What Are Your Most Satisfying Reading Sources?

[SemiSama]

My first WK Community post!

I LOOOVE how far I’ve gotten in the four months I’ve been doing WK. I’ve rarely experienced so much desire to express gratitude for something I’m paying for. I already know a lot of grammar so I have immediately been turning to places to practice reading in real life to fill in the gaps and solidify memory. Sadly, I don’t have a lot of time to wander and research through the internet for engaging places to practice readings. I’m reeeeally tired of contrived example sentences from apps or study websites and news is only interesting for a little bit (I can only take so much about COVID-19 among other boring news topics).

SO. What are your most satisfying places to read and practice reading your Japanese? Obviously there is manga, but it is so hit or miss whether you like it and it isn’t usually a full breadth of kanji usage.

I’m sorry if this has been talked about, already. The WK community is massive and I didn’t see anything like this question after doing a number of searches. Feel free to point me to previous posts!

I’m just dying for places to go to daily when I’m wanting to practice.

[Myria]

The book clubs on this forum. The reason I’m reading so many books, with others and on my own as well.
Of course you sometimes get books / manga that you don’t care much for, but being able to discuss the story, and of course asking questions and helping each other with understanding, makes it so much better in my opinion.

Master List of Book Clubs

Introduction There are several book clubs here on the forums. Reading along with a book club can provide a great source of motivation, and there are a lot of people to help you out with questions, enabling you to tackle harder content. Many of the book clubs have community vocabulary lists, so they can be a great resource even if you’re reading after the book club has moved on. Additionally, you’re always welcome to ask questions even after a book has been finished by a book club. People are a…

[alo]

I’ve been playing more video games in Japanese. It’s not only good practice, but it exposes a lot of vocabulary that is specific to gaming, like 回復かいふくポーション is for recovery/health potion.

I’m also using Quora in Japanese, although not as much as I probably should be.

[Radish8]

This thread might have some resources of the type you’re looking for:

Resources for Starting to Read Japanese Content

[Reading] This thread brings together resources and advice for helping people to get started with reading. If you know of any great tips or resources, please share them! You can also let me know if anything needs updating, like if any of the links go out of date for example. Reading Advice and Support Tools

Where to Start

Reading native Japanese content is simply hard, and you’re gonna have to prepare yourself to look up a lot of stuff if you plunge straight in - sorry! Two things…

Particularly thinking of things like online readers (TangoRisto pulls from a travel magazine and some folk tales as well as NHK News, and Manabi Reader curates articles), Satori Reader, Watanoc (online magazine in simple Japanese), PIBO (free children’s stories)…

There’s also the Picture Book Challenge:

Picture Book Challenge 2020!

Hello fellow crabigators! The challenge has begun! It’s never too late to start, so read on for more information! Do you know about the EhonNavi website and their HUGE, BEAUTIFUL, WONDERFUL library of Japanese children’s books that one can read IN FULL, FOR FREE?! Apologies for the caps, but I am hella excited about this resource. The only catch being that you can only read each book once. The website organizes the books by age group (0 - 12 and adult) based on, from what I can tell, self-repo…

[teenprez]

Manga can be hit-or-miss, but so can literally any other reading material. You try a few until you find one you like that’s reasonably comfortable to read. Luckiyl most manga are crazy long, so once you find one you like it will keep you going for awhile.

One of the book clubs here can definitely help make reading that you otherwise might not be into more engaging, as well.

I also think some of the stories on Satori Reader are actually enjoyable.

And don’t forget twitter! There’s a whole word of people out there who are writing short, digestible content in Japanese.

[ren_grantz]

@SemiSama

What are your most satisfying places to read and practice reading your Japanese?

Definitely manga! I choose a manga that I can handle vocabulary wise and that is interesting enough that I can read until the end of the volume. I don’t mind looking at the dictionary every page as long as I can finish the manga.

@SemiSama

I’m just dying for places to go to daily when I’m wanting to practice.

If you want to practice daily, you can schedule your own manga (or whatever interests you) to read for a certain number of pages/chapters per day. There are many apps and websites offering “free” jp manga (time-limited, usually) like pixiv or comico.

[MisterOfu]

For me it’s really satisfying to jump in at the deep end and try reading something significantly above my pay grade to use as a measure of my progress. Then as I’m gradually getting better I’ll keep coming back to that work and one day lo and behold I can suddenly understand the gist of it!

[crihak]

I personally found graded readers to be a useful stopgap between just example sentences and actual native materials. They still feel a bit contrived and I did outgrow them quickly, but in the beginning I got a kick out of just reading something long-form in Japanese.

After that I started reading manga (Yotsubato) for a while, and then I replayed one of my old favorite JRPGs (Genso Suikoden) in its original language.

From there I kinda dabbled in manga and games until I finally found a “real” book I could read (the No 6 Series)

After finishing that series (took over a year), I can pretty reliably make my way through normal fiction books, so I can mostly go with things that interest me. I’ve read some Kotaro Isaka and have started giving Murakami books a go.

(I personally recommend Mariabeetle by Isaka and Kafka on the Shore by Murakami out of what I’ve read so far).

EDIT: Oh, after No 6 I did spend another year reading the Kemono no souja series (There’s a book club in progress here). I liked it but personally felt that it kinda lost steam towards the latter half.