Novels Will Make You Fluent in Japanese

[@atomicnarration1740]

20:20 I recommend the novel I Am a Cat (吾輩は猫である) by Natsume Sōseki. It’s a classic often assigned to Japanese schoolchildren (although it is roughly 600 pages lol). The story is told from the perspective of a teacher’s house cat, who narrates in a very dignified manner. The narrator’s personal pronoun, 吾輩 (wagahai), is archaic and rarely used in modern Japan. However due to the book’s influence, it continues to be used in fiction, usually by animal characters who are arrogant or dignified (ex. Bowser from Mario and Morgana from Persona 5 both use 吾輩)

[@CapNemoSan]

When the world needed him most, he returned. メリークリスマストレントン

[@Hikarochan]

My penguin goat is back! Glad he returned this winter season! 🎉

[@ExplosiveBrohoof]

15:15 -- Hope this doesn't cause this video to get axed. I've gone on ahead and archived this video anyway just in case, since I need all the resources I can get learning this language. Your videos have motivated me to start really learning Japanese. I'm a week or so in, so it's too soon to tell if those 200 episodes of Nihongo con Teppei that I've listened to so far have done anything to help my comprehension, because ... well, I still don't understand 99% of it. But my motivation hasn't wavered yet, which is a good sign! Haven't missed a day of Anki, and I'm slowly chipping away at Tae Kim's guide to learn the grammatical basics. I'll check in again when you upload your next video to see how much progress I've made. Thanks for telling me I can do this.

[@katsukira8451]

THE GOAT IS BACK

[@FlansyLinny]

My favorite medium for learning Japanese is visual novels. It’s like anime and novels put together.

[@DelgaDude]

Thank you for making these guide type videos. I am still only a beginner but what I thought was impossible now seems just like a matter of time due to your amazing videos guiding me through it. Can't wait for more content.

[@lennynjenga5696]

The king is back

[@ltsKenzie]

I found this channel a month ago and this channel genuinely gives me high hopes about learning new languages

[@DeckardManc85]

Great video, I just finished my 6th Novel/Light Novel of the year, 変な家 and I feel like reading has really fast tracked my Japanese. I started with 同じ夢を見ていた which took a while to get through at the time and out of interest, I went back and reread the first chapter recently. It was laughably easy despite being such a big struggle at the time (those long sentences were scary!). As mentioned in this video, I aim for an hours reading everyday and plan on continuing this for the foreseeable future. Great to see you back!

[@BigM1330]

This penguin is the reason why i started learning. Thanks bro Merry Christmas

[@Nikkiipo-o5f]

i love to binge watch ur videos and have found myself slowly starting to genuinely learn japanese after multiple failed attempts at different languages. i’m definitely moving slow but i’m still moving thank you!! 💕💕

[@meowiguess903]

Reading helps A LOT, I learned English by reading novels and fan fictions. I don't even care about grammar at that point, if I didn't understand a word, I would search for it's meaning, write it down and make some sentences with it or if I'm lazy I will just search for sentences on the internet

[@DanilND]

I just bought all the available Junior Bunko for Ascendance of a Bookworm (本好きの下克上) to try and read them. I went for the Junior Bunko version since they are like half the length of the normal ones and have hiragana above every kanji so it would be easier to look words up and familiarize myself with other readings of kanjis I know. Also, if you haven't read the series, I 100% recommend it to you.

[@Blue-rr5zp]

Glad to see you're back! Always love your content

[@guyk768]

That's for all the videos, Trenton. Hope you and everyone have a very Merry Christmas and a healthy and prosperous New Year in 2025.

[@viviansytsui]

You inspired me to start learning Japanese in hopes of a deeper appreciation for the culture when I visit Japan again. I've been eagerly awaiting your return! Great video once again! Merry Christmas!

[@Bainna]

He just wanted to use his Santa art thats why he applauded in December

[@grayfoxjaguer]

plz keep em coming your videos inspire me to keep the eternal grind of learning nihongo!

