しあわせ

よつばと！ 著:あずまきよひこ

More “Feel Good”-ness from しあわせ！

Yotsubato is a manga from the creator of my favorite anime “Azumanga Daioh“, Kiyohiko Azuma. It is about the day to day existence of a pre-schooler living in Japan with her adoptive father. (Yotsuba may not be Japanese herself). The manga’s subtitle is “Enjoy Everything”; which Yotsuba-chan surely does as only a five year old can. And so the look of delight on her face as she laughs ははは！never fails to cheer me up.

There are 7 volumes available. (I got mine while in Japan and via Amazon.jp In London you can get them at JP Books in Mitsukoshi.) Yotsuba always speaks in kana, sometimes mispronouncing words too. The adults speak in Kanji, but it all has furigana so it’s good for learners. The artwork is very clean and detailed line drawing that gives a good sense of Japanese life. — check out 第9話 「よつばと復讐」[Yotsuba and revenge] here.

どんどん読めるいろいろな話　著者: 秋元美晴、糸川優、寺島ミチ子、(ISBN4-8386-0368-1)

Part of my ongoing 100万字 project. Slightly daunting at first as it is completely Japanese. But I found I could understand most of the introduction so I bought it. There are 11 stories in it. I reckon the level is about post JLPT3 in terms of grammar but maybe a little higher in terms of vocabulary. It has the story 「注文の多い料理店」which I have previously read in the レベル別日本語多読ラブリー series. This version is a little harder overall but still doable at my reading level so I’m pretty confident in reading the rest of the stories. I’m looking forward to reading an excerpt from Souseki’s “I am a Cat”「我輩は猫である」

Everything has furigana which is useful. There is even a little plastic sheet you can put over the page that will block out the furigana so you can test your ability to read without them. Unlike the NPO books there are footnotes. These explain unknown words either by using pictures or by explaining the word in simpler Japanese or very rarely by giving the English.

My only complaints about the book are quite minor. It would be nice if the illustrations were either colour or line drawings. And the typeface the book is set in is slightly small; for beginners a larger size would be easier. However it does seem to be the standard size Japanese novels are set in, so maybe it’s good to get used to it.

北嶋千鶴子（著者）North Island Company

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