Finished reading my first novel in Japanese! (N4/N3)

[WeebPotato]

@fustian_garb

There were quite a lot of words written in kanji that I’d usually come across in kana - like たばこ written as 煙草 - or that when I looked them up my dictionary insisted they were usually written in kana. I presume this is just a stylistic choice because it’s a novel?

I see… yes, it makes that kanji is preferred if it’s a novel. For words like たばこ and animal and plant names, it’s definitely a stylistic choice, because they can be written in hiragana, katakana or kanji (いるか vs イルカ vs 海豚) . I would be totally okay with it, since getting through those first novels is for sure a challenge.

@fustian_garb

So I think the reason I came across so many different words in this was partially just because it’s a very different context to those sources. For example, there were a lot more words describing emotional states, whereas Minna No Nihongo tends to focus on teaching you how to use photocopiers.

Mmm, makes sense! I’ll bear that in mind.

@fustian_garb

For grammar: I didn’t really look up any grammar while I was reading. I found the grammar I knew was usually enough to enable me to figure out what was going on, and my aim was to ensure I understood the story. A few times when I got a bit confused about the relationships between some of the characters, I kept reading and it was stated more explicitly a sentence or two later. It was very different to doing JLPT reading texts where they’re making things deliberately confusing so that you can’t just guess at the answer but have to really prove you know the grammar.

Cool, that’s re-assuring! I have a bit of a turtle’s approach to reading new texts - I often read the same sentence a couple of times to get the rhythm right (especially for longer sentences) or to make sure the sense of it really sinks in, and write down clauses, phrases or entire sentences I find interesting.

Haha, yeah, JLPT texts are definitely something else .

Super big thanks for feedback and good luck with the new books!