I made a free site with Japanese folk tales you can read from day one (furigana, English, audio) — feedback welcome

Japanese Language Resources
1

Hi everyone,
I’m a native Japanese speaker.
People here often find that reading gets much more accessible around level 20.
I wanted to make something a level-1 person could read today, in the meantime —
not instead of that.

Easy Japanese, one sentence at a time. Every sentence has furigana, a picture, and the meaning in your language. You can listen to the whole story too.

日本語（にほんご）を、一文（いちぶん）ずつ 読（よ）みましょう。
(Let’s read Japanese, one sentence at a time.)

Nine Japanese folk tales — Momotaro, Urashima Taro, The North Wind and the Sun,
Hanasaka Jiisan, Issun-boshi, The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Tongue-Cut Sparrow,
Princess Kaguya, and Saru Kani Gassen (The Monkey and the Crab). Each one has:

  • The full text in very simple Japanese, one short sentence per line
  • Furigana on every kanji
  • An English translation, line by line
  • Audio, read aloud by a person
  • A picture for each scene

EDIT (Aug 16): sentence-level highlighting is now live — the sentence being
read lights up as the audio plays, and you can click any sentence to jump to
it. Added because someone here asked for it.
Free, and no sign-up.
Two things I should be upfront about: the illustrations are AI-generated, and the
audio — which used to be synthesised — is now a human reading, recorded line by line
by a native speaker in my family. The Japanese text itself is written by me, and
every line is checked before it goes up.
What I would genuinely like to know:

  1. Is the reading speed right now? I made it very slow on purpose at first, and
    three beginners told me it was too slow — it has all been re-recorded since,
    faster and with shorter pauses. I’m a native speaker, so I honestly still
    cannot judge this.
  2. Does anything in the Japanese, or in the English translation, read strangely
    to you?

The site is new and unfinished. If something is wrong or unhelpful, I would
much rather hear about it than not.
Thanks for reading.
(Edited: my original opening said people are “told to wait” until level 20.
That was my phrasing and it wasn’t accurate — thank you to Alonzo-xyz for the
correction.)

EDIT (Sep 13): the audio is no longer synthesised — every story has been
re-recorded by a person. Three more stories have been added, and eight of them
are now also collected in a paperback. The site itself stays free.

2

I joined Wanikani a few months ago and am still at level 2. I wonder if I have to learn about the pattern of uses or the context sentences.

I love Morimori which I had to replay over and over to make sure I catch what was told. I slowly read each letter, using what I know from the Tofugu teaching lessons of Hiragana, Katakana and kanji.

Thank you for the children stories. I will listen AND read them all.

BTW; Is there a way to have each word highlighted when the speaker says it?

Louann

3

Thank you, Louann — this is exactly the kind of message I was hoping for.

On highlighting: not yet, but it’s the right idea and I want to build it.
I already have the timing of every sentence in the audio, so highlighting the
sentence that is currently being read would be straightforward. Word by word
would take more work. Would sentence-level highlighting already be useful, or
is word-by-word the part that actually matters to you?

On your first question — I’m a native speaker rather than a teacher, so take
this as one person’s view: I’d lean toward the sentences. Patterns are easier
to absorb once you have already met them a few times inside sentences you
understand. That is roughly why these stories repeat the same few forms over
and over instead of showing many different ones.

I hope they work for you. If anything in them is unclear or reads strangely,
please tell me — I would rather fix it than not know.

4

@jean_u80 — sentence-level highlighting is live now, on all six stories.
The sentence being read lights up as the audio plays, and you can click any
sentence to jump straight to it.

Word-by-word would need a different kind of timing data, so I haven’t done
that yet. If word level is the part that actually matters to you, say so and
I’ll look into it.

Thank you for asking. It was already on my list, but I had no idea whether
anyone actually wanted it.

5

You might be misremembering the advice! Most people find that at level 20 reading is much more accessible than it was at level 1. I would never tell somebody to wait to read if they’re excited about it.

6

Thank you so much for the quick résponse.

Word by word would be better but if it takes more work for you, sensei, then highlighted sentences are also alright.
That said, you can have more time to create more learning material for beginner old students like me whose brain is no longer as sharp as in my younger age.

Correction about my mispelling of the.Peach Boy name : it is Momotaro.

Thank you
Louann

7

Fair correction — thank you. “Told to wait” was my phrasing, not anyone’s
actual advice, and it wasn’t fair of me.

The distinction you’re drawing is actually the thing I was trying to serve:
reading does get much more accessible around level 20, and I wanted something
a level-1 person could read today, in the meantime — not instead of that.

8

You said word by word would be better, so let me try that properly rather than
take the easy answer.

I’ve just tested it and it looks possible — I can get the timing of each word
out of the audio. It will take me a few days to do it across all the stories.
Sentence-level stays in the meantime, so nothing is lost.

More stories are coming too. Kaguya-hime is nearly done.

9

Word-level highlighting is live now — each word lights up as it is spoken.
It turned out to be easier than I expected.

Thank you for pushing for it rather than settling for the easier answer.

10

This is fantastic! Thank you so much for doing this work. It is perfect for me! This will be my Readathon work! Thank you!!! Love it!

11

That’s exactly what I hoped someone would use it for — thank you for telling me.

