また、同じ夢を見ていた

珍しいですが、面白い

I loved story, because it is different, but still interesting. I am currently around jlpt n4, but I didn't have much problems following the plot.

Story-wise, the earlier parts was quite slow, but the pace kinda picks up in the middle. It does give an interesting thought on the main topic being discussed on. The slow pace, however, does help for a language learner.

Language-wise, as someone who just finished Minna no Nihongo 2 and completed a few "easy-ish" anime, a lot of lookups are required. Counting from the number of Anki cards I "mined", around 500+ words were found. Some expressions and conjugations are quite challenging too.

Overall, I would say this is a good novel for someone interested in delving into native JP material. Whether this fits for a first novel is up to discussion, but if I were a beginner (N4-N3-ish level), I would pick up an easier novel or manga first before jumping to this.

The difficulty jump is quite present at the end of this book. it is quite baffling, honestly. However, the ambiguous description of the ending kinda leaves something to think about.

Fun book to practice long sentences

This was the 4th book I've read, and I expected it to be easier based on the rating, but the long sentences take some time to get used to. The first 25% of the book kind of dragged due to the child-focused setting, but after that the plot picked up and I got used to the long sentences. The grammar isn't hard in a JLPT sense, and this is the first time I've been able to appreciate good writing/word choice in Japanese.

cute

I liked it

A good first foray into native material

This is a story about how we approach situations presented during our lives, in relation with those close to us, and the possible ramifications of how we choose to approach them. What is happiness? Is what Nanoka, the protagonist, is assigned to find out by her teacher Hitomi.

This is a good first book if you have experience reading easier short stories/graded readers and feel ready to jump into material targeted towards native speakers. Nanoka speaks politely, so if you have started learning with textbooks, you're probably used to phrases ending in desu/masu. While not all characters speak like this, most of them have a peculiarty in the way they speak, so distinguishing who is speaking during a dialogue is a non issue.

If you're above the grade level of this book, I still think it's a good opportunity to be able to read a book without either having to stop to lookup words that much, or because you didn't understand the meaning of a phrase/grammar point. While I wasn't able to mine as many words as the previous N2-rated books I read before this, I still found new vocabulary, while also having the opportunity to enjoy the flow of the story without having to look up words often.

This is a great book for N3 level learners to challenge themselves with, and to start climbing up the hill towards N2.

Great story, good for beginners

A girl has to give a presentation at school answering the question "What is happiness?" To do this, she goes to her three odd friends - an old lady who lives in the woods, a young woman who meets customers at night, and an upperclassmen who self-harms. Her conversations with them, as well as an interesting situation with a classmate, lead her to her answer.

This is a great story with a simple premise but very interesting characters. Although ostensibly for children, there are some very deep and mature themes that might only get picked up by adults. The story moves at a good pace, and I especially enjoyed the main plot point of the last third of the book.

As for learning Japanese, the language is mostly daily usage and the grammar is not particularly complex, so it is definitely suitable as a first book and it is now clear to me why it is often recommended as such. However, Nanoka is a very lively and imaginative girl who often speaks in metaphor, so a good grasp of grammar is ideal otherwise you may struggle to interpret her less literal statements.

A great book for language learning and long sentences

It started out kind of dry but as it went on, I really enjoyed the story. It has a really wonderful meaning in the end for anybody. I may have even cried a bit. Had me thinking that maybe the cats in this story are actually God lol. A decent beginner book with sentences that don't lack in length. We're talking many 4-6 line, long sentences, billions of commas etc. By the end of the book you'll at the very least be much better at reading those. Overall, highly suggest to anyone around N3.

Good for learning, interesting story

This was a great book about an individual's search for happiness. I was a bit surprised by some of the sad scenes in the story, though, because of the reviews I read beforehand that mentioned the humor. I went into the story expecting it to be a little more lighthearted and then the story got quite heavy in the middle.

As for language learning, I felt pretty comfortable reading through it at my current level (N3ish). I definitely struggled with the longer sentences and some of the conversations, especially when they were making analogies, but the overall plot and some underlying messages were understandable.

Perfect for learning indeed

I will parrot what most are saying, this is excellent for beginners to pick up their first novel. First 20 pages for me were a big struggle, parsing longer sentences. Then i got used to them. First 100 pages were going slow. Next 100 pages I was struggling but going at decent pace. Last 100 pages were at a speed I was satisfied with for now. So within a span of a single novel I saw huge improvment in my reading. Countless mangas would not do that.

As for the entertainemnt value - it's okay. I like slice of life genre so I can't complain, characters were interesting enough. Im terrible in avoiding spoilers so I'm just gonna put it this way - when i decipher things, i want reward to be worth it. The reward for struggling was okay-ish, therefore 3.5/5 from me. Perhaps if I were native japanese speaker and it was just a quick easy read for me i'd rate it slightly higher.

Extremely cute

I liked the story. The protagonist was cute, the characters were nice, and the story overall was good. For someone just starting out reading books in Japanese, this is a good book to go with.

I'm very torn, I guess it was okay?

I read this book after I had seen it be recommended a lot. I learned many new words, but oh boy.. the story definitely wasn't for me... Unfortunately I found it very boring, often I had to force myself to keep on reading. I kinda liked the end, though I wish it had been more conclusive? I feel a lot was left unsaid...

I guess i m kinda proud i read through it, as its my first book i completed in JPN.

The perfect gateway to reading overall in japenese.

The strory is really interesting, yet i wish that the conclusion was a little more explained .

Happiness is having a good audiobook to listen to.

No, really. The audiobook is fantastic. Even if you don't usually do that, do yourself a favor and read while listening to it!

