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When I first picked up a volume of manga to read in Japanese I thought, “I can do this! I’ve been learning Japanese for two years!” But I failed… miserably.
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The factors that helped me read manga as a beginner were: However, I was eventually able to read manga and now I have a huge library of Japanese manga to enjoy and improve my Japanese with! I wouldn’t touch manga in Japanese for several years after that. It was a frustrating and demotivating experience. I tried translating pages into English for myself, but this turned my brain into mush incredibly quickly. I tried to learn them, but the words wouldn’t stick. There was so much grammar and vocabulary I didn’t understand. So I picked up another manga, this time Vampire Knight, same issue. I had a copy of Fullmetal Alchemist, still one of my favorite manga of all time, and couldn’t even get past the first page! The experience was… frustrating to say the least. The first time I tried to read manga my Japanese level was roughly equivalent to beginner level (JLPT N5 or N4). My First Time Reading Japanese Manga Was… a Disaster Needless to say, you can’t pick up any old manga and start reading. However, there are a few things to take into consideration when reading Japanese manga for the first time. Understanding new things from context is a great way to learn and it helps your brain retain the information longer. This means you can normally work out what unknown words and grammar patterns mean from context. Reading manga in Japanese is fantastic for beginners because it gives you a visual aid to connect with the Japanese you’re reading. If you understand everything then you’re not learning anything new. You might not understand 100% of the manga you pick up, and that’s fine! It’s important to remember that you don’t have to understand all of the vocabulary and grammar. You certainly don’t have to know advanced Japanese to be able to start reading manga. It’s rich in vocabulary, grammar and phrases, and fantastic for improving your reading comprehension. Manga is written by Japanese for a Japanese audience. I often hear people say you shouldn’t learn Japanese from manga, but I say why not?! Well, what if I told you it is possible to be able to understand manga a lot sooner than you thought? They convince themselves that being able to read manga is beyond their abilities, so why even try?! Being able to do either of these is incredibly rewarding, but many beginners think you need to be ‘fluent’ or that you need to live in Japan for a certain number of years before you reach this level. A lot of us study Japanese because we want to be able to understand anime without subtitles or read manga in Japanese.