If you do use it for your Readathon and anything gets in the way, I’d like to
hear about it. It’s easier to fix while the site is still small.

12

This is wonderful! Just listened to ももたろ

The speed of reading seems I bit inconsistent between sentences. Sometimes I would say it’s at great reading speed for a beginner, but occasionally it feels very slow. If the system you have can only speed all or slow all, I would leave as is for level 1 reading. I’m a “heritage leaner” though (from a Japanese language family, but not a speaker myself), so am maybe biased.

If you continue to develop features, Some features that would be nice:

  • An option to increase speed
  • Option to toggle off furigana
  • Toggle on/off English translations
  • Individual words linking to a dictionary

I generally try to avoid AI speech for fear of unknown errors, but with a disclaimer that all audio was reviewed by a native speaker, I would feel comfortable using more resources in this format!

For the English translations, they read fine. There are a couple times where tense changed (all past tense as typical in story telling, a couple present-tense sentences snuck in.)

Knowing some of these stories, I would love to see “advanced” reading options that have more details/text to level up to.

13

Sazanami san,

I really love the idea and have started reading the stories. One suggestion I have is to include a tooltip for each of the hiragana words. This would help those with a limited vocabulary. For example, I had to look up the meaning of おうさま and also saw that it is classified as a NLTP3 level word which is most likely beyond most beginners like myself.

I think this would also help in separating words since there are no spaces between the kana. For example when I looked up あるくにに, I typed the Romaji instead of cutting and pasting and it said ‘arukunini’ wasn’t a word. Of course, when I stopped being lazy, the response was correct.

There is a place for looking up words though since I learned that in the context of the story, ある acts as an adjective meaning “a certain” or “some” when placed before a noun, indicating an unspecified or generic place rather than existence.

As a stretch goal, hyperlinking to the word in https://jisho.org/ would be amazing.

Thank you again for your effort

14

Thank you thank you for editing the stories with live highlighted sentence.

Regarding the speed of the reading, I, as a beginner old student, find it perfect to follow the story and read every single letter. I can understand the request of another Wanikani community member to have the speed change: he or she must be at a much higher level of learning Japanese.

Prior to this, I have a hard time trying to make sense of the meaning of written words even though I can recognize each letter. I often became frustrated and gave up reading as I cannot understand what I read. Your stories with the pictures and the slow reading pace help me tremendously and dissipate my frustration. I am sure I can progress with your stories.

Thank you again. I cannot say thank you enough.

15

Thank you — this is the most useful reply I’ve had.

You’re right about the speed being uneven between sentences. I found the same
thing yesterday from a different direction: my tool was equalising the length
of each sentence including the pause after it, not the speed of the speaking
itself. Short sentences ended up spoken more slowly than long ones. I’m fixing
that properly.

A speed control is clearly the right answer rather than me picking one speed —
another beginner in this thread says the current pace is exactly right for her,
and you find it slow. You are both right, and a slider settles it.

On the AI audio: that’s a fair worry and a good suggestion. Every line is
checked against the script by me — I’ve caught and re-recorded real
mispronunciations that way (the reader said “Onijima” instead of “Oni-ga-shima”,
and slipped an extra sound into “Momotaro”). I just never said so on the site.
I’ll put it in writing.

Thank you for the note about the tense too. The Japanese itself switches
between plain present and past, so the English is following it — but I’ll look
at whether that helps or just confuses.

16

Thank you — the “arukunini” story is exactly the problem I’m trying to solve.
Not being able to see where one word ends is the thing that makes early
Japanese so much harder than it needs to be.

That’s why the text is spaced into words on the site, and why the audio
highlighting follows those same word units. Linking each one to jisho.org is
the obvious next step — I have the word boundaries already, so it’s mostly
plumbing. I’ll do it.

17

This is the message I’ll remember.

“I could recognise each letter but could not make sense of the words, and I
gave up” — that is exactly the problem I built this for, and I had never heard
someone describe it in their own words before.

Don’t worry about the speed. It isn’t changing on you: I’m adding a control so
faster readers can speed it up, and the default stays where it is.

18

Hello! Glad to hear this was helpful.

On the tenses—if the Japanese is also switching tense, from a learner perspective, the English should as well. Typically in English stories things stay one tense the whole time (unless the narrator is changing their position in time). I have yet to study tenses in Japanese so didn’t catch the original change; with that in mind I wouldn’t want it changed!

Thank you again!

19

Thanks — that’s exactly it. The Japanese moves between past and present, and the English follows it line by line so you can see what the Japanese is actually doing.

The present tense turns up in two places: everyday repeated actions (the old man goes to the mountain, he cuts trees) and the action beats (the dog bites, the monkey scratches). It’s also the first form most beginners learn, so the simplest sentences sit in it.

You’re the second person to notice, so I’ll add a note on the site explaining it. Thanks for pushing on it.

20

Sazanami san:

Thank you for the continuous improvement to perfect the learning process.

I am not sure if reporting this will cause more headache for you, but I sincerely wish to benefit the most from the teaching.

Prior to the addition of the dictionary Jisho.org. I could click on the sentence and listen to it again and again if I want the words to be repeated. Now if I click on a specific group of words, the screen automatically switches to the dictionary, while the reading continues to the next sentence. I have to wait until the story ends or I click back the beginning of the story to start all over again.