I’m currently an intermediate learner, I’d say somewhere between N4 and N3. I rarely watch anime or read manga, but I’d like to practice with some native material. I’m a big fan of Morimi Tomihiko, but I heard that his books, like 「四畳半神話大系」or 「夜は短し歩けよ乙女」, are pretty advanced. It’s not a problem for me to look up lots of words and grammar rules – however, I don’t know if it’s worth it. What’s your opinion about that?
6 comments
Why wouldn’t it be worth it if you like his material and don’t mind spending the extra time looking up word and grammar rules?
As an advanced learner who’s read both books, I wouldn’t recommend them to a beginner though. They pretty much just use metaphors and puns everywhere, along with tons of weird and long locations and people names to remember, the cherry on top being constant use of old japanese expressions paired with descriptive words you only see in literature.
Conclusion: not only there’s not a lot of useful stuff to learn from them as a beginner, it’s also probably going to be hell to go through them in general. Anything is better than not reading at all though, so you might try them out and see if you like the experience, but I doubt it’s going to be enjoyable
I also really like Morimi Tomihiko! However, he definitely uses a lot of obscure and erudite vocabulary (which is one of the cool things about his prose style, to be honest.) I passed N1 and most novels are fine for me, but if I want to read a Morimi novel, he really makes me work for it!
In my personal opinion, you won’t get as much out of reading a book that’s far above your level as you will from reading a book that’s closer to your level. It’s slow and frustrating to read a book that’s far above your level, and it can be difficult to make yourself stick with it long-term even if you really like the book.
Here is my recommendation: buy a Morimi Tomihiko book, and also buy a couple of books that are somewhat easier than that. (Hopefully you can find a few easier books that you are interested in.) Then you’ll have something to read if you feel up to tackling the Morimi Tomihiko book, and you’ll have something to read if you end up getting frustrated with it.
Thank you all!
I’ve read 夜行 by her and it wasn’t that difficult, but i still would not recommend it for an N4-N3 level.
I used to read pretty much all of the stories from satorireader.com before i jumped into “proper” native material.(satori is still written by natives, but for learners) And i feel like it helped me immensly, i think without their grammar explanations, i would still not properly understand some grammar points.
If you want to dive into some native material, I’d recommend looking into some beginner manga. It’s not fun reading things above your level, having to look up words every 2 sentences will lead to burnout real quick.