Depending on what I’m trying to check, I also might do either (or both). But for stuff where I can’t find streaming with JP subs, I just torrent it at this point, and add them in VLC. Otherwise I might occasionally accept the challenge and go no subs. Tbh I miss the convenience of Crunchyroll + Jimaku Player, but oh well. I do want to see if maybe I can sign up for a JP streaming service at some point. But I’m not really sure what’s good to go with.
Would you say this was primarily a result of shows, audiobooks, or both? Also I wonder how much of that is just your reading being more fluid just from 8-9 months of reading having passed. That makes a pretty big difference all on its own.
I’m starting to think that the best way for me to go through audiobooks is not stopping for lookups. Lookups are twice as disruptive, since I have to control the audio + do the actual lookup. But I guess it depends on the material. 神様たちのお伊勢参り | L30?? prologue went pretty well, even after I stopped the lookups… But 義妹生活 | L31 or ソードアート・オンライン1 アインクラッド | L34 are much iffier without lookups. With SAO that’s tolerable, cuz I know the story to death anyway. 神様 too, I’m not fussed if I don’t get everything 100%
I’ve been stewing over this for a few days now, lol.
I think both, in different ways. Audiobooks have helped the most in getting through long narration passages on my own, and anime has helped with conversations. And unsurprisingly, anime has been helpful with manga especially. I have had a lot of trouble in the past parsing long strings of casual speech. Having heard people speak the kinds of expressions that they use in manga makes it easier for me to break them down. (e.g. いやいいや is one I saw the other day that I don’t think I would have had trouble understanding, but would have taken me a second to figure out what words were where and what the full expression was).
This is part of it, for sure. Since I can’t split myself in to a paired experiment (If I could I would), I can’t really be sure how much I can attribute to listening and how much was just going to come from reading anyway. But I do get the impression that with audio has helped a lot. And at the very least, it makes it easier to spend time with more difficult materials that I wouldn’t have read with just text.
I usually only read with audio digitally, and I put the text and the player in split screen mode. I do look up a lot, but I batch my lookups so that I don’t have to stop the audio that frequently. If I’m following what’s happening I usually won’t bother with lookups. But if I do pause, I’ll usually go back and do any previous lookups on the page. I only do audiobooks with physical books if they’re only a tiny bit above my reading level, and then I almost never do lookups.
I personally don’t do lookups when listening to audiobooks. Or well, slight nuance, if a core word is used 4-5 times in a row, then that’s the only time I’ll look it up. It happens very rarely, but in scenarios like that, I might as well relisten to the chapter because I probably missed half of it due to that one word.
That all makes sense, and while I hadn’t thought of it too much, I think anime had a similar effect for me, with understanding manga conversation, and even in LNs (tho I’ve read way less of those). Tho for me I think mainly just reading more LNs has helped me with the long passages.
Mmm, I think I’d say it feels like somebody else is driving
Hmm, I suppose it could work fine if I did it with Yomitan on the computer. But in general I read on tablet, with bluetooth headphones that I can tap to pause. But in any case “Pause audio, look up word, resume audio” is inherently more disruptive than “look up word”
That sounds like a good strategy, but also sounds like you’d probly have to do a lot of rereading? (helpful, but annoying). If I don’t pause per-word, then I’ve forgotten what I wanted to look up by the end of the sentence. Anything beyond a sentence is totally lost to me lol
That’s probly what I should do? But I don’t necessarily have the best tolerance for not understanding things. I’ve done that before though… like I think when I went through ひげを剃る。そして女子高生を拾う。 | L27 I was very minimal on lookups, but never felt like I was missing much. But for say 義妹生活 | L31 I wouldn’t be able to do that, because there’s just too much unfamiliar vocab
Yeah, there’s zero chance I’m relistening to a chapter lol. It takes enough patience doing it once
Anyway, it seems like my choices are “be fine with missing some things” or “read level-appropriate stuff”… the latter is my preference, but unfortunately the overlap btwn “things I want to read that have audiobooks” and “L29 or lower” seems quite slim. Yuri LNs with audiobooks here seems to literally just be あだしま (unless you count vol 1 of 声優ラジオ), and even L20-29 LNs with audiobooks is all of 33 series (some of which are on my wishlist to be fair). Good to know I suppose.
