Reading in Japanese is so much fun. I honestly am not much of a reader in English or Spanish…even in Italian I don’t really enjoy it…Japanese and Korean (but mainly Japanese) are extremely fun to read. Manga, light novels and visual novels…none of which I like to read in any other language are so much fun to read in Japanese (when I find the time) Funny enough, 君の名は is one of the last books I have read…since I’m an 異世界 junkie, my first book was 精霊幻想起1…which took me roughly 4 months (too many 異世界 type vocab made it a bit too challenging, but it was great :D) I personally have learned the language by myself (no teacher or tutor) through these 4 years (will be 4 years on May 3rd), only reading and listening to content I liked (not meant for language learners) as early as below N5 level (started with games) as well as the occasional grammar book (used 日本語総まとめ) and kanji app (used iKanji). Though I may get a tutor later on for speaking (whenever I actually want to improve on it). Because I only ever read what I wanted to read…only content that called my attention, I was always reading only stuff way above my level. I tried graded reading but it was just too boring for me…I do recommend as soon as possible to stop relating Japanese to your native language…there are a few ways that can help you do that and won’t want to look back…as the language just “makes sense”…a couple of things you could try are 1. Japanese only dictionary 2. Listen to shows….a lot 3. Watch shows whose original language you don’t understand with subs only in Japanese…try not to stop the video too much…doing this will force you to read fast and will barely give you any time to translate in your head (language reactor for netflix is a big help here) 4. Read a book but while reading listen to its audio book version..trying to keep up with a native speaker as they read the book Good luck on your future studies :) !
As a beginner in Japanese, I began my journey with manga and anime, but I struggled to understand the main idea without assistance. I used to depend on Google Translate, which didn't help me progress in learning the language. Now, I prefer Immersive Translate because it presents both languages side by side, allowing me to learn new words and phrases on my own rather than just skimming through poorly translated texts.
Totally agree that Satori Reader is an amazing resource for Japanese learners!! Yomu Yomu is a newer resource that I also recommend that has content for more levels of learners, including absolute beginners. (It is made by the creators of Du Chinese.) Since it's newer, it has less content so far, and they don't have native speaker audio yet, but I think those problems will be fixed soon, and the more bite-sized stories/articles there can be more approachable for more beginner learners of Japanese. (I have a video reviewing it on my channel if anyone is curious)
I love the start of this series!! Thank you! Actually this was so encouraging for where I am at. I am just beginning my N3 levels right now so this felt targeted perfectly for me atm. One of the struggles I am finding with self study is my paranoia that I am not making progress or making choices that make it harder and slower for me. So this was already amazing! Thank you again, can’t wait for the rest!❤
Thanks for this really helpful video. It gave me some perspective on how to continue my own reading journey in Japanese. I’m a really slow learner and even after almost two years of studying Japanese, I’m still not on N5 level which is okay for me because I’m not in any sort of rush. However, when it comes to reading it can get quite frustrating because the stuff I could read on my level is not that interesting to me and things I’m interested in are still too difficult. But I guess I just have to overcome this period somehow and finally start reading stuff although it’s not so much fun. Because otherwise I will be stuck at this point forever and never get to the fun stuff. And you are absolutely right that you have to have a good foundation of grammar and vocabulary knowledge to finally be able to read the books you like. Hearing from your experiences and seeing that you too had to overcome this phase and even read stuff you did enjoy that much but did anyway to make progress, is very motivating for me. So thanks for this video and I’m really looking forward to those other videos in your series. Until next time 👋🏻
Thank you sooo much for your answer on this video 🥰 I am glad you liked it, and that my experience could be useful, that was my sole purpose filming this! ♥️ currently producing the next video in the series, so I hope you will like it too!
I love the video! Looking forward to the series. I had a few questions How often would you look up words? Is it every single unknown word you would encounter? And did you ever do reviews of those words?
I'm around N4 level and bought myself "Harry Potter", version with furigana, because I know the story very well so it's easier to understand. I read it without checking dictionary. At the beginning it was exhausting, after reading 3-4 pages I was too sleepy to continue. And I was too focused on pronouncing words in my mind that I didn't even focus on the story. Now it's way smoother and I can enjoy the story and I'm surprised how much I can actually understand. Yesterday I started "Kiki's delivery service" but with different approach. I listen to the audiobook while reading a paper version. Just one page at a time. Then I write down the text in my notebook, after that I circle new words and look up the meaning, after that I read it again. I think writing the whole text down helps me to understand it better and also memorize more. It's quite time consuming (around 40-50min/page) but also relaxing and I just enjoy it a lot and it reminds me high school when I would write down over and over again russian declination to memorize it and it was my favourite way of studying. :)
🥹🥹🥹 I am SOOO grateful for you telling me this!! 🫶🏻 I sometimes struggle with my tone (if you knew how much I edit out of these videos and how many times I re-record sometimes 😭) and being careful to not sound too pushy or rough with my words or with how I explain things because I always want to motivate, never to bring shade or shame.
