I found this website a few days after returning from a 16 day trip in japan. 5 months prior to the trip I was using every app under the sun to become conversational. This ended up backfiring as I had no one to practice with. During my trip, I decided I would learn to read kanji and keep it fresh by reading Manga every day. So how would I keep myself motivated? I’ll just buy 100 yen Japanese Manga to bring home with me.
So 20+ shops later, 5 cities, 50 pounds added to my bags and one portable luggage scale, I was ready…ready to wait till I could actually read the language.
So that’s where I’m at. Any idea what level I can start reading my collection?
Akira (read in English years ago)
Trigun and the Trigun maximum (only say the show)
Monster
Rurouni Kenshin (saw the first part of the anime years ago)
INUYASHIKI
It is. I found it in Akiabara in a gatchapon collectors store. My girlfriend loves the Character and i wanted to bring something back from japan for her that had the character.
to answer your question about what level to read, honestly its hard to say. Akira is supposedly sorta advanced or harder to read. I feel like all the manga you got is a big more “advanced” in reading material but im not 100% sure. I’d say at least a full year of study. You said you were using apps for conversation so I’m not sure if you know much vocab or grammar aside from the apps and WK levels.
Hopefully some advanced readers can come in and give you a real answer lol
I think it really depends on two things: A, what the manga is, and B, how much you are willing to stop and look something up while reading. I could read a full-length novel in Japanese, but I would end up looking literally every single word up in Jisho. I don’t feel like doing that, so no native reading for me yet
I thank you for your answer. I do waniKani every day. Before the trip, I used Duolingo for 3+months, and Memrise for 1+months. Moved to Mango Languages to focus on sentence structure and grammar as it avoids Kanji completely and focuses on conversation without reading Kanji. this tripped me up as It only teaches you full sentences and no systems for taking individual vocabulary and combining it. So far I have retained the most through Wani Kani. I opened up the first page of One Punch Man in Japanese and I recognized two symbols but could not read the sentence as a whole. I’m also going to start using the site The Japanese Grammar Index for grammar.
I haven’t read it in Japanese, sadly. For me, in the level 20s is when it felt I was encountering stuff that I recently learned all the time.
The youtube channel of CureDolly really helped me with the important grammar basics, and then I switched to BunPro. Getting up to N3 grammar made reading much, much easier. Before that it was a struggle.
It will take you months of work, but your goal will be right there for you to look at!
