I'm looking into buying a novel/textbook made for advanced beginners level / lower intermediate. Such as Breaking into Japanese literature, Reading japanese with a smile etc. that has parallel text in English included as well as vocab lists and such.

I searched and found out that BIJL is quite bad choice for a beginner since there is some outdated stuff in there. Reading Japanese with a smile looks good but the texts do seem quite short and I do not necessarily need grammar explanations since I have my dictionaries of Japanese grammar with me.

That said some longer texts with modern take on the language would be most preferred, of course parallel text in English is a huge plus too. If the difficulty increases along the way that would be great too.

Can you offer any recommendations for me?

If you want a book that has a "modern take on the language," I would suggest reading an actual novel geared towards native speakers. That doesn't mean go hardcore and read traditional literature, but starting off with a light novel wouldn't be a bad choice. If I were you, I would find a text version of a light novel (I recommend ゼロの使い魔) and download rikaisama via this site. That way, you can scroll over unknown words for a definition, and even save them to an Anki deck if you want (this worked wonders for me.) If you have the grammar dictionaries like you say, then you should be good as far as grammatical structures go, but I don't think ゼロ is too hard in that respect. If you are looking for an accompanying English text version, try http://www.baka-tsuki.org: they have English translations for dozens of series. Not only does this get you some real exposure, but these novels are interesting, and you can easily get lost in the story, characters, etc (ie, they are something people read for pleasure.) Also, there are hundreds of light novel series, so I'm sure you can at least find one that captivates your interest. Even on the days I don't feel like studying, I can kick back with a good Japanese novel and not feel guilty about neglecting my language skills...

It really depends on your level. If you're around N4 or closing in on N3, then I'd skip the translated stuff. It's all overpriced, anyway, and I always found the translations to be annoying.

Just dive right in. There's a kiddy pool for folks who aren't quite up to adult level yet, and it's children's literature. (Not "Goodnight Moon," but actual novels for kids.)

When I was just starting with novels, I had a rough time reading light novels, and I found the readers made for Japanese language learners to be full of uninteresting stories I wouldn't read in English, let alone Japanese, so I downshifted to kiddy lit. There's some decent stuff in there. It's a lot less painful, and hey-- furigana!

So I recommend Telepathy Shoujo Ran テレパシー少女蘭 because it's an easy read and there's a manga version if you're having trouble. It's not stellar, but it *is* entertaining.

Here's a link to the first book, ねれわれた街:
http://honto.jp/netstore/pd-book_01670438.html

Make sure you don't accidentally buy the manga version by シリウスKC.

In general, if you buy the Aoi Tori Bunko books, you'll be greeted by easy reads with loads of furigana. And if you look this series up on Amazon or honto, you'll get a heap of similar books in your recommended lists.

The books are also in the 600-700 yen range, not 2-3000 yen like some of those graded readers.

I'd say the 三毛猫ホームズ novels by 赤川次郎 are quite easy to read. Overall, he seems to be one of the easiest authors around so give it a try.
Contrary to what one may think, "light" novels are not always easy in my experience, try to make a beginner read Kyoukaisenjou no Horizon and the next day he'll have commited seppuku.

[Zgarbas]

I always recommend this book: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Short-St...0143118336 It's just really good, and the parallel translations are nice. Some of the stories are also quite good. Occasional grammar explanations at the end, but not considerable. Still a good set of texts to work on.

Kino no Tabi also consists of mostly short stories, is enjoyable, and not that difficult. I think most graphic novels are like that, but you can look around the forums and see what people recommend . It's also useful if you watch the animes/movies beforehand to have a clear image of what is going on, whilst relying on your reading skills to rebuild it.

Zgarbas Wrote:I always recommend this book: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Short-St...0143118336

- $14.52?
- Free shipping?
- Paypal checkout?
- On its way to my house?

Why do they make this too easy? Stop making me buy things.

Thank you everyone. I'm not sure which level I am at, but N4-N3 is probably close.

Kid's literature sounds good and simple enough. I think I will obtain one book with a parallel text included before diving into real novels.

