I thought I'd share this in case someone on this forum might find this useful. It's a Japanese reader in which each passage is presented four ways: with furigana, without furigana, in romaji, and in English. There are 53 reading passages which are fairly short and self-contained. They gradually increase in difficulty and add more and more kanji. They have footnotes explaining vocabulary and grammar. The book is "Japanese Readers" by Oreste Vaccari.

Here is a sample, from a reading passage about Kyoto:

-with furigana: http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/vv346...rigana.jpg


-without furigana: http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/vv346...rigana.jpg


-romaji transcription: http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/vv346...romaji.jpg


-English translation: http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/vv346...nglish.jpg

I'm sure there are better readers that were written more recently than 1939 (although that must have been updated later since it uses post-war kana and kanji).

yudantaiteki Wrote:I'm sure there are better readers that were written more recently than 1939 (although that must have been updated later since it uses post-war kana and kanji).

It's actually the "tenth edition, April 1972 printing" and the author says it uses only the general use kanji.

If you know of a more recent reader that presents each reading four ways (furigana/no furigana/romaji/English) please let me know author/title as I agree, the more recent the better.

But in the meantime, this book will be good, fun practice for me.