Japanese Short Stories for Beginners: 20 Captivating Sh… (2025)

この 本 は とても 便利 で、楽しくて、面白い。私 は 毎日 ものがたり で 新しい ことば を 習った。この 本 が 大好きよ。

Estoy en un punto en el que comienzo a sentirme frustrada con mi japonés, porque pese al estudio, la gramática y el libro de ejercicios, siento que necesito leer un poco más para mejorar el vocabulario. Éste libro ha sido de mucha ayuda, las historias son fáciles de leer ya que todas tienen furigana y una pequeña guía de estudio para reforzar el aprendizaje.
Me ha servido además para identificar puntos gramaticales importantes en la conversación cotidiana.
Otro punto a resaltar; que no les eche para atrás el hecho de que el libro está en inglés ya que basta con un nivel súper básico para leer las traducciones.

I’ve read a lot of “beginner” level materials for Japanese study, and these were by far the most interesting stories I’ve ever encountered. The layout of the book was helpful for studying and included just enough difficult vocabulary that most unknown words could be figured out using context clues - I only had to check the glossary for one or two words per story. Quizzes to check understanding were also very useful. Definitely would recommend for anyone at the N4 level of their Japanese study or to anyone looking to refresh their language skills.

There were mistakes in several vocabulary lists but I am glad I bought this one. It was a big step to read my first Japanese short stories and Lingo Mastery did it achievable for those like me that are self studying.

Bon, on peut dire que c'est mon tout premier livre lu en Japonais. C'est vraiment utile d'avoir ce genre d'ouvrages et je regrette qu'il y en ait si peu de disponibles !
Il y a quelques coquilles dans celui-ci cependant, mais rien d'insurmontable.
Chaque histoire propose :
- le texte en japonais
- la traduction précise de chaque paragraphe
- un résumé
- le vocabulaire
- des questions sur le texte et leurs réponses
Je m'attaque du coup à la version intermédiaire. 💪

いい本ですね。たくさんの新しい単語があります。物語は結構で面白いです。

A great entry point for Japanese language learners who are ready to move on to reading. I would have preferred no furigana with pronunciation only in the vocabulary glossary, but that is a minor gripe.

I loved everything about how easy this book makes it to practice reading in Japanese while learning new vocabulary. The only thing that would make it better would be some kind of audio file for pronunciation.
A disclaimer here that I’m not a beginner and already know grammar, so things that seemed clear to me might not apply to everyone.

The dokkai reminds me of my first year in uni. Easy to read with furigana on the top of the kanji, plus bilingual version accompanied it. There is summaries in the end of each passage, vocabularies and questions followed. The stories are all interesting. A nice book to learn dokkai.

Suurta lukunautintoa turha odottaa, mutta hyvää lukumateriaalia meille, jotka osaavat vasta kielen alkeet. Vaikkei kaikkia sanoja aina ymmärtäisikään, niin tekstistä kyllä tajuaa pääkohdat ja kirjan käännökset ja sanastot auttavat vaikeampien kohtien kanssa.

Good, but still requires a companion to teach the basics before diving in

Glossed over the last few because due date but it's a pretty nifty practice book with questions. I wish the questions didn't have the English translation though. That was too much of a crutch.

Carino, abbastanza funzionale, molto semplice. Ci sono tante storie, alcune più carine di altre, ma la maggior parte direi un po' anonime.

This is perhaps the longest it has ever taken me to read a book. Almost 4 years!!! I started this in my final year of college as a way to improve my listening comprehension (I have the audiobook) and while I did enjoy it, it always felt like such a huge chore to listen to one of these stories a week. I remember during 2020 going on aimless walks around my neighbourhood and listening to these.

Getting back into studying Japanese now, entirely self directed, I really enjoyed these stories. Trying to just immerse myself in Japanese and follow my interests has been so much more enjoyable than following some pre set curriculum. I hadn’t realised that previously I was studying to pass tests and now I’m just trying to actually learn. It’s been good. I’m glad I got to come back to this book :)

* The stories are purposive, they do their job. Still I would have wished for more wit in the writing and punchlines/twist at the end of the stories, more often then they occur. I think there was still untapped potential to create more entertaining and thus engaging short stories without rising the language level or interfering with the didactic quality, as the educational exercise is the main purpose of this book.