[@guyk768]

20:20 I highly recommend the diving manga Amanchu! is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kozue Amano. It's about Futaba Ooki, a shy girl who just moved in from the city to the oceanside town of Shizuoka, meets Hikari Kohinata, an erratic girl who loves scuba diving. Together, they join their school's Diving Club and discover the joys of underwater exploration.

[@calemonger9233]

Thats crazy i was just rewatching your videos today and wondered where you've been these past 2 months

[@TheMurkyCoylsph]

Yessssss keen for the video, found you recently and was sad it'd been a while since you last uploaded so glad to see it so soon!

[@Icer48]

Return of the GOAT

[@Alcatexcl]

yo im so happy to see that Trenton has posted bc his videos have already helped me and I've barely started learning this language, merry christmas トレントン

[@dronix6624]

Been waiting for you to come back!!

[@carolineneh2791]

Hey man been watching your japanese tutorials for a while now and gotta say I really love them and they are REALLY REALLY helpful and I'm glad to know you're back also love your christmas version of your avatar BTW

[@todeskoenig]

Always a good day when Trenton uploads

[@dahlialang]

I just found your channel like a week ago and watched all your videos in like two days😅 It’s been very helpful! Thank you!!

[@P.diddy123-k6c]

the osu! legend is back, i will never forget you

[@philipdavis7521]

Great overview and I like your honesty about how much you've read. Krashen of course considers reading the no.1 way to expand your vocabulary. I wonder what you think about non-fiction in Japanese? In practising French I find non-fiction on topics I'm interested in much easier to read than fiction, maybe because I'm just more interested in it. btw, I find satori reader an excellent way to take the first steps into reading. Its so much more user friendly than any alternative, including Lingq, Storylearning, etc.

[@nefernaly7583]

It's pretty effective.​ I personally started reading novels two months into studying, and now, nine months in, I can read almost anything as long as I can look up words every now and then. At the beginning, it was pretty tough, but it paid off big. though, I neglected my listening a lot, so rn there is a huge imbalance in my language skills​

[@dani-ou4uu]

yayyy i love your videos so much, welcome back !! happy holidays to you and your loved ones

[@DairokutenHajun]

Welcome back.

[@machinehorrific]

if you think about it, streamed tabletop rpg sections combine both the everyday spoken language and the description and narration of novels so theyre probably also a really good resource

[@alite_2200]

YOU'RE BACK!!! 😭👍

[@esoes835]

Oh man you are the best for using Iroduku Sekai in ur video

[@Ashikuあしく]

YES THIS IS THE BEST CHRISTMAS GIFT EVER

[@DavidOnYT04]

Three days of happiness is one of the best stories i've ever read

[@ignorantia-yt]

What a christmas present!❤

[@CalvinPDX]

Awesome new video! Very excited to see what you have to say about novels. On the topic of Anki, unfortunately, the video setup didn't work for me, even after importing the notes. It seems like Jitendex was missing very basic kanji (like for "high" or "accompanying") and for that reason I couldn't really use it. Hopefully I can find other dictionaries or notes to get around it. Thanks again for these videos! They've been immensely helpful!

[@coldcallerloopy]

Recently on a cruise I found a book called "Plane Insanity" by Elliott Hester translated into Japanese. It looks extremely difficult and I have 0 interest currently getting into novels since I'm still focusing on building my vocabulary and speech, but this it's super cool to get some advice I can use in the future. いつもありがとうございます！！

[@Moonlyte_Music]

One of my favourite authors is Haruki Murkami and my dream would be to read one of his novels in the original one day. Or maybe all of them?! But that is an extremely distant goal these days. I just finished his latest "The City and Its Uncertain Walls" and it was beautiful and heartbreaking. I recommend ❤

[@roufas7595]

A lot of parallels with video games too, specially JRPGs that can be very dense on text.

[@Ebrulia]

You are like the delusional voice in my head but a version of it that actually makes sense

[@rodthedigger2902]

Great video!