@@arinoyume aw, I never would have guessed but I think it's really hard to be perfect! And no, no problem! You deserve it! And I still keep going back to your videos - they really calm me down when life gets hard. Your way & progress is very inspiring, it gives me energy. I'm sure it's the same for others 🥰🙏✨️ p.s. sorry I just saw your reply msg...
Буду рада увидеть серию видео о чтении. Большое спасибо. i'm learning n5 materials now and would like to start read something regularly. reading is one of the way to repeat and to know something new. you can see words/kanji+grammar points in the meaningful context. that's what i think is better to start as soon as possible.
I loved this video! You’re one of my biggest language inspirations and I always feel encouraged by your content 😊 Just a little English tip: “interrogation” is usually used in a police context/police interrogation, so it sounds a little like your Instagram followers are drilling you with questions against your will to find out your study habits 😂❤ Not sure if this was intentional
Holy shit 130 books in japanese... you're an absolute pro. I definetely envy you. I have a question for you: when you read a japanese book now, how many new words you come across? 1 new word every 100? maybe 1 every 300? Maybe even less?
Thank you so much 🥰 Reading in japanese was always my ultimate goal so I am living the dream now, literally! And I will definitely answer your question in a future video thank you so much 🥳
悪い聞き取りの俺には中国語は超難しいだけど、頑張ってね！ ありさんのビデオでありがとう、俺に勇気をもらった Je n'ai que quelques notions de russe, mais cela me semble également une langue difficile, compliquée pour nous du reste, alors bonne chance ! En espérant que tu puisses un jour profiter de la littérature russe dans la langue originale.
C'est effectivement le but !! j'ai trop hâte de découvrir cette littérature qui me fait rêver autant que la littérature japonaise ♥️ そして中国語については、勉強し始めた頃私も「聞き取りが難しそうだな」って思ってたんですけども、思ったより簡単に覚えられそうです！なのでもし、VENIKさんが中国語に興味あったら、少しでも試してみて欲しいです😄EasyChineseというCZcamsチャンネルおすすめします！ Merci de ton commentaire et d'avoir regardé ma vidéo 🫶🏻
Personnellement, je n'ai clairement pas le niveau N5 mais j'ai quand même commencé à lire avec le Japanese Short Stories For Beginners (Lingo Mastery) et je trouve que c'est très abordable et adapté, surtout pour donner confiance en la compétence ! Il faut maitriser un minimum l'anglais et avoir quand même une base en japonais mais les textes contiennent du vocabulaire simple du quotidien et sont bilingues et il y a des questions à la fin de chaque texte pour pouvoir tester sa compréhension. Je le trouve vraiment bien fait ! L'option des textes bilingues est peut-être à mentionner ?
Le livre que tu mentionnes a l'air super en effet ! 😍 Je parlerai des textes bilingues dans une prochaine vidéo, mais puisque dans cette vidéo je ne parle que de mon expérience et que je n'en ai utilisé que plus tard dans mon apprentissage, c'est la raison pour laquelle je n'en parle pas !
@@arinoyume Oh je vois ! Je ne pensais pas que tu y avais eu recours comme tu t'es lancée dans des textes unilingues directement. Mais du coup, j'ai hâte de voir la suite ☺
@@K_Kuroe j'ai tout essayé SAUF les fameux graded readers de chez Tadoku dont tout le monde parle, car je ne connaissais pas leur existence à l'époque 😅 merci de ton engouement, ça me motive énormément !!
Reading in Japanese is so much fun. I honestly am not much of a reader in English or Spanish…even in Italian I don’t really enjoy it…Japanese and Korean (but mainly Japanese) are extremely fun to read. Manga, light novels and visual novels…none of which I like to read in any other language are so much fun to read in Japanese (when I find the time)
Funny enough, 君の名は is one of the last books I have read…since I’m an 異世界 junkie, my first book was 精霊幻想起1…which took me roughly 4 months (too many 異世界 type vocab made it a bit too challenging, but it was great :D)
I personally have learned the language by myself (no teacher or tutor) through these 4 years (will be 4 years on May 3rd), only reading and listening to content I liked (not meant for language learners) as early as below N5 level (started with games) as well as the occasional grammar book (used 日本語総まとめ) and kanji app (used iKanji). Though I may get a tutor later on for speaking (whenever I actually want to improve on it).
