Who are your favourite Japanese audiobook narrators? I quite like http://jclab.wordpress.com/ , and would like to hear more beautifully-read Japanese - preferably recordings of novels, or non-fiction books of similar length. Recommendations for particularly well-read books, or particularly skilled readers, would be wonderful. Nothing abridged, please.

You're a dreamer, boy or girl or both. If you want to LISTEN to books, you'd better learn Lithuanian.

Double post.
I keep getting that error.

It'd have to be 大塚明夫. He's more of a voice actor than a narrator but he has done some narration. Here he is reading the classic 走れメロス.

http://ceron.jp/url/www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm1922185

buonaparte Wrote:You're a dreamer, boy or girl or both. If you want to LISTEN to books, you'd better learn Lithuanian.

Explain please.

kuljd Wrote:Explain please.

What's there to explain?
People are usulally either boys or girls. But some people are both girls and boys.

As to Lithuanian - there are more audiobooks in Lithuanian than in Japanese. Murakami Haruki, for instance.

kuljd Wrote:Explain please.

What's there to explain?
People are usulally either boys or girls. But some people are both girls and boys.

As to Lithuanian - there are more audiobooks in Lithuanian than in Japanese. Murakami Haruki, for instance.

I'm afraid I still don't get it. Could you elaborate? Is it because the language sounds so beautiful or because there are so many audiobooks in Lithuanian? And why do you always post twice?

That would be a poor attempt at sarcasm, but Buonaparte is right ; there are very little audiobooks in japanese, to my knowledge at least.

But apparently, there are plenty in Lithuanian, so... there's that.

But back on topic, your best bet would be to stick with podcasts. There are a few books that come bundled with a cd of stories read by actors, but I don't know if they are any good (such as this one http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese...1568365292 )

Oh, and this website has a few stories you can download as well http://www.speaking-japanese.com/breaking/ (it's the companion website of the book "breaking into japanese literature. From what I've heard, it seems pretty good)

I'm personally a big fan of http://jclab.wordpress.com/. Her soothing voice is just perfect for bedtime listenings.

CaLeDee: Thank you. It's a pity he hasn't done more narration; most of the amazon.jp results for him aren't audiobooks.

Buonaparte: Inuktitut, Northern Saami, Swahili, or Welsh would make me a dreamer - much less Bena Bena. As we both know, Japanese has far less audiobooks than Russian - and perhaps Lithuanian - but it still has quite a few. I know you know sheetz's list. Amazon has plenty, like http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%82%AA%E3%83%...775928058/ - most results for CDブック aren't useful, but some are, especially with an author, like http://www.amazon.co.jp/s/ref=nb_sb_noss...1%E7%9F%B3

However, most of the audiobooks don't have many reviews, and some simply have poor reviews, like http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%82%AA%E3%83%...775922823/

So, it seemed worthwhile to ask if anyone knew any particularly good professional Japanese narrators - even a handful of prolific ones go a long way.

I have "Breaking into Japanese literature"; I'm looking for long audiobooks by native speakers, for native speakers. I know there's Harry Potter 1-3, but I can't stand it. I linked above to quite a few audiobooks of famous Japanese novels, but I have no idea which of them are recorded well.

And Linval: yes, podcasts are a lot easier to find and try out - I mentioned jclab in my first post. She does have a beautiful voice. I'd be really happy if I found a few long novels read anywhere near as nicely.

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=6840

Audiobooks – readers/narrators (various languages)
http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_m...c346179195

delete, please.
Double post again.

booksuki Wrote:CaLeDee: Thank you. It's a pity he hasn't done more narration; most of the amazon.jp results for him aren't audiobooks.

大塚明夫 is a well-known voice actor. Just look up his name in ja.wikipedia.org and there is a long list of his works, including some of his 朗読CD such as 桜桃, 杜子春, 蜘蛛の糸, etc.

booksuki Wrote:So, it seemed worthwhile to ask if anyone knew any particularly good professional Japanese narrators - even a handful of prolific ones go a long way. ....
I linked above to quite a few audiobooks of famous Japanese novels, but I have no idea which of them are recorded well.

I don't know whether FEBE.jp accept overseas credit cards or not..... however, you may like to check with kodorakun over at this thread "new" jp audiobook site? Febe

At the Febe site, there are "sample listening" (short mp3 audio) for each book too.

