My Reading Experience
As you know, I started 天気の子 on Aug 16 and finished on Sept 8. It took roughly 3.5 weeks to complete, but with many hours each time I read. Thank you everyone who came on this reading journey with me and being so supportive.
Is that slow? Is that fast?
I’m not entirely sure….I’m just glad to be done to be honest. I read of some people taking 6 months to finish their first book and others not much time at all. It really depends on many factors in addition the book itself. I had more free time this past month, which makes a huge difference in my energy levels, so I read almost daily. I documented my progress with this book, but I probably won’t as much moving forward.
Initially, I wasn’t trying to speed through the pages, but just go at my own pace. It started with the freaking boat scene that took forever to read . The prologue too…
At first, I could only read 5 pages at a time. But after maybe the first 40 pages, I was able to pick up to 10 pages and then 15 in one sitting. Toward the last 50 pages, I really pushed myself to read 20-30 pages a day. I took breaks in the middle, but I wanted to finish.
Overall
It was challenging, but given that there was furigana, it wasn’t that difficult to just read for me. However I saw the movie first, so the story was generally easy to follow. Even if I didn’t know some words, I knew what was going on in every page. There were only a couple really tough scenes in the beginning and the climax. This book is LONG though. Like really long, so you need a lot of patience. But I gained more confidence from completing 天気の子 to try other Japanese books.
Now, I actually really want to listen to the audiobook, since it’s read by same voice actors as the movie and I can hear how everything is natively pronounced.
Level Verdict
I stand by saying you need N3 at least (esp vocab) proficiently with the furigana version. Without furigana, N2.
Below that, I really don’t recommend it. 80/20 rule. It’s not worth your time to struggle through every page even if you love the story.
天気の子 In-Depth Book Review (From A Language Learner’s Perspective)
Kanji
Shinkai Makoto tends to use a LOT of kanji for everything. Even words that normally use hiragana or katakana, he has kanji for them. Also he uses different kanji that may have slightly difference nuance to the normal kanji, but the sound is the same.
For different nuances.
聞く -> 聴く
聞く -> 効く
使う -> 遣う
For things normally written in hiragana/katakana:
ダメ -> 駄目
すでに -> 既に
Vocabulary
It is most definitely N2. It would have been much harder for me to read without furigana. There are also a ton of adverbs and onomatopoeias for rain falling, steps, etc.
There’s a lot of -込む, -出す variations. I seriously wonder how much the words 雨、雨曇り,駆け出す、ふい、appear in this book lol. There are a lot of onomatopoeias for rain and sounds and adverbs as well.
Grammar
It’s at least N3 with some N2 points stuck in there as well. You really have to know N3 ように variations.
Here are some N2 points I noticed.
つつ
げ
恐れがある
It also helps tremendously if you can read casual speech as well because theres a huge amount of dialogue and all the characters speak super casually.
Writing Style
It is written in first-person POV mainly from Hodaka, but there are times when it switches to Hina, Natsumi, and Suga. Hodaka is simple most of the time, but the other three can be more deep especially Hina. Hodaka is generally easy to understand except in the end of chapter when he starts to get philosophical.
The more complicated scenes are definitely the descriptions of the weather forecasts, locations, boat, and how time has passed, etc.
I hope this was helpful I think all Shinkai Makoto books are written similarly to be honest, so the next one will be easier.
framed in beige 