Because I only ever read what I wanted to read…only content that called my attention, I was always reading only stuff way above my level. I tried graded reading but it was just too boring for me…I do recommend as soon as possible to stop relating Japanese to your native language…there are a few ways that can help you do that and won’t want to look back…as the language just “makes sense”…a couple of things you could try are
1. Japanese only dictionary
2. Listen to shows….a lot
3. Watch shows whose original language you don’t understand with subs only in Japanese…try not to stop the video too much…doing this will force you to read fast and will barely give you any time to translate in your head (language reactor for netflix is a big help here)
4. Read a book but while reading listen to its audio book version..trying to keep up with a native speaker as they read the book
Good luck on your future studies :) !
As a beginner in Japanese, I began my journey with manga and anime, but I struggled to understand the main idea without assistance. I used to depend on Google Translate, which didn't help me progress in learning the language. Now, I prefer Immersive Translate because it presents both languages side by side, allowing me to learn new words and phrases on my own rather than just skimming through poorly translated texts.
Totally agree that Satori Reader is an amazing resource for Japanese learners!! Yomu Yomu is a newer resource that I also recommend that has content for more levels of learners, including absolute beginners. (It is made by the creators of Du Chinese.) Since it's newer, it has less content so far, and they don't have native speaker audio yet, but I think those problems will be fixed soon, and the more bite-sized stories/articles there can be more approachable for more beginner learners of Japanese. (I have a video reviewing it on my channel if anyone is curious)
😍😍😍 I am going to test it out!! Thank you so much for sharing 🥳
I love the start of this series!! Thank you! Actually this was so encouraging for where I am at. I am just beginning my N3 levels right now so this felt targeted perfectly for me atm. One of the struggles I am finding with self study is my paranoia that I am not making progress or making choices that make it harder and slower for me. So this was already amazing! Thank you again, can’t wait for the rest!❤
I love Satori Reader too, I am using it at the moment. Quite slowly though, just one chapter a day and doing other stuff.
Interactive digital resources love that
Thanks for this really helpful video. It gave me some perspective on how to continue my own reading journey in Japanese. I’m a really slow learner and even after almost two years of studying Japanese, I’m still not on N5 level which is okay for me because I’m not in any sort of rush. However, when it comes to reading it can get quite frustrating because the stuff I could read on my level is not that interesting to me and things I’m interested in are still too difficult. But I guess I just have to overcome this period somehow and finally start reading stuff although it’s not so much fun. Because otherwise I will be stuck at this point forever and never get to the fun stuff. And you are absolutely right that you have to have a good foundation of grammar and vocabulary knowledge to finally be able to read the books you like. Hearing from your experiences and seeing that you too had to overcome this phase and even read stuff you did enjoy that much but did anyway to make progress, is very motivating for me. So thanks for this video and I’m really looking forward to those other videos in your series. Until next time 👋🏻
Thank you sooo much for your answer on this video 🥰 I am glad you liked it, and that my experience could be useful, that was my sole purpose filming this! ♥️ currently producing the next video in the series, so I hope you will like it too!
Love this! Thank you, Ari!!
You’re welcomeeee ❤️😍😍😍
I love the video! Looking forward to the series. I had a few questions
How often would you look up words? Is it every single unknown word you would encounter?
And did you ever do reviews of those words?
I'm around N4 level and bought myself "Harry Potter", version with furigana, because I know the story very well so it's easier to understand. I read it without checking dictionary. At the beginning it was exhausting, after reading 3-4 pages I was too sleepy to continue. And I was too focused on pronouncing words in my mind that I didn't even focus on the story. Now it's way smoother and I can enjoy the story and I'm surprised how much I can actually understand.
