Anyone else have a serious backlog?

I’m just glad I can finally get through my backlog of Japanese manga I bought like nearly a decade ago when I was actually living in Japan and was very hopeful about learning Japanese through, I don’t know, osmosis or something instead of actually putting in some effort

My english backlog… I curse it. It does not exist. Too many book fairs/charity stores near here. Let’s not even get into kindle sales.

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Buyee is actually pretty nice! (Although I can only speak to my particular shipping situation)
If I get 9 books from honto.jp they’ll each cost around 10 to 14 dollars shipping and other fees included, possibly less now that the yen is so weak

We do have a local Kinokuniya but their stock is completely random and the books aren’t significantly cheaper

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How does the tax handling work with Buyee? Do you pay the no-Japan-sales-tax price for the book the way you do when Amazon/cdjapan/Kinokuniya ship direct?

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Yeah, I have a backlog of 30 (27 physical + 3 digital) now, says Natively. Some I hold back on purpose, as I don’t want to waste them, like by reading them all at once, too fast. But with the rest my problem is usually: I buy 6 and read just 3, until I want some new ones. I am still too slow with reading I suppose.

Strategy: none. I just read the one which has the most appeal when the last is finished. This usually leads to alternating between more difficult and more easy ones.

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Natively backlog: 11 (not including language textbooks and references, and counting series as 1 each). Spreadsheet backlog: 33 (same criteria as above). Nearly half of the latter are novels I’m not ready for yet. At least for manga I’m at the point where I can keep up with current purchases, and most of that backlog is titles I got 20+ years ago. (And, to be frank, may not ever finish just because the things I enjoyed half a lifetime ago aren’t all the same things I enjoy now.)

The only strategy I have is keep reading, focusing on things that are around my current level, and slowly building literacy until I can tackle those backlog books. Oh, and mostly avoiding LNs and novels for new book purchases so that the “too difficult” backlog stays stable at worst. I guess purchase planning also counts as a strategy?

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Not quite sure! I haven’t paid enough attention to specifically remember (and also have no idea what that is)

A quick look online shows that you do have to pay import taxes, which are maybe those?

But only for orders over 800 bucks in the US, and I’ve definitely never ordered that much. Customs is apparently around 2-3%?

I don’t know anything though I’m just reading off of this page

As I was half-way through typing this I realized it’s like a sales tax and that it might vary depending on if you’re buying local or national or abroad.

To which I also have no idea because on the Buyee website they just say they’ll charge “a consumption tax as necessary”

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Import taxes are what the destination country charges (varies from country to country, usually is at least your local sales tax). These used to get charged by customs on the way in and you had to pay the courier to cover it, but recently it’s changed so that commercial sellers take the destination-country taxes (which is a much nicer experience for the consumer). The Japanese sales tax goes to the Japanese government, and applies if you’re in Japan and buy something, but not if the item is being sold abroad. So Amazon etc don’t apply it for foreign sales. It’s less clear to me what happens with Buyee because they’re a separate company from honto – maybe honto sell the book to buyee and charge Japanese sales tax because it’s a within-Japan sale, and then buyee sell it to you (and any destination-country taxes apply)? Or maybe a business-to-business sale works differently. But the buyee faq suggests you do get charged Japanese sales tax as part of the product fee, which would mean every item is 10% more expensive than if you buy direct from a Japanese online bookshop that offers direct shipping.

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It doesn’t seem very clear, no. I guess it’s probably best to assume 10% if they don’t say?

Although 10% at least isn’t a very big increase for a book. Leaves it still well within the range of an average book price

(Ah thanks for explaining btw)

Yeah, it might be that the extra 10% is offset if buyee do cheaper shipping or something, or they might be cheaper at the “one or two book” quantity; but since several other online bookshops will ship direct it didn’t seem to me worth investigating. It’s already enough of a hassle comparing cdjapan vs amazon vs kinokuniya shipping :slight_smile:

Oh boy, haha.

I recently decided to buckle down on my paper copy backlog before September, since I’ve plans to travel to Japan then… and I will buy more books. There’s just no way around it. :laughing:

So, reducing the issue to my paper backlog, I have 154 books (in Japanese) sitting unread on my bookshelf, plus 43 volumes of manga. That’s not counting the 1 I’ve started (Level7, a 777 page monster I’m thankfully getting to read along with a bookclub) or the 2 I’ve borrowed… also not the 3 I lent to other friends, so I probably should just count them.

I’ve decided to try to cut those in half. That’d mean I need to finish a book every 2 days, plus a manga every week or so.

Anyway! My strategy is usually to set myself deadlines. I work best with a bit of pressure. :joy:

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Every 2 days? Dang, I salute you. :saluting_face: Good luck!

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It might be time to be ruthless about what books are worth finishing!

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All the books!

Most of these I bought intentionally, though there are a couple of blind purchases based on cover or author name only. A lot of the used books I get don’t have a cover, so there’s no summary until I later check the internet … Even so, there’s maybe a handful I’m not all that interested in. Of course, if the writing’s bad, maybe…? But even 君の膵臓をたべたい which didn’t grip me at all in the beginning had a sort of turn around at about 50%. Enough of one that I’d give it 3-4 stars, erring on the 4 star side.

