Intermediate Japanese Book Club // Now Reading: セーラー服と機関銃

Two years at least, judging by the date of the nomination post

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Holy, then I can see why you’re all mesmerized :joy:

I wouldn’t mind reading it at all, in fact I voted for it not only because I’m genuinely interested, but because my local Japanese store has it in stock so I don’t even need to order anything online.

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It’s the oldest of all current nominations :joy_cat:

It really looks like a miracle at the moment.

Not entirely sure whether by now I really want to read it or whether I really want to get it over and done with :rofl:

Nah, just kidding. I want to read it!

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nvm it’s been there since 2017

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Yes, it was one of the original nominations before the book club even split into the beginner and intermediate clubs.

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Ditto! :joy: But I own a copy, so it would be good to be able to tick it off the list, as I’m much more motivated to read when others are too.

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I wonder where I’ve even put my copy…

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OK, since not that much happened voting-wise in the last day or so, I would like to close the poll in ~24 hours! Please make sure to vote if you have not done so yet.

Oh, I found it. Right next to my copy of Nordic Girl Åsa volume 2.

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I can get it in two versions: one with furigana and another one without. I wonder which should I buy. On one hand, furigana is very handy initially, but on the other hand, whenever I have furigana my brain automatically jumps to it and ignores the kanji, I gotta force myself to really look at the kanji. Besides, I think by now I’d be able to read most of them, so even if I don’t know many words I can guess their reading and look them up.

I think I’ll get the one without furigana, also because eventually (lol) there will be a time when I start being proficient and it will bug me a lot having furigana all over the place if I ever want to read it again. And I kinda don’t wanna buy the same book twice. :sweat_smile:

What version do you all have?

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At your WaniKani level I’d recommend going with the version without furigana. As you said, you should be able to guess the readings most of the time, so dictionary lookup shouldn’t be terrible even when you don’t know the words themselves.

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I actually have both, since I regretted buying the kids furigana version first and then bought the original :slight_smile:. It also looks nicer and is a better size. I was going to give the furigana version as a present, but still haven’t found a good target.

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I left mine on the other side of the world thinking realistically I’m not going to be reading any Japanese books while I’m in Korea and it’s not like Kimi no Na wa is gna win anyway yet here we are…:upside_down_face::sob: At least I can just walk into a bookstore here for another copy I guess.:sweat_smile:

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Could you please take a picture of both of them next to eachother for comparison? I’m curious about the size difference, still on the fence about which edition I should get

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is this the furigana version?

or are there others

Thank you!

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since nichijou “won” in the bbc, and only two people voted for it(city), i’m thinking of moving this to the bbc, do i copy paste it there and remove this from the topic or do i put a link there?

A quick guideline is that books with that green boarder are meant for younger readers, so will include heavy furigana. There are also some books with a blue border that have the same approach.

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I think it would be better (from the perspective of the BBC) if you copy-paste your nomination post to the BBC thread. I think that makes everything much clearer for the BBC participants.

I will take care of dealing with it in this thread’s OP (I’m slowly restructuring it a bit anyway so that fits quite well right now).

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