Reading Road ―多様な日本を読む

Cultural articles about Japan

Here is how the book is arranged:

• These are nonfiction articles, poems, and some stories of general interest about Japanese life and culture.
• There are 5 chapters (overarching themes) and three levels of content within each chapter. There are 5 articles at level 1, 15 at level 2, and 15 at level 3. Each article is just 1-2 pages. Levels 1 and 2 are N4 level, so they remove furigana for N5 and N4 kanji, and gloss word definitions that are above this level. Level 3 is N3, so they remove furigana for N5-N3 kanji.
• Each main article is independent and about twice the length of a typical NHK news easy article. Then at level 2-3 there are 2 related articles that follow.

Other features:

• translations: in the back for each article (English, Vietnamese, Chinese)
• glossed words at the bottom of each page (translated), I thought these were well chosen
• comprehension questions
• After each main article there is a page with 5 "key kanji" and mnemonic style images. Sometimes they have have a few nice ideas so it's worth glancing through.
• a couple of grammar points glossed at the end of main articles (probably 30 grammar points total). This feature is more like a reinforcement for knowledge you might have forgotten, not so much to learn new grammar.
• Ahead of the main articles are some text messages that students might write about the topic. You need a bit of fantasy to benefit from those, but it does help with the article comprehension because you have some clues as to what it's about going in.

Difficulty: I'm reading at Natively 20-23 and knew about 350 kanji at the start, and Levels 1 and 2 were very approachable without a dictionary or kanji lookups. Level 3 was variable and topic dependent for me. Some I can understand with some guessing, others were too difficult.

Content: the easiest articles feel like slightly harder versions of the cultural articles on NHK news easy. For example, an article about what もったいない means, and an article about the 駅伝 (New Year's relay races). I like the cultural nature of these and the presentation of topics that non-Japanese might not known about, or even find clear explanations of. If you're looking for something like that to read specifically on paper at this level, then this is great for you. Many articles and stories I found super interesting and it was a pleasure to just sit down and be able to read something like that in a paper book without needing to reach for a dictionary.

It's nice to have the furigana removed at just my level for a paper read (for level 1-2, level 3 was stretching it for me quite a bit). The vocab gloss covered the words I didn't know just about perfectly which was great.

Who would I recommend this for: If you're somewhere around/between N4-N3ish (have covered beginner grammar) and looking for a smooth nonfiction read to develop your reading skills with a paper book, this would be enjoyable. Also, if you're just at the point of reading more widely, that was the sweet spot for me.

I recommend just browsing through this book and not taking it so seriously. At first, I didn't see the point of putting the harder level 3 content in here. But then I realised at this level is also just where I started to realise that I have to get out of my comfort zone and transition from reading everything with a microscope, to reading more extensively and being more flexible about understanding from context. Reading the Level 3 content with a more flexible mindset gave me a nice confidence boost. Some articles I could understand fine, and others I could at least understand the main idea. It was part of getting me to loosen up and just have more fun reading, not making everything study.