I finished 人妻教師が教え子の女子高生にドはまりする話 | L30, which story content aside is a good accomplishment for me. I’ve previously felt pretty lost with this author’s writing style. Also reading and doing well enough with 私の初恋相手がキスしてた (same author). Making me consider eventually retrying やがて君になる 佐伯沙弥香について 1 | L30
Probly gonna start 『人斬り』少女、公爵令嬢の護衛になる | L28 soon. Since it’s at a good reading level for me, I’m curious whether the battles will feel dragged out, the way they do in SAO or Grimgar. Anyway, a fantasy action yuri in the L20s should be a nice change of pace!
Considering there’s a billion lv30?? (e.g. no grading) light novels with audiobooks, I assume there’s a lot more that could get in there. Plus, I don’t know enough about yuri to tell for sure, but series with covers that gave me the vibes simply had zero tags (so they would not show if you search by tag)
Edit: also, looking up 百合 on audible returns a lot of hits. I don’t know if they are to your taste, but there’s stuff in there.
I’m curious, where do you listen to your audiobooks? I don’t know about Japanese audiobooks, but for Korean there are a lot of children’s books and YA books on Storytel. Granted they aren’t always super interesting, but it’s still nice lower leveled audiobooks. Does Japanese Storytel not have that?
Ah, that’s where I’m the opposite. My approach to language learning has always been fake it till you make it, just keep reading and eventually it’ll make sense. It also means that there are a lot of words, mainly plant/animal names, that I’ve learned separately in various languages but can’t translate because I only have a vague idea of what it looks like and I never looked it up
That’s certainly possible, but not really helpful for identifying things definitely under level 30, unfortunately. I tried checking with books already on my profile, but the filtering for those seems to be drunk right now, at least on my phone
We do have a but if a missing tags situation in general but… there’s 166 L30+ LNs with Audible JP (that includes the provisionals), and 12 with audiobook.jp . Out of those, このぬくもりを君と呼ぶんだ | L30?? is the only thing I saw that’s yuri (and I added the tag, thx). If you have a moment, can I ask what some of the other ones you saw are? (screenshot or title are fine)
I get 67 hits, about 6 of which are LN series, and a number of the hits seem to just not be yuri at all. The majority of results I can’t tell anything from the cover and title alone. Is that different than what you’re seeing?
Audible JP, audiobook.jp or even dwango.jp (shudder)
Storytel doesn’t have Japanese as one of their language options, unfortunately. But that doesn’t sound like a great fit for me anyway. Nothing will get me to put down a book faster than “not super interesting”. I’d rather stress myself out with something super hard than read something boring.
I’ve had phases like that, but after checking translations and discovering that my comprehension was quite off in certain areas (a while back), I went back to more intensive comprehension. Things might “make sense”, but that’s not really helpful if you’ve gotten them wrong. (not saying you specifically, just in general). Maybe I should play around with it though, since my JP skills are a bit more solid now.
In theory this is the sorta thing that would bother me (b/c it means I don’t actually know it) except I’m bad enough about that in English already anyway
I don’t think I agree with that. Like I know that pine, spruce, fir, and redwood trees are all “evergreen” trees, and honestly (at least in my English) if you called any of them a pine tree, if we aren’t botanists, I wouldn’t bat an eye.
Hell I know that 百合 means lily and I couldn’t pick either out of a lineup
I think there are a lot of words that you just need to know “is a type of X” and have that be enough.
That’s kinda what I meant by “except I’m bad enough about that in English already anyway”, and hedged with “in theory”. In any case, it will still bother me a bit, personally. So at the very least, I do try to link those things in multiple languages (EN, JP, and maybe Latin name) + with a picture, when I look them up. Whether I retain them afterwards or not is a different story
This also seems relevant since sometimes flowers have symbolic meanings in JP literature (and others I’m sure)… but even then you can probly get by knowing “type of flower, associated with xyz symbolic meaning”
I can try to check later. I just saw covers with two feminine looking characters looking in each other’s general direction and thought “close enough”
(Or more specifically, I tried to check the tags and they had none).
That is what I am seeing (although only 5 LN series on my side) BUT it’s not like everything would come up with that word. For instance, 裏世界ピクニック is 百合 (and available on audible), but won’t show in there.
I was hoping that the “other series like this” feature could help, but it just provides other random LNs…
Unrelated, but by doing so I ended clicking on a book that belongs to the “porn” category I didn’t even know that was a thing on audible.
