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(4.11/5)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
Although it didn't keep me on the edge of my seat, it was a sweet wholesome story full of good life lessons that should be applicable at any age. It seems like an excellent first novel for someone who has passed N3. The majority of it should be immediately comprehensible, but as always some look ups might be required for a few more advanced grammar points and additional vocabulary.
Good first read
This book was recommended by a Japanese language teacher as an introduction to reading on YouTube and so I decided to deep dive in. As the main character is a child the language is not overly complex. However, at the same time the underlying themes can be quite difficult to grasp as it requires the reader to read between the lines.
It was a fun read, I managed to enjoy the story despite its simplicity.
I had about 5000 words under my belt before going into it, and encountered approximately 800 unique words/expressions that I didn't know.
All in all, it may have been too easy. Sure, the vocabulary used is simple, but the only hassle was the amount of unknown words that I met; grammar-wise, it was extremely basic (I don't even remember seeing much above N3?).
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
My first novel
This was a book about an elementary school student searching for what happiness means to her and those around her. The pacing was consistent and I never felt bored while reading but the writing never really gripped me either. Overall It was enjoyable and I can definitely see why it's so popular.
For language learning this was the first novel (only read Yotsubato prior) and I learned a lot. The whole experience was fairly difficult. It wasn't until I finished the first two chapters that I s
- Entertainment: The story of an elementary school student on a quest to learn about happiness, what it means to different people and how to find happiness in your own life. There is some drama, some mystery, and a lot of soul searching. The book is very well written and I personally loved the story, but I can also easily see that it might not be for everyone. As a teenager I probably would have enjoyed this a lot less than I did now as an adult. This book is a little longer than other beginner
Good, and incredible for my japanese learning experience!
I enjoyed it! It's not a genre I normally read and the story is pretty simple at some points, but it was still very interesting and there are things to think about, so it definitely doesn't give me any "children's book" vibes at all, so it was a breath of fresh air compared to what else I had read in Japanese. I do think it would still be relatively enjoyable without the language learning goal, so it's not like that was purely carrying it.
I found that the vocabulary in general was relatively e
Overall, pretty fun!
I started reading this book at the beginning of summer, and gave up soon after. The first part felt slow-paced and reading was almost a chore, but after 100ish~ pages it got much better. I picked it back up recently and (finally) finished it completely! Language-wise, though, I'm going to disagree with some people. I'm someone who rarely whitenoises, and I had to do it a few times, especially when I first started reading (this was my first ever LN). The sentence structure is often long and som
Great book
The rumors are true. This is a good book.
It took me awhile to get into this, as usual for me, as not much really happens in dramas like this following the