I either buy things I got interested while browsing or from book recommendations by people I trust.
I would prefer physical books but I don’t have much space because of that I read ebooks on a table or ebook reader.
I buy most things discounted, so I probably don’t spend that much. Actually I don’t have time to count my spendings.
June 1
We run around the park searching for evidence. There is a video showing the park mascot doing the killing. Of course we don’t know who was actually wearing the mascot outfit. If I had to guess the secretary seems to be suspicious.
Thanks so much everyone for sharing where you’re getting books and book recos from, that helps a lot! Now I have a bit more of a plan in my head.
That is very wise and good advice. I’m sure many of us myself included have to make sure not to fall into this habit - stuff collecting.
I checked out my local library the other day. They had a great Japanese selection… and I found myself wishing each book had a natively difficulty rating on the spine 
I flipped through some of the rather tiny novels and my head was spinning when I saw they didn’t have furigana… for now I still need my training wheels on but it was really motivating actually. I can do it! I can picture myself reading all sorts of Japanese books with no furigana. I will get there!!
Oh and in case anyone’s curious to know what I am reading and what is my plan. I have a newish 1 year subscription to Satori Reader so I’m going to continue reading there primarily until something else interests me more. I have all of Yotsubato! in digital format so I will also read those, and in physical format I have one Shirokuma Cafe volume and the first 魔女の宅急便. So I have a lot of material to read still. I will have a look at bookwalker too and start noting the names of books you guys are reading!
Thanks again 
You will!
Another good stepping stone on the way to novels is children’s novels. We have a Children’s Novel Club on the forums, but if you don’t feel up to a book club yet, here’s another children’s novel I particularly recommend as a first novel because it was fun to read while also being on the easier end. I felt that it was easier than 魔女の宅急便。 I like children’s novels so feel free to ping me if you have any questions about which ones to read or ones I’ve enjoyed (or reply in the children’s novel club thread which will also notify me)
Just a heads up that this book has long strings of hiragana - might sound easy, but if the strings of hiragana become really long, they also become very difficult and tiring to read. If you are looking for comfortable reads this is not (in my opinion) a great choice.
If you’re reading physical books, you will need a dictionary for occasional look ups. I can recommend Takoboto (there’s an app) and of course the online denshi jisho https://jisho.org/
The things I decide to read are either manga I’ve already read in English or was interested in reading in English but decided to hold off until I got better at reading in Japanese, or I went off of someone else’s recommendation.
I read a lot on Bookwalker, but I also have quite a few physical manga I brought back with me from my trip to Japan (that was TWO years ago now! 
) and I bought a lot at Bookoff for cheap (100 yen manga!). Even buying new manga in Japan is way cheaper than getting English manga in the US, and it’s probably the same for other countries as well. (Of course, that’s IN Japan and most of us do not live there.)
I’m not sure how much I’ve spent of manga, but I’ve read/acquired quite a few manga via either limited time freebies or random coin giveaways from Bookwalker. I think if you don’t make a purchase for a few months they give you some coins to use, and if a something you want is on sale for cheap, you just basically got a couple of manga volumes for free!
６月３日
パラノマサイト FILE 25 pgs 35 – 84 / 235
I blinked and somehow had read 50 pages…nice.
一緒に頑張ろう！！
I’ve spent about USD 250 so far this year (incl shipping). Which to be fair is pretty par for the course for me, books wise. I went ahead and got the Kinokuniya membership to maybe save some $…
＊６月３日＊
Read:
・ドラゴンクエストモンスターズ テリーのワンダーランド ４コママンガ劇場⑤
The cover artist for the 4コマ was drawing the DQM 1Pコミック, so she never contributed any 4コマ herself until this volume, when the 1P had finished. I was wondering why I never saw her inside the books too. Anyway, I gotta try and get the 1Pコミック too at some point. And the manga for the other games. (I think I need to make a DQ shelf.)
♂と♀間違えて作っちゃったテリー： 面倒だからこの際♂同士で結婚させてください。もしくは性転換。(←本気)
モンスターじいさん： できるか
At least I do that less in DQMJ2 because they’re color-coded now. It’s the symbol on an orange (メス), blue (オス), or green (万能) background. In DQMJ, it’s just the same white text as the rest, so the only one I could reliably identify was 万能 since it’s got two things coming off of it… (The only times I’ve done it in 2 were when I was only paying attention to some other 条件 and only realised when I couldn’t find the other monster that, oh right, they’re both male or both female.)
