I finally finished my first book entirely written in Japanese. It is called ベルナのしっぽ (Beruna's Tail) and is by 郡司ななえ. It's about 300 pages long and I would call it slice of life-ish, I guess?
The story follows the author's life (it is based on real life events) who, halfway through her twenties, becomes blind. She then gets assigned a guide dog named Beruna, despite the fact that she is not fond of dogs at all originally. This is where the story starts- it tells a tale of growth and overcoming hardships, about bonding and learning from each other- I'm sure lovers of the film Marley and Me would enjoy this book. I thought it was really heart-warming and I was thrilled to hear it also got adapted into a movie. You can watch clips of the movie (without subtitles) here.
I'm really proud I finally finished a book in Japanese <3 Especially one that wasn't aimed at Japanese 'learners' but this is real native speaker material. I didn't have many problems with the grammar or vocabulary in the story - in the beginning, there were a few kanji readings and translations I had to look up (for example 盲導犬 - もうどうけん - guide dog) but I found that after the first maybe 50 pages, the vocabulary stayed more or less the same, which is probably why I read through the latter half of the book quite quickly. I think the last ~150 pages only took me 2-3 days.
I wonder what I will be reading next? This book was such a bargain at 105 Yen in Book Off! I wish I could just stroll down to a Book Off again and pick up my next read...!
