Recommend me a book to practice reading with, please

[JackiJinx]

Hi! I'm currently an Japanese Elementary 2 student in college, but also do some self-study to further my Japanese education. I'm currently looking for books to help me further my Japanese since I received some birthday money, but am unsure of what to choose. I was thinking of getting maybe two children's books, but don't want to pick something that's too easy for me.

I know about 100-200 Kanji and can say things like　少し日本語を話すことができます and 　私は幸せで彼は幸せんです。

If it helps, my interests are video games, communication (I'm a communication: media management major), myths, learning, the internet, and online networking. I don't think that'll help much considering my current level, but I don't think it'd hurt to post. Also, I understand that katakana does get used a lot in things like manga, but I'd prefer materials that'd help me learn to use more kanji and some new (but nothing crazily indepth...yet) grammar points. I did order two manga over the summer, but both proved to be a little too advanced for me even still (too many kanji that I still don't recognize).

If anyone has any ideas or recommendations in mind, please let me know.

[jazzbeans]

Belton recommended me Yotsuba&! and I think it's pretty good, so I pass on the recommendation. =D

[Javizy]

Unless you're talking about those picture books that three-year-olds read with one line per page, you'll be very lucky to find a children's book that's too easy. Children have an understanding of language far past even intermediate learners, and know thousands of words. This means that a full-on book without many pictures is going to be a nightmare for an elementary student, as I found out myself. It doesn't help that children's books are written almost entirely in kana either, instead of using kanji with furigana. I found it very demotivating taking 10+ minutes to turn a single page...

I agree that manga is a much better option to get you started. All the language is broken down into speech bubbles, and well contextualised by the surrounding pictures. If you read one based in an everyday setting, the language will also be very practical to learn from. The first one I read was Doraemon, which I'd recommend.

As for kanji, it's very hard to learn while reading, especially if you don't have a good starting base. Somewhere between 1000-1100 characters make up about 80-90% of everyday usage. If you have this as a starting base, Japanese text will start to look more like text, and not a bunch of overcomplicated strokes. I'd recommend dedicating some time to learn how to at least recognise these characters as soon as you can.

If you really want to take control of the process and speed it up (and ensure you remember how to write kanji), try Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. You can finish it in a little over three months if you do just 20 characters a day (can take between 15-30mins depending on difficulty). You could also just learn the 1100 characters I mentioned above to begin with, and be finished in half the time. I'm sure you'll be able to impress your teacher either way. This forum is a really good resource for all areas of Japanese study, and you'll find lots of info about the book http://forum.koohii.com/index.php

[JackiJinx]

Thank you for the recommendation, jazzbeans.

Javizy, thanks for the Doreamon manga recommendation. I actually started learning with Remembering the Kanji, which is why I know so many already (most of my classmates only know about 12-15). I feel it's best to rotate between sources so as not to get bored, so I continually shift between Heisig, kanji-a-day sources, Anki training, listening activities, translation activities (bilingual materials), conversational material, etc. What I'm lacking in is material to practice reading with. The only material I have for that are a few online resources, the two manga I listed, and an issue of Famitsu. My tutor recommended that I get some more material that's for my level, which is why I'm posting. The only site I know that sells Japanese books is yesasia.com, and I'd like to take a stab a children's book instead of manga.

[Taurus]

If you check out the forum on that site that Javizy linked to, you'll find a list of free audiobooks and transcripts here. You might find something interesting there.

I've been reading through The Happy Prince recently, for example, because I love the original. The grammar is very simple, but even such a simple story has plenty of vocab that I didn't know. Anything I don't understand I just stick into my Anki deck, using the English transcript to provide translations (although you need to check those translation because sometimes they're not very literal - in which case I resort to a dictionary).

My wife also bought me a book called 365 Bedtime Stories, as a Christmas present, which contains a short story for every day of the year, mostly fairy tales from Grimm's Fairy Tales or Hans Christian Anderson, but also more modern stuff. Again, it's more difficult than you'd think because of the vocab (even the title of stories like the Tin Soldier require a trip to the dictionary for me!) and all the kana, but the grammar is simple enough, and they're short enough to get through fairly easily.

[Javizy]

Have you tried something like the smart.fm core 6000 or Kanji Odyssey 2001 decks? Is that what you mean by anki training? You can learn to read those 1100 most common kanji fairly quickly.

The only children's books I've read were about a stray dog going on a journey and a young king who got into trouble a lot. They were really hard at the time, and not very interesting. I just wanted to give you some idea of what you might be up against. You really need to know how to break down sentences well in order to interpret long strings of kana. Of course, it's worth giving it a try. If you don't get any useful replies, try searching/posting at the forum I mentioned.

One good resource that you can match to your level is the JPod transcripts. They have kanji and kana, so you can test yourself with the kanji first, and maybe even learn a few readings while you're at it. I didn't know about anki and such at the time, so I learnt all the basic readings from them pretty much.

[mutley]

The picture books that accompany the studio Ghibli movies are quite good for learning. The ones I've seen tend to include quite a few Kanji but also furigana alongside all of them.
They also have pictures which makes it easier to understand without being manga.

The difficulty depends a lot on which book you get, something like Totoro is probably a lot easier for a beginner than something like Princess Mononoke.

I've never really tried Heisig, but where I probably would agree with people who have used it is that once you've learned the 1st 100-200 kanji and have a good grasp of basic grammer it's really worth cramming kanji for the next 6 months to get to around 800-1200 at which point you will be able to read a pretty wide range of things. I think quite a few people get stuck around 200-300 at which level it is hard to just learn more Kanji as you read.

[tanitayou]

From Yale University Press The book "Reading japanese" by Eleanor Jorden and hamako Ito Chaplin is a very good resource.It starts from Hiragana and Katakana and goes hrough 450 common kanji. You can check review on Amazon.

Ps I think there is a review of the book in this forum, because one of the subscribers gave me this advice.

ganbatte