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Fun way to practice reading Japanese for free with manga

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KasperJensen
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Posts: 1
Joined: August 13th, 2018 1:00 pm

Fun way to practice reading Japanese for free with manga

Postby KasperJensen » August 13th, 2018 2:00 pm

Hey everyone

I'm not sure if anyone has ever thought of this, but I recently discovered that the Japanese publishing company Kodansha has free samples of pretty much all the manga-series they're currently running in their magazines online. This, of course, means that even those of us who don't live in Japan and can't afford to import such a magazine are able to read some good manga in Japanese. At the very least Weekly Shounen Magazine and Monthly Shounen Magazine both have furigana above (or next to) every single Kanji, which makes those manga more beginner-friendly (even if there are some words that one may have to look up).

The good news is that since this is Kodansha posting the manga themselves, that means this way of reading manga online is perfectly legal (the chapters posted are intended as "samples" or "appetizers" after all). The bad news is, aside from Chapter 1 of each story, chapters only stay available for 3 weeks at a time (and they only come up 3 weeks after being published in printing in Japan). Even so, it's a really fun way to practice reading Japanese. I know my own reading-speed has increased a lot in just a few weeks.

Here's a link to the full list of Shounen Magazine series you can read online for free (or at least samples): https://pocket.shonenmagazine.com/series

I know other of Kodansha's manga magazines also post their series online, but I don't know how many of them have furigana over all the Kanji for those of us who can't read Kanji fluently...

I hope you will have as much fun practicing reading Japanese with manga as I do! :)
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