[@zomt420]

I recommend YomiNinja as OCR, as it has yomitan integrated and you dont need a browser window or anything

[@copeul7214]

【化物語】 is the start of one of my favorite light novel series; it will definitely give you a skill check😂

[@thesunrising4982]

It's a (rather short) manga series 'Mermaid Scales and the town of sand' but the art style is so beautiful and the story's so ,💔❤. I've only read their books in translation but Banana Yoshimoto' and Mieko Kawakami are probably my all-time favourite writers. As for the classics, I've enjoyed Junichiro Tanizaki's works the most. Hope I'll get to read them in Japanese one day

[@lightleviathan1]

thanks for reminding me to lock in 🙏

[@11thNakama]

Merry Christmas ペンギンさん！🎄

[@darkspire6710]

I have the entire Monogatari series by Nisioisin in physical copies, and I really need to pick up the online versions. Using the "Japanese" dictionary app and trying to write the characters 20 times to look them up is just such a pain in the ass. Thanks for providing resources for use. I'm also reading the visual novel Hirurashi No Naku Koro Ni, and that's going to be a real struggle if I were to guess. Might swap over to Steins:gate instead.

[@yoshi1039]

日本から失礼します。 いつも素晴らしいアドバイスと聞き取りやすい発音の音声をありがとうございます。 私は英語を勉強しているんですが、 リーディングが苦手なので、楽しく続けられる練習方法を探していました。 もし良かったら、英語で書かれた小説で勉強に使えそうな物を教えて下さい。 TOEICは600点位で、あまり難しい文章は読めません😂

[@Eternal-Security]

The santa outfit is top. Much dapper. スゲー Also, I found this to be the case for me as well. In regard to my Christian faith, I figured I would start with the NT as my first book. There are multiple versions using strict written language and colloquial language. The bible apps usually have a few versions that are accompanied by full audiobook. All free btw. My japanese got way better, much faster. Granted, there some dated language and very niche religious language in the Bible. But that's what I was personally looking for.

[@HundoRaichu]

how do people possibly reach such a high level? i planned to take up japanese eventually, but ive been focused on learning spanish on and off since about 2018. im frustrated at myself for not being fluent or understanding much yet. it makes me think if its going to take 20 years of 8000 hours a day of immersion i may as well just invest that time into something else

[@danielfreezer8469]

What is your motivation?

[@DanilND]

No se rinda, si se va a poder, ya sea español o japonés. Sólo hay que encontrar la motivación adecuada.

[@HundoRaichu]

@@danielfreezer8469 good question. I'm not sure. I wanted to be able to speak to my friends in Spanish and prove (to myself, not other people) that it's possible to pick up a 2nd language. At this point my motivation is sheer frustration of not being further ahead of where I am

[@Seacle14]

@@HundoRaichuDon't be so hard on yourself. I won't speak for you but for me frustration would not be an effective motivator. Positive emotions work much better. Are there things you care deeply about in the target language? Are there things you cannot access in your currently known languages? These are the things that have kept me going with Japanese. Best of luck to you!

[@cmalate]

Konichiwa 👋

[@sesburg]

最近日本語 con Teppeiたくさん聞きました。結構楽しいですね. 韓国語もできるから、すこし簡単です。

[@Jellyjishyunderthesea]

HORRRRAAYYYY!!!!!!

[@ThisMarv]

I wish as I was as good, quick and consistent with studying Japanese as I am with watching videos from this penguin

[@incognitoknight2250]

I'm currently trying to play RPGs in japanese to help with my studies. I'll probably never use words like 囚人, 砦 or 迷宮 in real-life conversations, but it's something... I hope to reach "novel level" one day.

