When I went to the library on Sunday, Ranmafan had just posted about the Murakami novel that he was reading, and for years Naftali has highly recommended Murakami’s work. So at the library, I got a copy of The Elephant Vanishes in Japanese.
I’ve read maybe 6 or 7 pages of the story “眠り/ Sleep” so far. It is interesting to read, even if it is challenging for my Japanese level. On each page, there are usually at least 5 words that I have to look up, but the writing style seems to be very direct and matter-of-fact, which I think makes it easier for me to understand.
I’m sure I’m missing out on the subtle nuances of the work, nevertheless I think it is good Japanese practice. Reading this, I’ve realized how boring most Japanese textbooks are. Studying in a textbook is a chore, but so far I am enjoying this.
Another thing good about reading novels or short stories is that they introduce and reinforce vocab really well. In the story I’m reading, I’ve seen so many new phrases related to sleep, and many of the phrases come up repeatedly in the text, which is useful for remembering the words later.
There’s no way I’m going to finish the whole collection before the book is due back, but hopefully I’ll be able to finish a story or two.
sneaky
I’ve tried reading Dostoevsky in Russian and it’s really slow and i have to look up a lot of words, especially old fashion words and references to 19th century Russian culture. Maybe I should try a more modern author and it may be easier. Maybe I just need to L2Read.
I just read “Sleep” yesterday. I want to try to read it in Japanese, too, but I’ll have to find a copy. Even in English that story knocked me on my ass. I don’t want to give anything away, but for me the most interesting thing about that story is how Murakami blindsides you at the end, not so much through what happens, but by making you realize that the entire tone of the story was completely different than what you thought it had been.
I’ve tried reading some older French stuff, but novels tend to be quite difficult for me. I can read a newspaper almost as fast as I read English, with good comprehension, but French has a literary past tense. It’s going out of style, so I definitely need to try to read some modern authors, but it makes reading something like Flaubert a chore. Supposedly even native speakers stumble over the old literary forms of verbs and have to look them up.
I’m going to have to pick that one up too sometime. Reading a book really does make the experience of learning Japanese much more enjoyable. Textbooks and their forced objectives and boring texts just get in the way. Heck watching Doraemon is more enjoying to learn Japanese with than a textbook. I really love trying to read the otaku/anime world novels that have become increasingly popular over the last many years. Still novels are always the most challenging. I can read websites, newspapers, manga, so on with no problems. I may not understand every word, but I learn a lot and I understand the points and so on. But a novel makes my brain hurt at times. Still always good to improve ones abilities.
This reminds me that one day I need to try to read my copy of “Battle Royale,” but its length, difficulty, and the fact I don’t consider it the amazing thing it was that one summer any more probably means it will always be at the bottom of my catch up list.
Don’t bother with Battle Royale. I have the English translation. It’s so terribly written that I didn’t bother with it past the first hundred pages or so. I thought maybe it was just the translation, but then I asked like four or five Japanese people whose opinions I respected and they said they all had the same experience.
Yeah I don’t †hink I will also because quite frankly, I think the movie is insanely overrated now. Multiple viewings of that film destroyed it for me. I just want to see what the so called “political satire” missing from the movie was.
I’ll save you the time and just tell you that the “political satire” is pretty much just the setup that Japan won the Battle of Midway (iirc) and America withdrew from the war. Japan is a fascist dictatorship where rock music is banned blah blah blah.
Read “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley. It won’t waste your time like Battle Royale does.