This fall, I plan on taking Japanese at my university and I have never read manga before. Are there any good mangas for beginners in Japanese, especially ones that aren’t too childish which is most of what I have been seeing online?
Also for my Canadians, how do you get manga in Japanese? I went to local stores and most of them were in French (I live in Québec), a limited selection in English, and none in Japanese. I spoke with one of the store owners and he told me it would be expensive due to the shipping from Japan and there would be a low demand for manga in Japanese. I would rather have a physical book instead of pirating it online.
12 comments
How much beginner are you? its a broad term 😀
As for buying Japanese manga, I buy them Second Hand from Ebay(inside my own Country) so I dont have to pay that much for the shipping.
[https://japaneselevelup.com/difficulty-level-guide-everything-japanese/](https://japaneselevelup.com/difficulty-level-guide-everything-japanese/)
For manga I only know of this list (I have never used it so I’m not sure how accurate it is).
For manga in Japanese I personally use Buyee it’s a bit pricy but I mean it’s going to be when you’re getting things directly from Japan.
*なめて，かじって，ときどき愛でて* and anything else by 深 湯町 is both not childish and somehow has very easy vocabulary and sentence structure for whatever reason. I can’t quite put my had to it but I find this artist’s writing style very easy to read and others say the same.
There is almost no way to get releases in Japanese without ordering them from Japan.
ebay. i just got a shipment today. it left japan 2 days ago. O.o damn that’s fast.
yotsuba
eBay actually isn’t too bad if you want to buy an entire series or in bulk.
Not sure where you are in Quebec, but I just checked out the listings on Kijiji for Montréal and it seems like there are a few manga series in Japanese for sale.
To be honest, Kijiji is where I get most of my books because it’s so much cheaper on there, but you can’t be picky. It’s great for getting vast amounts of reading for a low cost though 😅 (also great for reselling once you’ve finished a book).
Vancouver.
I don’t have money rn so I’m not buying any currently, but I used to just get them off Amazon Japan.
If you buy like 20 at once, the shipping becomes quite reasonable.
I’m in Ontario and I usually just buy online. Whether it be from Indigo, Simon & Schuster, etc. Sometimes I use the [Shop Local](https://bookmanager.com/i/tbm/www/ShopLocal) website to see if anything in my area carries manga near me. (Go to the bottom of that page, type in a title of a book/manga. When you find what you want, click the “Shop Local” button next to it. Then put in your postal code and such.)
Canadian here – I used to buy from Honto but I think they’ve switched to using a shipping service to ship internationally, which made the shipping pricier. I’ve ordered used manga from Mandarake and was really pleased with the quality considering it’s used. Amazon Japan is good if you’re buying in bulk to offset the shipping.
Reading manga online doesn’t mean pirating it. I read my manga off of japanese manga sights like comic walker and pixiv.
I get the physical copy thing though, I want to get some for when I’m camping.