Specs
Reviews
(3.29/5)Summary This is a graded reader with five stories: Urashima Taro, Yuki Onna, The Spider's Thread, The Siblings Who Almost Drowned, and Gauche the Cellist. As the author explains in the book's preface, stories 1-2 are simplified versions of the original folk tales while stories 3-5 are unabridged and unedited other than the addition of furigana. Each story is first presented in English, then in Japanese, followed by with translation notes, grammar points, and vocab. At the end, there are some grammar exercise questions (in Japanese) and discussion questions (in English).
Main issues: content I think the best bilingual graded readers explain grammar thoroughly and offer notes that help us understand the translator's word choice and phrasing. Having a vocab list with definitions is the lowest priority feature for me because it's easy enough to just use a dictionary, but unfortunately the lessons that accompany each story in this book are mainly vocab lists with only a sprinkling of grammar/translation notes.
On top of that, there were times when I found even the vocab lists lacking. For example, The Spider's Thread and Gauche both use 云う instead of 言う, which I hadn't encountered before this book. But the only time 云う is listed in any of the vocab lists is as part of a set phrase like "何とも云えない nan to mo ienai indescribable". Sure, from that you could assume that 云う and 言う are the same (or you could look it up somewhere else). But with basic verbs like 歌う and 合う in the book's lists I expected to see 云う as well.
The grammar exercises are two-choice multiple choice questions with an answer key at the end of the book and no explanations about why a particular choice is correct or not.
If the stories were all at an easier reading level (for example Short Stories for Japanese Learners by Japanese Language Park), lessons that mainly consist of vocabulary wouldn't bother me as much. But with the relatively more complex sentence structure and grammar in this book I would have really appreciated more depth in the notes and explanations.
Minor issues: structure I like that longer stories are split into multiple parts, but in my opinion the book doesn't make the best use of this. Ideally the parts would be laid out like so:
- Part 1 (English)
- Part 1 (Japanese)
- Lesson for Part 1
- Part 2 (English)
- Part 2 (Japanese)
- Lesson for Part 2 etc.
Instead, the third and fourth stories have all the English parts together, followed by all the Japanese parts, and then all the lessons. The fifth story, which is the longest, does alternate the English and Japanese parts. But it still keeps all the lessons at the very end. I think this would be less of an issue for physical book readers, but as an ebook reader it was pretty tricky to navigate back and forth with a list of manual bookmarks to check my understanding rather than just flipping a few pages.
Odd omissions? My final complaint might just be with my version of the book, which I got from Kobo. Most of the translation for the third story is missing, and there's no furigana in any of the stories even though the book preface states that there is.
What I did like I did enjoy the stories themselves, and I appreciated the fact that the stories went up in difficulty from simplified folk tales to unabridged short stories. The included audio is also very good.
Conclusion My least favorite bilingual graded reader out of the ones I have read. Okay if you just want to read a few stories in Japanese with English translations, but for detailed language learning there are better ones out there!
Great mix of stories containing a good mix of difference grammar structures, vocabulary and difficulty levels. Each story gets progressively longer and more difficult as you progress through the book.
There are grammar and vocabulary explanations for each story after the full story, which could have been made better by having those after each section, but it only takes a few seconds to flip to the explanations if you need them.
There is audio for each story read out slowly by a native Japanese speaker which allows you to listen while reading. These are on the cd provided with it and also Able to be downloaded from their website for free.
This is one of those books you may need to read each story more than once for to internalize the grammar from or just study the grammar from the explanations after the story.
Would recommend this for anyone trying to make the jump from graded readers to native material as it will give you a step up on the ladder.
Poor Layout and Dated Language
Book Layout
The main appeal of this book is the inclusion of the English translation on the opposite page and the dictionary entries in the back. While these may be helpful, I found myself using them rarely. There is also furigana on all newly appearing words (per section).
The English translations didn't always appear on the same page as their Japanese counterparts, and it sometimes felt too time-consuming to read the translation. I think that struggling through the effort of trying to understand something can be more beneficial than reading a translation. I found that using Shirabe Jisho (a free dictionary app) was much faster than the included dictionary entries (as you don't need to flip through pages).
There are also some comprehension questions, but I didn’t see any value in using them.
Language Learning
First of all, the language seems dated. I don’t think I have a high enough level of Japanese to recognize exactly what made the reading difficult, but there are many examples of strange and potentially outdated kanji (and maybe grammar) use.
Additionally, the difficulty of the book is NOT consistent. While the book is structured to increase in difficulty as you continue from story to story, there are noticeable jumps between them. The beginning stories were a bit too easy for me, and the ending stories were difficult to get through.
The content also wasn’t very appealing to me. My personal favorite was the third story, 蜘蛛の糸, but nothing else captured my attention.
If you want to try reading this I would recommend reading the 青空文庫 versions of the stories. I am unsure if they have been edited for this book, but they are credited as being the source of the stories. By reading them online, you have access to a more efficient pop-up dictionary and no furigana, all without the strange layout.
Story Links
For a more enjoyable and better version of this concept, I would recommend Japanese Folktales for Language Learners (昔ばなしで学ぶ日本語). It fixes many of the layout issues.