🐶 わんわん探偵団 🕵 Home Thread - Doggy Detectives!

To be somewhat unhelpful, your grammar knowledge is more important than WaniKani level :slightly_smiling_face: this book doesn’t use too many kanji, and where it does there will be furigana so you can still look words up easily.

The kanji it does use probably don’t align particularly nicely with WaniKani level either :sweat_smile: that said, better kanji recognition will definitely increase your comprehension speed, so learning as many as possible isn’t a bad idea.

What kind of grammar knowledge do you have?

I did a comparison across seven pages, and it’s a surprising difference. The standard page has more text, but there also aren’t really any of those pages we got in Kitty Detectives which just had one or two sentences on - those really helped to lighten the overall weekly load, I think.

I agonised a lot over the pace :sweat_smile: so I’d definitely appreciate feedback as we go. It’s possible people will be able to manage more dense pages better than they can manage lots of pages… But then again each page might feel more like a mountain.

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I’m just choosing a grammar book right now, so… close to zero, if we count random youtube knowledge (ok embarassing xD)

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If you follow the Amazon link in the OP, you can have a look at some of the pages to get an idea of difficulty. An understanding of basic sentence structure and particle use would be a minimum for this to not be a version of purgatory, I would say.

Reasonable. I was talking more about vocabulary and kanji though, since that’s pretty much what WK levels are more or less tied to.

I’ll refer you back to Radish8’s comments then, adding that WK vocab is aimed at reinforcing the kanji, not as being the most common vocab in daily use.

That said, since the reading schedule stretches over 24 weeks (including breaks) you will probably progress a fair bit in WK as we go. I know there were several pages in the last book where I thought, ‘Hey, I just learned that kanji / kanji-combo yesterday!’

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If it’s your first time reading a book in Japanese and you don’t have much grammar knowledge yet, I’d rather recommend the book the absolute beginner book club is currently reading. I think the grammar is simpler compared to the Kitty books (and I’d assume the Doggie books are similar). It’s geared at 2nd year elementary school kids and according to this chart you’ll probably know all kanji in there by level 18 and more than 50% by level 6.

Btw, for vocab, the book clubs usually provide a handy vocab sheet.

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Oi, stop stealing my readers :wink:

@Chaly, I don’t have a good sense of how different grammar resources compare, but I’d say that if you’d finished Genki 1 you’d have a reasonably comfortable time. There would be plenty of new grammar constructions to ask about, but you’d have basic sentences down.

Does anyone who read Kitty Detectives have a good metric for how much grammar they knew / how difficult it was?

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Oh, speaking of vocab and vocab sheets, I read again today that Kitsun has / is going to have the capacity to collaborate on making decks; @Radish8 - do you know if this is possible yet? It would be good to take the vocab from the sheets each week and add them to an SRS deck…

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Oooooooops, sorry, I totally said I was gonna make one for Kitty Detectives :scream: I pared my SRS use down hugely this year, so I haven’t been keeping up with Kitsun, but I’m happy to investigate and look at setting one up at least.

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My Japanese learning has been less-than-systematic, but I would agree that finishing Genki I or equivalent would make your reading more enjoyable/ less of a struggle.

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My emphasis here was on the fact that it said COLLABORATIVE - it wouldn’t have to fall on one person’s shoulders. As long as we are clear on format, then we could each do some (weekly rota, or some such).

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“Hey, I’m sure I’ve learned that kanji-combo before and whoops, I forgot what it means. :tired_face:

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‘But thanks to this book club, it’s been reinforced and now I’ll remember it!’

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Can anyone talk about the pros & cons of the different ebook stores?

I want to pick one and stick with it so I don’t end up with different books in different stores.

I already have some purchased books on the US Kindle store. How much of a hassle is it to switch back and forth if I buy some Japanese books on amazon.jp?

Are any of the stores more calibre-friendly than the others?

Thanks, @Rowena, @frayderike and @Radish8 :slight_smile: I feel embarassed but educated now xDD
Consider me joining anyway though, I’ll try my best to progress enough until April!

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Apparently BookWalker is often slightly cheaper and the quality is higher - but I’m not sure how Calibre-friendly it is, or how easy it is to de-drm for your personal archives (I couldn’t even find what file format they provide).

I bought a few Japanese-language books on amazon.com, but now I use amazon.co.jp because the JP catalogue is bigger, it’s easy-ish to buy the books, download the actual files (if linked to a physical kindle), and the azw format can be de-drm’d and converted to any other format with Calibre for my personal archives.

It’s annoying needing a separate amazon.co.jp account and a VPN, but you don’t need a Japanese credit card. I did end up buying a super cheap second hand kindle just to get access to the file downloads though – because if you just associate iPad/PC apps with your account, you can deliver the books straight to the apps, but not download the actual azw files. And switching between accounts on a physical kindle is a pain…(“special offer” ads came back on mine)

I haven’t tried Kobo JP, I’m not sure how easy that is (I do buy on Kobo FR though, I like the ePub format).

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Thanks for the reply. I’ve looked a Bookwalker a bit before, and I don’t think they allow downloading books at all. You can only read them in the web or mobile app. I’m sure if I go digging through temp directories the files are there somewhere, but they may be in some proprietary format.

I didn’t realize you needed a VPN for amazon.jp. I thought you could just create a new account and be good to go.

I think I’m going to buy the first one on bookwalker and see how it goes. If I don’t like it, I can research the other options.

Yeah I use a VPN for amazon just to make sure I don’t get blocked – I’ve seen posts of people complaining about getting blocked because they’re outside Japan (I guess amazon protects themselves because rights work differently in different countries). Apparently you don’t need to use one every time though…

I’d be interested in your experience with BookWalker!

I started reading before I finished Genki I and it was just about doable, with a lot of puzzling. If you get demotivated easily, I’m not sure it’s the best introduction to reading, but I think it can be done.

As for eBooks… Kindle and Kobo can be de-DRM’d easily, Bookwalker not at all. I also find the Bookwalker reader really annoying to use. I personally stick with Kobo because Kindle sometimes compressed images, I’ve read.

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Hi! I have a question about Kobo JP eBooks: do you need a separate JP account / VPN / forwarding address / Japanese credit card?

(I really wish these forums had threaded replies, I feel like I’m derailing the thread, sorry about that :pensive:)