Japanese Literature/Manga

2 comments

1. I’ve heard a lot of people recommend Bakuman. It’s a manga about friends trying to create their own manga — so, mainly “real world” kind of vocabulary– and also has quite heavy use of furigana, which is what makes it a good option for learners.

2. Use graded readers — that’s what they’re for. The Taishukan and Tadoku sets are excellent and come in packs of 4-5 slim books, each with one or more short stories/essays, both modern and traditional, going from level 0 to 5 (not related to N levels). At your level, I suggest starting with level 3 and then working your way up from there to 5 (levels 0, 1, and 2 will be too easy). They use furigana at the lower levels but this drops off at the higher levels. They also have digital downloads for every single story so you can practise listening too.

   I recommend using the Taishukan over the Tadoku if you’re gonna choose. They seem to have a better balance of traditional vs modern, fiction vs non-fiction.

   N3 is a frustrating level to be at — from experience, children’s books will either be too easy or, paradoxically, too hard because of heavy use of hiragana instead of kanji, which can be taxing to parse. And books aimed at teenagers and above will likely be too hard and you’ll get frustrated with having to look up words all the time and with meeting unfamiliar grammar forms. I’ve never found manga useful — it’s too terse and punchy Japanese for me. I need full, coherent sentences to learn from. Graded readers are designed to gradually increase in difficulty, which is what you want. Use them before wasting money on books you won’t be able to read for quite some time (I know this from experience).