Breakthrough in Reading - キノの旅 (Kino's Journey)

I am glad that you had such a great experience :+1:

how do you do 15 levels in a week though :smile:

EDIT: oh, never mind, I misread that.^^

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Thanks for telling me about Honto. I actually don’t care too much about the built in dictionary, since I’m sort of trying to look up less words when I read and rather try to understand them by the context in which they appear. It’s a bit hard sometimes since I get curious, but everytime I do it it also breaks my flow and immersion, so it’s kind of a trade-off.

Also, the thread about different electronic book stores was extremely useful for me when I set up my accounts on the different sites. Just wanted to say thank you for all that effort.

That’s sounds fantastic! good job. I’m hoping I see that much improvement with my japanese as well 8)

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Thank you :relaxed:

I hope things go as planned for you, and when it doesn’t just remember that for every minute you put in you get one minute closer to achieving what you want do be able to do.

What an awesome story! Thanks a lot for the inspiration and keep improving!

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awesome! I’ve just began my journey through WaniKani, and haven’t been keeping up with the grammar past the simple stuff. but I’ll probably order the Tofugu recommended book, A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar to improve that and spend lots of time learning here for kanji. I might have some unintended breaks but I’ll be sure to keep learning.

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I can really recommend getting the dictionary. I’ve never been a text book kind of guy when it comes to grammar, but putting grammar points I encounter into an SRS really seems to work for me so far.

I am also far from done, of course. Let’s keep going together!

Aaaahhhh, being able to read ラノベ is one of the main reasons I want to learn Japanese!

The anime adaptation of this is one of my favourite series of all time, and I’ve always wondered what the original source material is like! It’s just so evocative, and I imagine the light novel is even more so…

Congratulations, and hopefully one day, I too can enjoy reading this lovely series!

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Based on this topic, I too started reading the first volume. As others have noted, I found it to be a very pleasant reading experience, being a good combination of easy reading and intermittent unknown vocab. You want that balance of being able to read a page in a couple minutes while still learning new words.

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Cool! I was hoping more people would pick it up. Next step: Book circle! :wink:

Ans as for the difficulty, that’s more or lesss mirrors my assessment, even though I believe you have a firmer grasp of the language as a whole. Hope you enjoyed the story as well!

You should try it already, just to get a feel for your progress later on! (or any other writing of course)

Kino has a dreamy, floaty feel to it that I really enjoy, both through the subject matter and the way it is written.

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Yeah, I’ve been looking at the sample pages you can get from a few of the online book sellers to see if I can read stuff before buying it, and well… I can truly say I’m not quite at the right level yet to read Kino.

I’ll keep checking back every few months or so though, and knowing me, I’ll probably just decide one day to buy a box set up to current all in one go.

Wow great!
I just watched “Your name” japanese anime movie. It was mindblowing!!

This is my favorite kind of thread. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Im finishing Genki II in 5 chapters and Im planning to give textbooks a time and into mangas before beginning Tobira. I will begin with Yotsubato, and will try to use HouHou so wish me a good luck!

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That’s great to hear! :smiley: I’ve bought the first few volumes as well, and I’ve got about as far as you have. Glad to know there’ll be progress soon enough.

Would you mind posting an example screenshot or two from your Houhou grammar cards? I’m not quite sure how to tackle grammar with Anki, so some inspiration would be very much appreciated!

I also tried reading Kino no Tabi, and I think it took me a full month just to get through 人の痛みが分かる国 when I was under level 20… this gives me a lot of motivation to complete WK because I own the full set and would love to get through all of them at some point.

How inspiring!! Thank you very much for sharing, I hope that I will be able to reach that level of comprehension myself one day. Being able to actually visualize the story while reading in Japanese is a really awesome milestone. I do have a question, the Japanese Amazon for e-books was something that I hadn’t thought of before. Did you need to purchase a Japanese kindle like one would for a Nintendo 3ds LL?

No you just sign into to your amazon.jp account on any kindle of your choice. Just be sure to use a vpn, because you’re only allowed to purchase kindle books within Japan.

Speaking of which, I have a funny story about the usage of a vpn. I used it on my computer while I was connected to my schools servers. The first problem that came about was my credit card company thought that someone stole my card, so they locked it. Because to them it looked like I withdrew some money from a mac machine in america, then 12 hours later purchased a book in Japan. After that confusion was settled out the next problem to arise was that my school looked me out of the WiFi. They saw the vpn as malicious hardware and forced me to format my computer with a warning to never do it again in able to get back on to their WiFi. So much trouble just to purchase a few books!

I’m currently reading the same book. I feel like I can grind through it but I thought it pretty easy to understand. Though I must have been wrong as I didn’t realize it was the motorcycle who was talking, I thought he had a companion. I’ve only made it to the part where he decided to stop and eat. Also wasn’t there a mention of the motorcycle not being able to fly? But motorcycles don’t fly so isn’t it redundant to mention it in the first place?

I’m currently playing a visual novel in Japanese, but apart from the basic vocabulary, I hardly understand anything without resorting to the English translation. Hopefully, I’ll have a similar reading experience in like a year or 2 when I plan on replaying the visual novel, once I’m in my 30s or 40s on Wanikani.