Japanese learning: Six months of reading

After a stint in hospital last winter, I resolved to pick Japanese back up and go further than I had before, in part because I needed something positive to occupy lots of time, and in part because learning to read in a second language has always been a dream of mine in itself. I previously saw my dream as a bit unattainable; I put it on a pedestal and studied for a mythical time where I’d be equipped to read to a high enough standard, rather than realising I’d have to grind my way there.

I spent a couple of months studying vocabulary and grammar, read a few anime episodes, then began reading books six months ago. I started with 魔女の宅急便 (also known as Kiki’s Delivery Service), a children’s fantasy novel, although I moved on to adult content soon after. I really enjoyed it—it was lyrically detailed and very whimsical, and I’ll always fondly remember it as the book that first empowered me to tackle Japanese. I also read 14 books by the author 東野圭吾 (Keigo Higashino, whose most famous work in the West is Devotion of Suspect X), whose detective stories often centre on the culprits—being a huge fan of mystery novels, it was amazing to see how his formula could play out in so many ways. And, recently, I’ve been reading the light novel series 本好きの下剋上 ～司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません～ (Ascendance of a Bookworm: I’ll Stop at Nothing to Become a Librarian), an isekai story about a book-loving girl reborn in a fantasy world without easy access to paper.

Although I’m far from speaking or writing in Japanese (forming language is harder than simply comprehending it), it turns out that language is something you can just practise by using it, and I wish I’d realised that a lot sooner and seriously set about doing it!! Textbooks don’t make you better at reading by themselves, but reading is what puts what you learn in textbooks in practice.

There’s a massive abyss between preparing to read (textbook learning, for example, and/or basic vocabulary acquisition) and actually reading. You can’t easily process words as meaning without encountering them as language and in context, even having memorised them prior, so a lot of learning takes place on the fly. With no experience in reading, it is always difficult, so one has to tear off the band-aid and resign themselves to not understanding the majority of what they encounter, which in my case meant dictionary lookups (as well as a degree of acceptance that a lot would fly over my head regardless).

As a frequent, in-my-sleep reader in English, such sluggish, laboured ‘reading’ was a shock. At first, it was a slog looking everything up in a dictionary, and it was more akin to deciphering than reading, but persevering turned it into a genuinely enjoyable activity, actual reading where I can envision what happens in the text, anticipate what happens next, and feel real emotional investment in the story. I still have to look up a lot of words in what I read, but the frequency dramatically decreased. Also, I enjoy learning new words, and now that my brain has wrapped itself better around sentence structure in such a different language, I think Japanese reads beautifully.

I love learning things and find it more fun than almost anything, but I did not realise learning to read in another language would be such a directly fulfilling, curiosity-stimulating experience. I think reading in Japanese will only get more leisurely and pleasurable as I learn more! I’m closing in on 40 books read, and it feels amazing to have my hard work come to fruition in such a way. Since I can’t work, I would read during the day regardless, but right now the majority of my reading time is in Japanese. It’s become a passion for me that I wanted to share with others!