I don’t know, I’m not good at letting books go. :sweat_smile:

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My backlog is pretty darn big :sweat_smile: At the same time, I don’t think I intend to finish every book. There are a few books I’ve started that didn’t really interest me, so I put them down for something else. Thankfully Japanese books are cheap, so it’s not like I’m wasting gobs of money on them.

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Finally got my physical books tidied and categorised. But I do still have around a dozen or so on the way to be added.

Top left is grammar books, dictionaries and intermediate textbooks.
Top right is みんなの日本語 beginner and intermediate sets (currently removed since I’ve started working through the intermediate set again) and a few of the intermediate to advanced level guided readers as well as books for dealing with individual parts of Japanese grammar.
Middle left is manga and graphic novels including “Japanese that Japanese people don’t know” set as well as a few kids books.
Middle right is all the books from the “Learn Japanese by reading” list that I’m working through (most of them are キノの旅 series on the shelf but there’s also Zoo 1 & 2, 暗黒童話, キッチン, 死神の精度, 女のいない男たち, 夢十夜, アナザー, 新世界より, 重力ピエロ, ノルウェイの森).
Bottom left is my other novels and native level short story books.
Bottom right is more graded and guided readers alongside some newspaper article books on differences between Japanese and English (will also include the non fiction books I’ve got on the way once they arrive) and the first few books I want to read once I’ve completed my reading list.
I also have the 10 book set of 妖怪の子預かります on the floor as it doesn’t fit on the shelf yet.

I have some more textbooks, Genki 1 & 2 as well as the Japanese from Zero set of 5 and Kanji from Zero book 1, but those are on a different shelf because I’ve finished those and others in my house want to use them. I’ll move some of the short story graded readers across to the other book shelf once I feel more confident in my reading and are sure I’m less likely to need them but only because I’ll need the space for more native level books :joy:

I think I’ve a good mix of difference genres but most of the books have all been ones recommended to me except Howl’s moving castle and Moon Saga so I’m a bit unsure as to what I’ll think of most of them.

So far, other than the text books on the other shelf, みんなの日本語 red set, one or two of the grammar books and the first キノの旅 book, I still have all of these to read.

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Are you a big JoJo fan then? :eyes:

Are you planning to read/watch all of the whole series for your milestone or just one Part?

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I have a serious backlog. I’ve decided to limit myself to just stuff I own, which isn’t the most helpful perimeter as I probably have around 200 volumes of manga and too many doujinshi (and keep buying more and incorporating freshly built shelves to house them). I’m going through series by series mostly.

I’m hoping to get through the rest of the main ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 manga this year, but I take breaks for book clubs. I’m in one ongoing and one about to start. After I finish JoJo, I’ll probably read through or finish another series I already own in its entirety. Odds are on ララの結婚 or 八雲立つ, although I might finish LaLa over a free weekend tbh.

The rest I’ll try the first volume of. If I like it, I’ll buy the rest. If I don’t, I’ll sell it back to BOOKOFF. Some stuff I know will be harder or easier than others, so I’ll likely decide which of those series to try by whether I’ve watched the anime or if it’s a genre/story I really like.

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I am a big JoJo fan, it’s my favorite anime/manga. :>

I am planning on reading the entire manga from part 1 to part 9 when I get to it. When I watched the anime I did watch the entire thing as well, from part 1 to part 6 (which was still releasing at the time).

JoJo was also my first anime that wasn’t a slice-of-life. Another reason I wanted to watch JoJo as both my 10th anime, and first non-slice-of-life anime was because I had already watched it ~2-3 times already, so I was very familiar with the story.

JoJo will also be the last manga I read in English that I haven’t also read in Japanese. Currently reading through my 8th manga in Japanese, so it’ll still be a bit until I start reading JoJo. (about ~19.5 volumes planned before I start JoJo)

I’m also getting close to my 50th anime in Japanese, and for that I’m planning on watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which I actually haven’t watched before, so I’m really excited for that.

I also started Naruto for my 25th anime in Japanese, but I’m still only 100 episodes into that lol. (there’s 720 episodes total)

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That’s really awesome :smiley:

What made you decide to give it a try?

Nice, that’s a solid chunk of reading for sure. I don’t know what your speed is like, but I’m planning on running a chapter a week JoJo club starting in January 2024. I’ll probably host it on WaniKani’s forums, but if they decide to take those down, I’ll probably go here.

Great choice!

I can’t imagine watching that many episodes as an adult, but I know I watched a good chunk of them on Toonami as a (pre)teen.

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Very late cause my life got kinda crazy but

If you do end up checking out Buyee I did recently find out two things to be careful of

Generally do not consolidate anything even if it seems like a good idea. I don’t know how they do it, but it always makes the combined shipping price double

Also this applies to any bookseller but if you buy a particularly heavy book it’s equivalent to buying like 5 or so smaller books (the average Japanese book is around .6-.3lbs, but I made the mistake of buying a book that’s 2.4lbs without realizing that essentially means the shipping would be the price of 4 to 8 normal books. That did not compute for me until I had already ordered the thing. Although it was still like multiple times cheaper than a textbook here so I almost count it as a win)

But generally if you do only buy 単行本 or even light textbooks in sets of around 8 from a supplier that ships them compactly in one box it’s a good deal

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