The penguin book seems perfect for this stage, and I will keep in mind the other suggestions for more quality Japanese literature.

Ah, before I forget-- there's always the Harry Potter option as well, if you're up to Rowling's word use. You can find it in just about any language, so having parallel texts isn't a problem. There's a whole Listening-Reading thing that some people do with Harry Potter. There's a thread about it here somewhere. (Search for Harry Potter or Listening Reading on this forum.)

Amazon ratings should at least help you avoid really bad books. Opinions can vary, but in that case, Amazon can help save money. Generally, I research at Amazon, and buy elsewhere, unless I can only get it from Amazon, because Amazon's shipping is very expensive compared to Honto or other booksellers.

Reading Japanese With a Smile was pretty good when I was at a similar level. As for the other options (which I also bought) and reading real books, I'd have traded them all for some manga at that stage. It's horrible looking at a block of text that takes you 5-minutes to get through, i.e. a page. You can find manga catering to all levels and interests and read through them in a decent amount of time, which is quite motivating and increases your exposure to lots of different language situations. It's possible to find anime conversions for a lot of series too.

By the way, kids literature is a nightmare.

Javizy Wrote:By the way, kids literature is a nightmare.

Could you elaborate on this? I was just planning on getting myself some Japanese children's books so I'd sure like to be aware of the pitfalls.

[Zgarbas]

japanese aside, kid's literature is...weird. The little mermaid has her dancing on knife-feet which stab her at every step (Ariel still dies), Story of a mother has a mom give up her eyes and hair and still has her end up begging Death to take her child, The Matchstick girl dies of hypothermia whilst having hallucinations about the loving family she's never had, and so on, the happy prince and his bird die, the steadfast tin soldier jumps in a fire as it's the only way he can be with his loved one (same goes for the hunchback of notre dame, who buries himself alive with Esmeralda...). Kid's lit is scary o.O.

Javizy Wrote:It's horrible looking at a block of text that takes you 5-minutes to get through, i.e. a page.

For exactly that reason, I don't even look at manga, where you get 100s of pages and still struggle to find decent descriptive phrases.

Zgarbas Wrote:I always recommend this book: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Short-St...0143118336 It's just really good, and the parallel translations are nice. Some of the stories are also quite good. Occasional grammar explanations at the end, but not considerable. Still a good set of texts to work on.

Wow I was going to make a thread about buying this, and here you are recommending it! It's the only considerable book to buy that I could find here, other things were phrase books and useless books. The set of Japanese books in the largest library here, has been the same for ages, and no one is buying one of the two copies of this book!

What level is recommended to start using it? (preferably in Tae Kim's and Core2k6k numbers)
Thanks.

[Zgarbas]

undead_saif Wrote:

Zgarbas Wrote:I always recommend this book: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Short-St...0143118336 It's just really good, and the parallel translations are nice. Some of the stories are also quite good. Occasional grammar explanations at the end, but not considerable. Still a good set of texts to work on.

Wow I was going to make a thread about buying this, and here you are recommending it! It's the only considerable book to buy that I could find here, other things were phrase books and useless books. The set of Japanese books in the largest library here, has been the same for ages, and no one is buying one of the two copies of this book!

What level is recommended to start using it? (preferably in Tae Kim's and Core2k6k numbers)
Thanks.

I got it around the N4, I think? Around core 3kish and finished Minna No Nihongo. Some texts are really easy (like the 2-page Murakami short story), some are longer and get a bit weird. All pretty enjoyable though. I'd say just dive in instead of waiting to get to a certain level and practice reading, while studying newly encountered terms and grammar points along the way. It's really the kind of book that serves as a starting point, so I think the earlier the better .

Zgarbas Wrote:I got it around the N4, I think? Around core 3kish and finished Minna No Nihongo. Some texts are really easy (like the 2-page Murakami short story), some are longer and get a bit weird. All pretty enjoyable though. I'd say just dive in instead of waiting to get to a certain level and practice reading, while studying newly encountered terms and grammar points along the way. It's really the kind of book that serves as a starting point, so I think the earlier the better .