[@astropgn]

So, this advice is for those who already know japanese at some level, not someone who is starting to learn. He mentioned on the video, but it is important to note this. Especially because in his past videos he argued that you should dive into the language as much as possible even though you don't know it. Flooding yourself with content. But I think it is impossible and counter productive to dive into japanese text without even knowing how to read at least some good portion of characters. Otherwise your eyes will see a symbol, but you won't associate this symbol with anything. Does it have one syllable, two? Do you know the katakana/hiragana for it? I am learning chinese and it is worse because they don't have an alphabet even, it is all characters. I really wanted to dive in blindly, but it doesn't seem fit.

[@Loink-Heika]

my goat

[@EnglishImmersion-or4gj]

3:43トレントンってもしかしてKevin's English Room Podcastも聴いてるのかな

[@louiebr7620]

He returned...

[@CooldownCentral]

omg i love 汐音！

[@ZachariahMicallef]

Read The Tatami Galaxy, or in Japanese 四畳半神話体系 (I love learning Japanese; I get to see how different the localisations are) This is a really funny book. Yet also incredibly profound and heart breaking at the same time.

[@Nenadior]

Isn't it full of puns and stuff? Looks hard

[@alexandrkiriya7762]

Good thing that I have about 60 visual novels in my to read list

[@Drizzos]

You could always just read web novels rather than light novels, they will be less refined than the LN since they don't have an publisher or proof reader, but they are completely free. And if u find one that's translated you can read 1ch in jp first, then read it in eng and make light comparison if there is something u wondered about and then read it like that.

[@Seacle14]

The day I finish Umineko in Japanese I will consider studying to be over.

[@playalot86]

MY BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOY!

[@kineticmeow9242]

Not a novel, but I highly recommend everyone read 狼とリボルバー (Wolf and Revolver) it's a really good manga!!! (It's a story where werewolves can disguise themselves as humans and their werewolf form is a wolf skeleton! It's really cool!)

[@01wishiata76]

Santa outfit trenton is amazing lol

[@Sr_mjw]

You help me so much ❤🇧🇷

[@YouTubeHandleDesu]

Trenton the throat goat

[@Aeroxima]

I'm still only at 4 minutes in, but I have to say real quick, it reminds me of somebody who learned English as a second language, and apparently largely through reading particular kinds of things. Her language was pretty strange sounding, a mix of ESL and being overly poetic (which doesn't come across as well when mixed with ESL, like sprinkling sugar on something not very tasty). Just the ESL alone would have sounded better than mixing in literary and poetic phrasings. With that, I have to say I'm hesitant but keeping my ears open for the rest of the video. It just might be something I wait till later on, to brush up rather than before having basic conversations past "hi, how are you?" Edit: I suppose we're on the same page there. (See what I did there? Did you see the thing I did??) I'll also say, even with English (as a first language), reading stuff above my comprehension level I feel really kicked things up a level, back in the day. I'm not really big into reading, but just like 1-4 books did wonders, I feel like. (Also FFXIV, which has pretty advanced English, but also some fantasy/archaic stuff. I must needs remember not to say must needs, now.)

[@Incon_lais]

TRENTON!!!!!!!!!!

[@quinnibraheem3725]

JUST IN TIME (I just bought novels)

[@donkeyhota.dontflamingo9294]

Trenton, I have a question for you: At this moment, when you read a novel, how many new words you come across per page on average? And how many word families have you learnt with anki to be able to get to that level of reading comprehension?

[@Yuma700_0]

He’s bak guyz. Time 2 lern japan. 😎😱😱

[@costelinha1867]

"Are visual novels good for learning" Trenton: "Yeah, they're fine, i gu... wait, what are you doing?" The other person: Furiously downloading the entire japanese catalogue of the Ace Attorney series and the entire NEC PC98 library. (yes, even though a lot of those PC98 VN's are NSFW, this doesn't seem to phase bob.... assuming he's grabbing those for actual reading purporses and not just for... you know...) Jokes aside I've been mostly playing games to learn, mainly RPGs...

[@vytah]

Which would be ironic, as both Ace Attorney and old PC 98 titles are hard to attach a texthooker for easier word lookups. A better choice is finding a game made in any common modern-ish engine.

