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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 wer

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

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 (textboooks don’t prep you for this). Understanding the vocab and the grammar isn’t alwa

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 tha

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

Captivating read

This was my first Japanese light novel. I enjoyed it and would recommend it to other Japanese learners or people who are generally interested in Japanese culture.

In terms of Japanese learningthis is a good book for early immersion. There is a good amount of drilled repetition, grammar points (I found N2 and N1 grammar points in the book, although most are N3), and useful daily use vocab and phrases. However, despite the easy language, the content and themes in the book can be difficult to gra

Slow paced, character-driven read excellent for language learning.

The slow, repetitive pace of this book may not be for everyone, but I found it a charming read. A precocious middle-school girl learns some important lessons about her relationships with others and herself as she earnestly seeks a satisfying answer to the question, "What is happiness?"

There is a lot of repetition in this book, which may feel soothing to some and boring to others. But I think it makes for an excellent learning experience, because you get to see the same expressions many times i

Good story with mostly common vocabulary.

Edit because I reread it: This book is teeming with irony and wordplay and euphemisms and subtext. If you read this book as a beginner like I did, reread it after you've read a few dozen more books, because the book's best offerings demand that you understand the language it uses well. It really wants you to focus on reading between the lines, which is really hard to do when reading the lines themselves takes several trips to the dictionary. I understand why newer readers feel like it's boring;

It's both easy and hard

First couple of chapters feels like one of those books targeted at a very young audience, but it quickly changes. Even though the protagonist is very young, the book has quite some food for thought for adults.

For language learning, this is one of the books that requires not much in terms of vocabulary. The first half is very, very easy to read. The second part has passages that are very challenging though, because of the subject. It's not like your average romcom where you just follow what's

A pretty good story, with great learning potential

It has a narrative style that may turn off some people- that is you may feel or know what is going to happen before it happens more or less the whole way through. For me, that kept a tension which made it easier to keep reading. The same viewer retention pattern I hate from YouTubers is good in this context because I value the learning opportunity. The story isn't amazing but it is plenty good. The MC was charming enough. Her interactions with the adult characters had some wi