Resources for Starting to Read Japanese Content

I found this yesterday. I’m not sure exactly where it should go so I’ll leave it here and let you decide.

Read Real Japanese - Essays
(There is apparently also an earlier one called Read Real Japanese - Fiction)

Short works by eight established contemporary Japanese writers.
Each double page spread features translations of sentences and phrases, plus at the back of the book are more detailed discussion of various points, and a CD of someone Japanese reading the essays aloud.

You can see inside the book via the Amazon link. I also took a couple of photos.
This is the first page of a story by Murakami, 真っ白な嘘


And this is the associated page from the back of the book.

I haven’t read much of it yet (although I did come across a vocab word I only learned yesterday, thank you WK) but it looks excellent.

And what do you know, I just now found a Tofugu review of both books, where they recommend them for intermediate-advanced students, particularly those interested in translation.

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Ooo, I’ve bought that. It remains on my shelf unread, though…

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It feels strange to say it’s aimed at advanced readers… I feel like people have different conceptions of what “intermediate” and “advanced” mean.

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I would +1 for Tangoristo and read real Japanese series. The first one is a very useful reading app for all level maybe the best on the market and the second one is a good guide to understand the language deeper as the author explain words usage and inference (best for upper intermediate students I think)

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I added them to the bilingual book section for now as that seems most fitting even if they don’t quite have an ‘English version’ sitting alongside the Japanese text. Thanks very much for the recommendation - they look fantastic! I will aspire to them in time…

@Talena - thanks for the heads up! I added a mention of that and the travel magazine articles to the OP :+1:

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@Radish8
As you mentioned this thread in another post, I think I’ll write a bit about some resources that have been of use for making my own transition from Graded Readers to native material.

I’ve read the three graded readers series mentioned here (up to level 3 that is), so I’m confident anyone reading any of those could do this transition smoothly.

Find your level.

If you’re already into the Graded Readers series (which I think are the easiest way to get you into reading japanese) there are some suggestions for native content related to the Graded Reader material you are able to read.

- Tadoku Recommendation
- Liana’s Extensive Reading Journal

For children’s books there’s hiragana… and there’s hiragana madness.

Sample pages will save you from the madness. And shortly you will see that 1st grade aimed books can be found with some kanji too (albeit the 80 kanjis that kids are supposed to learn during that year). There are series like the 10分で読める that follow this grading system, going from 1st to 6th grade, with the kanji been more present in every step. I’ve found that even with the 1st grade book and their small amount of kanjis the text was fairly well parsed and it’s not madness at all in the hiragana department.:+1:

The WKstats website provides with the reference for the when you reach completion for the joyo kanjis in the different school grades following the WK system in case you’re wondering

I’ve started with the 10分で読める伝記. This are biographies, so if you want a break from all the demons and the japanese vegetals / fauna stories, this should be fine, plus you can learn tons of different vocab, since there’re lots of famous characters mentioned that setted a landmark in various fields.

As free resources I would recommend

EhonNavi and Pibo, you can find how to sign up instructions here and here as to make the most from the 立読み options they provide.

Well, that’s all I an think from the top of my head. But yeah, kids have lots of options in Japan, and so have we, japanese learners :wink:

I’ll post any other resource I think about later.

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This is awesome, thank you so much for sharing!

I’ve actually seen the 10分で読める伝記 series around before, and similar, so I’m a bit annoyed with myself for having forgotten them in the first place.

Any thoughts on the graded reader sets? I’d be interested to know from someone who’s tried all three whether any set is ‘better’ than the others or if they cater to different tastes or anything (you don’t have to reply, haha, you’ve already been tremendously helpful ^^ ).

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Honestly same.

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FREE reading materials aimed at beginner readers (yay!)

On the Tadoku graded readers website there is a page with links to a number of teacher-made pdfs at the various graded reader levels. Some of them are very low budget productions, but I think still worthwhile for the impoverished beginner. :wink:

Kansai International Centre has similar home-made pdf booklets, and these ones also come with mp3s of someone reading each booklet aloud.
http://jfkc.jp/clip/yomyom/index.html

Slightly better production values (but same style of home-made PDF) available at Nihongo Tokuhon. Hover over レベル別の読み物 at the top to access materials at levels 0 - 2.

