Three Books for Japanese Reading Practice (Beginners)

By Tom Wilkinson-Gamble

Are your Japanese reading skills not quite at the level to read a full-blown novel but still want to practice? Then this is the article you've been looking for. Lingo Mastery have published three books that, if studied in the order suggested below, can improve your skills enough to move onto short stories and novels.

Conversational Japanese Dialogues (2021)
This first book is the simplest out of the three. It contains 105 example conversations on topics ranging from order a meal at a restaurant to being hunted by pirates. Each line of Japanese is followed immediately by the same line in romaji. This creates a repeating pattern of kanji and kana followed by romaji. The Japanese text is then followed by an English translation. All Japanese is covered with furigana. 

Japanese Short Stories for Beginners (2020)

Japanese Short Stories for Beginners contains twenty simple 2-3 page stories ranging from a self-replicating machine that writes novels to a woman whose house is broken into by mute dwarf that is being hunted by the police. Each text is followed by an English translation and a summary, which also has its own translation. This is then followed by a list of important vocabulary covered in the text and then by five reading comprehension questions to test how well you understood the text. All Japanese is covered with furigana. 

Intermediate Japanese Short Stories (2021)

This intermediate version contains almost the exact same features as the beginners, but with one added twist: there is no translation for each main text. This means that learners cannot rely on a translation to help them, and must instead use their own understanding of the text to answer the comprehension questions. The ten texts are considerably harder than the beginners version and cover topics ranging from short horror stories to brief biographies on famous Japanese figures. Like the beginners version, all Japanese is covered with furigana.