If you’re frustrated or annoyed with learning, this is your cue to keep going! I just wanted to share something in hope of motivating others!
In my native language German and in English I’m a very fast reader, so when I first started reading manga and light novels in Japanese I kinda really struggled with the horizontal reading. It just felt so different and it took me forever to read anything… That really frustrated me. About two years ago I dared to read my first light novel in Japanese which was the first volume of SaeKano. I would not recommend choosing this as your first LN to read in Japanese… It was very fun to read but I had to look up a lot of words that I had simply never encountered in years of playing RPGs and other games in Japanese. So I managed to read about 10-13 pages in one hour. That was so frustrating because it felt like I wasn’t making any progress. I started reading volume 9 of 青春ブタ野郎 series yesterday and I realized how much my reading speed has improved. I can read about 50 pages in an hour now. This made me so happy and I just felt like sharing this with you. Especially since it had felt like my reading speed barely improved.
Just keep going! Read a lot but make sure it’s fun. And even if you struggle with understanding the meaning sometimes or get annoyed at reading at what feels like snail pace, just do it! It’ll be worth it!
