I passed 1-kyuu! Now what?
I have been studying Japanese for about nine or ten years now. This year I passed 1-kyuu of the JLPT on my first try! So, yay! But I still don't feel all that "fluent," and I'm wondering where to go from here.
I read a fair amount, but it's mostly pretty light fiction, like Murakami Haruki, Yoshimoto Banana, that kind of thing. I have tried reading older authors (Mishima, Mori Ogai, Soseki, Tanizaki) but I frequently give up because they're hard. I would love some suggestions that are somewhere in the middle!
I live in New York City, so I do have access to Japanese bookstores and DVDs and TV. But I don't have any intention of living in Japan or getting a job with a Japanese company in the near future.
If I had to pinpoint a specific goal, I'd really like to be able to read all kinds of literature in Japanese, including classical Japanese, but I think I would need to go back to school for that, and I'm not ready to do that yet. I would like to improve my Japanese enough that if I decide to get a PhD ten years from now, I'm able to do a lot of primary-source research without getting bogged down.
Anyway, thank you for any suggestions!
I read a fair amount, but it's mostly pretty light fiction, like Murakami Haruki, Yoshimoto Banana, that kind of thing. I have tried reading older authors (Mishima, Mori Ogai, Soseki, Tanizaki) but I frequently give up because they're hard. I would love some suggestions that are somewhere in the middle!
I live in New York City, so I do have access to Japanese bookstores and DVDs and TV. But I don't have any intention of living in Japan or getting a job with a Japanese company in the near future.
If I had to pinpoint a specific goal, I'd really like to be able to read all kinds of literature in Japanese, including classical Japanese, but I think I would need to go back to school for that, and I'm not ready to do that yet. I would like to improve my Japanese enough that if I decide to get a PhD ten years from now, I'm able to do a lot of primary-source research without getting bogged down.
Anyway, thank you for any suggestions!