What should i read?

5 comments

1. Read something that interests you. I personally have a Japanese Kindle Unlimited subscription, so I have access to a lot of books that I just have to download (either onto my phone or onto my Kindle). I enjoy playing Go, and a lot of literature surrounding Go is in Japanese and only the most popular ones have been translated to English. Even then, they’ve become somewhat outdated in the last few years, so learning in Japanese is actually better for me overall.

   If you have any hobbies that could be written in Japanese, read something about that (ideally not something translated into Japanese) or if there’s any part of Japanese culture that piques your interest, read something more specific to that.

   There’s a style of book called「分かる」thats essentially the Japanese equivalent of the “For Dummies” series. Just search into Amazon.jp whatever it is you’re interested in learning followed by「分かる」and look at samples of books that come up. If you feel comfortable enough reading them, then buy the book/get a subscription, otherwise move on to a different book.

   Ultimately, read something you’re actually gonna enjoy reading and don’t just read for the sake of reading

2. Can you expand on what you mean by “adventure” a bit? Also, are you fine with novels aimed at children?

3. Kino’s Journey is often recommended at your level because while it is a ‘light novel’ series, the format is more like a series of short stories with the same main characters. Also, a lot of people have read Harry Potter in Japanese… *if* you like the series, it’s pretty good practice to read through it, the familiarity helps to have a good idea of what the meaning really is if you hit a tough spot.

   Personally, if I don’t know what to read, then generally speaking I’ll look through the listings for anime that I’ve enjoyed and see which ones are based on a novel or light novel.

   If you haven’t passed N1 yet then expect it to be slow going, but generally once you get a hundred pages or so into it, it gets a lot easier. Authors tend to each use a lot of the same vocabulary and sentence constructions, so you can find yourself reaching for the dictionary in nearly every sentence until you know all of the author’s favorite phrases, but once you do the rest of the work should be relatively smooth sailing.

   Not to say that you won’t find obscure terms… or common terms written with obscure kanji… later into a book, but generally it’s a lot less than at the start.

4. any novel you like. if you passed n2, then everything is possible, just possibly difficult. so try something. if it’s too hard, pick something else. the first murakami novel isn’t super high vocab, is mostly domestic interactions, and is pretty short. ([風の歌を聴け](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear_the_Wind_Sing))

5. [https://www.instagram.com/bookwormy_diary/](https://www.instagram.com/bookwormy_diary/) has a lot of book recommendations.

   [https://www.youtube.com/@Ryu0203](https://www.youtube.com/@Ryu0203) is a channel I like a lot since it as a lot of Japanese games played through without any commentary meaning you have to read a good amount to actually follow the story. I watched this channel a lot when I studied for N1 so the level of the games should be good for you.