海賊とよばれた男 by 百田尚樹 won the top place in 2013 本屋大賞 and also No.1 ranking this week at the audiobook section.
http://www.febe.jp/product/164857
ナレーター (Narrators) 中村雅俊、國村隼、江原正士、川島得愛、佐久間レイ、福沢良一、大林隆介、樫井笙人、金光宣明、浅科准平、利根健太朗、佐々木啓夫、酒巻光宏、久嶋志帆、高槻陽一、三宅貴大、祐仙勇、こばたけまさふみ、玄田哲章、上柳昌彦

Best-sellers audiobooks such as もし高校野球の女子マネージャーがドラッカーの『マネジメント』を読んだら and 桐島、部活やめるってよ are listed here.
http://www.febe.jp/documents/special/bes...llers.html

buonaparte Wrote:As to Lithuanian - there are more audiobooks in Lithuanian than in Japanese. Murakami Haruki, for instance.

There are quite a few audio(book) recordings of Murakami Haruki aired on NHK Radio such as 遠い太鼓/ 朗読：小澤征悦 and 特集 村上春樹を読む/ 朗読 ：松たか子

But they weren't made into CD audiobook nor available on online audiobooks store. Probably Murakami himself didn't want his books to be made in audio format for sale or there are some other complicated reasons. Anyhow, I noticed that some of them who made (synopsis) audio-recordings of his books earlier have to remove all of it.

Eslang: febe looks awesome, thank you. I've spent a few hours looking around it. I just have one big question at this point: how can I tell if a book is complete or abridged? There are no significant results on febe for 無削除; the results for 簡略 also don't refer to the audiobooks themselves (http://www.febe.jp/product/69930 is about 'abridged' funerals, for instance). The information about books includes their length, and the filesize (both for the normal book, and when available, a double-speed edition), but nothing about whether they're complete. I've checked for the translations of abridged/unabridged that I found in wwwjdic, as well as various terms for synopsis.

Am I missing something obvious? Is there a cultural assumption that audiobooks will be complete (or abridged), unless marked otherwise? Is there some important terminology that febe uses to indicate completeness?

booksuki Wrote:how can I tell if a book is complete or abridged?
Am I missing something obvious? Is there a cultural assumption that audiobooks will be complete (or abridged), unless marked otherwise? Is there some important terminology that febe uses to indicate completeness?

海賊とよばれた男　(上)巻
簡単な紹介
※1月1日・2日の二夜にわたり、ニッポン放送の特別番組にて、この作品のダイジェスト版 (Abridged or Digest version) が放送されました。
* NHK Radio special program has aired this book as a digest version during 1st~5th, Jan 2013.
http://www.nhk.or.jp/r2bunka/roudoku/1301.html (朗読：橋爪　功)
　この作品は、原作の内容全部を音声化した (Complete recording)オーディオドラマの前半（上巻）となります。
This is a full recording (in audio drama style) of the whole book (volume one).

You can contact the online store for further information if there are any queries.
http://www.febe.jp/store/contact

If the CD Book is an abridged version, either あらすじで読む or 特別付録CD is indicated.
Like this CD付 「朗読少女」とあらすじで読む日本史

It has got to be 森下潤子.

Her readings are really interpretations; for Botchan, she conveys so perfectly the humor of the text that it kills me every time, even though I have listened to it hundreds of times. Even if you don't understand Japanese, you can appreciate the talent just by listening to the first minute of the first file:

http://www.koetaba.net/3book/natsume-sos...cchan.html

The way she captures the taunts of Botchan's schoolmates is priceless.

She also has recorded the whole 500 pages of the translation of フランケンシュタイン
by 宍戸 儀一 here:

http://www.voiceblog.jp/junkoropin/

This recording took her 3 years. Unfortunately, she modified the translation, which she considered to be "可笑しい", and thus what she reads is not what is printed in the 青空文庫 repository, which is a big problem if you are like me and need to read a text prior to hearing the recording.

She also has a YouTube channel, with recordings of consistently stellar quality:

http://www.youtube.com/user/road9tampopo/videos

Another excellent female voice was the narrator at moon-reading.seesaa.net/, which is unfortunately offline. She is a professional voice artist - and hopefully her recordings will reemerge at some other location in the future.

Finally, there is an interesting resource that does not seem to have been mentioned anywhere here:

http://aozoraroudoku.jp/

All recordings on this website are of excellent quality and are all taken from 青空文庫, which means that the texts are freely available. However, they usually choose very short/minor works, which is a big annoyance. Like most rodoku sites, updates are few and far between.

Much thanks for those links. I will surely make use of some of those recordings.

どう致しまして、ヤンさん。