I can second that opinion. Shirokuma café will fly over your head as a beginner. The language puns are hard to grasp at an intermediate level. Some of the vocabulary is also pretty obscure. That said, some people just like the atmosphere of the manga and are totally fine with just following the animals “idle” shenanigans.
Yotsubato is way easier in my opinion ^^. Though, it is also not ideal for a beginner who doesn’t like ambiguity because it’s often from the view of a child. On top of casual language, yotsuba does make her own mistakes which can throw you for some loops as a beginner too.
But man do I LOVE yotsubato. Definitely try it at some point at least.
Generally, anything that interests you, you should try out. Many mangas and books have 試し読み online where you can read a chapter or at least some pages of the material and get a feel for it. Anything that has you interested and gets you reading is good material.
This entirely depends on the tutor honestly. A really really good one, absolutely. Otherwise I’m not sure that is true. It might seem frustrating to you, but honestly, you’re probably the best judge of what to focus on next. Especially if you ask for advice and then filter that through how you feel about your progress and where you are lacking/doing well.
Yotsubato was a very early read for the BBC and was therefore still figuring out the book club formula. It might be better to pick a more recent one. I see Teasing Master Takagi also recommended a bunch. @seanblue often recommends Aria as a first read if one ignore the first couple of pages of complicated SF terraforming scene setting (that is not really relevant to the chapter to chapter slice of life story parts).
But it is like @NicoleIsEnough says, your first one will suck. Just no way around it. The best you can do is pick as easy a one as possible that still interests you. The more it interests you, the more willing you’ll be to fight through the initial pain.
Hitting N4 first is a really good idea, for sure.
As for output stuff, I agree with @NicoleIsEnough. Consuming a lot will expand your vocabulary and will help greatly with output when you’re ready. For example, most my English active vocabulary comes from reading a lot and more and even more.
And thanks for the encouragement and luck!
As Nicole mentioned for Shirokuma Cafe, it uses puns a lot. Puns are really hard to understand when you don’t know a lot of the words, even looking them all up it can be hard to follow such things.
I’m trying to get through my long list of Graded readers and parallel books. I’ve started with these again. Tried reading them in the past and though I LOVED them, I kept getting distracted with other reading material (due to bookclubs and similar)
I got back to them recently and was shocked how much faster I could read the first book now! It is somewhat hard, as it is old Japanese Fairytales with some archaic words. But it comes with explanations, so you do learn a good bit from these
I find I prefer this style over classic Graded readers. If in doubt, check the translation/descriptions. You can read things way above your level, and use it to learn, rather than just check your understanding (or spend ages looking everything up)
Got to the second boom and read through it in a sitting O_o
It had easier language so blasted through it
Hope I can keep the momentum and finish the set, as I have many other sets waiting for me from them as well =P
I love seeing how often people still update in this thread! =D
Been a while without comments, but I keep getting “edit” updates, and that makes me happy!
