Reading Japanese Newspapers

[mvogel]

Recently my Kanji level has gotten to the point where I can actually start reading Japanese newspapers, a much desired goal. I still have problems with some of the words but I am learning as I go.

Does anyone else use newspapers to study Japanese?

[kirbyenigma6747]

that's amazing!
I wish I could do that, being able to properly read and understand a Japanese newspaper has been a goal of mine since I started learning.
I mostly use original manga to practice my reading, I just recieved my first light novel ^o^

[Javizy]

If the article is about a topic I'm familiar with it's not so bad, but I don't know anything about Japanese politics, and most of the articles are about that in the newspapers I have. I need to finish 1級 grammar and keep pushing my vocabulary. In the meantime, I've been reading 漫画新聞, which I think is a novel way to get useful exposure. There's still a lot of "newspaper language", so I think it's going to help me to push towards the real thing too.

How do you find reading articles? I don't like using a dictionary every sentence, so it's way too painful for me at the moment.

[samael]

I'm somewhere between reading manga and newspapers, so what I'll usually do is go to mainichi.jp and read articles there. I have the Rikaichan plugin for Firefox, so if there's vocabulary I don't know, I can just hover over it and continue reading without having to stop to look it up in the dictionary. It seems to be working pretty well so far.

[Jessi]

If anyone wants to try some easy news articles in Japanese, I'd recommend the ones over at http://coscom.co.jp/ Each news article and column even comes with an audio clip.

[ggenglish]

jessi, that's a great site, thanks for posting it!

[mvogel]

How do you find reading articles? I don't like using a dictionary every sentence, so it's way too painful for me at the moment.

At first it was really hard but like anything the more you practice the better you get. I still have to look up a lot of words but reading the articles on the internet helps alot. I can use Rikaichan or goo to look up the words so it goes pretty fast.

[mslozada]

Easy to read " real " newspaper?

No Problem. Just klick below:

http://asagaku.com/

However, I would recommend asagaku.com first, only after passing N3 or you will just be spending the whole day looking those grammar and Kanji's up which can be very very frustrating. The newspaper itself are intended for Japanese students so you can expect it to be at a very high level. First try,

朝日小学生新聞　『毎日発行』 (No explanations needed here, just read it)
- １００６字　「１年ー６年」 (Kanji's expected from Japanese students)

afterwards, you can try

朝日中学生新聞　『毎週日曜日発行』
- １９４５字　「中学」

(Actually, you can just go to the website and help yourself. I'm not going to explain everything here. If your Japanese is between N3 and N2, you should be able to navigate yourself freely and understand almost everything.)

[Javizy]

I've been reading articles on http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/ the past few days. A lot of them have videos that match the text word-for-word, so you can test your listening practice after reading. They're far more approachable than the broadsheet newspapers I tried reading before.

[tanitayou]

MSLOZADASAN,
thank you for the link of asagaku.
I only cannnot understand if, after subscribing, I can download the newspaper or if it is a service by mail.
If you kindly could explain.....Thank you very much

[mslozada]

Unless in Japan, you wont be able to subscribe. They will ask for your address in Japan. I just stop by everyday to see if there are any new articles posted.
The left side is (normally) everyday.
The right side is (normally) every week.
If the day is a holiday, there wont be any new articles. I didn't bother asking them if they could send me those news per emai or an email-alert if something new is beeing postedl. I'm just too fed up with those " Only for Japan " things and stuffs.

Hope this helps.

[tanitayou]

THANK YOU VERY MUCH! : :

[frank201]

sorry for reopening this topic, but for me as well, one of my motivations for continuing with Japanese was being able to read Japanese newspapers and being able to listen to Japanese radio news. (I must say I am still far away from these goals )

Besides the links already mentioned, the most interesting link for me is:
http://mainichi.jp/life/edu/maishou/
This has furigana for all kanji, even the easy ones.

And there is also this link:
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/kyoiku/children/weekly/
which has furigana for the difficult kanji.