Short Stories for Japanese Learners (Level 1, Volume 1): Learn Japanese with an Authentic and Fun Short Story Collection for Beginners! (You Can Read Japanese!)

This is a good resource for learning Japanese with short stories. You get both the original Japanese version, followed by one with the English translation interspersed throughout the Japanese text. There are interesting illustrations throughout, followed by a vocabulary list of the words used in the story. You then get tested at the end of each story to objectively evaluate your reading comprehension. There is a wide variety of different stories, all of which have been lovingly-handcrafted and carefully curated. Each are entertaining in their own right, and each serve their pedagogical purpose with just the right amount of new vocabulary and phrases allocated to each story. Personally, my favorite among this collection was "Spring in the Village, Spring in the Mountain", which gives a poignant, memorable retelling of a young fawn's first experience with spring. This is not the first of Ms Nishino's collection of short stories for learning Japanese. She recently had another collection of similarly curated short stories, which also had an audible edition, of which my favorite title there was "The Lost Item", which gives a similarly poignant rendition of a salaryman's sudden epiphany and rediscovery of his own moral compass. He rectifies his own lapse in rectitude, and is made whole again by embracing the value of simple honesty, in a sometimes chaotic world of temptation. Also highly recommended. I look forward to more notable contributions by Ms Nishino in this refreshing genre for efficient language acquisition.

Will be purchasing the rest of this series! This book was a little too easy for my skill level, but I still had a fun time reading it and looking at the lovely drawings. I love that the text is large, making the furigana easier to read (something that is often an issue in manga). I also really like the inclusion of a vocabulary list, an English version of the story, and comprehension quizzes at the end. All in all a wonderful way to help you on your language leaning journey. Even at my higher level, I still learned a new word. Highly recommended!

I have been studying Japanese for over a year pretty intensively. I can read and sound out words in hiragana and katakana very well. And yet, really internalizing the vocabulary and grammatical constructions is tough, really challenging. I've purchased many Japanese readers hoping to find books like I read in elementary school — over and over — to help me build my fluency and to enjoy doing it. The Japanese children's books don't work because although the stories are simple they use kanji because, after all, the kid's parents would be reading it to them. And, of course, the kids are already fluent to at least a child's level. Much more than me. I've also tried books that are marketed like this one, targeting adult learners. I was disappointed in those, too. So, what's so great about these? Here's some of my thoughts: - The font they use is large which makes the furigana easy to read. My eyesight with glasses is good but furigana can get very small if the font size used is also small. - They are very well edited. I have yet to find an error. They paid attention to detail. - They have multiple-choice questions about comprehension at the end of the stories to test, well, one's comprehension. Good idea. - They also repeat the story in Japanese with English translation. I don't use this because although I do need to look up words and so forth for translation I prefer to read as a native while translating to English in my mind. I really hope they produce more of these books especially at Levels 1, 2, and 3!

I tried many short stories books that claimed to be beginner friendly. All of them either expect you to read hundreds of kanji per story without furigana, or just use boring N5 paragraphs with a romaji monstrosity. Or, like Tadoky Library, are severely overpriced and don't include helpful translations. Japanese Language Park Short Stories are the real deal. They are really fun! At the same time, they provide very modest unique words count per story, a lot of kanji repetition smartly included into context. Grammar used is very simple but doesn't feel artificially dumbed down, you can just enjoy reading, learning as you go.

It's been well over a decade since I took a formal Japanese class, and in the last year I've challenged myself to pick the language back up and grow. After I re-tackled the writing systems and basic sentences, I knew I had to start diving into reading materials. I'm so glad this was one of the first books I tried. If you only know katakana and hiragana, and have a basic understanding of formal written sentences, you'll struggle at first - but don't worry about getting overwhelmed! Every kanji has the furigana (hiragana above it) to sound out. Every new vocabulary word has an explanation after the chapter. If you're still having trouble with a concept, keep pushing yourself through at least reading the chapter then at the end, you can re-read paragraph by paragraph, split up with the English translation. You also have fun pictures to help you understand the scene, and multiple choice quizzes to check your understanding of each story's topics. It's still a good read even if you are not a true beginner. I'm around N4 with some N3 kanji, but this book helped me to fill the gap on where I'm still weak on reading full stories. The tales are engaging enough to keep your interest, and the stories expand to become longer by the end of the book which really forced me to keep focus. After finishing the book, I quickly looked into JLP's Level 2 books and I'm excited to see them grow their Level 1 library and eventually branch out to Level 3.

I loved this book! The stories are simple and so is the grammar, but it is still different from the "textbook grammar". The sentences are not written as a foreign learner would do, but as a native Japanese speaker would. I found it really useful. Moreover, there is a full English translation at the end of each story, which really helps understanding the passages where the sentences are built in a way that sounds odd to a foreign learner.

I would give this a 9 out of 10. First, you have the story with the hiragana above the kanji, with a few important words defined. Then there is a vocabulary list. Then there is the story with English below it. There are questions which you can optionally answer, and then finally, the story without pictures, but with translation on the bottom half of the page. I think this is very efficient for learners, and also more pleasant than other methods of learning. So far, I’ve just read one story of level one, after one high school year of a Japanese class. It’s a bit of a stretch for comprehension, but it all works out.

Cute stories to supplement your learning. Very easy for a beginner to read with simple sentence structures. If you know your hiragana and basic sentences. (The thing is over there, I went to the shop etc) then you will be able to read this. The pictures help too, if you find yourself unsure of a word the picture can give an idea of what the word might be and 9/10 the guess I took was correct

For reference, I currently just finished the JLPT N5 level. The grammar used in this book was very easy to understand, though I did have to make frequent use of the dictionary, since the vocabulary list came at the end of each short story, instead of at the beginning. But I enjoyed the stories and was thrilled to find that I understood most words. I didn't use the English translations at all :D. Also, all the kanji has furigana, which I appreciate.

The stories are great for beginners, but unfortunately the quality of the paper is very low.