So, as I am wont to do, I was browsing one of the various blogs I read, and I saw another thing of use, that you fine folks might enjoy. The National Institute of Japanese Literature and National Institute of Informatics have partnered together to release something like 350 digitized versions of books from their collection.  A hand full of them have a text version attached for easy(er) reading.   So, this is definitely on the more difficult side of things, but it's neat to take a look at. Link.

[Zgarbas]

Don't forget that you can find most classic lit legally for free on Aozora Bunko =)

Looks cool, but I downloaded a couple and they appear to be incomprehensible compared to modern Japanese.

http://i.imgur.com/rUtI3j3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/EdWiY9V.jpg

In the first image, what even are the little 二、三、一 and レ'ｓ written on the left side of kanji?

(2016-01-28, 1:51 am)rainmaninjapan Wrote: In the first image, what even are the little 二、三、一 and レ'ｓ written on the left side of kanji?

They are used to pretend that Chinese is Japanese (as if they didn't do that all day). Iirc they change around word order and stuff.

Yep; the wikipedia article on Kanbun summarises how the system worked.

It's truly amazing that more and more collections are digitized for easy access. Waseda has an amazing collection too: http://www.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kotenseki/index.html

I love reading (or trying to read) books from the Edo-period. Anyone else on here who reads kuzushiji? Would be awesome to create a small circle where we could get each others help with readings and such.

I used to read kuzushiji, just a little. I've got the book on all the different ways of writing different hiragana. I'd be interested in the circle, but I might not be much help!