Hello, everyone. This is my first time actually posting a new topic on the forums, so excuse me if it's worded a little funny.

I've clocked 250 kanji, now, and I think I'm ready to do some reading. I've done all of my kana, so that's no problem. I know a small bit of vocabulary.

Does anyone have any particular websites where I might find some very simple paragraphs/sentences/etc. written in kana and kanji. Preferably at a very, very low level, children's if possible. Places where I can find children's books?

Any help is appreciated.

ありがとうございます。

I bought these books recently at the recommendation of someone on the forum. They are quite fun...

http://www.thejapanshop.com/home.php?cat=344

Someone else also suggested this children's newpaper...

http://mainichi.jp/life/edu/maishou/

250 kanji from where? Heisig or a kanji in order book? because of the way Heisig places all of the jouyou out of order i would advise to keep studying and finish it even more before you jump into reading... don't jump the gun ^_^

I would recommend just stick to reading sentences out of a textbook or something until you get farther along.

But, dont even think stopping to add more kanjis!

Well you can try reading the Hiragana Times, if you subscribe to the email they send you daily text in three grades: hiragana only, easy kanji and hiragana, and native level kanji.

http://www.hiraganatimes.com/hp/topics/index.html

Realistically speaking, there probably aren't any kind of children's stories that you'd be able to read at this point. Sure, you'd be able to pronounce the kana, but you'd have no idea what you were even saying.

On the other hand, the total number of words used in a single children's story is really not so high. If you go one story at a time, it wouldn't be that difficult to learn the words as you go, maybe with rikaichan or something the first time through. Maybe try Old Stories of Japan. You will need a decent chunk of basic grammar though.

i stole this comment off of the Glowing Face Man's RtK review:

"Heisig addresses this himself in the introduction to his book. Basically, to be literate, you NEED to know ALL the basic kanji. If you're missing just 1 single kanji, then inevitably the fates will twist against you and you'll start seeing that one kanji everywhere. With that in mind, it doesn't really matter what order you learn them in. The order matters in the traditional method when you spend TWELVE YEARS learning the kanji. Adult learners must learn all the kanji fast, if it takes more than two years then you're in trouble. So order's not all that important."

"Easy" Japanese (as in children's stories) have either very few kanji, or none at all. If you've done all of RTK but no vocabulary work it would probably actually be easier for you to read a newspaper.

Huge strings of kana with the random kanji mixed in are very, very difficult to read.

I started reading manga when I could recognize about 300 kanji, I jumped in with ayashi no ceres and card captor sakura... At first you'll probably just sound out whatever it is that's written there and not follow much, or anything, of the story. Even when I could understand maybe a word in every *other* sentence, I still had some fun... Just because I could 'read' it (without understanding). Soon enough though, you'll understand more and start actually understanding small sentences or parts of sentences.

Try to find something that's not incredibly hard, but that does interest you, preferably something you would like to read even if it wasn't in Japanese. At first that's hard... And for some people it might be different, but I'd rather 'read' something that's too difficult at the moment, and look up a word, or two, in *every single sentence*, than read something that's almost easy but really really boring.

If you want stories, not manga... Ehm I'm not sure.

Reading children's stories such as ちびまる子ちゃん is indeed rather difficult as since there are so few kanji you're left to find the word boundaries in amongst a lot of very casual Japanese, all in kana.

That said, I went to my local library yesterday and was pleasantly surprised at the range of books they had on offer there. I leafed through a few children's books and found several which had just the right balance of kanji and kana (at least for me).

If you have a good library near you then I'd recommend taking a good dictionary and working your way through some children's books.

Let us know how you get on. 頑張ってください。

Somewhere, someone posted a link to a site that listed European and Japanese fairy tales not only in Furigana, but with audio! I cannot find the link, but I remember it was a site I wanted to go back to.

Anyone recall this or others like it?

Are you maybe thinking of the ones listed on sheetz' learning log (and also in this thread)? The ones I've looked over don't have furigana though.

Edit: Wow, I'm glad you reminded me of this. I didn't realize that the site with the parallel texts also has built-in 国語辞典 lookup, and you can easily hide the English text too.

shaydwyrm Wrote:On the other hand, the total number of words used in a single children's story is really not so high. If you go one story at a time, it wouldn't be that difficult to learn the words as you go, maybe with rikaichan or something the first time through. Maybe try Old Stories of Japan. You will need a decent chunk of basic grammar though.