* While I liked the level in which this was written, some might expect easier texts for "Beginners"™. But I think its better to have the level that they chose. Should struggle at first because of lacking grammar or reading skills, you will improve your skills ands grow "into" the book, like with clothing that's to big for a child that is growing. Still a caveat you should be wary of!

* The topics and vocabulary used in them are diverse and nicely mixed! You encounter some general expressions multiple times which helps remember them, while special terms only get used once or twice in their story.

* There is a Quiz consisting of a small set of questions and answers at the end of each story. I like the idea of this, but like with other aspects of this book the execution leaves much to be desired: The questions are way too easy and too often just have No/Yes as answers. C'mon you guys, I know you can do better then that. Even better then a fixed set of answers might've been a field where you have to write your own answer, with an model answer as a solution to compare to (Although one can argue, that improving/checking one's writing skills is not this books focus, but it's just an idea).

* I have a physical copy which physically is nicely produced and has no problems. But one of my main complaints is: Generally the content of the products feels unpolished, especially the printing and format is what frustrates me: The list of vocabulary that thankfully is included after each chapter (=story) is never ordered properly! (My self-proclaimed arrangement-OCD is killing me just looking at it!) Often words that are bold (which indicates that it should appear in the list) are missing. Some words that I suppose not only I don't know yet, don't appear in the vocab list and aren't marked either, so the selection of translated vocab is dubious. On occasion, the furigana (Hiragana-reading of Kanji above words) is missing and on almost all headings the formatting is flawed, so that the furigana is printed over it.

* The text is printed THREE times! Once only Japanese, a second version with the same Japanese text but an English translation after each one or two sentences and then a third one as a summary in Japanese and English.
What a huge waste of paper and space... Feels like they wanted to bump up the page count or let it seem bigger then it actually is, which is kind of low-key scammy, besides producing unnecessary waste. I get that they wanted to emulate that flash-card functionality of having the text only in the other language viewable and to give options. Personally, I didn't even bother reading the first or third version, the second one totally suffices if you ask me (of course you have to be disciplined not to look at the translation immediately, but you can hide the next paragraph with a sheet of paper or your bookmark, that worked for me).

* There is a translation after each few sentences in the aforementioned second version.
I dislike it!
Obviously you can't and shouldn't translate each word literally, but too many times the words chosen for the English translation were too generic/general/bland in my honest opinion. If a word isn't included in the vocab list and you don't know it, there is a good chance that the translation leads you to false assumptions about its real meaning, so you should countercheck it with a dictionary!

As a resumé: While this book is indeed useful training for your Japanese reading capabilities, I think it should at least have been polished more. I wouldn't necessarily recommend buying it physically as it will take up unnecessary space in your house after you're through with it. Even if you read it two or three times while you get better, at some point it won't be worth it for you to have, once you have improved to a certain degree. The matter of expense is also dicey for what it is (ca. 14€), that's why maybe I would go for the cheaper digital version (there's at least one on Kindle).

I was mostly able to read these Japanese short stories though all of them contained vocabulary and sometimes grammatical structures I didn't know. This book was about right for my level if you subscribe to Stephen Krashen's Input Hypothesis, which says that you should try to read and listen to material that is at level "I+1" (just above your current fluency level).

There are twenty stories, each one about 2-3 pages long. The format is the same for each: first the story in Japanese (with furigana accompanying all the kanji). Then each paragraph is presented with an English translation. Then there is a summary in Japanese, with an English translation. Then there are some comprehension questions in Japanese (also with English translations).

I think this book was useful for my language learning, but I have to admit the stories were just plain boring. Now granted, at my level (barely N5), I can hardly expect to find sophisticated thrillers, but there wasn't much in the way of narratives or clever endings. Just a bunch of slice of life stories about ordinary Japanese people. It was fine as a reader, but not in terms of material I aspire to actually enjoy reading.