Yesterday I started "Kiki's delivery service" but with different approach. I listen to the audiobook while reading a paper version. Just one page at a time. Then I write down the text in my notebook, after that I circle new words and look up the meaning, after that I read it again. I think writing the whole text down helps me to understand it better and also memorize more. It's quite time consuming (around 40-50min/page) but also relaxing and I just enjoy it a lot and it reminds me high school when I would write down over and over again russian declination to memorize it and it was my favourite way of studying. :)
I loooooove this thank you for sharing ❤️🙏🏻
Tu me donnes envie de me remettre à lire en japonais, mais j’ai tellement besoin de chercher du vocabulaire que ça devient loooooong
Excellent ideas as always
Thank you for the video Ali! They always feel so motivating and genuine 💖💛
🥹🥹🥹 I am SOOO grateful for you telling me this!! 🫶🏻 I sometimes struggle with my tone (if you knew how much I edit out of these videos and how many times I re-record sometimes 😭) and being careful to not sound too pushy or rough with my words or with how I explain things because I always want to motivate, never to bring shade or shame.
@@arinoyume aw, I never would have guessed but I think it's really hard to be perfect! And no, no problem! You deserve it!
And I still keep going back to your videos - they really calm me down when life gets hard. Your way & progress is very inspiring, it gives me energy. I'm sure it's the same for others 🥰🙏✨️ p.s. sorry I just saw your reply msg...
Буду рада увидеть серию видео о чтении. Большое спасибо.
i'm learning n5 materials now and would like to start read something regularly.
reading is one of the way to repeat and to know something new.
you can see words/kanji+grammar points in the meaningful context. that's what i think is better to start as soon as possible.
I absolutely agree with you! Good luck in your studies! 🥰
Thank you ally 🎉🎉❤
I loved this video! You’re one of my biggest language inspirations and I always feel encouraged by your content 😊
Just a little English tip: “interrogation” is usually used in a police context/police interrogation, so it sounds a little like your Instagram followers are drilling you with questions against your will to find out your study habits 😂❤ Not sure if this was intentional
🤣 it wasn't my intention BUT since I received more than 120 questions combined, I guess you could call this an interrogation 😆
@@arinoyume 😂😂😂❤️
Thank you, Ally! Helpful and encouraging 😊 as always! How did you overcome frustration with the slowness of reading in the beginning?
Konnichiwa ❤
Holy shit 130 books in japanese... you're an absolute pro. I definetely envy you. I have a question for you: when you read a japanese book now, how many new words you come across? 1 new word every 100? maybe 1 every 300? Maybe even less?
Thank you so much 🥰 Reading in japanese was always my ultimate goal so I am living the dream now, literally! And I will definitely answer your question in a future video thank you so much 🥳
悪い聞き取りの俺には中国語は超難しいだけど、頑張ってね！
ありさんのビデオでありがとう、俺に勇気をもらった
Je n'ai que quelques notions de russe, mais cela me semble également une langue difficile, compliquée pour nous du reste, alors bonne chance ! En espérant que tu puisses un jour profiter de la littérature russe dans la langue originale.
C'est effectivement le but !! j'ai trop hâte de découvrir cette littérature qui me fait rêver autant que la littérature japonaise ♥️ そして中国語については、勉強し始めた頃私も「聞き取りが難しそうだな」って思ってたんですけども、思ったより簡単に覚えられそうです！なのでもし、VENIKさんが中国語に興味あったら、少しでも試してみて欲しいです😄EasyChineseというCZcamsチャンネルおすすめします！
Merci de ton commentaire et d'avoir regardé ma vidéo 🫶🏻
Personnellement, je n'ai clairement pas le niveau N5 mais j'ai quand même commencé à lire avec le Japanese Short Stories For Beginners (Lingo Mastery) et je trouve que c'est très abordable et adapté, surtout pour donner confiance en la compétence ! Il faut maitriser un minimum l'anglais et avoir quand même une base en japonais mais les textes contiennent du vocabulaire simple du quotidien et sont bilingues et il y a des questions à la fin de chaque texte pour pouvoir tester sa compréhension. Je le trouve vraiment bien fait ! L'option des textes bilingues est peut-être à mentionner ?
Le livre que tu mentionnes a l'air super en effet ! 😍 Je parlerai des textes bilingues dans une prochaine vidéo, mais puisque dans cette vidéo je ne parle que de mon expérience et que je n'en ai utilisé que plus tard dans mon apprentissage, c'est la raison pour laquelle je n'en parle pas !
@@arinoyume Oh je vois ! Je ne pensais pas que tu y avais eu recours comme tu t'es lancée dans des textes unilingues directement. Mais du coup, j'ai hâte de voir la suite ☺
@@K_Kuroe j'ai tout essayé SAUF les fameux graded readers de chez Tadoku dont tout le monde parle, car je ne connaissais pas leur existence à l'époque 😅 merci de ton engouement, ça me motive énormément !!
Tu parles français? Je peux entendre l'accent 😅
Je suis française !!! 100% haha 😆