How do you approach longer novels? I am reading Tale of Genji,

the best way is to write something between breaks
some summary or a list of characters

i believe genji has a whole bunch of characters

>>7615036
Reading in the original language. Heian period Classical Japanese is beautiful.

>>7615049
In between the chapters in my copy there are lists of what characters appear in the chapter.
Most of them are refereed to using their social rank only, so it can be confusing.
>>7615057
I can barely read Kawabata, Middle Japanese is far beyond my capability.

>>7615057
Even actual Japanese people read Japanese translations of modern English translations, so... you're full of shit.

>>7615107
Most Japanese people can't read Mishima.

>>7615107
No shit that most people aren't into Classical Japanese. But for me it's a hobby, aside from the more serious studies of contemporary Japanese.

>>7615057
>Heian period Classical Japanese is beautiful
No it isn't

>>7615165
Why not?

>>7615171
Because it's a fucking mess to read.

>>7615174
I dunno, I really like the wago-centric vocabulary.

Here is the first chapter of Genji read in the original language.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jEWDiPlxXU

>>7615203
If you're into that stuff, yeah. It's not as different as Middle English is from Modern, but it's quite a drag for me.

>>7615204
Well, that diction is definetly not something I'm into.

>>7615109
Really? I heard he had a way of choosing pretentious and even antiquated characters for common words in his writing style, but I didn't know it was that bad.

>>7615036
Isnt ToG really boring and even harder to follow than war and peace.

>>7615204
全然わかなかった :(

>>7615325
わからなかった*

>>7615204
The speaker is shit

Step 1: take a long novel

Step 2: read it

Step 3: finish reading it

wooooooooooow

>>7615366
I'm talking like a silly animu gurl

>>7615279
The very fact that you called pretentious just means you're full of shit and don't really know what you're talking about.

>>7615036
>Tale of Genji
>longer novels
Wew lad

>>7615916
Calm down faggot, it was just something I read somewhere.

>>7615325
僕も

>>7615279
Well, It's a bit exagerated, but most people in japan would need to read with kanji dictionaries in order to read it because he wrote with kanji that most people would not have known even back in the fifties.