15 volumes later with some 1829 new Anki cards created and something like 3000+ pages, I finally finished Yotsuba.
It was actually years ago that I got the idea for reading Yotsuba from this sub. Super grateful to have come across that recommendation because I absolute loved this.
For anyone else that wants to try, here are some basic stats about where I was going in. Disclosure: I am actually learning Chinese, not Japanese, but I figure since it was this sub that gave me the idea, I would share it here, and I can’t imagine that the fundamentals of language learning change too drastically.
**Background:** (Embarrassing confession incoming) I see plenty of people that have said “I started reading Yotsuba after like 6 months and it was easy.” I’ve been studying Chinese, albeit inefficiently and with the brain of a stupid person, for about 3 and a half years now.
**Vocab:** I don’t meticulously track all of my vocabulary in Anki (I should) but my guess is that going into it I had a good handle on about 3000 words, and was probably iffy on another thousand or so. I’ve been going through some of a B2 vocabulary list lately and I think my Yotsuba journey probably would have gone a bit smoother had I known some more of that list, but I don’t think it’s necessary to dive in. If you’re learning Japanese instead of Chinese, you will have a much easier time, as many of the most confusing moments were traditional Japanese culture things that were translated into Chinese.
**Grammar:** I think the grammar in Yotsuba is – for the most part – very very easy. Every now and again, I would run things into ChatGPT for an explanation (Yes, I have seen plenty of people make fun of how bad ChatGPT is at Japanese and translation in general, but, at least for Chinese, when prompted with “Break down this sentence” it is generally very very good, and if you’re at the level where you’re able to read most of Yotsuba without issue, you’re probably able to tell when ChatGPT is giving you a legit answer or is just being confused)
**Reading:**
When I first started reading, I thought “Ok. I bet the first 2 volumes are going to be difficult, but after that, it’ll be a lot easier.” The unfortunate reality was that this wasn’t the case it all. It wasn’t until volume 9 or so that I actually started noticing things get substantially smoother. There’s just such a diverse array of subject material that there’s actually relatively little overlap in themes, and thus minimal overlap in key vocabulary. I WISH I would have tracked my reading stats for the first volume, but it only occurred to me to do this for the last volume, so here they are:
1st hour: 32 pages (31 new words)
2nd hour: 49 pages (19 new words, quite a few pages with just pictures, but spent an embarrassingly large amount of time trying to understand a game they were playing with deliberately mispronouncing license plate numbers. Also, by some completely weird twist of the universe, I encountered the word ç¿¡ç¿ ï¼Œmeaning jadeite, in one of the chapters, which is incredibly weird because I had seen that word for the first time earlier that day watching a youtube video and I didn’t imagine ever seeing it again. Then I saw it again literally just a few hours later. Freakin weird.)
3rd hour: 35 pages(18 new words)
4th hour： 34 pages (24 new words)
5th hour: 35 pages (28 new words)
6th hour: 39 （27 new words）
Last five minutes (how long it took to finish the volume): 8 pages (0 new words)
It’s important to mention here that this doesn’t really accurately reflect my average reading speed. Since I had a timer going, I definitely felt more urgency. Whenever I came across a panel without words on it, I would just immediately skip it, but this is not what I would normally do. The artwork in Yotsuba is really, really good, and I typically spend a fair amount of time just appreciating all the details. If I had to take a guess, I’d say you can easily subtract 5 pages from each of those to get my average. The upper and lower bounds for my reading speed was pretty large too. In the beginning, I expect I was getting probably around 20 pages an hour. The most I ever hit in an hour though was about 80 pages. But realistically, if I had to guess, I’d say 30 pages an hour was probably average.
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This was a fantastic learning experience and I can’t recommend it enough. I will absolutely be transitioning to a much more manga oriented learning approach. Big thanks to the people on this sub for recommending it. If you have any recommendations for what you read after Yotsuba, please let me know! The next manga on my reading list is Yagate Kimi ni Naru (And I am HYPED to read it)
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TL;DR (generated by ChatGPT)
After creating 1829 new Anki cards and reading 3000+ pages across 15 volumes, I finally finished reading Yotsuba. It took me 3 and a half years to get here while learning Chinese. Although the grammar was easy, the diverse subject material made it challenging. Yotsuba is a fantastic learning experience and I highly recommend it for language learners.