時をかける少女

Good reading practice and an interesting story

This was my first full book and it was a very good choice. I have not seen any of the film adaptations so went in completely blind, which worked out fine. The language and grammar is not too complex, and introduces a lot of useful vocabulary. There is some sci-fi vocab near the end which did make the last 40 pages more challenging. Sentence length is actually surprisingly long sometimes - at first I would get lost, but by the end I was able to understand them much better, so it's very good pract

Good read for language practice

We chose this book for a book club, mainly because we all knew the anime movie of the same title, so we thought it was easier to follow along than a story concept completely unknown to us.

It was interesting to find the many differences to the anime version, since the stories only loosely relate. Also, the book was a solid N3 level read in my opinion and learning the vocabulary (despite the fantasy related words) was helpful, as I realized afterwards that it often reappears in other school-rela

I don't know why I'm reviewing a book with so many reviews already, but I feel like I wanted to add a little nuance to the reviews for people to decide if it's for them.

I bought the book a long time ago and finally decided to get around to reading it now that it's an easy read for me. I don't think I'd recommend it as a first novel because as others have mentioned, the story deflates as soon as it reveals the plot. The ending is pretty disappointing, and would be even more so if I had been str

Not a deep plot but nice easy read

First of all, at the beginning I didn't know that the book was written in the 60s so I got surprised by a few things (there's a character not knowing today's date, why don't they look at their smartphone or turn on a TV or something like that?). Then it made more sense when I found out.

Despite the age of the book, the language is not too old (maybe a couple of expressions), just a bit surprising how sometimes words are spelled in hiragana: ことば、へや、かの女, but you get used to it.

I liked the stor

Regret to say this is skippable

If you're not already a fan of the film and you're easily reading material at this level, you can skip this as in the big big picture of things the SF here is just not that good and the characters are told rather than shown.

I really hate to say this but I was glad I read fast enough I could easily get through this in a couple sittings in a day.

If you enjoyed the film and are looking for level appropriate reading, absolutely this could be a good first book. If you can, say, comfortably read

Not a great story, good as first novel

Read this looking for a good first novel. As others have noted, the story really falls apart at the end. It really reminded me of another sci-do book I read in Chinese, from the Wisely Series, the Blue Blooded Being, where the end is just straight exposition of some other sci-fi world. I wonder if that was the style of the era.

Overall it was useful, but the lack of kanji made it difficult at first to get used to, especially since I’m more kanji dominant. I ended up listenin

Good first book, but kind of boring

This was the first book I ever (tried to) read in Japanese. As a ressource, it was really great, it showed me I could actually read (painfully of course, but that can't really be helped)
However, on the entertainment part, I really felt bored. So much that I'd just ditch it for another book. The story was getting lengthy without keeping my interest, and I couldn't take pleasure reading it anymore.

Overall, I'd say that if it's your first book, you can try, because it's quite readable (presenc

Fairly Simple Story, Cut Too Short

The story of 時をかける少女 reads like an overscoped short film that had to be cut short and sloppily wrapped up with stageplay exposition. A pity with how well everything is set up.

I got the non-furigana Kadokawa version, which came with 2 other short stories from the same author, and I enjoyed these stories much more than the first.

At first, the usage of only hiragana for words that aren't usually kana-only was offputting and difficult, but after half the book, I was able to get used to the autho

• Entertainment: A highschool girl gains the ability to jump through time and space. This book is very short and there is only so much one can do on so few pages, so don't expect any major plot developments. The book's main question is how she gained this ability and the conclusion is reasonably satisfying to read. It is not riveting but it is entertaining enough to not get boring.

• Language Learning: There is so much kana instead of kanji. This book could have been really easy to read and

A classic teen novel about time travel

時をかける少女 is a short sci-fi novel about a middle school student who accidentally becomes able to jump through time and space, and ends up living the same day over again. It was originally serialized in young adult magazines in the 1960s, and has been adapted many times for TV and film, most notably as an anime film in 2006.

It's not too difficult for a language learner, but I would say it's too tough for someone at an N5 or N4 level. The green 角川つばさ文庫 edition has full furigana. The chapters are e

Updated review since I reviewed this when the site was very, very new. I think I read this much later than I should have because my impression of it was that was quite easy (much easier than other reviewers have graded) - and had I read it when it was appropriate for my level I would have enjoyed it more and felt more the grammar/vocab challenge.

I think this story is cute, easily digestible, and a good touchstone to understand the difficulty ratings of other books. For a kids book this is defi