So, I’ve been studying Japanese Studies for about eight years now, just finishing up my Master’s degree. Problem is, due to Covid, the last few semesters were just a drag. I finished my last Japanese classes about two years ago … and haven’t used the language besides my very focused research for my thesis.
So now, after I got my degree, I want to get back into refreshing my skills. I want to start reading novels, because I feel like I can relearn organically, and I love reading in general. I started with コンビニ人間, because I enjoyed the English version. Thing is, I forgot sooo many Kanji and basic vocabulary, it’s ridiculous and quite frankly embarrassing for myself! It’s very discouraging having to look up stuff I learned years ago. Grammar is fine, but those Kanji are just … it’s exhausting.
Question: Should I just push through, or maybe focus on relearning Kanji/vocab separately? Do you have any other novel suggestions, maybe something more general? コンビニ人間 is very retail-focussed, but still, I should be able to read most words with my knowledge … then I forgot the Kanji for 袋 and I questioned the last eight years lol
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PS: Even tho I got the degree, I do something else job-vise (copywriting). So this is purely for my own language learning and not losing touch with Japanese.
3 comments
I’m in the push through camp for myself (the first novel I ever read in Japanese took me several months), but if you easily burn out from this sort of thing, maybe it’d be better to refresh kanji and vocabulary with some kind of SRS first. (By which I mean Anki, but there are other options of course.)
I think コンビニ人間 is one of the easier “normal” novels. But you can find some easier ones, and many more recommendations sorted by difficulty [on learnnatively](https://learnnatively.com/resources/search/?type=novel&sort=level_asc).
Personally, when I want something easy-ish to read, I pick something random by Banana Yoshimoto. キッチン is one I’ve seen recommended often, but I think most of her books are on a similar level. Probably not easier than コンビニ人間 either, but also not more difficult.
Sounds to me like you’ll just need to encounter kanji and vocabulary in a bit more controlled environment and you’ll be right back on track. I can recommend both of the graded readers by ask and taishukan, level 4 would be just right for you I believe. They are all written for learners to easily understand unknown vocabulary from context and will get you reading more fluently and confidently. The taishukan graded readers even have a level 5 if you want a bit more challenge!
Everyone keeps talking about that book… I might have to buy it.
Anyways… if you are so rusty as to have forgotten a significant chunk I would do a SRS with a stupidly large vocab list and easy out all the ones you know – leaving you to retrain and retain the ones you forgot. If you forgot enough to be able to read effectively, that will at least get your vocab back in order.