially then losing my mind since I can’t keep up.

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Too few votes for Tsuredure Children! Plus it’s free!

Oh well. I’d like to be added please.

How many pages of よつばと!would you like to read per week? The first volume has 224 pages.
(This can be later changed depending on the group’s pace)

  • 10 pages/week
  • 15 pages/week
  • 20 pages/week
  • 25 pages/week
  • 30 pages/week
  • 35 pages/week
  • 40 pages/week
  • 45 pages/week
  • 50 pages/week

0 voters

Obs: You can vote on 2 options once again. This way, you can give us the interval between the number of pages that you find comfortable reading while still giving a specific answer.
( I want to avoid a situation like this: 20-30 pages/week wins, but is it 20, 25 or 30?)

Photos of the first pages can be found here (click on the book’s image).

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Done :slight_smile:

What an awesome idea.

Could you please add me to the list? Can’t wait to order whatever title will be chosen :slight_smile:

Just seen that Yotsubato obviously made it - good choice. Have all 13 volumes on my bookshelf :slight_smile: Time to re-read the first one.

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If my experience with よつば&! is any example, the first chapter, which is longer than average, will be painful, so targeting five pages per night sounds like a challenging, but achievable, goal. It has a fair amount of kanji packed into its first half (which is also much denser, dialogue-wise, than the second), though most of it should be passably familiar by around level 12 and the topics topics largely predictable if you’ve watched much slice-of-life anime.

But its grammar doesn’t really get much more complex than that, and a lot of its vocab follows very directly from visual context: the most abstract conversation I recall was people discussing a trip that wasn’t shown or previously alluded to at all, not counting a chapter near the start of volume 2 that’s loaded with movie-tough-guy slang. This holds at least to midway through volume 4, where I am right now, where the main reading challenge has shifted to parsing hiragana and trying to map that back into kanji to discern meaning, kinda making it like listening comprehension work, though the amount of kanji has been ramping up as characters other than Yostuba have been given more page-time.

Chances are it’ll be feasible to target half a chapter per night by the end of the first volume, even for less-confident readers, and maybe a full chapter per night by the end of the third, especially if the grammar/vocab breakdowns in the discussion threads stick.

I’m voting for 30 pages per week, which is about how long a chapter is. (24-28 pages, though I think the first one was closer to 50, or at least it felt that way)

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I think for first two or maybe three weeks we can start from smaller amount of pages. Maybe ten. If majority of users will be able to keep this pace we can change amount of pages in one week

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Ordered よつばと! I loved Azumanga Daioh and enjoyed what I read of Yotsuba& in English But then the later volumes were done by different translators and they were a bit too literal in their translations, so that it felt really awkward.

Was reading チーズスイトホム on my own before this. It’s cute and at about my level, but I’m having a bit of trouble with the cutesy kiddie talk that Chi speaks at times. Hoping to get more practice and reason it out with everyone here!

Agreed. It’s easier to start slow and ratchet it up than to have people get frustrated and quit. I could probably handle the quicker rate since some of the pages are really sparse, but I have lots I can read in addition if it’s too slow a rate for me. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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Yeah… I’ve noticed that, too, when I check my Yen Press copies instead of ADV while confirming whether I read a difficult sentence in a way that makes sense or trying to figure out where I made a mistake (usually some verb conjugation detail). They’ve both been on my shelf for years, but I didn’t actually start reading the series 'til my Japanese copies arrived.

They not only lose a lot of the character I’ve been reading in Japanese (the way Yotsuba slurs or abbreviates words or adapts speech patterns from others), but they also overstate context, making everyone sound older and more absolute.

ADV rewrote jokes and took liberties, but it feels more like what was intended. Yen Press’s rendition is very stiff.

I would like to be added as well please.

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I agree with this. I have the first volume on the way and I’d like to get a good ways through it and then decide if I’m interested in reading the second.

I also agree with this. Start low, assess how that’s going, discuss and decide on new amount after a couple weeks.

Yay, I’m excited to start! :blush:

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I will join, but as I have already read V1 of Yotsubato in Japanese, I will read along next time. Good luck! -.- :smiley:

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Done :slight_smile:

I’m on the second chapter of よつばと! - I started Ch 1 when I was still level 11, and I found the first chapter to be a lot more challenging than the second. Mostly the conversations between the adult characters. Either way, it’s really cute and fun so far, so I think it will be a good pick for the first book! :smiley:

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