While we're talking about rikaichan... I installed it in my firefox and its not working :S I checked under tools to see if it was enabled and when i hover over things it does nothing :/

are you using the beta edition of firefox?? because its not working on the beta addition again at the moment.. right-click your mouse and select rikaichan if you didn't know.....

im using ver. 2.0.0.14 of firefox, and when i right click the page there is no option to click rikaichan :S

weird maybe try to reinstall rikaichan or something.......

NICEEE, I had to also install the dictionary from their website, and also disable all other addons ( i have a few for reading kanji) and later ill just have to trim it down and see what addon was conflicting with rikaichan... this is a great addon

tokyostyle Wrote:

Floatingweed5 Wrote:I bought these books recently at the recommendation of someone on the forum. They are quite fun...
http://www.thejapanshop.com/home.php?cat=344

Every Japanese person I've shown these books too immediately complains about how strange they are.

Could you go into more detail about what they think is strange about them? (or which books they find strange).
I just got through with level 1 and bought level 2 (before seeing this post). I love them because I listen fiarst and tried to understand (usually don`t fully). Then I go through and read them and can understand them fine. They are small, easy to carry around, easy to understand. They also include some famous Japanese stories (level 1 has urashimarou).
If your Japanese friends are saying the _japanese_ is strange, I wouldn`t be as impressed. But are they saying it is strange becasue it is not true to the original? For example, a "Huckleberry fin" reader would be strange to me because it is not how Mark Twain wrote it--it would be written for a lower level reader. If that is the case, I would say that is the downside of using readers, but not a reason to stop using them.

The language is simplified to suit the grade of reader. Lots of repetition of simple key sentence patterns and vocabulary. It's the same with any book written for children or people with basic reading skills. My native-speaker girlfriend has read through a couple of the books and not highlighted any problems... and she's not shy when it comes to that sort of thing. I'll ask her for a more thorough opinion.

I agree that they are relatively expensive, but if you are like me then your monthly book budget is crazy anyway... If not then you might want to consider your options first. They are not long term study books - just a fun diversion.

[Katsuo]

Regarding the レベル別日本語多読ライブラリー books, there are several samples here with audio, text and illustrations.

You have to click through a few levels to get them, i.e.
- にほんご　よむよむ文庫 Vol. 1, 2 or 3 buttons
- Amber あらすじ buttons
- red "Sample" button

The Japanese person I showed them to said that the text and audio were normal Japanese, but thought that some of the illustrations were strange e.g. in the 注文の多い料理店 excerpt.

I remember the first book I ever read in Kanji. It was the Japanese translation of "The Little Prince." It was surprisingly accessible and all of the kanji had furigana (the small hiragana used to show the kanji's pronunciation). I was amazed at how well I understood it--a real ego booster. I would recommend it to any one as a "first read."
From there, I had the confidence to tackle authors like Murakami Haruki.

tokyostyle Wrote:I think she was particular disgusted with the Level 1 Volume 1 stuff. There were lots of unnatural sentences in them just so they would be easy to read. This has become a huge problem for me because there are all of these "bad" sentences in textbooks and materials for learners.

I see that you are in the UK, but for anyone in Japan a trip to a used bookstore flipping through some of the elementary school books is worth the time. Plus the books themselves will be very cheap. At least with those you know you are getting fluid Japanese.

BTW, I personally enjoyed them yet at the same time I was glad she pointed out how odd they sounded.

Thanks for the tips. I will read them with a grain of salt now. I have justified the price because they come with a CD which I think is great. Here is why I love the CD (that I import to my ipod):
1. I listen without reading the text. (and usually have a hard time understanding)
2. read the text (and get a big ego boost from understanding it)
3. listen again without the text (and get a second ego boost from understanding it just by listening)
(Mainly because of the ego boosts) I have really enjoyed these readers so far. But I won't be adding them into an SRS or anything since you say some sentencces are unnatural.

AS for elementary school second hand books, do you have any recommendations? (I will definately try to find "Le petite prince" KMarkP.) Also, when at a secondhand book store, how do you ask for the elementary school book section and not get a manga section?
小学生の文学はどこですか。　（しょうがくせいのぶんがくはどこですか。）　　Is that right? (seems like an oxymoron)
Also what second hand book stores are good? I know of BookOff and Seagull (they are quite far from my house unfortunately), are there others? What is the kanji for second hand bookstore?

second hand bookstore = 中古書店