Do you give up reading japanese books or how do you study?

Question

I have a bunch of books.. and can't even read the intro because i have to first find a bunch of kanji compounds in the dictionary. it makes me wanna give up cause i have like 10 books but i won't give up. My books are interesting about Politics, society etc. and i can understand them if i know the Kanji.. but there's so many kanji compounds i don't understand....is it just inevitable for non natives to have to do a bunch of research prior to reading only one page of a book? or should i learn all kanji compounds i can possibly learn prior to reading any books, so that when i start reading i will not be stuck. i have 4 years of study but haven't studied in a long time and didn't ever learn much kanji.

Answer 1

You might try findings some Japanese graded readers to build up your reading skills, though they won't likely have a lot of Kanji in them. Would you really understand these books if they were written completely in Kana? If that's the case, I would get a heck of a lot of Kanji flashcards. Study a lot, then try to read without trying to grasp the meaning perfectly. You know, just get the basic meaning. Then read them again later.

Answer 2

i think if you can memorize about 1500 kanji component. you should be totally fine. unfortunately, kanji is the most difficult component of the japanese language.. and yea.. you just have to memorize them.
no other way...

PS: think of it this way.. learning Kanji makes you learn a bit chinese (although they have far more characters than Japanese.. but, in a sense you kinda learn 2 languages at the same time.. isn't it cool?)

Answer 3

I think you should start off by reading easier books. Once you get comfortable reading those, you can start building up to more advanced books.

If you shoot straight to the advanced books, you'll just be frustrated because you'll feel like you have to look up every other word.

Get easier books, so you can start building up your reading vocabulary. Then progress up to these books you currently have.