I have been reading 異世界のんびり農家 01
pretty slowly.
The chapters are really short, which makes it easy to read. However, it’s 400 pages so it makes overall progress slow. It’s very minecraft like lol. The more I read the more I think so.
I should almost be done with とんでもスキルで異世界放浪メシ soon as well. I think I have adapted to the writing style as well, to me it feels very easy now. I like rating things after like 75-100 pages because if you can get to page 100 it just gets easier from there.
More so looking than reading but I received my Flowers Couleur artbook today! It has a lot of sketches, CGs, some extra stories and a bunch of other stuff about the game in it. Some of the jp is too difficult to read at first glance, so I’ll go back over it eventually with dictionary help to read it all (although there is over 300 pages, so that’ll be more of a long term project).
she’s so pretty omg! What’s the series about? 
I might have to read it in English lol
She is super pretty! Its my favorite series of all-time haha. It’s a 4-part mystery yuri visual novel series with the tagline of “The tale of the girls who grow with a season”. Each game takes place during the course of one of the seasons (starts in Spring and ends in Winter). Its hard to explain too much of the plot cause it’d spoil a lot of the mysteries but it was very emotionally moving for me, one of the few games that made me cry. The description on VNDB gives a good rundown from the first game.
Surrounded by immense walls in the middle of a forest, lies the prestigious all-girls school, Saint Angraecum Academy. It’s a school that prides itself on growing bright and cultured young women.
The school’s Amitié program is designed to help foster new friendships that will last a lifetime. This is why Suoh Shirahane, a painfully shy girl with a mysterious past, has enrolled. As her first year of high school begins, she is filled with hopes of a new life.
Follow her as she navigates her new friendships and attempts to unravel the many mysteries at the academy, including occult rituals and the mysterious disappearance of fellow students, all while trying to pass her classes.
Oh, here is the link to the game on steam as well: Flowers -Le volume sur printemps- on Steam
I think the last, fourth, game just got an English releases recently. Unfortunately the English version doesn’t have Japanese. I assume the English version of cheaper?
Do you have a digital version or a physical one? PC or console?
I read a good chunk so far, so I checked the prologue of volume 2 to see how far I got compared to the publication. Well, it turns out I am only a bit ahead of that part because a whole part has been dropped from the published version.
I own the game both digitally and physically but only the English versions. I do plan on buying the Japanese version later on to replay the entire series in Japanese though.
The English version does appear to be cheaper. From what I looked up, the only place to buy the PC version digitally in Japanese is on Innocent Grey’s own website ( InnocentGrey/Noesis/商品詳細 FLOWERS - Le volume sur printemps -〈通常版〉 ) and each individual game is 4.5k yen. If you own a Switch or PS4, you can buy 四季 edition which comes with all 4 games and that is only 7.3k yen which is actually significantly cheaper than buying each game separately in English or Japanese.
What are your thoughts on the story? Personally, I found the start a bit hard to follow so I ended up stopping. Though, I have plans to pick it up after a later date
I’m taking a break from 魔女の旅々1 though I have plans to pick it up eventually like 夏へのトンネル、さよならの出口
I’m going to start reading コーヒーが冷めないうちに while listening to the audiobook accompaniment.
A little late to the party but I started reading 六人の嘘つきな大学生 three days ago and have been reading it every day since. It’s the winner of this year’s Japan Booksellers’ Award (本屋大賞) and I’m really curious since a lot of Japanese booktubers have been hyping it up.
As I expected the book is quite challenging language-wise, the writing style throws me off guard sometimes and I encounter a lot of new unknown words. It’s going to take a while to finish this and I hope it lived up to the hype.
I loved the audiobook, but people who read the text seemed to have kind of panned it. I never read it, only listened, and it was quite enjoyable in that format.
I’ve been seeing this hyped everywhere too, but when I read the summary it didn’t really seem like my kind of book. Curious to read your take on it when you finish!
What happens if you did not catch some words and do not know the timestamp when those words were spoken? Honestly, I would really like to try your approach but I’m hesitant since I would likely have to re-listen to the entire thing in order to catch the few words that I missed.
So this really depends on where your listening comprehension is already at. コーヒーが冷めないうちに is by far the easiest audiobook I’ve ever listened to, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have to work up to that level. 
It does make it a great first choice though! I did not rewind and while I’m sure I missed a word here or there, I was never struggling.
3 things helped:
If you’re not sure you’re there yet you can do what I do with currently hard-for-me books which is listen while reading along and then at a later date listen to the audiobook solo and see how that feels.
Also when I started out I would listen to a chapter, then read+listen, then listen again but that’s quite intensive and I only did it until I felt I built up my “ear muscles” 
This is a really good method to improve my listening comprehension skills! I’ll definitely try out your intensive method with this book.
Another novel on the easier side with a really well produced audiobook is また、同じ夢を見ていた | L25. The audiobook honestly almost feels like more of an audio drama than your average audiobook: full cast, some light use of sound effects, music playing in and out the scene changes to set the tone. If you want to get started in on the listening this would be another to try as well
What place would you guys recommend purchasing audiobooks from?
I always first check the US audible since I already had lots of credits (and it has a ton of Japanese audiobooks). If you go to the advanced search you can filter by language (plus the teen & young adult category will get you LNs). If you’re lucky enough to be in Japan or have a credit card with a Japanese billing address the JP Audible is “all you can read” which is nice, and definitely better than the US audible.
Next (and this is where I found また、同じ夢を見ていた) I check audiobook.jp since there’s no region locks here and at least it has an app.
Finally, as a last resort when an audiobook is exclusive to it I go to ListenGo. This one is kind of a pain - no region lock in the store so you can listen just fine in the browser, but the app is region locked.
Thank you so much! I didn’t realize US audible carried foreign language audiobooks.
Noted! I’ve actually listened to a bit of the audiobook and it’s pretty manageable. I also have the actual book with me so I may start on that book after I finish my current one.
I usually purchase my audiobooks from https://audiobook.jp/ like I did with コーヒーが冷めないうちに. I like the fact that you can listen to a sample of the audio since I can grasp the speed of the audiobook
That’s another +1 for audiobook.jp, then. Thanks! My listening skills are absolutely awful, so any way I can practice them while doing the reading I’d normally be doing anyway is plus.
this was so helpful–I’m gonna bookmark this reply. I was just about to ask where do you listen to your audiobooks at because I would love to use some books for strictly listening comprehension. It seems like a good chance to write down a summary afterwards and then eventually go read the book to see if I understood the audio properly.
