Introduction
This site is intended to help you teach yourself how to read
Japanese manga. In Japanese. With no prior experience. It
might seem impossible, but really it's just a matter of working
consistently every day a little bit at a time.
First let me comment on the name of the site. It derives from
the habit of Linux developers to write documents for how to do
things that nobody knows how to do. Usually these things seem
to be horribly complicated to the uninitiated, but once the
mysteries are revealed it turns out to be fairly simple. These
documents are called HOWTOs. I dedicate this HOWTO to the
people who saved me hours of frustration in the past.
Like the Linux HOWTOs of old, I hope this HOWTO will remove the
cloud of mystery from learning the Japanese language and help
you to read manga in its original form. Please be warned,
however, that this HOWTO is geared specifically to reading
manga. The intent is that by the time you have finished
this guide you will be able to pick up a Japanese manga with
furigana and read it with the aid of a dictionary.
This guide will not teach you how to speak Japanese.
That is a much broader and more difficult subject. However, I
will endeavour to ensure that everything covered here will be
supplemental to the cause of learning Japanese. In other words,
it should help you with your general Japanese studies if you
wish to pursue them. It also won't harm them.
Also be warned that this guide will take time and effort to
complete. You will have to spend roughly 30 minutes every day
working on your manga. Since we will be making use of some
computer software to help us on our journey, all of that time
will be in front of the computer. It is expected that it will
take roughly a year to complete this guide.
As I have not yet finished writing the guide, I will be helping
the first set of people as I go. Keep in mind that my time
estimates are rough. At the moment I don't really know exactly
how long it will take. But I think 30 minutes a day is a decent
estimate to begin with.
Requirements
In order to follow along with this HOWTO, you will require a few
things. The requirements are minimal though. They are:
- Manga (of course!)
- A computer
- Some software
The manga we will be using in the HOWTO is called
Mahoraba. In
my opinion, it is a cute story that is appropriate for all ages.
However, in order to cover my butt I highly recommend reading
the Wikipedia description linked above. If you are a child and
are unsure if the material is suitable for you, make sure that
you speak to your parents about it. Since different people and
different cultures have different values, I can't determine
ahead of time if you might get offended by this material (but I
would give it to my kids if I had any).
I expect you to buy this manga. This is the one and only place
in this guide where I will ask you to spend money. Even though
it is possible to find scanned versions of this book on the
internet, please support the author and distributors of the
book. In the long run this will help everybody. I will be
quoting from the book fairly often (especially at the
beginning), but eventually you will need to buy this book.
The software that we will be using runs on Windows, Mac OSX and
Un*x-like operating systems including GNU/Linux and Free BSD.
Since I only have a Linux box at the moment, my installation
instructions will leave a little bit to be desired. But if you
have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me. All of the
software we will be using is
free
software. Not only does this mean you won't have to pay for
it, but if you read the information at the link you will
discover other things you can do with it.
We will be installing software later, but there are a few basics
that need to be fulfilled before we begin. First make sure that
the following strings look the same (without the differences in
the fonts):
まほらば
Also, this guide makes heavy use of stylesheets to look good.
If your browser doesn't support styles, the guide will look
pretty ugly. To fix the problem, you can upgrade to
Firefox.