Played:
・ドラクエ・モンスターズ・ジョーカー２・プロフェッショナル (22:47 ⇒ 31:32)
I ended up just saying screw it and taking my ナイトメア monster to Dorothy, and?? It worked?? It doesn’t list ねむりガード+ under his traits, but it still counted.
And then I gave Shuu (my シュプリンガー | mandrake marshal) the メタルハンター skill and put 120 SP into it for メタルハンター, and that showed up in his traits! Also:
・メタルハンター
メタル系のモンスターにダメージが+1される
・メタルキラー
メタル系のモンスターに大ダメージをあたえられる
(That is, indeed, the potential, and it is, indeed, with a hidden 稀に – or perhaps 超稀に – in there. The first time encountering one of those 2-HP metal slimes after he gained this, he did 20-30 dmg per hit, but that was purely a coincidence; the one after that was the normal 1 dmg.)
Looks like I’m gonna need to get the メタルハンター trait for Prince. Luckily, that is 100 SP in バウンティハンター. Unluckily, he is only at 59, so it is going to take forever. Guess I will be breeding him with someone with a lot of unalloted SP and the staff of rebirth. Even though he’s lv 32, 18 away from 50 and hopefully a second evolution, we’re leveling so slowly that I wouldn’t be surprised if lv 32 was closer to lv 1 than to lv 50. That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway. At the very least, the number after his rank will be bigger, so he’ll be stronger.
Yeahhhh I used a few (3 I’m p sure) metal tickets and got him up to lv 30 pretty quick. I had Rick (a.k.a. Warwick, my 強 silvapithecus </3) with metal claws equipped, as well as Shuu (連続 – 2 hits) and Prince (連続 – 3 hits), and got メタルハンター for Prince after like the first or second battle lol. With those three, I can even reliably defeat a LMS in a single turn now! Prince does 6-9 dmg, Shuu 2-4, and Rick 1-2, plus I’ve got metal stones to throw at them at the beginning of the round which deal 1-3 dmg, and they only have 12 HP. As long as they don’t flee between our turns, we’ve got ‘em in the bag!
The party I’ve been using was Kodohana (強 kodora, Rank C), Baby (強 bakudan baby, Rank C), and Prince (強 swingin’ hipster, Rank C), with a rotation in the wings that included at least one healer (though Rick’s been a mainstay since I attained him). Now I’ve got Shuu (mandrake marshal, Rank B), Baburun (bubble king slime, Rank A), and Prince as my main party, with Rick and a couple Rank As I’m raising in the wings. One of them’s got 連続 (3), but I keep forgetting to put her in for Baburun when scouting lol. Oh well, it’s still been going pretty well, especially after I remembered Shuu can raise his tension and Prince has Oomph. I’ve netted myself a few Rank As and even a Rank S! A shield ogre, or escudogre as they’re called in English. It was actually easier than Gigantes, which is Rank A, and my scout chances for each were around the same (different parties + different strategies; had I done things the same as with the gigantes, the escudogre scouting wouldn’t have gone nearly as well)
Baburun’s my healer, but mannnn do those high-level healing spells cost a lot when you don’t have the “skilled at healing” trait. The king cureslime is only Rank B, but it does have that trait. And more MP besides. I need to make a new one to replace Baburun… Man, this is the exact same thing I did in the first game. 懲りないヤツやなぁ、俺……
There’s a room in the temple ruins with six chests and at least one of them is a mimic, and I’m pretty sure it’s a reference to the original DQM
Anyway, I made it to the final boss. Have not challenged him yet. Hopefully I can beat him with my current party.
6月3日
読み終わった本： 漫画6巻、読み切り3作
home post || 
natively
| status | name | natively lvl |
type | pages / sections |
time | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 62% |  |
大正忌憚魔女１ | 24?? | manga | 71 → 91 | 59min |
Alright, returning to 対処忌憚魔女! This was probably not the best day to do it, as I had a wildly busy day at work and kept getting interrupted during my lunch break while I was reading, but it is what it is. This series has some challenging grammar, with lots of long sentences and subphrases, and 3rd-person narration that weaves in and out of dialogue. But it’s a lot of fun!