Appreciated if you do, but no worries if not. I’m definitely not seeing them tho, even when I remove the level filter altogether. Unless you just mean in the general pool, and not specifically with audiobooks. Maybe I should go through and try to see if I can find ones missing tags, in the general pool… cuz it would help for reading selection otherwise.
Yeah that’s a problem - there’s no good way to search this afaict. Similar with Netflix, which also barely has any yuri (though to be fair, there are really few yuri anime in the first place)
Considering how prevalent it is on Kindle store, why not? lol … but I also wouldn’t have expected to find that there tbh
櫻子さんの足下には死体が埋まっている (but it seems the character are looking towards the cover, not each other, when I zoom on the cover)
The one you actually changed
六人の赤ずきんは今夜食べられる (technically looking towards the cover, but the blurb mention the main character is “私”; I did not read the blurb itself and can see that it’s horror? I don’t know if that means anything)
転生令嬢と数奇な人生を1 辺境の花嫁 but looking more closely I think the other is just a guy with long hair (I literally can’t tell honestly)
ホラー女優が天才子役に転生しました: ~今度こそハリウッドを目指します!~ Had I actually read the title, I would have realized that the two characters are literally the same person
Not one I considered before, but 魔法少女さんだいめっ involves a guy who turns into a girl (the 2nd 魔法少女) and his replacement (the titular 3rd). I feel like that could work, depending on how things go with transformations.
奇械仕掛けのブラッドハウンド I mean, they are not exactly looking at each other, but they aren’t looking at the reader either?
I was just quickly going through the thing, so I didn’t check carefully. I just got the impression that there could be a lot of stuff that is just missing tags.
(I should tag the books I read as well…)
To be fair, I don’t use the kindle store (except when I bought that one series titled something 推し and 悪役令嬢 or something) so I don’t really know.
Right? Someone has to voice it. I mean, same for anime, I guess. Probably a lot of overlap in the voice actors there.
Cool, I gave them a look, and did some googling. None of them are yuri sadly.
I think there are probly some number of yuri LNs on here that aren’t tagged (in fact I’ve probably tagged some number), and plobly lots of other untagged stuff. I try to tag books when I notice (esp for certain content)… but I also don’t usually check tags without a specific reason, so I don’t realize they’re not tagged in the first place.
私の推しは悪役令嬢。 | L32 I assume? Anyway, fair enough. I’ll just say that if someone’s looking for yuri porn on kindle store, it’s easy enough to find, depending on what you’re looking for
Sure, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be on Audible per se. I’m not really familiar with that stuff personally
Unclear to me why the author put 魔法少女育成計画 in there. It didn’t have any 百合 vibes as far as I am concerned, but anyway, the rest looks like it or are things that I know nothing about.
Thx! I tagged all those besides 魔法少女育成計画… maybe there’s something in a later volume? (its up to 18 on here now). Idk / don’t plan to read it
明日の世界で星は煌めく | L27 - for some reason the audible book doesn’t show on Amazon JP. Added the link… and may actually try reading it soon (not that I need to start another LN )
In more ways than one
成瀬は天下を取りにいく - quite surprised, but I looked it up, and it does seem to be the case. Never would have guessed. Edit: I deleted the tag, and was gonna re-add it as a spoiler (cuz idk if it is), but now I’m getting server issues
猫の言葉 and みすてぃっく I think I saw but assumed weren’t yuri
Anyway, yay!! Have gotten some more stuff tagged now Thx again!
The author of the page I referenced said they only read the first volume, so I don’t think so? I guess it’s just because of the interactions between some of the girls. I wouldn’t call it 百合 myself, though, but that person might be satisfied with that. (At the same time, they also said they are generally not too fond of that kind of plot, but liked the girls a lot). That makes me wonder how accurate their recommendations for the other series are, but I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt. I added a couple to my wishlist and will probably get to them next year (or as soon as I finish my reading bingo card, whichever comes first)
Fwiw I looked up the ones you sent, to double check, and they were all bona fide yuri. Otherwise I know 裏世界ピクニック and 安達としまむら and the ぬくもり one (well we found it earlier)… so that leaves 4 unknowns, two of which literally have 百合小説アンソロジー in the title. So I think they’re probly alright - for this list anyway
Right, I could see it. It didn’t feel like the main point of the story (or a major element in any way), but I wasn’t paying much attention to that at the time I read it.
Okay, if you did check, then no issue here. Among those I mentioned, the cat one and みすてぃっく・あい didn’t look like my stuff, but I added the other three to my wishlist.
Thx again!