It’s seems like a really uncommon novel when I googled it, but I’m very curious about the synopsis:
The novel centers on an unnamed protagonist who turns into a monster at night. One night, he goes to retrieve something he forgot at school, thinking that no one would be present at school. But it is there in his classroom that he meets a classmate named Satsuki Yano.
Still, if anyone here has actually checked this out: was it good? is it hard to read if I’m, by estimate, on a JLPT N4 level? I kind of plan on buying this novel.
By the way, it has the same author as 君の膵臓をたべたい (I want to eat your pancreas)
Have you tried reading a sample from it yet? Here’s one from Bookwalker. It’s the first 26 pages.
I haven’t read it, but from a quick glance I can say it doesn’t have a lot of furigana.
So, I’ve read about 20 pages of the hardcover edition so far. It’s not too hard, I think, but you’d still need something like N2 to be able to read it without having to look up a lot of grammar and vocabulary. If you buy it as an ebook, the vocab part shouldn’t be too much trouble as you can look up the word easily, though.
That being said, there are people on WK reading books at N4, it’s definitely possible, and this one is indeed straightforward enough in therms of sentence structure, so guessing the grammar pattern might be possible.
I still plan on buying it as hard copy. I want to think my grammar comprehension is good enough, but yes, my vocabulary is still severely lacking at this point.
Well, the first 15 pages or so cover the first night (Tuesday) and basically covers the things from the synopsis you posted (with a few extra details about (not really spoilers, but anyway) his monstrous form, its powers, limitations, etc.
I don’t really want to spoil anything, but it does remind me of 君の膵臓をたべたい in the sense that two characters are brought together by the fact that one knows the other’s secret.
So, yeah, not too much action yet, but it is intriguing and I like the writing style.
I read the first few sentences (while browsing the dictionary all the time) and I also like how it is written. It’s very straightforward! However, I need to look up word/s in the dictionary every single sentence
On what WK level do you think I can read this with ease? (Just an estimate)
I’m not the person that you asked, but I just want to say that you probably won’t be able to read novels easily at any wanikani level without also learning a lot of words that aren’t on wanikani. So, I imagine which level you can read stuff comfortably on also depends on how much you know from outside wanikani. (That said, you do learn a lot of Kanji and a decent amount of vocab from wk, which obviously helps, but I don’t think just that is enough to be able to read stuff easily. Though, it could obviously help with not having to look up kanji.)
(I’m obviously not level 60 myself though, so I guess you can take that with a grain of salt, but it’s still based on what some level 60 people have said, and knowing that a decent amount of the words I’ve learned from books aren’t on wanikani)
Like @Ditto20 said, it’s more about your vocabulary size and less about your WK level. Knowing kanji will help you look up words when there’s no furigana, like in this book; even if you don’t know the specific reading in a given word, at least you’ll know a reading allowing you to type the word in your IME of choice. However, there are just too many words that either do not contain kanji, contain non-joyo kanji or are simply not on WK.
The thing that really helped me for vocab was to use floflo.moe, specifically to learn words as I was reading through a book. That way, it makes sure I learn words I have to look up, rather than just forgetting them straight away.
Sadly the word list for よるのばけもの isn’t available there, but I just gave a suggestion. Hopefully enough people will vote for it Who knows.
Another disadvantage is that it’s another SRS on top WK, which can be very taxing.
The next best thing, honestly, is just to pace yourself. I read my first Japanese book somewhere between the N3 and N2 level, and it took me something like three months, I think? And that’s fine too. Just read a bit everyday, you’ll vocabulary will naturally get better whether you use an SRS or not anyway.
This is hard because I tend to like “uncommon” books, and I prefer reading the hard copy but thanks for the suggestion!
Thanks for reminding. I keep becoming impatient why I can’t read a single novel yet at this point. Its sounds so impractical when I know myself reading manga is already hard for me as well. Reading NHK news is becoming boring already, so I thought I’d upped myself, but yes, reading novels is still hard
but thanks for the suggestion!
