Is this useful for learners?

Here’s a picture of the book, I Google translated the description and says it’s teaching kids emotions and idioms, would this be a useful for a learner and what sort of level is it?

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Looks like this is more a guide about the polite rules of interactions, aimed at late elementary/early middle school girls. It shows how to write thoughtful fan letters or how to be respectful via SNS, and how to express dislike for something without being offensive. Honestly, we could all use a book like this :sweat_smile: I would wager that this could start to be understandable for N3 upward.

In general, if you can’t understand the example pages that Amazon offers you for a book then you’re not yet at the level to gain anything from trying to read it.

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it looks nice enough. though, if you’re trying to learn japanese, being taught in japanese (which this book seems to be in) might not be the most efficient way to go about things…

where’d you find this, by the way?

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I disagree with the other two responders, for what it’s worth, but I also enjoy “reading” books where I understand only 20 percent of it, so maybe that’s just me. If it looked interesting I’d read it and consider it a win if I learned 3 words from the whole thing.

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Finally a book aimed at me

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whatever works for different people, personally only understanding 20% of a book sounds miserable…oof… super embarrassing if it’s a picture book :face_with_open_eyes_and_hand_over_mouth:

if you are looking for a good resources for books for various levels of learning take a look at natively
can filter however you want and there are also public lists made by users grouped by topic

https://learnnatively.com/search/jpn/books/

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Normally I’d agree with you, but this user has asked three times in just a few days “what level is this book,” so unless they’re putting together a handmade alternative to Natively, I suggest that they stick to books they can understand (on at least a basic level) what they’re about :melting_face:

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Fair. I only read things I can get the jist of, and actually 20% comprehension is enough for that, although I admit I haven’t actually done any stats.

Also @shuly I can’t tell if you’re being mean or making a joke. Or a third option I haven’t thought of?

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it’s hard to quantify comprehension but sub 60% or 70% understanding i find immensely frustrating in manga. it’s a little bit easier for digital books because of instant lookups but even then it slows progress significantly in a real frustrating sort of way

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There is something to be said about the ability to smash your head against a wall reading and still enjoy struggling through it. It’s a valuable trait.

I started reading my first adult VN before I learned katakana or even had verb conjugations figured out. It’s more just a question of how good you are at looking stuff up when you’re punching that far above your weight.

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It popped up on Amazon Japan when I was looking at ほんとうにあったお話

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I’ve looked at natively before but the problem I found was the so called beginner books that were there were very casual, slang, onomatopoeia and stuff no one teaches like I couldn’t read yotsuba despite it being an n4 level cause of all the stuff no one teaches you and I looked online for translations but one article randomly missed out bits entirely and I didn’t have much luck trying to look things up cause it was more natural Japanese that isn’t taught. Also the book I put in this post didn’t come up on natively

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The example page the writing was so small I couldn’t make it out even zooming in

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People say you shouldn’t read unless you understand a certain amount but I’m bad at remembering vocabulary through textbook examples so thought reading would have remember a little more vocabulary even if I did have to keep looking things up but I can’t understand n4 level books like yotsuba cause of all the casual language that isn’t just the normal casual sentence endings that books teach and things often don’t come up when trying to research cause it’s not the typical stuff that’s taught. But if I read more basic stuff like learner stuff then I find I seem to learn less when I understand more, as in if there’s say only 3 grammar points or words I don’t know then I remember none of those things.

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There’s a yotsuba club in the forums with pretty much everything explained, and you can ask anything that hasn’t been explained.

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Since i’m doing exactly that on Higurashi i’m considering making a “Guide On How To Be An Efficient Moron And Smash Your Head Against the (Japanese) Wall Constructively”.
(name subject to change :stuck_out_tongue: )

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yup… wk bookclubs or natively book clubs (this is the way!)

best way to start reading is to just start - our fearless club leader @ChristopherFritz for many a bookclubs wrote, a not sure what we call it, faq/open letter/fyi thing and it was becoming it’s own thing…so he wrote this to help others getting started.

The first book you read cover to cover is just gonna hurt :dizzy_face:
Have to get over the hump and push through

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