[@costelinha1867]

@@vytah True, however, you can still use stuff like Yomininja to basically acheive the same effect as having an OCR browser extension like Yomitan on your browser, like hovering text to look up definitions and all. I use that for PC98 games and it can work relatively well if you're willing to tweak yomininja a bit. However, besides that, I still agree with what you're saying, it's just much easier to just use a text hooker on a modern game, I just use yomininja with pc98 games because... well... I don't usually play modern games that much. Also, isn't the steam version of Ace Attorney literally made in Unity? Can't you use text hooker on that?

[@vytah]

@@costelinha1867 Good question, I haven't tried hooking the remastered AA games yet. Maybe I should, I've played AA4 in English, I could replay it in Japanese. But from the context, I assumed downloading DS roms of the games, which would be pretty tricky to hook.

[@kaspian4540]

Dos somvane know if boochi the rock have a novel it was bast on? Sory I have dysleksia

[@gawk...]

Where can you watch anime with Japanese subtitles? Also, websites I find that do have subs don't allow you to select them and copy it into a dictionary or anki, so are there better websites I should be using?

[@flowingtimer]

How do I start reading at all?? I can't really memorize the letters and tell what words they are.

[@greggaines3482]

If anyone has Japanese slice of life manga recommendations that do not involve School life (any school life), work life depression, children or love romance I'd really appreciate it a lot.

[@ElmoOnice]

any chance you'll make a video- giving tips of what are the most efficient ways to pass each of the JLPTs? i'm corrently 110 days into studying, but i find it hard to get what it takes to completle master JLPT-5. like, on certain apps i already passed it, but then i go on youtube and discover i'm kinda not even close... it's honestly so confusing...

[@トレントン]

Unless you have an important reason for needing to take it, I would recommend not particularly studying for it and just focus on learning real Japanese. Passing JLPT doesn't mean your good at Japanese, but if you're good at Japanese you can pass JLPT.

[@wordman9371]

crimas penguim

[@misscreepyhome]

dude i need someone like u in korean language 😢

[@danielfreezer8469]

What do you need exactly?

[@misscreepyhome]

@danielfreezer8469 Useful resources such as a dictionary or sites for mining sentences or for reading novels, books or audiobooks

[@ganbare-gu4dc]

Just curious. Do you know about tmw, djt, or refold?

[@Nenadior]

3:54 - what is this anime?

[@damga123]

It's 色づく世界の明日から

[@denjakeln]

フィンランドからこんにちは！

[@Nenadior]

How did you do that on 5:13?

[@cyrus_traeh]

Same I want to know as well

[@トレントン]

It's a popup dictionary I linked the video where I show how to set it up in the description

[@Yuma700_0]

Mr penguin, iz it ok 4 vizual novvellz??1?1?1?11

[@stopdropNDtroll]

Do you give online lessons ?

[@abhigyanraj7302]

Any Monagatari readers.

[@joshuwottdelta]

I want to learn korean solely for reading, but other than that, i'm not interested in anything else. kdrama's, the culture, the food... it's so hard to actually want to learn :/

[@Funnyvideosonyoutube]

Ayyy

[@Funnyvideosonyoutube]

Bro I been watching you and you have helped me a lot I have rewatched your video to fully understand them!

[@Melodiesimp]

im seriously wondering, why is there a jappanese writing system with only like 100 characters that everyone knows, and still they use kanji?

[@kinge8098]

To differentiate better when it comes to reading. There are videos on it, basically there would be a lot of reoccurring characters that just makes the language tedious. Which in my opinion the language is built upon saying as little as possible while still getting your point across.

