Can anyone help point me in the right direction for reading material for practice? I think I have a decent vocabulary to get me started since I’m on level 25 right now, but I can’t say my grammar knowledge is at the same level of progress. So far I only know some basic grammar concepts, and I’m not using a traditional textbook for learning grammar (I recently started on Cure Dolly’s playlist of grammar lesson videos, though I have some prior knowledge from skimming over Tae Kim’s basic grammar chapter) so it’s not like I have a huge supply of practice reading from my main source that’s tailor made to complement what I’m currently learning. I like Cure Dolly’s lessons, so I think I’d like to continue with that, at least for now.
I’m aware that there are many kinds of reading material out there, but I’m lost on where to start for my current skill level.
Here we go!
I just started reading myself, so I will just give you some resources I know about:).
Satori Reader
You can choose how many kanji you know and it will be displayed this way. You can also check the word/sentence translation. Some stories are available in different difficulties!
Of course, Absolute Beginner Book Club! People contribute to the vocab sheet and help you if you don’t understand something. I will participate myself, would be happy to see you there.
Bunpro Reading Practice
Very basic, but hey, why not? You could choose N5-4 levels and try to read them to see how grammar is used in sentences.
As someone who just started reading a few weeks ago, I can say that it’s a wonderful feeling to read a sentence and understand it =W=!
Good luck! I hope it helps!
Even if you don’t intend to join a book club (at this time), I’d still echo what others are saying that checking out book club threads is probably a good idea. When a new book club book is suggested, previews are added so that people can check how they feel about the difficulty level. You can use that to work out what feels doable. If you end up reading something covered by a previous book club, there may also be vocab lists, and questions you may have might already have been covered by the members of the club.
You may also find something in the Ultimate Additional Resources List.
Thank you for the suggestion! I’m currently over in that thread trying to gauge my readiness for the upcoming book since I’m not familiar with a ton of grammar. That’s about the only thing about the club that I might be lacking in preparedness for; I’m comfortable with reading hiragana, katakana and kanji. I could maybe use BunPro to at least skim over as many N5 and N4 grammar topics as I can before it starts.
If I end up joining that club, you certainly will!
This was a lot of help, thank you! I think I’m going to dip my foot into graded readers, specifically the ones provided on Todaku’s website and the ones by Yomuyomu Bunko. The latter aren’t free, so I might check them out if I find that I like the free readers and want more. I’ve also joined the Absolute Beginner Book Club starting on the 13th.
I also have my eye on Satori Reader, seems like it would also be a good resource.
I’m willing to bet grammar will be the hardest thing when going through reading material, but I guess the most I can do is try to pick some new things up through osmosis during reading and continue with Cure Dolly’s videos for “formal” grammar instruction.
Yes, I do enjoy video games. In fact, part of the reason I’m learning Japanese is to be able to explore the original Japanese versions of games I love (like the Pikmin games, for example) that came out in English, just to see if there are any interesting details that got lost in localization. A rather geeky and niche motivation, but it’s worked so far, haha.
I’ve never played a Final Fantasy game before, but I’ll keep that in mind as something to maybe try out.
This is exactly what I did. I use Satori Reader and Cure Dolly’s video for grammar, and after reading close to 500 chapters, my skills increased exponentially. Satori Reader definitely is great because it acts as a bridge between very easy material (grader readers and the like) and real native material. Besides, you can use the “translation-for-each-sentence” feature to check if your own “translation” is correct or not, which is a good way to cement all the grammar that you just learn IMO.
Anyway, good luck with your reading journey, Cure Dolly’s video really helped me understand grammar structure and I bet you will too.
Pokémon is actually a pretty good place to start for games in Japanese. If you have any experience at all with these games they practically play themselves. Even though a lot of vocabulary isn’t necessarily helpful in real life (“Haunter used Night Shade!”) there is a lot of repetition which helps with developing reading speed, and since all the Pokémon names are written in Katakana, you can get a lot of practice with that. The main series 3DS games already include the Japanese language pack with choice for kana or kanji versions of the dialogue. Most older games I believe only include kana.
I’ve been playing Pokemon since the original Johto games, so yes I have plenty of experience with them, lmao. I happen to own the main series 3DS games (among many others, though in English), and I believe the most recent entries on Switch can also be played in Japanese if you change the system’s language setting.
I guess if I wanted to play any of the pre-3DS games in Japanese, I’d either have to find Japanese copies or try emulating them.
Yuna is enjoyable and reads aloud the dialogues so you get both listening and reading practice.
She has a stream of her playing Pokemon Red (the one I wanted to watch). It’s all Hiragana and Katakana.
I kind of thought about it, but it’s similar to Magic: The Gathering. You have a lot of fancy words one doesn’t use on a daily basis (Infernal Caretaker wut), but both are good language practice, because you have succinct context with pictures so it’s possible to infer what those words mean or what kind of emotional load they have, right?
Come to think of it, M:TG might also be good Japanese practice.
Meh, sort of. Sometimes it just becomes “generic plant move,” “generic plant move with more damage,” “generic plant move that puts things to sleep.” It would probably be more useful to play the game along with watching the show, which would provide significantly more visual context. However, I suspect that after learning the character’s names, and the names of the attacks, it will be a lot easier to learn from the manga and anime.
For now I mostly use it as a way to relax and have fun with the langauge after studying, but I do think I’m getting some benefit from it, even if I don’t exactly know what it is yet.
