Just wanted to share this here because I’m really happy.
I’ve been reading raw manga for a while now. I started 2+ years ago, when I was at a mere n4 level.
Of course, reading anything at that level was really difficult and I came across far too many unknown grammar points and vocab to be able to really enjoy the story and absorb all the details.
With that being said, I made my way through quite a few mangas, getting marginally better each time. Coupled with the fact that I’m now studying to take the N2 in December and am currently living in Japan, I’ve become somewhat confident in my reading skills.
Yesterday I bought Junji Ito’s Gyo, a horror manga about zombie fish(that’s right). I think I picked up the dictionary 4 or 5 times through the entire process and reading was just as natural as it would have been in english.
It’s a pretty short series, only two tankobon volumes with about 200 pages each, but I’m really happy and proud to finally have finished and enjoyed a whole story in Japanese. It’s these small victories that make all the learning worth our while.
2 comments
Nice I have been reading Gantz.. It’s easier than I expected. Colour version available too which is nice. Have you read it? I started a Junji Ito one and it also seemed pretty easy difficulty wise.
I haven’t read or watched anything yet in Japanese with ease as you describe, but I remember watching Totoro in Mandarin for the first time and being amazed that I understood everything easily. The Japanese version seems harder though for some reason.
Happy to hear breakthroughs like this. Instead of the usual, “I’ve been immersing for months and am losing motivation”
You obviously did what was necessary to reach your current level, did the research when it came to grammar and made it through the hardest part of this entire process: just brute forcing the beginning parts where so much is unclear or unknown .
Keep it up and you’ll be at n1 is very little time and will understand whatever it is you want to