やまなし

I think this little story is quite difficult for a language student, and I don't recommend it for beginners. I was only able to get a vague sense of it, and found it harder to follow than 君の名は。I found an English translation (called “Wild Pear”) on a blog and it was charming and poetic. But I’m not good enough at Japanese to pick that up from reading it myself. There’s too much I haven’t internalized yet. It’s a lot like Miyazawa’s story 銀河鉄道の夜, which was also really difficult for me.

There were

This seems to be another Aozora book that is popular in elementary school literature classes. From a BookMeter review: "国語の教科書(光村？)で読んだ小学生以来の再読であるが、今回も正直わけがわからなかった。" Same feel. The story was simple but puzzling. It very much felt like it was hiding some sort of meaning but I can't quite get at it. It also didn't hook me with any sense of "I wonder what it means". It fell flat for me to be honest. Grammar and vocab wise this story is pretty simple with the usual caveats of Aozora means older kanj