I ā¦ donāt. But thatās basically because my standards in English are unattainably high. I canāt stand most peopleās prose. I like sci fi and fantasy settings but cannot deal with most peopleās tropey characters, dialogues, and wannabe Harry Potter and/or Hunger Games garbage. Every now and then I will start The Next Big Series and almost invariably return it to the library having given it less than 3 chapters of a chance. They usually all have 4+ stars on Goodreads.
I will (and honestly in some ways at my level, have to) put up with a lot in Japanese to read books. So I wonder how much of it is that Japanese readers are expecting such a different experience and how much of it is simply that things that are popular are not necessarily good.
I wonder if the reason could be that some ābooksā are not primarily published as one complete work, but as chapters written and immediately published afterwards, like e.g. on syosetu, or at a newspaper in earlier times.
Then the author might want to repeat essential information to make sure the reader remembers them, or may think that the reader has just entered at that chapter and needs to know some things to understand it.
But the actual published book is afterwards not much changed.
My unscientific theory is that Japanese people are less negative or less very openly negative about a book in online reviews and I assume that there are many readers in Japan who feel similarly but not share their opinion online as much. I feel like they only review when they like something. Plus, many of the overexplained Japanese books are also popular in the west.
I also read a few books of the contemporary well liked mystery writers from the UK since they are easy to read and translated into my other TL, Serbian, and I find them horribly trope-y and drawn out and also repetitive. But I am not 100% sure if it fits the same vibe that you describe with the rehashing/restating since I didnāt read the books you named. And also I always read it in Serbian translation so maybe something went wrong when translating
I think this is not something exclusively Japanese, but rather prevalent in a lot of books. Iām not sure whether itās more abundant now compared to when I read much more English and German (original and translated) book 10-25 yrs ago, but I certainly notice it a lot more now myself. I feel like especially books geared towards a younger teen or young adult audience over explain a lot, but that may be me being more sensitive because thereās also so many tropes Iām already rolling my eyes at.
I recently had the dubious pleasure of reading excerpts of a couple books someone I know (early twenties) absolutely loved and devoured all 5 or so books in the series. A lot of over explaining of even simple, childish interactions. People were in eternal love and conflicts were abundant everywhere. The writing was not superb, letās leave it at that.
I think Iām somewhat more tolerant of certain tropes and over explaining in Japanese, still. I used to be much more so when I was just starting out reading. Reading took much longer, I had to look up a lot, and it was at times difficult to hold all the information together at once. In a way, some repetition was welcome even. Reading in Japanese isnāt such an event anymore, and I can read fairly quickly and keep it all together in my head. I donāt know if I maybe just got used to it by now that it doesnāt bother me that much still.
Iām also reading much more in Japanese than other languages, even combined. Iām making an effort to change thatā¦ Iāve read a couple of really good books (the first of the Outlander series, for example. A couple Terry Pratchetts. The Winter King is shaping up to be something), but I also learned that one of my favourite German authors from way back when isnāt that good at writing action scenes and relationships. I hadnāt even noticed then.
I think it might also be that the more you read, and the more variety you read, the more you develop a sense of whatās good writing for you and whatās not.
I think itās worth noting I didnāt read that book, I listened to it. Moreover, I listened to it exclusively while doing other things like going for a walk, cooking, cleaning, etc. Repetition doesnāt phase me if Iām only giving it a slice of my attention anyways
I carefully wrote my English post to not diss/put down readers who enjoy this writing style, and still I worry it will come off as hating on people who enjoy a style rather than musing about the prevalence of a style I donāt enjoy, and whether itās a cultural artifact or sampling bias. Trying to write something like that in Japanese would make me melt
Oh interesting I didnāt know there were premade decks of this type! I might give it a whirl, but I can see myself heavily modifying it like I do nearly every pre-made deck
Early on in my Japanese reading I tried out several popular authors and books and discovered that I didnāt like their writing style at all. Iām not going to name names, but people who have seen enough of my reviews can guess That said, I have enjoyed some massively popular books, so I canāt write something off purely for being popular, but Iāve started to develop an eye for who it is popular with, because often āpopularā is not all the same group of readers.
Itās funny you say this because Iāve noticed that for fiction books I dislike/think have awful writing tend to be highly rated on GR and books I really enjoyed will be rated lower. At this point a 2* rating is a good sign for me
I can definitely see this being the case for some of the older books I read! I wonder if ē¹ćØē· was one of them But syosetsu is largely for LNs, I think, which outside of the ęØēć«ć«ć series I donāt read that much (and whether or not ęØēć«ć«ć is an LN is kind of up for debate, but Iām on the side of being an LN now as itās being adapted to an anime).
