Whether you've just mastered hiragana and seek practice, or if you're looking to enhance your reading comprehension of both hiragana and kanji, this book is tailored for you. If you are a beginner to upper beginner of Japanese, this new collection of stories is here to the rescue! Read real Japanese-beginner level, but not boring! You won't find the Japanese version of Dick and Jane here; instead, you'll discover stories written for adults. Enjoy flash fiction, super short informative essays, and funny stories about common mistakes made by learners of Japanese. Best of all, the only requirement is that you can read hiragana and have a very basic understanding of Japanese. Vocabulary and grammar will be defined and explained.

 * Download free sound files of the stories read both slowly and at normal speed (link found on the last page)

 * Or use the QR codes within to quickly scan and stream the audio as you read

 * Every beginner-level story is presented in three ways: hiragana only (with spaces), Japanese with furigana, and full Japanese without furigana

 * On each page, you'll find a complete glossary of the words with grammar and sentence structure explained

 * For beginners (who have learned or are learning hiragana)

The format is a little different from our other more advanced readers. The idea is for the reader to read the entire story three times. Each page will have a sentence or two in hiragana (with spaces between words for you to see "words" instead of syllables) at the top and that same content in full Japanese (with furigana-small hiragana over kanji) at the bottom. The middle will have the glossary and grammatical explanations. Lastly, the story is presented in Japanese without furigana. See if you can read it after going through the previous two versions and explanations. If you have just learned hiragana, you may want to listen to the sound file while reading the top hiragana section to practice correct pronunciation. If you have studied Japanese a bit longer, you may want to start with the bottom version and take note of the glossary for understanding. The glossary will have the word as it appears in the story, but it will also give the "dictionary" form so you can look the word up further. Stories included in this volume:

STORY 1 SETSUBUN

STORY 2 HINAMATSURI

STORY 3 JAPANESE SCHOOLS

STORY 4 CHILDREN'S DAY

STORY 5 SHIKKE

STORY 6 OPENING THE BEACHES 

STORY 7 SIGNAGE

STORY 8 TOMOKOROSHI

STORY 9 KANNAZUKI

STORY 10 KOHARUBIYORI

Having fun while learning a language is a great way to increase motivation. With increased motivation, you are less likely to skip a day's study. A skipped day can quickly become a skipped week and then a skipped... forever. And so, we hope you will have as much fun reading these stories as we had writing them.