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!)

I completed my very first short story reading hiragana /kana. I really enjoyed the short stories, and will likely start rereading it again to keep practicing. The illustration kept my interest, and the questions at the end of the stories were useful. Also, reviewing vocabulary words were very helpful.As an elderly person challenging myself to learn a new language, any little help in building such skills is appreciated! Thank you, and I look forward to reading more ventures soon.

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.

I would recommend this book.Pros: sentence structures are small enough to not leave your head stuck in a dictionary but big enough to give you a good level one reading challenge.Even comes with a nice list of vocabulary words after each story that proves helpful and questions to challenge your reading comprehension.Cons: None, it is what it's supposed to be.

I am very happy with this purchase. The story format is very basic, which is great if this is one of your very first attempts to combine your language knowledge on a tangible way. There is repetition of vocabulary and grammar points and plenty of room to take notes in the margins of you desire. It includes vocabulary lists, follow-up questions, etc. I look forward to buying more from this author.

This book is fantastic! The stories are nice and short with nice sized font Hiragana. I love that you can first read the story in Japanese followed by a short 4 questions about the story and ending with English translation. Overall great purchase for those that can read Hiragana and wanting to practice.

Great graded reader for n5-n4 level. FYI there is furigana over all of the Kanji (a plus for some people, a minus for others). I don't particularly mind since I have other materials without furigana, so I take it as an opportunity to focus on the text as a whole. The stories are fun and cute, repetitive but engaging. Very good for beginners. The one with the fawn is adorable haha

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!

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.