> Out of the ones you have read which would you recommend the most, to start off the reading journey?

I would say that of all the things I have read, the most encouraging one was a children’s book called 鬼の毛三本. Probably the hardest thing about it is understanding what the title means (hint: 本 is a counter, and often counter expressions go after what they are counting). It has a large amount of text on each page (actually, the left pages are all text, and the right pages are pictures), the kanji have furigana, so words are easy to look up, the sentences are relatively simple structurally, and there is enough repetition of vocabulary that you can start to understand entire sentences without having to look up words.

> how was Breaking into Japanese Literature?

Breaking into Japanese Literature and Exploring Japanese literature have a really nice format. There is a mini dictionary on each page and a translation on the facing page, so everything you need is right there in front of you. They are both great to read in bed, because you don’t need a computer to look things up or anything else. You can read a few pages before going to sleep and get a little more Japanese time in each day, on top of whatever else you are doing.

That being said, the texts are difficult. There are long descriptive passages with lots of uncommon words, archaisms, etc. So if you are going to read them, you have to have the right attitude, which is that you don’t expect to understand the text without help. Expect that you are going to have to look at the definitions and translation for every single sentence, and forget about trying to learn every single new word you come across. Learn what you can, and enjoy the story.

The Read Real Japanese Essays / Fiction texts were easier, as I recall. But the dictionaries are in the back, instead of on the same page, which is inconvenient. There are interesting grammar notes in the back as well though, which can be useful. In a final note, BIJL and both the RRJ texts have audio, but EJL doesn’t.

> The huge anki deck is overwhelming

Timebox it. Over on the study thread, I recently wrote about a setup I used to resolve a large backlog. No matter how large the backlog is, you will eventually get through it as long as you are learning the cards.

http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/the-study-thread/page/30/#post-26625

> I’m extremely disappointed that Textfugu is incomplete

It is what it is. Take advantage of what’s there, and don’t worry about what isn’t.

> I just need to know how to start back up again, and where

This time around, fun should be your priority. Find something fun to do that involves Japanese. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you enjoy it. Do it every day, even on holidays and weekends. Probably the easiest, most entertaining thing to do is watch Japanese TV shows or movies. You have to start making Japanese a part of your every day life, one way or another.

Now if that is all you are doing, you aren’t going to learn new words very quickly. So after a few weeks of just doing fun stuff every day, add some focused study to your routine. Maybe that means using Anki. But whatever you do, keep it short. Anki is effective, but it wears you out. At the beginning, do maybe 10 minutes at the most. Seriously, don’t try to be a hero. It’s better to do 10 minutes a day for a year than 60 minutes a day for 6 weeks and then quit.

So after a few months of watching some Japanese TV and doing some flash cards every day, you are probably going to want to add other kinds of things. Maybe you want to try writing practice, or even calligraphy. Or maybe you want to read some explanations of grammar in a textbook. Or maybe you want to join a conversation group, or start reading Mangajin or Pera Pera Penguin, or something else. Great. Add that to your routine.

To sum up, don’t think about your progress in terms of how many words you know or your comprehension level. You don’t really have any direct control over that. Like a kid sitting in a shopping cart in a store, your brain will grab a hold of whatever it wants to. You can push the cart down the aisle, but that’s about it. Instead, focus on cultivating a lifestyle that involves Japanese. Think about how you can spend more time with Japanese, and have more fun doing it.

> I study every evening

This is the only thing that matters. Spend as much time with the language as you can, and enjoy the time you spend. Don’t worry about your progress, and don’t compare yourself to others.

I finished reading the first issue of Mangajin. One unexpected challenge has been the handwritten kana and kanji. Fortunately there are romaji transliterations of the dialogue and even sound effects.

Another thing I noticed is that some of the stories have a distinctly foreign sensibility. One of them is apparently about some hotel staff who do a really good job. That just isn’t the kind of story an American writer would write. American culture is more concerned with social mobility, so stories are usually about people on the way up or on the way down.

There are “procedural” dramas on TV, which tell stories about people doing their jobs well, but those are almost always about doctors or cops. Compared to catching the bad guys or saving the lives of patients, the world of ordinary workers seems mundane. There are shows about office workers, but those tend to be comedies where people screw around instead of working.

I finished Read Real Japanese Fiction. Next up is Exploring Japanese Literature, which has the same format as Breaking into Japanese Literature.

In other news, that Mangajin complete set was re-listed, and I bought it this time. It turns out that it was the former publisher who was selling it, and it was his last complete set.

> Mangajin magazine

That looks interesting. I tried to buy a set from eBay, but it’s a reserve auction, and I couldn’t match the reserve price. If anyone else feels like they can do better, here it is. In case it helps you, my maximum bid was $157.50, which represents $2.25 per issue, or 50% off the price on the cover.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Complete-Set-Mangajin-Magazine-70-Issues-Most-Mint-Condition-/120826636817?pt=Magazines&hash=item1c21d42a11

It is difficult to figure out what a fair price should be. There are listings for individual issues for $6 from another seller, but those are fixed-price listings, so there aren’t any bids. So it isn’t clear whether people are actually buying at that price, or if maybe that seller has unrealistic expectations. Also, I’m not a collector, I’m just trying to learn Japanese. So I am extremely reluctant to buy used materials anywhere close to the original brand-new price.

Another problem is that it’s not clear how much actual Japanese content you get for your money. I can buy a volume of Bakuman for around $8 over at Kinokuniya, and there are English translations available online for reference. So I can sort of put together my own “guided manga reading” experience. It says Bakuman 1 is 194 pages, and I think it’s basically all content. That comes to around $0.04 per page.

The Mangajin volumes aren’t totally full of Japanese content however. From browsing a little on the Web, it looks like there are articles in English, and then there are the notes pages. So what do you get– 20 or 30 pages of actual manga per issue? If it were 30 pages, then at the price of $.04 per page, each issue only has $1.23 worth of content. Even if it were 45 pages– basically evenly split between the content and notes, that’s still only $1.80 worth.

Maybe the notes and articles in English make the Mangajin issues worth a lot more. It’s really hard to say. At the moment I’m most concerned with getting as much Japanese actual content as possible, because I feel like explanations in English aren’t really doing a lot for me. They just get stored in my brain as “facts about Japanese in English” rather than building pure, native-like understanding of the language. I think you can really only get from massive amounts of exposure to the language itself. But what do I know?