I love books that leave behind important questions.

This was the first book in Japanese - it gave me self-confidence and the desire to continue reading in Japanese. I highly recommend it!

The story itself made me think - what is happiness for me? I am still looking for this answer.

The Best Beginner Book

If it wasn´t for learning japanese, there was no way in hell i would have read this kind of novel - ever. So color me surprised when i say that i actually came to enjoy it more than i thought.

This story is told by a child, but neither its themes nor its writing style is particularly chilidish. Meaning it can very well be enjoyed by an adult and doesn´t leave a lot to be desired kanji-wise compared to many actual children books.

I´ve conquered a few books before this one, all of which were recommended as "beginner books" to start reading real native content. But i gotta say... this one takes the cake. The language is "simple" (relative to other real books for natives!) and repeats quite often because of many similiar situations - which makes for a great learning experience!

Apart from a few serious topics, content-wise this novel consists of the daily life of the main character visiting her friends, a few references to other literature from all over the world as well as weird analogies to life as seen by an elementary student and finally a few dramatic moments towards the end.

Overall, i have to agree. This is probably the best native beginner book out there. Especially considering there is a manga adaptation! I highly recommend reading parts of the novel, then catching up with the same content in manga form (english). It really helped my comprehension doing that since the manga is pretty close (at least the main points) and visualizes things obviously. The only real downside is that the book is rather long. Though, depending on your learning style and your enjoyment, this might actually be an advantage!

Great book

The rumors are true. This is a good book.

• The language is accessible in terms of vocabulary.
• The girl thinks about what she will say and what others will say and considers the situation so there is some natural repetition and regurgitation of similar sentences making it great for language learning.
• There are humorous sentences and scenes maintaining some mild entertainment

It took me awhile to get into this, as usual for me, as not much really happens in dramas like this following the character from school to the houses of her friends and they just talk. So the entertainment value is mainly in the playful language and humor for how she thinks about life and situations with her analogies.

The book club with some forum discussion supported my motivation to power through this.

Very approachable slice of life novel with likeable characters

This was my first novel in japanese. Considered myself at a ~N4 level, and it took me about 50 days to finish, looking up everything I didn’t recognize (made a 800 words deck (!) and learned a hundred new kanji). This could have been a chore, but the pleasant tone and characters meant I never got close to giving up.

Outside of my limited vocabulary, the main difficulty was understanding the longer sentences (textbooks don’t prep you for this). Understanding the vocab and the grammar isn’t always enough when, reaching the end of a sentence, you have already forgotten the beginning. But this is good training, forcing you to read carefully and intently.

A great first read experience I’d recommend.

My First Full-Length Novel

Before reading this book, most of my reading practice was non-fiction or objective material such as the news. In my head, Japanese was connected to studying, objectivity, and emotionless small talk. My experience with the language was dull. It may sound a bit pretentious or strange that I'm saying this, but it truly opened my eyes. Before I only had exposure to "duller" uses of Japanese. For the first time, I was able to read Japanese that was written for an artistic purpose. I was surprised that I was at the level of being able to read something and sense the emotions of the characters.

In the beginning, I was unfamiliar with some of the elements of Japanese books and had difficulty understanding who was speaking in dialogue, or some of the language differences in literature. However, by the end, I became much more familiar with these and was able to read the ending sections with much more comfort.

There are some expressions I needed to look up, that I am sharing here in case you want to read the book for yourself. I have hidden the English meaning spoiler if you don't want to see the meaning out of context. These were, 季節を売る, a euphemism for prostitution (売春) and 色を気がつく, become sexually aware or "Do you like him?". There is also a reference to the Japanese etymology of the word contradiction (矛盾). You can read about it here. When the characters start talking about 矛 and 盾, you'll understand the reference and won't be suddenly confused about the topic.

I had consistent difficulty understanding the speech of 南, but I attribute this to my unfamiliarity with dialogue. Other people who have more experience with dialogue may not find her speech hard to understand. Some sentences are also very long.

Overall, I was very happy reading this. The story isn't super groundbreaking or complex. At points, I found it a bit too tedious. Also, the twist is a bit predictable. I found the overarching conflict and premise of the book interesting.

I would not recommend this to beginners though. While it works well as a first (non-children's) book, I would recommend other learners to check out short stories and children's books first. The book is 300 pages (bunkobon size), so I recommend having some experience reading fiction before starting due to its length.

I'm glad I picked up a physical copy. In the future, I hope to collect (and finish) many more.

A good first novel

I made the serendipitous decision of reading The Little Prince before starting this, completely unknowing that the two books are quite intertwined, so if you enjoyed The Little Prince and want to see that evolved into a slightly more matured story, then this is for you.

As I was reading I found myself wavering back and forth on whether or not I was really enjoying it. In retrospect, the pacing of the book makes a lot of sense with the thematic elements all laid out in the end, but as you read it may seem quite haphazard with not much drive in the story direction. It's quite a mundane story. It flirts with creating tension, but doesn't really follow that energy through. Rather, it opts to leave questions and mysteries unanswered, but the resolution does make the lack of direction worth it.

The voice of the narrator is a bit childish, and I think I'm done reading kids content (or at least kids as narrators) for a while, because it did get old, and I won't lie that at certain points, without spoiling, I thought the main character was simply acting, well, childish and rude.

With all that being said, I think each scene acts well enough on its own to create enough engagement and narrative tension to keep you reading to the end. It's a good mix of straightforward description and dialogue, and much like The Little Prince, uses a good amount of figurative language to challenge your language skills a bit. And just want to emphasize how strongly it ended. This was when the narrative satisfaction, as well as the writing style and quality, were at their best.