I was wondering whether any of you have read Japanese novels (in Japanese), and what you thought of it? Was it helpful in your learning journey? Any tips on how to tackle them?
And of course, which Japanese novels did you really enjoy reading and would you recommend?
(All recommendations are welcome, whether that be a widely acknowledged popular one or a hidden gem, with contemporary themes or historical settings, etc!)
There is free library (with text that fell on the public domain, that is older than 75 years), called 青空文庫(あおぞらぶんこ) https://www.aozora.gr.jp/
I sometimes get books from there, some are in ebook format, so I can read them on my ebook reader., As my level of Japanese is not very high, I try to find short and simple stories, like children books.
i recently enjoyed reading 手袋を買いに、 いちょうの実 and 地球はおおさわぎ.
I read Japanese novels, and I do think they're really helpful. Some novels I recommend reading are those from the author 住野よる who wrote books like 君の膵臓を食べたい. I personally read that one plus また同じ夢を見ていた, よるのばけもの and 青くて痛くて脆い. I also saw the movies. My best advice when tackling such novels is to simply make a list using reading buddy. Lucky you though, I did make lists of vocab you might not know when reading the above mentionned novels here in renshuu so feel free to take a look at them. Yoru Sumino is pretty popular amongst Japanese learners who want to tackle novels. But honestly Japanese aside, the stories are all really good and captivating.
Thanks for all these recommendations so far! Funnily enough, I actually watched the anime of 君の膵臓を食べたい without ever realizing it was adapted from a novel. I'll check everything out for sure!
At the end of last year, probably influenced by the members of this Japanese conversation group I attend who were all posting photos of the books they were reading on our group WhatsApp, I got suddenly hot to try reading a light novel. I chose two which already had four things I wanted: an anime adaptation (so I somewhat knew the story and the characters), an audio version on Audible (so I could hear the readings as I read the text), a lowish difficulty rating on learnnatively.com/ and an official published English translation (in case I ran into trouble.) It was my New Year's resolution for 2026 to read those two books but sadly it's nearly August and I still haven't tackled them. Hopefully this thread will get me motivated again.
Btw, the two books I bought were お隣の天使様にいつの間にか駄目人間にされていた件 and 本好きの下剋上.
Since no one suggested it yet: I enjoy Satori Reader.
The stories in that app aren‘t as long as novels, yet interesting. I do not enjoy and never enjoyed kids‘ stories as a starting point. While the language is easier, also with lots of hiragana, often too many, to me it’s boring. Eventually it feels like a must-learn, not like reading.
Satori Reader has some grown up stories, even thriller-like, if you enjoy that. The best part about it is, you can export the kanji you know from renshuu and import them in Satori Reader. You can setup Satori Reader to match your kanji knowledge. That way all stories come with natural kanji and furigana only for the kanji you don‘t know. You can enjoy practicing the kanji you already learnt.
Also all stories come with audio and optional translations on word and even phrase level. It’s a fun middle difficulty level option, in case novels get so difficult that you stop reading or enjoying them.
