Intermediate Japanese Short Stories: 10 Captivating Short Stories to Learn Japanese & Grow Your Vocabulary the Fun Way! (Intermediate Japanese Stories)

Easy language and pretty interesting stories

Language

Overall pretty easy in my opinion, compared to mangas of the same Natively difficulty. All the vocabulary used is quite standard, and difficult words are included at the end of each chapter so you can refer to it or learn them beforehand. No slang at all, and well-constructed sentences, which somehow feel like better quality practice than most mangas.

Entertainment

While the two previous volumes of the same series had pretty bland stories, I found that this book had quite a jump in quality. There’s fewer chapters (10 instead of 20) but they are longer, going in-depth in each topic. Instead of fictional short stories, this volume is mostly focused on Japanese culture, which I found to be much more interesting. There are chapters on Japanese authors such as Soseki Natsume or Osamu Tezuka, festivals, bowing, ...

I would strongly recommend to anyone wishing to immerse in some Japanese closer to literature, while still looking for something very accessible and pretty short.

Level - Between N4-N3. Tadoku Level - Harder than the Level 4 readers but easier than the level 5 one.

Great format to get practice in!

A great graded reader for those looking to reinforce n4-n3 grammar points in context

Stories are longer than their beginner short stories which is great because there is a lot more happening. For some stories, you really get sucked into it only to be disappointed when you reach the end because you will want the story to continue and develop more.

The vocabulary lists per story are super useful for quick reference and the summary and questions after each story are helpful as well to gauge your understanding.