[Looking for Nominations!] Beginner Japanese Book Club // Starting Soon: Death Note

[NicoleRauch]

Thanks for the heads up! I was already a bit worried because I hadn’t seen Radish in the forums in a while… I just hope nothing bad has happened

Anyways! For the polls, the usual rhythm would be to end the poll about 6 weeks before the new book club starts, to give people enough time to buy physical books from Japan.
If the new book club should start on Dec 4th, that would mean its poll should end in a bit more than a week (i.e. around Oct 23rd), so I guess it could start some time next week? (Voting might take 4-5 days I guess…)

I don’t mind running the poll, but I’d be very happy if somebody else would like to do that (and maybe grow into the role of hosting the Beginner Book Club eventually?) Of course I’m available to answer questions and/or give advice if desired.

Let’s have a quick poll to see whether anybody is interested

• I’d be happy to run the next poll.
• I’d be happy to run the next poll, but only together with somebody else.
• I don’t want to run the next poll.

[Shadowlauch]

If no one else wants to do it I would be up to host it.

[Phryne]

I don’t mind running the poll. I have some other book clubs I am running as well, so I can just add it to the pile. But it someone else wants to get their feet wet that’s fine with me too

[chrisosaurus]

I wasn’t sure how to vote, I wanted to say the equivalent of “just right”, since I’ve read it in English I likely find it easier than if I was reading without that extra context, so I biased upwards to “moderate difficulty”.

[Shadowlauch]

I have added the 2 new nominations to the main post. It would be great if everyone (who hasn’t done so) could go through the preview pages provided and vote on the difficulty . Especially the newer nominations don’t have enough votes!

@Phryne if you could do us the honors of hosting the next vote!

[NyappyTiramisu]

The Way of the Househusband

Summary

Tatsu, an infamous and feared yakuza boss nicknamed “the Immortal Dragon”, retires from crime to become a househusband so that he can support Miku, his kyariaūman wife. The episodic series depicts a variety of comedic scenarios, typically wherein Tatsu’s banal domestic work as a househusband is juxtaposed against his intimidating personality and appearance, and his frequent run-ins with former yakuza associates and rivals. (Wikipedia)

Availability

Physical: CDJapan Amazon JP
Digital: Bookwalker Kindle

Personal Opinion

To be honest, I wasn’t sure if this is better for the ABBC or BBC based on the first chapter. I went with the BBC since there’s no furigana and I’m kind of expecting slang in a Yakuza related manga. The premise seems pretty funny, and judging by the previews the language should be at a decent level. There’s also an anime and a live action series based on this manga, for those who want related listening practice.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Not too text heavy
• Award-winning series
• The ebook version has good quality, no tiny blurry characters as far as I could see

Cons

• Yakuza themes - I feel like there might be a few characters speaking in heavy slang
• No furigana
• Ongoing series

Pictures

First Three Pages (with text) of Chapter One

Additional Pages

Difficulty Poll

How much effort would you need to read this book?

• 1 - No effort at all
• 2 - Minimal effort
• 3 - Moderate effort
• 4 - Substantial effort
• 5 - So much effort my head might explode
• I don’t know

[DIO-Berry]

I’d love to join in this club since I already have the first two volumes Hopefully I can finishing catching up in my other book clubs first if it gets picked

[denzo]

I think it’s quite an easy read if you’re used to slang/kansai ben. I can’t remember how long it took me to read, but it was the quickest first volume I’ve read by quite a long way…

also the pun in the title is great and it’s a shame it doesn’t translate into english at all

[seanblue]

What’s the pun? I’m not seeing it. Or is it a pun with something in-story that I won’t get since I haven’t read it?

[denzo]

the pun is on 極道 which can mean yakuza

[TokeruKonkoyo]

@denzo

the pun is on 極道 which can mean yakuza

Yup, that’s the genre of old yakuza movies - ごくどう. It’s in one of my Anki decks for that reason

Not sure if I’ll be joining this time around. Let’s see. End of the year is going to be super busy and I have some books from Aozora I would like to read through (Edogawa’s style really got me!).

Hmmm… but judging by the first 3 pages, it wouldn’t really be too hard to read so hmm… The yakuza slang might fun し.

[denzo]

it’s a great manga and I really recommend it

[NicoleRauch]

@Shadowlauch

@Phryne if you could do us the honors of hosting the next vote!

I was actually hoping that you would run it though…? Because I think it’s important for us to broaden the base of people who are an active part of running the clubs. Currently we’re only a really small handful, and if any one of us drops out, that’s gonna hurt quite a bit…

But if you absolutely really would prefer @Phryne to run the poll then that’s of course fine with me as well

[Shadowlauch]

I don’t mind running the poll but since I said “If no one else wants to do it” and someone else actually came forward I did not want to assume anything.

[Phryne]

No worries on my part, please go ahead

[Shadowlauch]

I will start the vote on Tuesday 19th October so that we’ll have a new winner until the end of the weekend! Until then please keep voting the difficulty!

[Naphthalene]

@ChristopherFritz

One con I might add is

Another con I would have about 約束のネバーランド is that it has text-heavy parts that may be challenging for beginners. I do not remember if that happens in the first volume though.

[Shadowlauch]

One thing that I’m not quite sure about are the rules for “short manga”, I understand that a manga that takes less then 8 weeks, but how many pages do we usually aim for 30?

[NicoleRauch]

Good question! It’s a bit difficult to determine ahead of having a schedule

I think a pattern that many manga book clubs follow is to read the first chapter over 2 weeks (often the first chapter is longer, also it needs time to adjust to the setting and the author’s language) and then one chapter a week. Many manga have around 25-30 pages per (normal) chapter so that would fit well, and the general rule would be that a manga is short when it has ~6 chapters. But I think the difficulty should also be considered: If it is a text-heavy manga or e.g. a 4koma, then maybe that needs to be adjusted.

In the previous polls, Radish pointed out which manga could be considered “short”, and to simplify the lookup I’ve added that information to the proposals list. Maybe you could have a look at the newer nominations and try to judge them accordingly?

[Shadowlauch]

Thanks for the elaborate explanation. One thing that tripped me up was that “A tropical fish yearns for snow” was not classified as a short manga even though it only has 4 chapters (first and last are a bit long so probably 6 weeks), but maybe he forgot about that one. I will classify the new ones today.