I was getting confused by some of the spellcasting parts, but then I remembered that she refers to them as 実験 (experiments). Part of the joke is that our dear 外人の魔女 doesn’t know what anything in Japan does magically so she has all these weird notions and ideas about how pretty much anything might be a potential ingredient. It’s a lot of fun!
I do most of my reading on my tablet because the books are cheaper and Bookwalker has some good deals. You can always check the Bookwalker Freebies Thread for deals and, well freebies. There are also some digital tools you can use to assist with lookups like I do, though they’ll all include some kind of time or money investment to set up…
If you’re looking to buy physical, you could try Suruga-ya, which is a online Japanese used bookseller. They often have free shipping deals to the U.S. (dunno about other countries), so if you order strategically you can save a lot of money. Personally, I have a Kinokuniya near me, so I got a membership and buy from them. They can also ship to a store for free, so I do that often and just pay retail price. Generally, I try not to buy books that I don’t already know I want to reread because I’m limited on space…
Like others I’ve found good things on here and Natively! I recommend perusing the Absolute Beginner Book Club and Beginner Book Club lists of past titles for ideas of approachable titles you might be interested in. The old threads are all still there, and I’m sure if you had a question even now someone would still respond haha. Or join a current one!
On Natively you can follow other people (many of us are on there, my link’s at the top of the post) and see what they like. You can also search by level and look for easier things that look interesting to you. I enjoy tracking my reads there, too.
Finally, one of the main reasons I started learning this language was to be able to read yuri (girls love) manga that doesn’t get officially translated to English. I came into this with a billion things I wanted to read and have since found a billion more. For discovery, one option is creating a japanese-only social media account (twitter, youtube, etc) and following authors of things you like or accounts that post recommendations. I’ve found new series from new authors that my fav mangakas have shared like that, for example.
Specifically for manga, you can look up what magazine your favorites were serialized in and check them out. For instance, Yuri Hime is the premier yuri magazine so it’s always a good place to look for ideas. Lately I’ve been enjoying stuff from Comic Ogyaaa and Comic Cune, so I can always check those for ideas. Magazines often try to have their own vibe going, so if you dig the vibe it’s a good place to look. Or if I see something from one of those magazines elsewhere, I’m more likely to check it out! (And someday I’ll get into Harta Comix but a lot of stuff is way above my level.)
２０２６年６月４日(木)
 |
Book | Natively lvl | Pages |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
ケサランなにがしとスープ屋さん 1 | 17 | 139 - 152 |
 |
おじさまと猫８ | 17 | 125 - 138 |
 |
可愛いだけじゃない式守さん ８ | 18 | 119 - 130 |
Day 65-66
06月03日(水) - 06月04日(木)
| Title | Type | Progress | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| とんがり帽子のアトリエ | Manga | 91-122 | Continuing volume 9 |
| とんがり帽子のアトリエ | Manga | 123-150 | Continuing volume 9 |
June 4th
鏡地獄
Read just past the halfway point - the plot so far is a boy discovering the power of mirrors via microscopes/telescopes and then slowly going mad as he looks at everything in minute detail… I’m not sure where this one is going 
突然部屋が明かるくなって
Idyllic reading time! ラッキー 
2026/06/03
A little more 夢現Re:Master
lmao, I realize I didn’t even answer this properly in my previous answer
When reading on bookwalker, I have three options: Web browser on (1) desktop pc or on (2) laptop or (3) on the app on phone.
My laptop is a 360-flip type of touch screen which I flip all the way round and then read in portrait mode placed on a laptop stand. Also a good view for reading manga.
I often read on phone during lunch break/on the go or before falling asleep/getting up.
June 2
I’m still on the amusement park case. Once again we find a corpse and camera footage make it seem like the park mascot is the culprit. I’m sure it’s not true the guy orginally wearing the mascot costume surely got killed and someone disguised themselves as the mascot.
June 4th 
安達としまむら 第８巻 読み終わった！
I’ve been too sleepy to remember to post this past week, but I’ve been reading most days and finished my 15th book in yappanese today! I kind of wonder whether people reach a point where finishing books becomes less exciting, since I still feel over the moon each time a book gets finished ふふ
I also didn’t say this earlier but happy June everyone! (And pride month if you celebrate it) Only one more month left of the spring challenge already 
June 3
I was busy and just read manga magazines.
