Learning Japanese requires time and patience! Some people turn to means like watching animes and doramas or reading mangas to learn Japanese. These 2 topics have already been covered on the site, and we recommend that you read them as a complement to this article. In today's article, we will give you one more tip for studying Japanese, this time using a Light Novel.
Light Novel is a Japanese Book that follows light stories in the style of mangas, most containing romance or a very captivating plot. Many Light Novels end up becoming animes, attracting people's interest.
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How to get a Light Novel?
One of the biggest challenges of using a Light Novel for studying is having one. If you don’t live in Japan, you need to order it through some websites. Not even at Anime Events in Brazil is it easy to find Light Novels in Japanese.

Another option is to read online the free webnovels made available by some authors, but this comes with many limitations. It’s important to remember that Light Novel are books written for young adults, so most of them have little furigana and are full of kanji (ideograms). Therefore, we make it clear that to study Japanese using light novels, it is necessary to have a basic knowledge of the language and a lot of patience.
Choosing and Familiarizing with the Light Novel
A large number of light novels depict stories filled with fiction, magic, or quite complex themes. However, the best stories for studying Japanese are always those that present something everyday. So, prefer works that portray the daily lives of certain characters.
Do not look for works like: Monogatari Series, Durarara, and Sword Art Online. This is because they have a theme very distant from everyday things, and moreover, they present complex language.
We also recommend that you choose short Light Novels, or ones that are already complete. You will take a long time to read and study them, and you might feel uncomfortable waiting 6 months for a new volume to be released. You might also end up rushing to finish the story quickly, hindering your study results.
There are plenty of Light Novels for you to choose from, try to pick something that suits you. Perhaps choosing a work that you have already watched the anime may make it easier to understand the story and the dialogues of the book.

Studying light novels
A chapter of a light novel usually has around 5000 to 7000 words. A complete volume (book) usually has 40,000 words and is generally divided into 5 chapters, about 200 pages long.
Light novels have simple and short dialogues, they do not usually have very long dialogues and there are also few exceptions in light novels that use complex lines.
Light novels, for the most part, use more hiragana and katakana, while kanji make up about 30% of a light novel. And about 5% of these kanji have furigana. Light novels are not like in mangas, where the “shounen” genre always has furigana. But still, the reading is quite simple.
When reading a Light Novel, aim to have fun and not to learn. You should learn Japanese in a natural and automatic way, reading light novels will help you do that.
Here are some tips for you to study the right way:
Don't read what you don't know. – If you started a Light Novel, and you are all the time chasing meanings in the dictionary. We recommend choosing another Light Novel at your level. You will only delay your learning, and you will not be able to memorize anything.
Read again. – If you come across a word or phrase that you know, read it again. The more you repeat, the harder it will be to forget, and the faster your reading will be.
Make reading short and fun. – You will only benefit from reading the Light Novel if you find it fun. Many have difficulty or laziness to read, for people like that, it is recommended to read a little so as not to get boring or not to strain the mind.
Copy Phrases. - If you use anki or another memorization tool, copy the sentences and meanings that you find interesting to the app. Also, use a notebook to write down the sentences if you intend to practice writing.

Problems when studying using Light Novel
You can use Light Novels to improve your Japanese learning, but we do not recommend using these books as your main tool for studying the language. Here's why studying Light Novels can be risky for your learning if done incorrectly:
- The Light Novel is full of slang and abbreviations. Authors also write however they want, using kanji in the wrong places or that are not necessary. Some even swallow particles, and completely disregard the rules of Japanese. So be careful when using it as a study source;
- A Japanese student should focus on maintaining dialogues, listening to audios and learning simple sentences. Using reading books can become a very slow and arduous process. So if you want to reach fluency quickly, Light Novel is not the best option;
- As mentioned in the article, a light novel contains several new and unknown kanji characters. It is recommended to have at least an N4 level to understand 40% of the book. Some students spent around half a year to understand one volume of a Light Novel.
What do I do to study Light Novel?
Despite the difficulties, don't get discouraged. I didn't find it that hard to study a Light Novel. I already did this here on the site using a excerpt from the Web Novel of Re:Zero.
Using the web novel, I selected and copied the excerpt I wanted to study, separating all the phrases and sentences, leaving a large space between them. In this space, I place the reading in romaji or hiragana.
I select word by word from the sentence and search for its meaning using various online dictionaries like Jisho, Google. In addition, I search for the word on Google Images to gain a better understanding. Then I gather all the meanings of the words and try to understand the meaning of the sentence.
Hope these tips help you Japanese students!