# A LITTLE BIT OF BACKGROUND
I started learning Japanese in June 2021 and grind the fundamentals (grammar, vocab, and kanji) in the first 3 months or so before starting on comprehensible input. My daily routine these days consists of 5-10 minutes on SRS, 30 minutes to 2 hours reading, and roughly the same for listening because I want to become good at both. I know \~8k words but I don’t know my level exactly since I haven’t taken any official test yet. I’ve finished reading Tobira and right now I’m going through N2 grammar using Nihongo Kyoshi (great underrated website by the way). Also planning to use Shin Kanzen Master N2 読解 to try my comprehension across different styles of writing.
# WHAT DID I READ?
I already read a few graded reader books and \~400 chapters of Satori Reader before diving into native materials. I treat them as a “warm up” as this gives me another solid foundation on top of already existing grammar and vocabulary knowledge. As of right now I already read 21 novels (19 titles to be exact), 4 light novels, and 75 manga volumes. I mostly read anything geared toward adults like general fiction, mystery, thriller, etc, and from time to time I like to read a slice of life as well since a lot of them are very easy and serve as a good break from heavy adult books. Haven’t read any non-fiction yet though but definitely will read them sometime in the future. In case anyone’s interested, you can check my Bookmeter ([Manga](https://bookmeter.com/users/1303581/bookcases/11776506) \- [Books](https://bookmeter.com/users/1303581/bookcases/11776509)) or [Natively](https://learnnatively.com/user/batuapung/library/) for a more detailed list.
Aside from books and manga I played two visual novels, 大逆転裁判 1 and 極限脱出 9時間9人9の扉. Other than that I read news, articles, and random tweets occasionally. I follow a bunch of cats Instagram and Twitter accounts and surprisingly they can be a good reading exercise.
# MY FAVORITE SO FAR
* 告白
* コンビニ人間
* ノルウェイの森
* かがみの孤城
* 流浪の月
* MONSTER
* SPY X FAMILY
# HOW’S MY READING?
Probably many of you already know this, 25 books and 75 manga volumes are actually not that many in the grand scheme of things. I’m still far from what you can call “reading comfortably” on a regular basis, which from my understanding roughly means requires close to no look-ups and an intuitive understanding of almost every sentence the first time you read them. With a dictionary, I can pick up a manga and comprehend close to 100% on average. With a novel or LN I can get 95% minimum comprehension while missing some nuances and whitenoising complex sentences occasionally (what I mean here is when I encounter a complex and long sentence, I look up every unknown word and grammar explanation, then analyze and reread the sentence at least 3 times but still didn’t get a full understanding so I just move on to the next sentence). Like I said before, I’ve never taken any official test yet so take all of this self-assessment with a grain of salt. As for my reading speed, it’s a little bit on the slower side (\~10k char/hour I think?) and it fluctuates depending on the genre and writing style, but that’s okay since I never cared about speed anyway, better read slowly while trying to understand as much as possible rather than going as fast as possible and gloss over every difficult sentence along the way, which I don’t think is an effective method, especially at an early stage.
# RECOMMENDATION
I’m not going to recommend the popular ones like 魔女の宅急便 (actually wouldn’t recommend this for beginners because of the lack of kanji)、 時をかける少女、また同じ夢を見ていた、よつばと!、しろくまカフェ、etc. since I’m pretty sure everybody already knows them so instead I’m going to list something that didn’t get recommended enough in the community, especially in this subreddit. I recommend these not only because of the difficulty aspect (all of them are “beginner-friendly” with a simple story, straightforward prose, and little to no archaic/unusual kanji and vocab) but also from the enjoyment standpoint (this is pretty subjective but I try to include something that can be enjoyed by everyone). I want to credit [Wanikani Book Club](https://community.wanikani.com/t/master-list-of-book-clubs/35283) for introducing most of the books on this list, if you want more recommendations do check their thread.
Please note while all of the books in this list are among the easiest available, they are still made for natives, which means it’s a big jump from graded readers or any material made for learners. Even in the “easiest” native material you will encounter a lot of words outside the typical frequency list that you often see on the internet, particularly onomatopoeia and compound verbs (打ち解ける、詰め寄る、etc.) which to this day I still struggle with, and not to mention a sprinkle of N1 and N2 grammar here and there. It’s advisable to have all the fundamentals under your belt before taking the plunge (preferably N3 level if you want to read novel/LN) otherwise it’s just going to be all noise.
**MANGA**
* **それでも歩は寄せてくる.** The creator of this manga is 山本崇一朗, which also the one who creates the famous からかい上手の高木さん. This is the first native material that I read along with しろくまカフェ. I remember it was quite a pain to read through at first because I have to basically look up every second and check the English translation back and forth just to confirm if my translation is correct. All in all, really love this series because I find the story pretty cute. It’s a slice of life romcom and I find the comedy quite funny. The only downside that I can think of about this series is the use of shogi jargon, thankfully it’s not that many and you can basically ignore them since they didn’t affect the main story that much.
* **ふらいんぐうぃっち.** I feel like this series draws some inspiration from 魔女の宅急便 since the setup is quite similar. It’s a slice of life of a witch named Makoto and her black cat living with her cousins. I don’t understand why this manga didn’t get enough buzz like よつばと! or しろくまカフェ since they are surprisingly similar in terms of difficulty. From the presentation and comedy style, it has the same vibe as よつばと! in my opinion, so if you like those you will likely love this too.
