i bought five volumes of xxxholic (image from amazon.com)

why this one?

i somehow found it, and i loved the drawing style :)

then i downloaded some scanlations (fan made japanese->english translated versions) from it, read volume1 from the scanlation, and decided that i want to read all of it.

and i’m also learning japanese, so i thought it’s a gread opportunity…

so i bought 5volumes from amazon.co.jp :)

even finding the right books was problematic ;)

so i went to sasugabooks, looked up “xxxholic”, and cut&pasted the ISBN codes from here into the search box at amazon.co.jp ;)) (it’s usually cheaper (here in europe) to order directly from japan)

for reading it i usually make a photocopy of it, and work with those. it’s better to work with copies, because:

• they’re bigger (A4, the manga is A5)
• i can write translations/comments/notes on the paper

there’s no furigana. i thought that it would be a big problem, but it is not.

looking up unknown kanji is not hard with good tools ( i use a canon g50 and an osx-dictionary based on jim breen’s edict).

the sentences are the problem :)

sometimes i can quickly translate a whole page, when the sentences are simple.

but sometimes i get to a complicated sentence and i wrestle for it with hours :)

to tell the truth, i am translatin/reading volume 2. and i have the scanlations for volume2 and volume3. so after i translate a page, i can compare my translation with the scanlated one. usually (always) the scanlated one is better :)