Not taking studying new terms and grammar into consideration, it seemed hard, but now that you've mentioned it, along with your opinion, I think I'll buy it
Thanks!

Betelgeuzah Wrote:I'm looking into buying a novel/textbook made for advanced beginners level / lower intermediate. Such as Breaking into Japanese literature, Reading japanese with a smile etc. that has parallel text in English included as well as vocab lists and such.

I searched and found out that BIJL is quite bad choice for a beginner since there is some outdated stuff in there. Reading Japanese with a smile looks good but the texts do seem quite short and I do not necessarily need grammar explanations since I have my dictionaries of Japanese grammar with me.

That said some longer texts with modern take on the language would be most preferred, of course parallel text in English is a huge plus too. If the difficulty increases along the way that would be great too.

Can you offer any recommendations for me?

In MY experience, most of Japanese novels have about the same difficulty. It doesn't matter if you're reading a light novel or a historic samurai novel. The difficulty is pretty much the same, just with different vocab here and there.

I've read a lot of novels, after a while, the difficulty levels all look the same to me.

[RawToast]

While old this looks useful for getting into reading, has anyone here read it?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Japanese-Reader-...d_sim_b_15

It contains vocab and sentences, but moves to short stories and newspaper articles. The following review sums it up quite well:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2GFDPUJSKV...hisHelpful

Quote:Buy this book if:
- you are willing to put in effort. This might sound odd to mention, but more and more these days you hear of people who want to learn something without actually working at it. If you want to pick up a book, read it cover-to-cover, and suddenly be able to read Japanese, forget it. No book on Earth will let you do that. This is because you are learning something that requires effort to remember. Not much effort, but certainly a little bit at least, and it's needed constantly.
- you want to read, study, or understand Japanese literature. There are a lot of people who write enormously complex and detailed analyses of Japanese literature without speaking a word of the language themselves; such analyses often miss the point entirely for obvious reasons. If you want to appreciate Japanese literature, this book will get you started and build you up further.
- you want to read Japanese newspapers or novels. Why not?
- you want mastery of Japanese, like the book says. And by mastery, I mean being at a higher standard than most Japanese adults. This shouldn't have to be explicitly mentioned, but it seems a lot of other reviewers missed it, so there you go.

There are 75 lessons in this wonderful book divided into five sections: 17 in "Introductory", which cover hiragana, katakana, and a few (43 exactly) basic kanji including numbers. The next 13 lessons are in "Elementary", and are much more interesting. They cover stories and dialogues between people. I kept count of the kanji learnt as I went by making flashcards, so I can quite confidently say that by the end of Elementary, you will have exactly 365 kanji, including those from the Introductory section. The kanji are not just used once and then left alone; rather, after being introduced in a lesson, they reappear in subsequent lessons, so you stay familiar with them. After Elementary is "Intermediate", consisting of 17 lessons. These are more interesting again, as they describe various traditions, discuss why the culture is changing, and basically give you a very good idea of Japanese culture in general. Very few English works give you this much knowledge over an entire volume, let alone in 17 lessons only 1 or 2 pages long each. One story, "Rokubei's sheep", was absolutely adorable, and although it had no cultural information in the story itself (there were a few gems in the information below the vocab list), it's my favourite story from the entire section, and I became teary at the end. By the end of Intermediate, you will have a little over 1000 kanji, enough to read over 90% of a newspaper, and enough for nearly all everyday life. After Intermediate, there are two more sections: "Advanced: Fiction" (12 lessons) and "Advanced: Non-Fiction" (15). The Fiction section has a few stories written in an older form of Japanese (think Shakespearian English as a similar comparison), essential if you ever want to read or even study Japanese literature. Finally, the last lesson is a passage which you read to test yourself at the end of the book.

The texts start off as inane, like most basic language texts. The first few are largely word lists. However, they quickly build up to short sentences and conversations by the end of the Introductory section. In Elementary, you have more interesting stories and dialogues. This works up to cultural monographs, children's stories, anecdotes, and other more interesting pieces in Intermediate and Advanced.