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Read Real Japanese Essays: Contemporary Writings by Popular Authors
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There is a dramatic difference between reading Japanese that is tailored to students, and reading real Japanese that has been written for native speakers. The concocted variety tends to be insipid, flat, stiff, standardized, completely lacking in exciting and imaginative use of language. Read Real Japanese Essays, and its companion volume Read Real Japanese Fiction, allows readers to experience the work of several of todays foremost writers as if they were lifelong Japanese speakers.
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(4.11/5)Great selection of nonfiction for the interested learner
Read Real Japanese Essays is a nice little graded reader: it covers 8 nonfiction essays from well-known authors (such as Murakami Haruki and Yoshimoto Banana) and comes with accompanying professionally-recorded audio, courtesy of Reiko Matsunaga (my copy is old enough to have a CD, but more recent copies direct you to an audio download on the publisher's website).
Each story is presented with the Japanese text on the right page and an English gloss on the left. All kanji are marked with furigan
Extremely useful, moderately interesting
This is one of the most useful tools for learning Japanese I have encountered. It gives you native-level essays along with line-by-line translations, vocabulary, and grammar explanations in order to conquer each one. The essays themselves are varied in their topics, but that also means they're varied in terms of how interesting they are. The difficulty of some essays also seem to vary as well; a few I could "grasp" and a few definitely felt like a slog to finish and, even then, I still feel like