掲示板 Forums - Casual Intensive Reading Group (少読?)

Good evening and happy new year 2016! I came back to Renshuu after brief holiday and slacking with a new resolution on mind― To hold an intensive reading group study that I have been wanting to since 2015.

■　What's intensive reading?

Intensive reading is a practice where reader read a material while looking up for words they don't know (we may have done this unconsciously). On the other hand, there's an opposite method called extensive reading. Extensive reading is a practice where reader read a material without looking up for words they don't know.

Both has it own benefit and I personally use both practice. Intensive to introduce me to new words and extensive to strengthen vocabulary that I have learn and actually using it.

The idea of intensive reading group study is actually inspired from Tadoku (多読), or known extensive reading practice that Japanese use to study English.

■　How does the group study works?

The group study works as simple as this:

1. The reader read a Japanese reading material* (explaination after this)
2. The reader write a really brief description about the article. (about or less than 140 character, is it too short?)
3. (Optional) The reader write question about the articles in English, or if you are feeling adventurous, write the question in Japanese to challenge other reader! The question can be in essay or in multiple choices
4. Post it on this thread
5. (Optional) Talk about the material with other reader

■　What kind of reading material can I read / What kind of reading material that's acceptable to practice intensive or extensive reading?

You can practice reading Japanese, intensive or extensive, virtually on anything, as long as it's in Japanese. Yes, that include Japanese tweet (140 characters in Japanese can surprisingly squeezes so many information inside.., it's quite scary and amazing, actually), short journal blog, wikipedia, about page, etc

Although, it'll be helpful if the material you refer is accessible to other, so the other can read and talk about it. But do not be afraid or hesitate to tell about reading material you are reading. Who knows that other also read the same thing as you!

■　How to find reading material that you want to read for free

Articles, blogs or review

At Google

1. Before you start looking, you need to know: What do you want to read about? Is it about food? Living in Japan? Anime review? Drink? Shirt? Interior design? Novel review? Games? Translate the word into Japanese and search for it on Google. (Tips: (keyword) ブログ for blog or (keyword) レビュー for review)
2. Scroll through the first page and visit the blog that caught your attention. Or, you can visit link that have blogmura.com in it and visit the listed blog.

At Blogmura.com

Blogmura is a Japanese website where Japanese blog is rank. With each keyword, Blogmura will display the highest ranked blog that's related to the keyword.

1. Skip going through the Google and type 「blogmura.com」on your address bar
2. Click on search box, type the keyword (just the keyword without ブログ at the end. If you are looking for review, try add レビュー at the end of your keyword) and hit enter
3. Visit the blog that catch your interest!

Stalking your favorite artist or games updates, new, etc

Nothing more to say about this

Books, novels, manga, picture books

At Booklog's store

Booklog is like Amazon kindle but in Japanese. You can find novels, manga, picture books, literally book for free on free section

All free books
Novels
Manga
Picture book

Side note: Like Amazing free section, not all of it is good, but it's definitely worth searching. User doesn't need to sign up to few or download the books either

(Manga only) LINE MANGA (Smartphone application)

LINE MANGA is an app developed by LINE MESSAGER. It feature free weekly selected manga. They also had feature trending manga such as D. Gray Man, Aoharu x Kikanjuu and others. Occasionally, they will give a volume of a comic for free! (P.S. App is only available on Japan, so you need to bypass it. Plenty of guide is available on Google)

Warning: Following weekly manga on LINE MANGA may cause a sudden outburst of wanting to know the continue but have to wait next week for it. I hold no responsibility when that happens.

(Novel and manga only) Pixiv

Do you know that Pixiv doesn't only have a lot of beautiful illustration but as well as novel? Written in Japanese and about your favorite character is just one of many ways to enjoy brushing your Japanese skill. Don't forget to change 'Illustration' to 'Novel' if you carve for long session

Side note: All of them is free with occasional teaser from artist.

Warning: Author hold no responsibility if you have urge wanting to buy a manga, doujin or a novel after reading the teaser

Tweet (on Twitter)

Don't be fool by the 140 character limit we usually curse, Twitter is a great place to practice Japanese!