This is true - itās pretty much impossible to find a negative book review on YouTube, but on Amazon and Bookmeter you can sometimes find them. More so on Amazon because thereās more anonymity/less chance of it blowing back on the person.
So weirdly I donāt read much originally-in-English mystery these days, unless Iām rereading say Christie or Doyle. Iām struggling to think of a modern English mystery Iāve read Iād be curious what some of those are, and maybe I should check out some modern English mysteries from my library to compare
Ack, I thought I had replied to everyone but I missed your post! Yes, definitely agree on this. I know even early on I had some level of taste (my first year reading Japanese I definitely hate-read a book because dammit I was not going to give up on any book yet!), but as Iāve gotten better over time my tolerance for āmehā books has drastically shot down
So I recently got back from a 2 week stay in Japan and I have feelings about my Japanese ability now. I will preface this by saying I donāt actually have a pressing need to know Japanese as I donāt live there, have any Japanese family, nor use Japanese for work. I learn Japanese for fun, because I can. This does not stop me from critiquing myself, however.
That out of the way, let me break things down into what went well and what did not:
Went well:
Navigating train stations/routes and dealing with IC card stuff. No issues there except for a bit of confusion when switching from a specially ticketed express train to a normal local line. I guess I was supposed to exit the station and then re-enter with my IC card. Since I did not do that and instead just proceeded from one gate (within the barriers) to another, when I tried to tap out it obviously didnāt work. I was able to awkwardly explain this to a person at the fare adjustment window.
Generally conducting my business (checkin/out, luggage forwarding, food purchases, etc etc) in Japanese. With the exception of one of two times where I had to partially fall back to English (for a reason Iāll cover under āwhat did not go wellā) I was able to get by without forcing anyone to practice their English on me. Only one person in this time spoke to me in English and didnāt switch to Japanese when I spoke in Japanese, which if she wants to practice English or just has her English script memorized I donāt care My goal is just not to be a burden and get shit done.
Had three multi-hour conversations in Japanese without fatigue. Both times were meeting up with friends, one who isnāt learning English and two who didnāt feel like talking English that day
What did not go well:
People talking to me through masks absolutely tanks my listening comprehension. Words I normally know I had to fall back to English once or twice because I just could not parse the words being said to me. The rest I got through ~ vibes ~ and catching a word or two and using context to figure out what was being said to me.
I struggle to articulate myself on the spot about topics that come up during travel but not during friendly chatsā¦like luggage forwarding. I ended up drafting in writing on my phone the question I wanted to ask the front desk staff because I just had no confidence I wouldnāt stumble and make a mess of it trying to do it on the fly. I also generally feel like Iām being a hassle struggling through an explanation to someone who is working, versus when talking to someone who is a friend or fellow learner, which causes my nerves to get more in the way.
I read a lot faster than I used to, but itās obvious I donāt read at the same speed as a native. Trying to watch the ads and whatnot on trains sometimes theyād just go too fast for me to catch it all.
I know the solution here is more listening practice (and probably more listening with poor quality audio? ) and more speaking practice. I feel like speaking takes ages to improve and I donāt enjoy it as much as I do reading, but it must be done if Iām to not trip on my words in these situations.
Reading speed will take care of itself in time, Iām actually not that worried about it, just annoyed that Iām still not āfastā.
Bonus! Did I hear anyone talking about me while I casually eavesdropped any conversation I passed? Listening practice, you see
Sure did!
I visited the countryside and a little girl (~8?) asked her mom why a foreigner was on the train. Fair question. I was the only visually obvious foreigner I saw all day. Her mom ignored her question and told her to sit down properly and be quiet
An old dude leered at me and made a creepy comment about my body to another man. Since he clearly didnāt think I spoke Japanese I pretended not to know it
Someone remarked on it being interesting there was a foreigner in the bookstore. Just buying books, friend! I canāt actually say for sure this was explicitly about me, but I didnāt see anyone else obviously foreign on the floor I was on.
I had that with going from the shinkansen line to the airport line and was so confused because I was sure I knew what I needed to do ahead of time. I was in Tokyo and she just told me in English. I was perfectly fine with that.
