北極熊Café

しろくまカフェ #1

by Aloha Higa, 比嘉Aloha, 李嘉琦 (Translator)

written in JAPANESE

Genres: Manga, Japanese Literature, Japan, Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Humor

164 pages, Paperback

First published March 26, 2008

About the author

２月10日生まれ。京都府出身。水瓶座、血液型はＡ。「月刊flowers」2006年４月号にてデビュー（第22回コミックオーディション銀の花賞受賞）。現在「月刊flowers」で活躍中。飄々としたなごみ系キャラの動物たちを描き人気急上昇中。

http://flowers.shogakukan.co.jp/artis...

Reviews

[Fon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally! This is the first Nihongo manga I've finished. An accomplishment despite its simple language. Lol
The characters are kawaii and their gags are hilarious. ^^

[Ronan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally finished my first book in Japanese. Look forward to going through the other 4 volumes and hopefully moving up to something a bit harder soon

[Petra · Rating 5 out of 5]

!!! my favourite. (the anime is also great!)

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cute, hilarious and lots of pandas!

[Kota · Rating 4 out of 5]

I often don't prefer to read mangas because most of them are action-packed and dramatic. It's not that I'm not a fan of these aspects being in a book, but ones in mangas are often adopted from an anime with the same energy, therefore being a bit too aggressively fitted in some parts. What separates this particular series from the rest is how chill and relaxing it is. I used to have a hard copy of this series a few years prior and revisiting them once again felt nostalgic and brought back many good memories. Although I must admit, the anime version of this wasn't the best compared to the books, it was still pretty decent for a small team production. I'm going a bit off-topic here, the story is there in the title. It's about a world where humans and animals interact like people and about a polar bear and all his animal and human friends with a nice cafe in the countryside. It's a bit like a diary in a sense, where the book narrates everyday normal things they do and the conversations they have on the cafe counter. Unlike other mangas, this book brings a really chill atmosphere and I highly recommend you read this.

[Jade Palmos · Rating 4 out of 5]

初めて日本語の本を読み終わることができた！可愛すぎて心温まるよ。

[Preethi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume covers up to chapter 24.5.

[Apolline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I managed to read one entire manga in Japanese and that alone deserves 4 stars honestly. I didn't understand everything, but it was still enough to enjoy the story and most of the jokes. It's a simple, light-hearted manga. The perfect book for me to start learning Japanese again.

[Prim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious.

[a dog who learned to read · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is so calming and nice, and funny, and sweet.

[Saya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Le pongo 4 estrellas por los dajare o chistes malos y juegos de palabras que tiene, que son el tipo de humor que me encanta. Este es un manga lento, que no va hacia ningún sitio, lo cual está bien porque es relajado; un slice-of-life en toda regla.

Empecé a leerlo porque suele estar en la lista de "mangas para principiantes" que quieran leer en japonés. Sinceramente, no creo que sea para principiantes, sobre todo si solo se ha estudiado con libros de texto, sin apenas exposición al lenguaje natural (por ejemplo, viendo jdramas, que es mi "nicho" XD). Además, algunos chistes son difíciles de seguir. Y la parte de los pingüinos se me ha hecho bola, porque como el tipo de dibujo es realista, a veces es difícil distinguir quién habla o qué emociones está teniendo cada personaje. De hecho, este artículo en Tofugu me confirma que me he perdido muchas referencias culturales, como lo de los partidos políticos o el azúcar. Y cuando lo estaba leyendo me estaba dando cuenta: "Aquí seguro que me está faltando algo por entender...".

En fin, este tomo no es más que otro intento por mi parte de leer en japonés, sin despegarme de jisho.org para el vocabulario y de DeepL para las frases más complejas gramaticalmente. Algún día no los necesitaré, espero. Algún día~~

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in Japanese for the second time. The first time was over the summer, and rereading it was a surprisingly valuable experience. I thought my comprehension on my first read-through was fairly good, and while I don't think I missed anything major then, I definitely understood much more, and had a much easier time reading in general, the second time around. It's a really cute and funny manga with mainly everyday language, and I'd recommend it to Japanese learners for sure.

[Cassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because the promotion of this book was recommended by a Japanese elementary school, I used to think it would be very childish. However, I really wanted to see this style of drawing. But after reading it, I feel that it won't be excessive at all if it's classified as adult reading. This doesn't feel childish at all, and it's very relaxing. There are many little plots inside that are really funny and cute. I really like this book.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoy this series, its a slice of life about adorable animals. My Japanese reading ability is still lacking so I was only able to understand about 60% of the text, but I still thoroughly enjoyed reading about all the characters.

[Autumn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shirokuma Cafe is one of my most favorite anime! I love the scanlation I am reading, it is very nicely put together & super tidy. For once, the English words don't dominate the page.

[Tracy Imamura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super cute!!

[Eszter · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is very easy to read and very good for beginners, though it seems a little dull and not very interesting.

[E.T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

日式冷笑话，其实有点理解困难。熊猫呆头呆脑的样子完全抢了北极熊的镜头哈。不过我喜欢北极熊。

[bobbu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely underrated in every single way possible. First manga and anime that I fell in love with, and I'm rereading it now. I love the casual vibes in this so much.

Sasako best girl <3

[Mara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cute.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Polar Bear and his ursine pals at the zoo live their anthropomorphic lives, communicating with one another and zookeepers. Easy to read, engaging characters, and light tone. This was a fun read.

[Ben Walter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fucking cute. <- this is my review of the entire series.

I read this as low beginner/ intermediate Japanese input and found it a great resource for a non-native speaker as it's a slice-of-life work and pretty engaging.

It's pretty wholesome I expect you'd enjoy it if you like light-hearted comics/manga; but I'd mostly recommend it to beginner/intermediate Japanese students. Slice of life work like this is the most practical for language acquisition as most shounen manga tends to be high fantasy which is likely to contain less useful language (for general purpose)

しろくまくんカフェモカおかわり！

[May · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very funny. Looking forward to reading the second volume.

[Cass]

Kinokuniya boxing day sale. :)

Got to brush up on those Japanese-reading skills. *brings out the Japanese dictionary*

18/03/2014

Finally finished this thing! Now I can buy the second volume... Not really much to say. Probably that the anime is better, but I can't really say that as I've only watched a few episodes so far. I like the art style, and the themes are light and fun. Just... if I didn't have to bring out the dictionary for every sentence it would be a whole lot better, and some of the meaning was lost on me.

[Faisal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I stopped after reading 5 chapters. Its pretty simple. Will be good for newspaper comic section.
Characters look pretty cute.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it in Japanese and it was significantly more funnier. It could because the jokes land better in japanese than english.

[toni · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of the manga out there are better than their anime version, but not for this one.