But who to follow? Here's some of the account I have been following

・Japanese official game's account. Update of what's new and maintance can be a quick read!

・ Japanese artist (voice actor, actor, singer, artist, etc). Get to know closer with your favorite artist by reading and understand their tweet. You may find out more about their daily life and work. Occasionally, it can be funny too!

・Japanese official manga and anime.

・Japanese fandom artist

・Japanese roleplay account

・and many more

(Under co.)

■　Some of the site that I often visit

If you are feeling lazy to search for the material, here's the place that I often visit:

1. Rocketnews24 (Japanese's site). RN24 feature everything about Japan. Coming down to what happen in Japan neticizen, to gourment discovery, lucky bags until living in Japan and their custom
2. MATCHA (In Japanese, or in Easy Japanese). MATCHA feature about food, spot, culture, how to, stay, and shop. What I like from MATCHA is they sometimes have this in the article: 「（unknown kanji）とは‥」which can be really helpful and, not to mention, it enchant reading experience too.

■　Okay, I understand now. So what should I do next?

Come by and say hi to us or you can start reading and post about the reading material you just read! There are no deadline, feel free to read and report what you have read, or if you feel bold, announce your goal and we'll try to keep you accountable!

■　References to post reading material

There is no hard rule on how to share the reading material you had read, but you need to input:

- Title

- Link

- Really short description about the reading material

There are optionals too such as

- Questions and answer (please change the answer's text color into white or any color that can't be easily read (so the other reader can try how much they understand and need to select on the text first before it's readable.))

- Perhaps, thought about it?

■　Final note

The main intention of this study group is to help readers to stay motivate to read and understand the material they are reading.

But, I also hope you have fun reading and meet other readers too!

■　Misc

Since extensive reading is called Tadoku (多読), then intensive reading shall be called Shodoku (少読)?

Message sent! Please check it

mangaz.com seems to be the current incarnation of Akamatsu Ken's program to collect old manga and make it free online. In addition to a lot of less known stuff, he started it by putting all of Love Hina there for free.

Title: Crocs's 2016 Lucky Bag

Link: RocketNews24 (Japanese)

Short description: Lucky bag or also known as 福袋 (fukubukuro) is a Japanese New Year custom in which merchants make grab bags filled with unknown random contents and sell them for a substantial discount, usually 50% or more off the list price of the items contained within. (Definition credit to Wikipedia). This time, Rocketnews24 is featuring what's inside Crocs's 2016 Lucky Bag.

Additional question:

1. To who does the writer suggest the Lucky Bag?
   クロックスはクロックスとして、立派なブランドなのだと痛感したわけだが……やっぱりもう少し安く買いたいのが本音。そんな人にオススメな福袋だ！
2. What's the value per shoes?
   Roughly 3,160円 (Divide 6480円 with 3)
3. Does the writer still think that the lucky bag is "おトク" at the end?
   Not entirely. The writer stated that it's 「これが適正価格だ」という方向に気持ちが行ってしまう。そんな福袋だった。

Hello there! Thank you for sharing your studying so far. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to contribute, but here I am.

Title: "Heart no Kuni no Alice" Musical Revival

Link: Animate TV

Short description: The article reports on the second run of the Heart no Kuni no Alice stage play, and shares a brief comment from some of the performers.

Additional questions:

What is special about the stage play's ending?

It had multiple endings that focused on different characters, depending on which day you bought a ticket for.

What is the story's source material?

The video game by the same name.

When did the performance run?

1月16日から24日まで

Vocabulary that was new/interesting to me: 本稿, ゲネプロ, 当日券, 一発芸.

~*~

My thoughts: This article caught my eye because I like the Heart no Kuni series. I wanted to see what the characters' costumes looked like because their outfits are so crazy, and I was not disappointed with how detailed they are. On a related note, I just finished this light novel based on the same series. It was about the right reading level for me, but it was my first novel in Japanese, so I'm very excited that I was able to read through it fairly easily.

Take care!

Ah yes, I like Heart no Kuni quite a lot. I've been playing through the visual novels over the last several months. I have also read some of the manga.

Surprisingly, I found that light novel easier to read than the games. I'm not exactly sure why. Either way, if you liked the manga, I recommend both.