I feel this a lot, which is why I donāt get too upset if all of my interactions are in English. I rarely travel outside of big cities and the only place I reliably have people talk to me in Japanese is used bookstores (weirdly, Iāve noticed thereās English speakers at most new ones), and conbini, but when they are also speaking Japanese as a foreign language
The speaking Japanese to conbini staff who are also speaking it as a second language is such a thing I definitely did that. I also had an interesting interaction at a food court where the non-Japanese cashier was trying desperately in Japanese to explain to the non-Japanese (I think Chinese?) customers behind me how the tray system worked, I could see it wasnāt working, so I intervened in simple English which they apperantly knew
I suspect the reason most people did not fall back to English with me during my stay is that while Iām clearly not fluent, I can speak clearly and quickly enough that itās deemed easier to proceed in Japanese than in English. Which is a small testament to all my hours of speaking practice, I suppose. But also most people donāt want to speak English if they donāt have to, Iāve found.
There was an phenomenon I experienced where Iād be in line for an event, for tickets, for help, etc and the cashier would have The Look of ābracing themselves for Englishā and then theyād relax when I introduced myself or started the transaction in Japanese. This is more often in places and things which were not geared towards foreigners, but not exclusively.
I would love to have a reply ready for situations like these to put a guy like this down a notch or 2. Would serve him right to be embarrassed in public.
I told my partner about that (it really got to me too) and he said that @cat should have commented on his body back in Japanese. So maybe we should all have a good clap back ready for gross old train men
The only thing that I might be able to come up with is something like: ćććććčććć¾ćććę„ę¬ć®ę„ć«ćŖćć¾ćććwith direct eye contact and a sweet smile.
A bunch of people making and/or updating their study logs makes me feel the peer pressure to write in here, so here I go
Iām taking the N1 in December, pretty much entirely because a friend of mine said he didnāt want to take it alone. I donāt need it for anything professional or academic, so it will purely be a āyes I have it so stop askingā type deal if I pass.
I hadnāt really been studying much beyond reviewing some grammar until I got back from my trip and since then Iāve basically been using the app Migii to practice questions and see how Iām doing. Overall Iāve noticed a few core themes with my profiency:
Iām probably going to be fine, but not 100% on vocab. Business, finance, and political vocab arenāt really in my wheelhouse because I find the topics largely boring, so Iām kind of studying them just for the test.
Likewise, Iām probably going to be fine on listening. The ones I havenāt done well on have slanted heavily towards office conversations so I know what I need to work on.
Grammar, since my review prior to my trip, has been pretty decent! Not as strong as vocab or listening, but Iām averaging ~70% across the grammar categories.
Hilariously, my reading scores are abysmal.
Ok so why are my reading scores abysmal?
I hate doing the readings.
Literally I dread them. I find them tedious and boring and itās hard to get myself to care. I currently have the app open on a reading problem about drivers license renewal and I need to answer which of the 4 answers is accurate to the text and I just donāt want to read it all to find out. Come on, brain, stop being so lazy Meanwhile, the other day I got a text on organ donation laws and read it all with great interest and got a perfect score on the included questions
I also, as a result of my ādonāt wannaā attitude, have been tripping on the trick answers. You know how on standardized tests sometimes they give two answers that are basically correct, but one is more correct? I am constantly tripping on those because I have no patience to sit still and re-read and look for the nuance in both the question and the answer. None. Patience = zero.
I also have tripped numerous times on seeing a question and the number or underline in the text and being like āok, answer the question!ā, feeling confused and kind of guessing, then realizing after Iād answered it that the answer was given in the next sentence or two after the underlined section
Anyways, Iām debating continuing with Migii for the grammar/vocab/listening and doing something else for reading. Maybe Iāll find reading questions online and print them out? Actually use the Kanzen Master čŖč§£ book I own?
I think part of my issue is that itās on my phone where I canāt see both the text and all the questions at once, and my phone is inherently kind of distracting.
But alsoā¦I just need to convince my brain to care
So I have not actually gone back to my print textbook, but I did print out some čŖč§£ questions I found online and have been doing them sitting at my coffee table, reading on paper. My scores are so much better 75% average over the past three days (compare to the yikes 43% I was sitting at on the app). I still have things to work on re: getting back into the swing of standardized testing, but I donāt find myself getting impatient and rushing through the questions or frustrated having to scroll up and down a bunch.
tl;dr maybe donāt do čŖč§£ practice on your phone?
