Hi

I am sorry if this is not related to the forum. I am currently studying Japanese language (elementary level) and I thought that one of the easier way to pick up the language is through reading. Was wondering if there are any manga or comics books that are simple enough for someone of elementary level to read, preferably without Kanji characters or with hiragana on top of Kanji characters.

There are many series of Japanese comics here in Singapore's Kinokuniya bookstore. But as the books are wrapped, not too sure which are the ones that are basic enough for me to start reading. Also, I love to read manga and thought this will be the best way to kill two birds with one stones.

Many thanks for your assistance and advice.

Advice to you would be to pick out the children's manga books -- those will have the most basic kanji and hiragana (called furigana when placed aside the kanji). This should help you study your Japanese. Example to think about is "Nutaro" to name one.

Sanosuke!

You might also want to search out the Kodansha bilingual manga series, either on the internet or at import manga shops. They have English in the dialog bubbles and the Japanese annotated along the side of the page.

I used Mangajin's Basic Japanese Through Comics many years ago. They are out of print, but you may still be able to find the odd copy in bookstores or on the internet. A few of the individual issues are still available through Rolomail at Mangajin.com, but the 2 collections are a better deal if you can find them. It looks like Amazon.com still has a few copies as of today. I found the collections Part I and Part II to be a lot of fun.

As has been stated here before, anime and manga are probably not the best way to learn the language correctly, due to the extensive use of idiom and slang. For me, however, it was a fun way to practise what I was learning in more traditional ways.

I also found that watching Japanese doramas and other TV shows, first with subtitles and later without - was a good way to improve my listening skills. You should be able to find a pretty good variety for sale or rent at video shops in Singapore.

JR

Hi

I am sorry if this is not related to the forum. I am currently studying Japanese language (elementary level) and I thought that one of the easier way to pick up the language is through reading. Was wondering if there are any manga or comics books that are simple enough for someone of elementary level to read, preferably without Kanji characters or with hiragana on top of Kanji characters.


I used to teach Japanese on the university level, and when I looked for supplementary reading materials for my students, I usually found that while the manga for children have few kanji and lots of furigana, they are also full of slang and childish language, and therefore, not very useful for older learners. On the other hand, most manga directed at adults (and I'm referring to non-pornographic manga here) contain language that is more like what you are learning in class, but they are full of kanji.

I finally concluded that finding manga that were both useful and easy for first-year students was a hopeless task.

However, by the second and third year, students were ready to read limited materials written for native speakers. One manga series that I used successfully is no longer in print. It was called "What's Michael?" (That was it's title, written in English), and it was about cats, either very realistic cats who lived with a human family or fantasy cats who acted somewhat like people and somewhat like cats. Another older series that I used with my third-year students was "Ningen Kousaten," a set of unrelated stories about everyday life.

It just occurred to me that as a resident of Singapore, you may already be able to read Chinese. In that case, you can at least understand more than my first-year students could, even if you don't know how to pronounce the kanji in Japanese.

If the stores in Singapore sell any of Japan's weekly manga magazines, such as the various versions of Big Comic, I'd suggest buying them for several issues and figuring out which of the recurring series both interest you and aren't too hard for you to read. Then buy the book versions of those series.

Aside from manga, teachers of Japanese sometimes have their students read short stories by Hoshi Shin'ichi. He is one of the few popular Japanese writers whose short stories are actually short, and he uses relatively simple sentence structures and vocabulary.

Don't worry if you can't read everything right away. At the beginning, you won't be able to read much of anything. Keep returning to the same materials as you make progress in Japanese, and you will be surprised at how much more you can read each time.

The suggestion about buying or renting Japanese videos and movies is good, too. Just be sure that the stories take place in contemporary times, because nobody nowadays talks like a samurai or an eighteenth-century geisha. As with the manga, don't worry if you don't understand everything at first. Just keep watching the same movie again and again over time.

An advantage of using movies and TV programs is that you will become accustomed to natural Japanese speech, and when you go to Japan, you won't think, "Everyone talks too fast."

Have you looked at Doraemon comics yet?

Almost every Japanese person under 40 grew up with these. The first comics are from the 1970s and are still popular - not too much slang was used so they're kind of timeless.

Although hiragana is mostly used, you'll find kanji for elementary words: such as for sun, myself, school etc...

Doraemon is probably one of the best children's comics for 'standard' language - but use it for learning vocabulary rather than for picking up speech and colloquialisms.

And be sure to remember that Doraemon is a robot. There is nothing there to fiddle with when he puts his hands down his pocket. (Some people who are introduced to Doraemon as adults seem to have a real problem with this :( ).

For DVD & Video we have all the episodes of Heidi directed by Isao Takahata as well as the condensed film version. It won't teach you that much about Japanese culture directly, but the dialogue is pretty standard and not too challenging (I can usually repeat what is being said). It's the best loved of all the Japanese cartoons, by Japanese of all ages. We have the complete series because MrLapLap and I would want our own children to grow up with this cartoon.

EDIT: just watched a few episodesof Heidi today - I had the Japanese subtitles on and it's all in hiragana & katakana. There's elementary kanji too, but every single kanji character has hiragana next to it. If you hit the pause button now and again there's no difference to having it on a comic book - and you have the voiced dialogue too.

Just realised that the person voicing 'Peter' is the same one who voices 'Nobita' in Doraemon, even the lady who voices Shizuka chan makes an appearance in Heidi to sing the delightful 'moshimo chiisana..' end song.

And all the stories are so lovely... sniff! It's beautifully observed and written.