* **少女終末旅行.** It’s about two sisters surviving day-to-day in the middle of an apocalyptic wasteland. Pretty heartwarming story with a lot of everyday vocab and very little specific military jargon is also thrown in there so it’s not going to be that difficult. What makes this manga difficult though there is no furigana, that’s why I put it last. Sooner or later you will have to read without furigana holding your hand so this manga is a good stepping stone for that. I remember reading this when I know around 3-4k words and it feels pretty doable to go through (with a dictionary help obviously) so if your vocabulary is around that range it shouldn’t be a problem. I suggest you download an app like Shirabe Jisho for iOS, it has a hand drawing feature and it’s quite accurate, good for kanji lookups. Alternatively you can use an OCR program if you read digitally since it’s more convenient but from what I’ve heard the accuracy can be a hit or miss especially if it’s a low quality manga.
**NOVEL/LN**
* **かがみの孤城.** A bunch of teenagers suddenly find their mirror shining and discover it’s actually a portal that leads to a mysterious castle. It’s a mix of low fantasy and mystery with a heartwarming story. The book won Japan Booksellers’ Award 2018 and it’s among my favorite Japanese book so far. You can buy the split version (下 and 上) like I did since the original version is pretty long (almost 600 pages) and it can be a little bit daunting as your first novel.
* **すべての神様の十月.** It’s a short story compilation about different Gods from Japanese mythology. I like the humor and find the writing easy to understand. It’s the easiest book on this list and if you are a fan of mythology I highly recommend this.
* **流浪の月.** Some of you probably got recommended or already read コンビニ人間 as your first book and this one has the same difficulty in my opinion, mostly everyday vocab with straightforward writing and story. I’m not going to say what the book is about because I think general fiction like this is best to go in blindly. What I will say is if you like コンビニ人間 (or キッチン if you happen to have read those) and looking for a similar kind of story or theme, you can’t go wrong with this book. The book won Japan Booksellers’ Award 2020 and has been made into a movie recently.
* **世界から猫が消えたなら.** In short it’s about a guy who is about to die and makes a deal with the devil to prevent that from happening. It’s a slice of life with fantasy elements sprinkled in it. There’s a charm to how the protagonist and the devil interact, which is my favorite part of this book.
* **キノの旅 the Beautiful World.** As the title suggests, it’s about Kino traveling from one place to another. It’s episodic and each chapter tells a different story in a different place. This is a light novel and what most people got wrong about LN is that all of them are lowbrow literature because of the word “light” in it (including me back then), when in fact this book can be thought-provoking and makes you think every time you finish a chapter. That doesn’t mean the book is hard though, the writing style is pretty straightforward and the vocabulary is mostly day-to-day stuff.
# MY TAKEAWAY
Speaking from my own and reading other people’s experiences, here’s my takeaway on reading native materials: **As soon as you got the foundation, don’t hesitate to take the plunge.** Consuming native material will always be a chore and challenging no matter how prepared you are and they’re not going to get easier any time soon. Don’t expect you can magically read manga or novels with ease just because you finish and know all the words from the core 6k Anki deck or memorize all JLPT grammar, because bad news that’s not going to happen if you never supplement that with real reading. At least when you consume something you like and enjoy, the process of having to look up unknown words or grammar explanations and trying to crack complex sentences will become less painful. Just remember to study all the fundamentals first and don’t whitenoise too often or you will not learn anything. The key here is it has to be comprehensible, and you can’t achieve that if you didn’t do any of the hard work. Alternatively you can start with something easy like graded readers or children’s picture books and start building up from there but some people find them boring, which is something you want to avoid.
# MISCELLANEOUS
I would like to put these two great articles about reading in your target language:
* [Why Reading Japanese is so Difficult: THE FIRST PAGE SYNDROME](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/language-first-page-syndrome/)
* [Why not comprehending](https://community.wanikani.com/t/%E4%B8%80%E9%80%B1%E9%96%93%E3%83%95%E3%83%AC%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BA-%E3%83%BB-one-week-friends-beginner-book-club/37573/49)[ 100% isn’t necessarily](https://community.wanikani.com/t/%E4%B8%80%E9%80%B1%E9%96%93%E3%83%95%E3%83%AC%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BA-%E3%83%BB-one-week-friends-beginner-book-club/37573/49)[ a bad thing](https://community.wanikani.com/t/%E4%B8%80%E9%80%B1%E9%96%93%E3%83%95%E3%83%AC%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BA-%E3%83%BB-one-week-friends-beginner-book-club/37573/49) (not an article per se but still valuable)
Also wanted to give a shoutout to these amazing websites related to reading in Japanese:
* [https://learnnatively.com/](https://learnnatively.com/) (All books are rated by the community, basically Goodreads but for Japanese learners)
* [https://jpdb.io/](https://jpdb.io/) (Amazing SRS and difficulty rating for various types of media)
* [https://dokushoclub.com/](https://dokushoclub.com/) (Review Japanese books and manga)
* [https://jtalkonline.com/](https://jtalkonline.com/) (Lots of great articles regarding learning Japanese, also review books and manga sometimes)
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If enough people like this I’ll probably make an update post once I reach a total of 150 books and manga and see if I have any noticeable improvement, along with more recommendations. It’s quite rare to see books and manga recommendations in this subreddit, especially the not-so-popular ones that I mentioned before, that’s why I want to recommend more books that are accessible to learners. Besides, I like to watch book recommendation videos from Japanese youtubers as a part of my listening practice anyway so why not make use of that.
How many books and manga have you read and what’s your favorite? Would love anyone to share so that everyone could see and I will add them ~~to my already long wishlist that I don’t know when will I read them.~~