So finally the first book club has kicked off. I have been learning Japanese for quite some time, but haven’t had the persistence or patience to read a whole physical book in Japanese yet. Although I have already read some books on my computer, where I use little helpers like Yomichan (a browser extension that opens up a dictionary when you hover over a word), or good old Anki with the Migaku Addons (another quite handy dictionary and pitch accent coloring add-on).
But as it comes to physical books, the first and most obvious obstacle is, well, that it is physical. So how the f**k do I search for new vocab, that I even can not speak out loud due to a highly fascinating writing system.
I approached this problem as follows: beginner you should look up more words)
First I set a goal. Mine (at least for now) is to read 10 pages a day, and I want to be able to read out the whole text loud. So I read through the 10 pages in one sitting, and with a pencil I underline all words I can not articulate, regardless of understanding the sentence/vocab or not. (According to Stephen Krashen, even if you don't understand a word, your brain gets about 5 to 10% of its meaning, and if you see a new word for 10 to 20 times you get the meaning anyways.)(I would consider myself as a upper intermediate in reading, perhaps if you are beginner you should look up more words)
Then I take my phone and create a new empty email. I use an app called Yomiwa to look up new vocab. In this app you can draw the Kanji by hand, what is a huge advantage if you don’t know the correct reading of a word. If the word consists of 2 or more Kanji, the app shows a list of the most common words with that Kanji in the first spot. Sometimes I have to draw more than the first Kanji. By tipping on the word a subsite opens, with the word on top of the screen. By tipping on the word again it is copied and I can paste it into the email I created at the beginning of the session.
After doing all my lookups I send this email to myself. Then I can check my mails on the computer and voila here are all my words I can now import into Anki, and with the Migaku Dictionary automatically searching Forvo I get the right pronunciation.
Perhaps I reduce the page-count to 5 and reread the 10 latest pages again, what makes 15 pages a day with less new words, but more repetition. Time will tell.
Excellent level of English! I also decided to read it in physical format, which it something I've never done with a foreign language book before. I did it that way to make it a little harder for me to use the dictionary, and so force myself to try and work out the meaning from the context. I hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I am
I admire your courage and perseverance. I alos bought this book but decided to wait some more months until I remember more words. I have to admit I hate pysical Japanese book with so few hiragana mark. While I stopped this book, I started Japenese ebook on my computer and am enjoying a lot. Mat I ask how many hours do you spend for 10 page reading?