Now that I have completed the “dreaded” first book, I wanted to reflect and give some feedback that helped me. This can be a reminder if you already are familiar with these ideas.
*Skip the prologue (and come back later)
Prologues are often kind of vague or dreamlike on purpose, so it can be confusing. Skip it and just go to page one. You can come back and read it.
*Consider the overall page number
This goes back to 天気の子 being 300 pages, but after 200, I definitely started to think it’s really long. I never that issue with English fiction books as I read quite fast, but it became a definite factor here.
*Set daily goals and read everyday
This is one of those things that sounds like “duh”, but it’s actually the most crucial. Reading everyday is important because it’s how you build stamina and concentration. You can set daily accountability goals.
My way was filming stories with the page number before I started, and I had to reach that page number in order to post that story. It was a bit extreme, but it kept me more accountable because you all were watching too.
*Stop looking up everything on every page
You can highlight on every page and maybe look up a word or two, but as soon as you bring up Jisho, your concentration will break. It’s better to get through 10 pages or a chapter, and then go back and see what you missed. Unless you really can’t understand anything, move on.
This was hard for me to let go of, but it makes it much easier to go on. And a lot of the words are repeated, but you won’t realize that as much unless you start from the end of chapter and work backwards to look up stuff.
*Take multiple breaks in the middle of reading
It’s hard to read 5, 10, 20. etc. pages of Japanese in one sitting, so make sure to take many breaks in the middle to reset and give your brain a break. Even if you think you are okay, your brain is probably working 10x as hard to read in Japanese.
*“Just Do It” attitude (not affiliated with Nike)
Stop looking up every method or hack out there to read faster or better. That Japanese Man Yuta says this, but all that time you spend looking up “how to”, you could be just reading already.
I hope some of these tips were helpful or motivated you to complete that first book!
framed in beige 