Graded Readers and Parallel Texts "Book Club"

If you can afford them they are still worth it though, I bought more lvl zero books from the other publisher when I’m at lvl 2-3 =P

I prefer the story ones by far. The fact ones can be a bit tedious.

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How much are the volumes overseas? I found them in Japan and was surprised when one volume was only 2300 yen, which is less than 20€. Seems pretty cheap to me.

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I bought it in a set: Japanese Graded Readers Complete Set – OMG Japan

It was that 2300 yen price I thought was expensive, because I had hoped to get them all… And buying them all would be a lot of money.

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@MissDagger @Abstormal

Yeah when you look it that way it would be expensive! My Uni library has almost the complete set so I’m starting to read lvl 3 ones now. Hopefully in 4 months (when I leave Japan) I’ll be able to start reading the lvl 4 ones, so at most I would be buying the 3 volumes of the level 4 ones.

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I was just gonna read the next booklet of Ask lvl 0, volume 1, but ended up reading the rest of them (4). They were more enjoyable since none of them were fact ones. Also easier because I could usually guess what something meant, or I already knew a lot of the vocabulary because it was about leaving home in the morning and other every day vocabulary I’ve actually learned (even if I haven’t used it much).

I ended up spending a huge chunk of money and ordering all the volumes for lvl 1 and 2. Hopefully lvl 1 will actually be a bit more +1-5 in challenge, rather than +0-0.5. :joy:

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How many pages are in Ant and the Grasshopper?

I only have 6. Tried redownloading and it’s the same : s

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It has 6 pages. I was disappointed by the length, but I learned a couple of things from it I’ll never forget.

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Weird doesn’t seem like a proper ending to the story though : |

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An American version of the story would have seven pages. On the seventh page アリ would see キリギリス learned his lesson and invite him in to share the food. I like how it ended, though. Never been a fan of ubiquitous happy endings and participation trophies. But, I also chopped a lot of firewood and went hungry a lot of nights as a kid.

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I actually love the ending of it :rofl:
It’s my favorite story, it was the first reading material I could finish and understand all of and I love the story itself =)

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I loved it too and also only needed Jisho for the song kanji and a few other words which was a great feeling.

Now I know that is the ending I love it too! Just in my mind I thought there would be more after that point. Time to try the bat story next.

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The bat one is my second favorite of all the stories! <3

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While walking through Dublin I saw a international book store and went. I found a nice parallel Text book.

Anybody already read those stories?

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I bought it recently myself =)
Haven’t read it yet though.

It’s on the list, so feel free to add yourself =)
I haven’t counted out the stories yet though (will be one square per story)

Ask Graded Readers now have their audio download from here: https://www.ask-books.com/category/product/japanese/多読ライブラリー/

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I just read 女の子 from Ask level 1, vol. 1. It was so sweet.

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Hello people, nice initiative ! Many people want to directly jump into their favorite native reading material and underestimate the benefits of graded readers.
One of my favourite thing about JGR is that they tackle a great variety of subjects related to Japanese culture and mythology that I would not read about normally.

I have access to the レベル別日本語別多ライブラリ and have read a few level 2 books and the 5 books of level 3 volume 1. My favourite one is the one with the biographies of the people on Japanese 一千円、五千円 and 一万円 bills.

I have a short question. Do you know if the books get harder within a single level ? Are all the level 3 books the same difficulty or do they get harder between volume 1 and 3 ?

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I’ve started reading level 3 volume 2 books of レベル別日本語別多ライブラリ.
After 2 books my impression is that they are a bit harder than volume 1. It would be nice if someone could say whether this is only an impression.
They are still at the sweet spot where I can read large chunks without a dictionnary and understand everything.

Most of the times I did not bother with the short biography at the end about the author who originally wrote the story but I’ve noticed that they adapted multiple stories that I enjoyed from the same guy : Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.

魔術 (Lvl 3, vol 2 2nd story) was a really cool read. I found that this story (and many others) is available for free on 芥川龍之介 魔術 .

As expected the original is a much harder but not really long. I will probably try to read it, it might be interesting to compare how they transform normal Japanese to an easier version aimed at learners.

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I can’t confirm, but I have the same impression myself =)

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