30.Jan.2009 Japanese Literature Challenge 2 Wrap-Up
In July I joined the 2nd Japanese Literature challenge. The challenge is to read 3 Japanese lit from 30 July 2008 to 30 January 2009. Thought it would be easy peasy, since I loved Japanese lits. But nooo, it wasn’t as easy as I thought. First, I wasn’t very happy with the 2 novels that I read. Second, I was probably not in the best mood for Japanese lits for some reason. I was learning Japanese extensively during the duration of the challenge, and hence spent my time more on books on learning the actual Japanese language than the translated novels.
Now the 2 novels that I read weren’t bad. But they’re just okay. Just less than expected/hyped. Click on the pics to read my reviews.
For my study of Japanese language I read the following books, though I didn’t put any reviews and I’m not sure if they count for the challenge.
I’ll just put some brief comments. Kana de Manga features both katakana and hiragana. There’s a word associated to each kana, and it’s explained in English. The words were quite interesting, though the humour felt a bit forced sometimes. The illustrations were cute too.
Kanji de Manga 1 and 2 are part of the Kanji de Manga series, which for now has gone up to 6. The first Kanji de Manga contains all of the kanji characters you need to remember for JLPT 4. Kanji de Manga 2 and onward should cover JLPT 3 and above. The book has the way to write every kanji step by step, and there’s a short (a few panels) bilingual manga (comic) for each kanji, which shows us the situation of where the word can be used. I like this series. Apart from learning Kanji, you can get used to colloquial Japanese used in the manga.
Now that I’m back in Australia, I checked my local library to see if they have any Japanese lits and/or Japanese language learning books, only to be dissapointed that they don’t have much here. A quick search showed that there’s no Kawabata or Soseki’s books, and there’s definitely no Kanji de Manga series and the likes. Singapore library is definitely better in this respect. I’d have to find some other ways to feed my needs :(
Wrapping up, thank you Bellezza, for hosting the 2nd Japanese literature challenge. The prizes look awesome! I’ll be waiting for the next one and will definitely join again.