These questions always get me as well. This is the exact reason why I didnāt go to med school, I didnāt want to deal with the evil standardized tests. And then language tests do the same thing smh
So I got it into my head that I needed to catalogue my digital books soā¦I did. I listed up all the books Iāve bought from a variety of different vendors of the years, ebook and audiobook. I am focused on editions that I have been able to, through various means, remove the drm* and actually own, so this actually isnāt a truly comprehensive list, but itās the one that will serve my purpose.
For the purpose of this list Iām counting manga as books although I often try to separate them in language for clarity.
*I wonāt answer questions about that in depth on here because it could cause Brandon/Natively problems, but Google is your friend!
Anyways, this was spurred by realizing I almost bought a book I already owned. I forgot I owned it
I just finished compiling my list and have it in a nice little sortable sheet in Google, so Iām able to see that I have 114 either never read or partially read titles Now, some of those are dupes because I often by the audiobook to accompany a text, but I just as often donāt buy the text.
Letās break it down, there are:
50 audiobooks
1 LN
16 manga volumes
12 nonfiction books
35 novels
Honestly not as bad as I thought! For several years of book hoarding I could definitely be doing worse - I read about 25 books (meaning not manga here) a year*, with hopes to get faster, so a backlog of ~50 is not too bad.
Iām only at 20 this year so far, though
Weāre going to entirely ignore my physical backlog which I have not catalogued
I finished going through the N1 content on the Migii app insofar as I plan to do. I did the entirety of the vocabulary sections (73%, could be better) and the entirety of the grammar sections (61%, oof), stopped the reading sections as I mentioned earlier because reading long text on their app is awful, and also stopped doing their listening sections in favor of just doing recordings from official tests.
I noticed that in both vocab and grammar there are sections that drag my scores down. For grammar itās the āarrange these words in orderā questions and for vocab it was āfor this word, choose the sentence using it most correctlyā. Which speaking of the āarrange the sentenceā questions, this one from yesterday I got right but was so irritated by the sheer length of it:
I might go and revisit the vocabulary I missed but I think from here to the end of the month my main focus will be grammar which is clearly my weakest spot.
Iām on the fence about whether I recommend this app. I think for N2+N1 it is fine. For lower levels I donāt think it would be good as Iāve noticed a lot of typos and their āreport issueā button doesnāt work half the time. For example, part of what drove me away from the listening on the app was a question where I was listening to two coworkers discuss a time to meet and the answers were like āļ¼ļ¼ć¢ććØ ļ¼ļ¼ćŖ ļ¼ļ¼ć¢ ļ¼ļ¼ćØććŖā which is an answer that that comes with a āpick the objectsā type picture that wasnāt present. The lookup a word function is also not great as sometimes it just gives a (seemingly machine translated) definition but no reading.
I might revisit vocab testing from other sources just to cross check with another source what my scores are like. 73% is lower than I would have expected. I may also see if my scores are better in the afternoon compared to at 5am when I have typically been testing myself
This is one of Ankiās functionalities that I love. My accuracy is best at night, usually at 1-2am (makes sense, Iām a night owl). Around 4-5am though, my accuracy drops a lot.
I tend to do a lot of my practice in the early morning before work because I have a good set of habits there (wake up, coffee, do anki, do other unfun things) and after work I tend to be a bit drained, but I do get a second wind an hour or two after work finishes I definitely have days where just after waking up Iām so bleary eyed that I miss simple cards that Iād absolutely know otherwise, so itās worth trying to shift some of my practice into that āsecond windā window.
Iāve had a headache tonight and couldnāt focus on my ārealā studying, so I read 3 Aozora stories instead. Iām trying to making the pre-vetted calendar this yearās Aozora Advent all level 33 and below so that it is more accessible to a wider group. I want more people to join me in Aozora diving, and I figured a softer introduction might help There will of course be the usual mystery grab bag calendar as well.
Reading these stories made me so happy. Something about Aozora short works just delights me so much. I wish I didnāt have to be āproperlyā studying and canāt wait to go back to just self indulgently reading essays from the 1920s
feelings 
My goal is just not to be a burden and get shit done.
I canāt actually say for sure this was explicitly about me, but I didnāt see anyone else obviously foreign on the floor I was on.
of ābracing themselves for Englishā and then theyād relax when I introduced myself or started the transaction in Japanese. This is more often in places and things which were not geared towards foreigners, but not exclusively.
Meanwhile, the other day I got a text on organ donation laws and read it all with great interest and got a perfect score on the included questions 