[@theemeraldingot6327]

Japanese is very phonetically limited, such that they have a lot of something called a "homophone", or a same sound word. Basically, this means that many words that mean different things use the same exact sounds. It’s like the difference between tea (the drink) and tee (the thing used to hold a golf ball). Thankfully, because Japanese is so context sensitive, spoken Japanese doesn’t present so many problems when it comes to words that are spoken the same but mean different things. With written Japanese however, which lacks the available nuance of a speaking partner, and instead must present you with only words, it’s much more difficult for you to understand what words mean, even when grammar or the wider context of the written material gives you SOME context. You’re still reliant on the written word. That’s where kanji comes in. If you have, say, a single set of sounds (let’s say for the sake of the argument the English word "hive"), but that sound can have multiple completely different meanings as completely unrelated words, then maybe it would be more useful to portray the word as a symbol, rather than a set of ambiguous phonetic characters, right? Take, for instance, the sentence "the presence of the hives makes my skin crawl." Just looking at that sentence in isolation you have no way of knowing if the word hives here means bee hives or the skin condition. Thankfully in English there aren’t a lot of homophones, but in Japanese there are A LOT. Way more than in English, so some system is needed to ensure that you know what’s being talked about. Kanji is Japanese’s solution to this problem. Imagine if instead of the word Hives, you put a symbol there for the word "hive" and then added an S at the end. Instead of just one symbol, you could have a different symbol for each meaning of "Hive", so for the Hives as in bee hives you could use the symbol of a bee, and for the word hives as in the skin rash you could use the symbol of a flat surface with bumps on it. These symbols are both pronounced the same way, but the use of the symbols leads to less confusion. Does that make sense? Using hiragana and katakana only to read adult level Japanese would be a living nightmare.

[@theemeraldingot6327]

Japanese is very phonetically limited, such that they have a lot of something called a "homophone", or a same sound word. Basically, this means that many words that mean different things use the same exact sounds. It’s like the difference between tea (the drink) and tee (the thing used to hold a golf ball). Thankfully, because Japanese is so context sensitive, spoken Japanese doesn’t present so many problems when it comes to words that are spoken the same but mean different things. With written Japanese however, which lacks the available nuance of a speaking partner, and instead must present you with only words, it’s much more difficult for you to understand what words mean, even when grammar or the wider context of the written material gives you SOME context. You’re still reliant on the written word. That’s where kanji comes in. If you have, say, a single set of sounds (let’s say for the sake of the argument the English word "hive"), but that sound can have multiple completely different meanings as completely unrelated words, then maybe it would be more useful to portray the word as a symbol, rather than a set of ambiguous phonetic characters, right? Take, for instance, the sentence "the presence of the hives makes my skin crawl." Just looking at that sentence in isolation you have no way of knowing if the word hives here means bee hives or the skin condition. Thankfully in English there aren’t a lot of homophones, but in Japanese there are A LOT. Way more than in English, so some system is needed to ensure that you know what’s being talked about. Kanji is Japanese’s solution to this problem. Imagine if instead of the word Hives, you put a symbol there for the word "hive" and then added an S at the end. Instead of just one symbol, you could have a different symbol for each meaning of "Hive", so for the Hives as in bee hives you could use the symbol of a bee, and for the word hives as in the skin rash you could use the symbol of a flat surface with bumps on it. These symbols are both pronounced the same way, but the use of the symbols leads to less confusion. Does that make sense? Using hiragana and katakana only to read adult level Japanese would be a living nightmare.

[@Zorgot.]

for me, it is noticeably harder to read kana only japanese sentences. when you're at the point where you know the kanji of the sentences you're reading, you just read it faster and easier and understand it faster than if it was all kana only

[@thejuiceweasel]

It could work. Korean does it, it basically has 24 "letters" and the language works quite similarly to Japanese. However, you really have to understand the context, because 車, 次 and 茶 are all just 차. Plus, hangeul is way more easily readable than kana.

[@luni_dam]

First🎉

[@Rob-ko9vm]

Thanks for cutting through the bullshit, T.

[@keinin_nihongo]

Yeah, you are absolutely right. I did learn english ONLY reading light novels. Will learn japanese the same way. Thanks for the web kindle reader recommendation!

[@dude..uhh0]

Noodles