And if you were wondering about the word Tadoku (which I was because I kept seeing it on all these websites):
自分で読めるやさしい本をたくさん読むことを「多読」といいます。

多読しましょう!

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Quick question, but does anyone know how exactly the point system for eBookJapan works? I signed up yesterday because a manga I wanted to read on bookwalker.jp was region locked. Unfortunately I only have PayPal available as a payment method, which eBookJapan doesn’t accept (bookwalker does).

Now eBookJapan gave me 300 points as a gift and I’d like to use them to get that manga I’m eyeing with, but once I get to the checkout I can’t use the points. I know there’s an FAQ but I didn’t get all of it. :sweat_smile:

I don’t, sorry… I’ve always just applied my available points once I get to checkout :thinking: they’ve never covered the full cost though, so I’m not sure how that would work / whether you can use them to pay for shipping as well as the book itself.

Hopefully somebody else can give you a better answer.

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Well since it’s an eBook there wouldn’t be any shipping fees at all.
But I just noticed that the manga itself is 400 Yen, and 300 points are apparently the equivalent of 300 yen.

From the FAQ:

貯まったポイントは1ポイント=1円相当としてお使いになれます。

So I guess I just solved my own problem. :joy: God I’m stupid sometimes.

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:see_no_evil:

I didn’t even twig you were wanting to know how much the points are worth :see_no_evil: :see_no_evil: :see_no_evil:

I’ll just see myself out now… of my own thread…

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Ahh no, I just thought that maybe the points were for something else and that’s why I couldn’t use them for paying. But it didn’t cross my mind that the points were basically just Yen, haha. I thought they were two different currencies.

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I don’t see Bookwalker being mentioned a lot, but you’re able to get a lot of free digital manga here. They have sales or campaigns every week on different series, sometimes even entire publishers or sitewide. A lot of series accept payment from paypal instead of a credit card too, which is a plus for me. Naturally, it has the points system too, though it pays better in points than honto and ebookjapan when you rank up or during their coin up campaigns.

The current free manga is here: マンガ(漫画)、0円の電子書籍無料試し読みならBOOK☆WALKER

I’d go for the ones that say 0円 rather than 無料 since the 0 yen ones are on your account forever and the むりょう ones are only available to read for free for a limited time.

I’ve gotten things like Volumes 1 and 2 of Mushishi, Volumes 1-3 of Hoozuki no Reitetsu, and Volume 1 of the older Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo for free. More recently, volumes 1 and 2 of Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso were free. The quality is great too.

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Is there any point at which it is advisable to start reading? Or do you just go for it? At my current level I still miss a bunch of words and only get N5-N4 grammar.

From the guide ^^

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If you’re interested, you can join the Beginner Book Club. We’re going to start a new manga around September 1st.

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@arsdiaboli1
A think you should start as soon a possible.
Vocab most likely will be the biggest limitation to pick native material, even if aimed at very young audiences; that’s why WK vocab shouldn’t be your only resource for that.
Grammar will hold you back too, but I think after basic grammar there’s room to learn on the go, so you can quickly get the gist of a newly found grammar concept after reviewing it once and then been exposed multiple times to the same grammar concept.

Graded readers are a great solution to keeping you reading while closing the gap to native content, if your are struggling too much. The grammar it’s fairly constant, so you will find only that many new grammar concepts in every secuentually more advanced level. I think of it as a great complement even if you’re able to tackle native media (specially because native media for younger audicences will go very gentle with the kanji, in case you wan’t to actually use those) in the beginning.

I think the recommendations in the guide as listed above are fairly accurate, most of all because at least in my case those 20-30 levels are the ones where I’ve actually felt kanji slipping through my memory, so reading has become a wonderful aid to prevent that from happening and moreover I feel I’m gaining reassurement in all the learning I’ve done so far.

Huh, I read that a while ago and completely forgot about it. Thanks! I guess that I might as well continue reading.

Like Satori reader? And grammar has definitely been a huge problem. The biggest issue I’ve had is probably the multiple conjugation chaining.

I’ll check it out, thanks.

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