Book tips!

[adambremholm6820]

Hi everyone!

I'm new to this forum but I've been listening to the podcast for quite a while so i thought I should bring my questions to these forums to see if you guys can help me.

I've studied japanese for about 1 and half year and im here in Japan doing a 1 year exchange tour now. My level now is good enough to make good conversations and i've just about started the upper intermediate series on this site.

In school we study a crazy amount of kanji every week and its almost impossible to keep up with the learning so I thought that I'd start reading a book to make the solidify the stuff I learned so far.

Not having had a big intrest for books or manga before coming here have no clue on what to look for in regards to my level. The books I ended up choosing last time was waaaaaay to hard (harry potter and the philosofers stone and some manga which i forget the name).

So I wanna throw out the question there to you guys!! What books did you read in order to improve your japanese?? (if you have an amazon link too that would be great)!!!

Thanks in advance guys and thanks to the crew of the site for a great podcast!

[j_bertoni2279]

You could look at キッチン, by Banana Yoshimoto. Or maybe a ダーリンは外国人 manga.

[url]http://www.amazon.co.jp/キッチン-角川文庫-吉本-ばなな/dp/4041800080/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1302390621&sr=8-6[/url]

[url]http://www.amazon.co.jp/ダーリンは外国人―外国人の彼と結婚したら、どーなるの-ルポ。-小栗-左多里/dp/4840106835/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302390688&sr=1-1[/url]

There are a lot of books in that manga series. If those are too hard, you could try an Anki deck to work on reading.

Also, a book like this might be good:

http://www.thejapanshop.com/Exploring-J ... =salesrank

[Javizy]

I don't recommend the literature one at all. It has some of the most obscure words you'll ever see, and uses old kanji that you don't need to know, and old readings that will confuse you. The actual format of the book is great for anyone at lower intermediate and above, but the choice of text itself is anything but.

Personally, I think reading too early can be more effort than it's worth. If it's taking you 10 minutes to read one page of a book, then you could probably be spending your time more efficiently. I started off with Doraemon, but that might be a bit below you now, although there are still loads of useful expressions and grammar examples in there. If you get Rikai-chan, you can browse the web for something suitable to your level, and easily look up unknown words and save them to a list.

If remembering kanji and how to read words is the problem, then check out something like Anki or iKnow. iKnow has a 6000 word flashcards set with sentences and audio and uses a special kind of system that helps you memorise it. I'd recommend Heisig's book for learning the characters, but it might be difficult to use if you're struggling to keep up with what your teacher is telling you to do.

I've seen a lot of threads with recommendations on this forum http://forum.koohii.com/index.php If you try searching a bit, you should find some good links to online stories. You can also find out more about Anki, Heisig and just about all aspects of learning Japanese.

[adambremholm6820]

Thanks for the tips guys!

bertony, I ordered some of the books that you recommended from amazon! Found some for 1yen used but I hope they are not in a too bad condition.

I should have been a little more specific, its not just the kanji that confuses me but also the way books are written are somewhat different to manga and real conversations. I've also read draemon and even if its good for learning but I lost intrest because (sorry all you doraemon fans) I felt it was a bit too childish.

I do agree with Javizy that its better to check out books that use words that are pretty common. Some time ago, I read all the stories in the back of the Genki books, there you get a list of the hard word at the end of each short story which makes it easy to understand. Because I always take the easy way I dont really like text with furigna because if they are there my eyes always overlook the kanji and I'm finding it hard to remember their pronounciation.

Maybe I should look at other methods but as you say: the work I have is already over my head. I took the 一級漢字course this semester and I'm starting to regret it..... So much studies.

I will however defenetly check out the webpage you linked me! Thanks!