Yay! I finally got my first set of Graded Readers from White Rabbit Japan!
They’ve been great for giving me a boost of confidence. They were kind of expensive but I will probably end up getting the other levels at some point too.
Anybody else pick these up?
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So they each have about six stories/entries per volume? Hard to get a sense for how many pages they’ve got.
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each story is around 15 pages. There’s not a lot of text on each page so they really won’t take that long to go through, but I find it great to be able to read something not too complex (where I need to look up multiple kanji and grammar for every sentence).
They each come with a CD that dramatizes each story. Not read too fast either, with little breaks between sentences.
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I got the first volume of level 1. i really like the graded readers. They are nicely done.
Btw, there‘s a japanese graded reader app made by white rabbit press. You can purchase several storys via inapp purchase there. You might take a look at it if you enjoy the books.
wicked. I’ll check that out for sure. Thx!
Do you know how much they cost, off the top of your head? I really want to try these graded readers, but after shipping from Japan the cost of getting some is ridiculous.
For me one story is 3,50€ at least the lvl 1 storys. They come with illustration, furigana you can enable or diasble, and with audio files. It‘s really nice
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I got these earlier in the year, and I love them. I can actually read them without much looking up of anything except an occasional vocabulary word. They do wonders for your confidence.
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I got the level 0 set and I like them. I don’t remember what I paid, it was high-ish but not outrageous (for me). I DO remember it took FOREVER [blinking and flashing] to ship. It might have been the shipping method I selected though. I’m used to picking the slowest method on Amazon and still getting things in a short time - NOT THE CASE with these books.
But still, I like them and I’m glad I got them. I should have gone for the next level up though.
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mine took 3 weeks, which is actually pretty good. They warned me that there might be residual delays because there was a Canada Post strike recently.
I kept checking the tracking number that they sent and it kept telling me that the package was still in Japan so I assumed it was going to be a loooooong wait. I was surprised when they showed up this past friday.
I actually just checked the tracking number from Japan Post and the last entry on it was from Dec13 and it just says “Dispatch from outward office of exchange”…
there’s a place here in Toronto called J-Town which is like a little Japanese Mall. There’s a bookstore(本屋) there so maybe one day I’ll take a trip to see if they have any of the other levels in stock.
Thanks. This pointed me towards the iPad App for Japanese Graded Readers, which is a nice experience reading and listening to a naive reader. Thanks again.
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These were a great way to bridge my gap between just reading sample sentences and reading native materials, so if you can stomach the price I recommend them to anyone!
Just try to avoid doing what I did and purchase too many at once, because once I was able to read native materials I completely lost interest in them, leaving them gathering dust, unopened 
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Yeah, second crihak’s comment about not going overboard ^^ I have level 1 and level 2 of that series, which were really good, but once you start trying to tackle native content they fall by the wayside a bit (though I use the CDs for listening/shadowing still). I’m glad I didn’t buy any of the later levels in a frenzy of over-enthusiasm 
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@Radish8 @crihak
Good to know about not going overboard on them. There’s a fantastic Japan Foundation library here in Toronto, so I’ll try using that more.
I’ve taken some stuff out from there that I thought were at a super easy level but still found it extremely challenging.
I guess this was never going to be ‘easy’, was it…
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I have been doing those exact Japanese Graded Readers, but I actually ordered them from Amazon Prime so it only took like 2 days for them to get to me. I have been really enjoying them! Thanks to the suggestion of @OmukaiAndi
I read over the book to see how much I can read, then listen to see how much I can understand, then read and listen together, then go back and look up any words or kanji that I don’t know or didn’t quite understand the meaning behind. Then basically, I just read the same one without moving on until I understand it completely, both reading, and listening. It is really great for me, at my beginner level, it gives me a huge boost in confidence when I can read something completely in Japanese when I just started learning the language less than two months ago. I feel like I will always recommend these for someone! I am looking forward to getting through all of the levels of them. Still currently on Level 0, Volume 1, but I’ll get there =D
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I have just downloaded the iPhone app to test.
They just give you some pages of a level 1 story, but I almost cry when I could read and understand the whole thing!!!
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doing those readers alongside wk, you’ll be ready for manga soon, then you have a bit more breadth
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