And if you knew the questions beforehand I’m sure you would’ve found the answers when scanning the text. Maybe you would even finished it faster by skipper irrelevant parts.
Btw, that’s the key to reading assignments on JLPT - read the questions first.
Took a few speed reading tests, where it put my speed at about 550 wpm, but my comprehension averaged maybe around 70% (english, non-native). To be fair, a lot of those questions were full of irrelevant numbers (like was the year 1996 or 1997, was he 4 or 5 years old etc.). That’s usually like the least important bit of the text…
I probably spent more time reading the questions than the text last time I took it 
. Without the context it was sometimes difficult to see the differences.
Playing video games in Japanese (Animal Crossing heyooooo) sped my reading way up. Also karaoke, because the pure panic that sets in if you don’t keep up forces you to read faster.
That’s actually a really good idea, I need to try that xD
I think you just have to practice more or it’s different from people to people… I can read it pretty fast I “glide” my eyes on a text and I can read it pretty quickly
Cool! It’s been sited there on my shelf for almost a year in my case 
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Where were you in terms of reading before starting with it? Still bumping into unknown words or it was a rare occurrence?
How did you go through the book, time frame and such.
I would love to hear about it. This is one of a couple of books with which I’ve been really thrilled upon encountering, and then have only seen shelf time.
I’m still waiting your level 60 
I attended a language school when I first arrived in Tokyo. I had spent roughly 3 years memorizing words, playing video games in Japanese and having the occasional very basic conversation before I arrived. It’s hard for me to say exactly how good my reading was back then… somewhere between N3 and N2 but not fast at all.
I would say 80% of my struggles with the book at that time were not words but being able to extract meaning quickly, which is why it served its purpose very well. Until then I had always read very slowly at my own pace, picking out words I didn’t know and adding them to SRS. Which is why being forced to read quickly, and try to answer questions based on a text even if I didn’t know a word or two was very good for me at that time. Being forced to read something quickly and show that you understand it is actually a really important survival skill in Japan imo.
The book still sits unfinished on my shelf too 
. I started working for a Japanese company and had so many emails, slack messages and other documents to be reading it was hard to prioritize the books I had. I plan on picking it up and finishing the parts we didn’t cover in class some day.
how long have you been reading English stuff? @qwertion
maybe you need more time to reach the same fluency you are at in English for Japanese.
besides I find it harder to read Japanese written in vertical style (sadly most books are written in that form)
Its definitely going to depend on exactly what is being read though. A standard fantasy novel like Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, I can knock out ~100 pages an hour, but I was closer to 60 with Stephen Erikson’s Garden of the Moon.
Thanks for commenting on your experience.
I’ll start again with the book then. I’m still bumping with unknown of forgotten words regularly, but I’m sure I’ll catch up with those just be reading often.
The two obstacles I’ll like for tackle with a speed reading method are catching up with CCs over Japanese TV and stop been afraid of bigger books (I’ve consistently chosen 200ish pages novels to avoid having something where the end page starts feeling this endless path)
@aanhlle
Nah… Level 60 comes with too many responsibilities: a finishing WK post, the ceremony, the secret forum introduction, fresh durtles looking forward for your next move. I don’t think I could take all that pressure… 
You are the first guy who mentioned The Malazan Tale of the Fallen outside of niche high fantasy forums for me. It’s as if no one I know reads it.
There might be some things that are impossible to speed up on. You don’t read word by word, line by line, your eyes dart of everything. The brain is very lazy (or efficient) it tries to minimise the effort of reading, and makes guesses as to what’s on the page. If you change language from reading left to right, and changing where the important information falls in the sentence, your brain can’t process it as effectively so you’ll spend more time on it. This might be stuff that gets hard wired in your head at a very young age.
The really common example. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.[1]
If you’re used to this and now have to process kanji and hiragana together, I think it would be difficult for the brain.
As morteasd said, your understanding won’t be 100%. If you do speed reading test, its based on wpm, plus how many answers you get right. When you want to read faster, you have to accept you will miss read things. It’s not a bad thing, even book editors cant get 100% comprehension.
If wonder if you can buy visual novels on e-Readers which come with text-to-speech. (Might not flow at the right speed) I sometimes do this with books on the Kindle (in English.) I find it helps me speed up reading, and keeps my eye in the right place.
I feel like that’s because its much harder to read than the average fantasy book. There’s so much to keep track of and the language can be a bit tricky since its mostly uncommon. Definitely worth reading!
I read that fast in English ( short books, anyway. The length of novels we’ve been reading in intermediate book club would take me a couple of hours if they were in English)
I read nowhere close to that fast in Japanese!! I imagine it’s a partly a matter of practice, and partly a matter of approach. In English, I don’t read each individual word, I read phrases, but in Japanese, I’m still figuring out individual words.
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