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Japanese Short Stories for Beginners: 20 Captivating Short Stories to Learn Japanese & Grow Your Vocabulary the Fun Way! Vol. 2
Looking to step up your Japanese before that big trip next year?
Are you getting prepared for an interview with a recruiter in Tokyo?
Maybe you’re tired of reading the subtitles on the latest anime!
This is the book for you.
No language is easy to learn without reading – even if you know all of the rules and have watched the videos – you’ll still have trouble. Diving into interesting material (such as stories) can be the difference between mastering a language and never leaving the basic level.
For this reason, we have created another Japanese Short Stories for Beginners title to ensure you can acquire even more learning in this wonderful language that has opened up so many doors for hobbyists, professionals and travelers alike!
Gain vocabulary that will help you better enjoy your shows and video games, meet interesting people and even land you the Japanese job of your dreams with our twenty easy-to-read and entertaining new stories!
How Japanese Short Stories for Beginners works:
The book consists of twenty chapters: each with a funny, interesting and/or thought-provoking story based on real-life situations, allowing you to learn a lot about the culture.
Having trouble understanding Japanese characters at first glance? No problem – we provide you with an alternative chapter layout that contains the English translation below each paragraph, allowing you to fully grasp what you’re reading!
The summaries follow each story – a synopsis in Japanese and in English of what you just read, both to review the lesson and for you to see if you understood what the tale was about. Use them if you’re having trouble.
At the end of those summaries, you’ll be provided with lists of the most relevant vocabulary involved in the lesson, as well as slang and sayings that you may not have understood at first glance! Don’t get lost trying to understand or pronounce it all, either, as all of the vocabulary words are Romanized for your ease of learning and pronunciation!
Finally, you’ll be provided with a set of tricky questions in Japanese, allowing you the chance to prove that you learned something in the story. Whether it’s true or false, or if you’re doing the single-answer questions, don’t worry if you don’t know how to solve them — we will provide the answers immediately after, but no cheating!
You are closer than ever to mastering the Japanese language – with these stories, you will breeze through the beginner level of Japanese like you were born to learn it!
Pick up your copy of Japanese Short Stories for Beginners and level up your Japanese language learning right now!
Text: English & Japanese
Are you getting prepared for an interview with a recruiter in Tokyo?
Maybe you’re tired of reading the subtitles on the latest anime!
This is the book for you.
No language is easy to learn without reading – even if you know all of the rules and have watched the videos – you’ll still have trouble. Diving into interesting material (such as stories) can be the difference between mastering a language and never leaving the basic level.
For this reason, we have created another Japanese Short Stories for Beginners title to ensure you can acquire even more learning in this wonderful language that has opened up so many doors for hobbyists, professionals and travelers alike!
Gain vocabulary that will help you better enjoy your shows and video games, meet interesting people and even land you the Japanese job of your dreams with our twenty easy-to-read and entertaining new stories!
How Japanese Short Stories for Beginners works:
The book consists of twenty chapters: each with a funny, interesting and/or thought-provoking story based on real-life situations, allowing you to learn a lot about the culture.
Having trouble understanding Japanese characters at first glance? No problem – we provide you with an alternative chapter layout that contains the English translation below each paragraph, allowing you to fully grasp what you’re reading!
The summaries follow each story – a synopsis in Japanese and in English of what you just read, both to review the lesson and for you to see if you understood what the tale was about. Use them if you’re having trouble.
At the end of those summaries, you’ll be provided with lists of the most relevant vocabulary involved in the lesson, as well as slang and sayings that you may not have understood at first glance! Don’t get lost trying to understand or pronounce it all, either, as all of the vocabulary words are Romanized for your ease of learning and pronunciation!
Finally, you’ll be provided with a set of tricky questions in Japanese, allowing you the chance to prove that you learned something in the story. Whether it’s true or false, or if you’re doing the single-answer questions, don’t worry if you don’t know how to solve them — we will provide the answers immediately after, but no cheating!
You are closer than ever to mastering the Japanese language – with these stories, you will breeze through the beginner level of Japanese like you were born to learn it!
Pick up your copy of Japanese Short Stories for Beginners and level up your Japanese language learning right now!
Text: English & Japanese
270 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 12, 2021
295 people are currently reading
55 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 15, 2025
この本はけっこうよかったです。新しい言葉をいくつか学びました。しかし、質問のところに少し変な選択肢があり、レベルも少しばらばらだと感じました
February 7, 2025
Mixed feelings
On the upside this book contained many interesting topics and was challenging to read, so was not boring and gave one the motivation to keep reading. On the downside every story had some very specialized vocabulary, not all of which was covered in the appended vocabulary sections, and this necessitated a lot of time spent in online dictionary searching. So this is by no means a book for even advanced beginners and I believe not even intermediate learners could possibly know much of the specialized vocabulary for the topics covered. Such vocabulary is also not retained very long and I would question the value of retaining it anyway given that one is unlikely to be in situations demanding knowledge of it. I appreciate there is a balance between providing interesting subjects that inevitably need more than limited vocabulary and expectations of what potential readers know, however I feel this sometimes erred in using technical terms or complicated phraseology that might have been avoided. Syntax in Japanese is challenging, as is the use of expressions and suffixes quite alien to English, and this certainly presented challenges here but on the whole very worthwhile ones. In terms of layout, the furigana was difficult to read. It would also be helpful to have a means of just pressing the vocabulary references to get to the list and then back to the text without having to scroll back and forth through the (online) pages (not such a problem in printed material but quite time consuming and frustrating here). This said, I would still recommend this book for those willing to bring the necessary hard work and motivation to reading it. How much is retained I will discover in due course! Not a book for beginners however!
On the upside this book contained many interesting topics and was challenging to read, so was not boring and gave one the motivation to keep reading. On the downside every story had some very specialized vocabulary, not all of which was covered in the appended vocabulary sections, and this necessitated a lot of time spent in online dictionary searching. So this is by no means a book for even advanced beginners and I believe not even intermediate learners could possibly know much of the specialized vocabulary for the topics covered. Such vocabulary is also not retained very long and I would question the value of retaining it anyway given that one is unlikely to be in situations demanding knowledge of it. I appreciate there is a balance between providing interesting subjects that inevitably need more than limited vocabulary and expectations of what potential readers know, however I feel this sometimes erred in using technical terms or complicated phraseology that might have been avoided. Syntax in Japanese is challenging, as is the use of expressions and suffixes quite alien to English, and this certainly presented challenges here but on the whole very worthwhile ones. In terms of layout, the furigana was difficult to read. It would also be helpful to have a means of just pressing the vocabulary references to get to the list and then back to the text without having to scroll back and forth through the (online) pages (not such a problem in printed material but quite time consuming and frustrating here). This said, I would still recommend this book for those willing to bring the necessary hard work and motivation to reading it. How much is retained I will discover in due course! Not a book for beginners however!
September 6, 2024
I don't know if the chapters in this second volume even qualify as "stories", they're more informational paragraphs about Japanese culture followed by a short fictional dialog, or something in that vein, but still sufficiently good reading material for learning purposes.
October 6, 2025
This is a wonderful book, but definitely geared toward intermediate Japanese learners. It's divided into 20 engaging, wide-ranging topics, and I really appreciated that it includes furigana for all the kanji. A very useful study guide that I'd recommend to learners of Japanese.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews