よつばと!(Yotsuba to!) is often said to be one of the best manga for beginners learning Japanese, but is it really? I wanted to take a close look at the first volume of Yotsuba to! and how useful reading it really is for learners.
A little background…
Yotsuba to! was the first manga in Japanese I read many, many, many, maaany years ago. I picked it up because so many people recommended it for first time learners. But I remember it being difficult and taking me a long time to get through. Since then I bought every single volume and have read them all, but hadn’t re-read them since. Until now, at least.
Yotsuba to! is a manga about a five-year-old called Yotsuba who moves to a new house with her dad. There’s no plot but short episodic stories about Yotsuba’s daily life—interacting with her dad, their family friend Jumbo, and her new neighbors.
It’s a cute, funny slice-of-life story and I highly recommend it if you enjoy manga in general. If you’re studying Japanese though…
How is Yotsuba to! good for beginners?
Yotsube to! is Accessible and Fun
I think graded readers are great for people who have just started learning Japanese, but not everyone likes them. The simple and sparse vocabulary can mean stories are very dry and many people I know get bored with them quickly.
Yotsuba to! on the other hand is a lot more fun and interesting. The episodes are funny and charming, which keep you engaged, but the vocabulary is still accessible to beginners.
It Has Commonly Used Vocabulary
One of the great things about Yotsuba to! is its slice-of-life setting. When you start learning Japanese you begin with the most commonly used vocabulary; basic verbs like いく “to go”, はしる “to run”, and common nouns like ちち “dad”, いえ “house”, and ひと “person”. The types of vocabulary you use in daily life.
Manga like Naruto or My Hero Academia aren’t as useful for beginners because they include a lot of uncommon vocabulary. Verbs like きょうそうする “to compete”, ちょうせんする “to challenge”, and nouns like ぎせい “sacrifice”. This vocabulary is useful to know if you enjoy reading manga and watching anime, but they’re not so useful for daily conversation.
You can read materials with these more difficult vocabulary if you want, but it can be a challenge for beginners. \it takes more time to look up what’s being said which can be demotivating.
Yotsuba to!, however, strikes a good balance with accessible vocabulary you’ve probably studied, but will also use vocabulary you might not have come across in your studies.
This isn’t to say Yotsuba to! doesn’t use more advanced vocabulary. But they’re not as frequent and the ones that do appear are ones you’re likely to come across often in Japanese. Such as 地球温暖化(ちきゅうおんだんか)”global climate change”, which is a word that frequently comes up in texts or the news. These advanced words are scattered between enough easy vocabulary that it doesn’t overwhelm the reader.
The Conversations Are Realistic
The thing I love about Yotsuba to! is how realistic the conversations are. There’s nothing special about them, they’re just conversations you’ll likely come across if you live in Japan.
When Yotsuba’s dad first meets their neighbor Ayase she stops to ask him if they just moved in and introduces herself. She uses polite Japanese because he’s older, while he starts to use polite and then changes to slightly more casual language.
Ayase introduces herself with あやせともうします “I am Ayase” which is more polite than あやせです “I’m Ayase”. And she ends her introduction with よろしくおねがいします “It’s nice to meet you” where as Yotsuba’s dad responds with a more casual よろしく.
How is Yotsube to! challenging for beginners?
There’s a Lot of Casual Grammar
There are many different resources out there for studying Japanese but most resources teach Japanese in one of two ways. 1) The classroom method by teaching you basic grammar through polite Japanese です・ます “desu/masu” verbs (like the Genki textbooks.) 2) The casual method by teaching you everyday grammar through casual Japanese (like Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese Grammar.)
The first method is good for beginners because it’s very easy to turn polite verbs into past and negative form. It’s also popular to teach beginner learners this way because です・ます form is what you use when talking with teachers, homestay families, and strangers. It’s polite Japanese.
The second method is popular for people who want to learn Japanese for the purpose of reading/watching media. Casual Japanese is also used in everyday conversations between people who know each other well. But it’s more difficult to conjugate into different forms.
People who study です・ます grammar first will start to learn casual Japanese at around the end of beginner level (JLPT N4/N3 level).
Which brings us back to Yotsuba to!. Because this manga was written by a Japanese person for Japanese people, the grammar used is mostly very casual. There is some です・ます polite Japanese too, but most conversations are casual.
If you are studying Japanese through polite です・ます Japanese, then the sudden change to casual forms of verbs can be difficult.
Instead of saying つきました “we’ve arrived” (polite), Yotsuba’s dad says ついた “we’ve arrived” (casual). Or instead of saying よつばがはたらきます! “Yotsuba will work!” (polite) she says よつばがはたらく! “Yotsuba will work!” (casual).
Spoken Language is Typed Out in the Text
Another challenge for all learners is the use of spoken speech written out in text. Let me give you an example…
In English you can have “I do not want to go!”, which would be a grammatically correct sentence. But if someone were to say this out loud they might say “I don’ wanna go!”. It means the same thing, but is written down in the way someone would say it if they were talking. Yotsuba to! (just like all manga) does this too.
At the very start of the manga Yotsuba says すげぇー “wooow” or “woah!” which is how a young child would say すごい “amazing”.
Even her dad does this at the end of his sentences using だなぁ instead of just だ or だろう.
This can be annoying when you want to look up a word in the dictionary only for it to not appear because it’s a vocalization.
It’s also a challenge for people who aren’t used to how Japanese people realistically talk in certain situations. This might not be as big of a challenge for some people who watch a lot of anime though, as characters in anime will often use verbalizations like すげぇー and だなぁ.
There’s a Lot of Hiragana Only Child-Like Speech
When I started learning Japanese I learned a lot of basic vocabulary through romaji, and then slowly moved to hiragana and katakana. I didn’t start learning kanji until over a year into my studies. This meant kanji was difficult for me, but I could understand simple sentences written in only hiragana.
I have noticed that many other people study kanji almost instantly and swear by learning vocabulary paired with their kanji because it makes reading easier. That is true, knowing kanji does make reading easier. But then you have a manga like Yotsuba to! where characters (especially young characters) use almost no kanji.
Let’s take another look at this panel where Yotsuba’s dad tells her they’ve arrived at their new house. You can see her dad says 着いた (with the furigana reading for the kanji), and Yotsuba replies ついた? They say the same thing, but her dad speaks with kanji because he’s older.
This can make understanding Yotsuba quite tricky for some people, especially when she says something in a spoken way such as すげぇー.
How Good Is The Yotsuba Manga for Beginners?
I think Yotsuba to! is great for people who want to dip their toes into manga in Japanese. It has realistic conversations between characters and a lot of commonly used vocabulary and grammar. It’s particularly good practice for casual grammar, but that can be challenging if you’re not used to it.
This manga is not ideal for beginners who have only learned a few hundred words. But it is a great level for people who have studied JLPT N5 and JLPT N4 vocabulary, grammar, and kanji, and have begun to learn N3 Japanese.
Side note, if you’re not sure what that means, by the end of JLPT N4 level you should know at least; hiragana and katakana, roughly 284 kanji, 1,500 vocabulary, and 80 beginner-level grammar patterns. (If you’re interested in learning beginner Japanese I made some Anki decks for vocabulary, kanji, and grammar for N5 and N4 Japanese.)
Lots of people swear by this manga as an good way to immerse yourself in the language, and I agree! But I think it helps to know what to expect, especially if you’ve never read native Japanese media before.
Other articles you might find useful
How to Teach Yourself Japanese Through Anime and Manga
5 Manga for JLPT N3 Level Japanese
Tips for Effective Japanese Immersion Learning
Find and Track Japanese Books with Natively