I also feel like the selection and organization and the translations were rather workmanlike; Lingo Mastery is some kind of language startup that markets ebooks and podcasts in many languages. The translations often seemed a bit sloppy.

Overall, worth the money for the reading practice, but I kind of felt like I was grinding through an elementary reader. I look forward to being able to actually read manga and light novels. Haruki Murakami in the original Japanese is still a long way off.

This is a very nice begginer's book. Sentences are simple, and most the stories (all short, 1 to 2 pages long) are pretty entertaining.
It's very helpful for self-study as it has translations, vocab list, and a small quiz with answers at the end of each story.

I liked that it had furigana, however this is also my gripe with it. I feel like the furigana should have been better used only the first time a word was introduced, or only on the first story it appeared at, and not in ALL the kanji, to help force people to look and remember the kanji. At least for common words for N4 and N5 (since there were a handful of harder vocab in a couple stories).

Also, I don't know if it was just my copy, but the furigana was a bit all over the place. In the titles it had been displaced so it was printed almost all the way ON TOP of the kanji, making it impossible to read the furigana, and about a handful of kanji were missing furigana completely in the stories- which was clearly a mistake as everything else had it. It wasn't too many, and as there was furigana elsewhere it wasn't a big deal, but it was still bothersome to find the inconsistency.

It's good to have a verity of sources when studying a language. From textbooks to "authentic material" like anime and manga. I know that native speakers of Japanese say that "textbook grammar is unnatural" and "real people don't talk like fictional characters." To which I say, so what? People who want to learn a language aren't going to solely rely on one source. They might start by reading a textbook or quoting lines from their favorite shounen anime, but they're not going to end there. (Well, some will give it up that quickly.)

Anyway, some of the stories in this book are fun. It says it's for beginners, but there is an expectation that you already know hiragana and katakana and some basic grammar and vocabulary. It is beginner level, but it's not for people who don't know anything about Japanese.

The Japanese short stories is really a fun way to improve your reading skills. I must say I think the book isn't really for beginners, but still it is fun to read. Even if you are a beginner, in the end every sentence will be translated in English, so everyone can understand whats written.

The book contains fun stories such as the habits in Japan. The sories are short, every chapter contains a text written in japanese, a translation in English , a short summary, every kanji is translated and in the end of every chapter you can make a quiz to look at how much you understood the story.
This book contains 20 chapters with short stories, so you will have enough to read.

I am very pleased reading this book:)

Thank you for making this book Lingo Mastery.

This book contains 20 very short stories written in Japanese for beginners. Each story has a glossary, although several of the words therein should be known by beginners whereas some words not in the glossary would not be known by beginners. Following the short story, there is an English translation, paragraph by paragraph. There is also a summary of each story written in both Japanese and English. Finally after each story, there is a set of questions to test the reader for comprehension. Except for the last story, the remaining stories were sufficiently interesting to hold one's attention. All in all, a good exercise for those learning Japanese.

20 stories to help Japanese learners practice and increase their vocabulary. The stories are translated into English and they have a list of vocabulary and some questions to check the reading comprehension. The stories are short and although they are a bit silly, the important thing here is that Japanese learners have some texts to improve mostly their vocabulary. My favourite stories are “The Train” and “Crybaby”.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and I am voluntarily leaving a review.

Nifty short little stories that make for decent reading practice. I was quite pleased to find myself understanding the majority of these and only needing to look up one or two words per story. Each story is about 2 or 3 pages long at must and while not everyone is a winner in terms of the actual plot (some are more like little scenes) there are some pretty cute humorous ones and one or two with a weird twist. I think my favorite was "The Annoying Neighbor". Good reading practice to affirm your practice, but maybe a bit limited on growing new skills compared to something like Satori Reader

A nice collection of short stories of daily life in easy Japanese. All Kanji have furigana, which makes reading easier. Each sentence has a translation below to use or to ignore, depending on the level of understanding.
Each story also has a vocabulary list and a section for Q&A. The book works well for self-study as well as for a teacher-led class.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

Japanese Short Stories for Beginners includes 20 stories for language learners. Every story is only about 2 pages short and learners then get about 8 pages each of additional content of translations, vocabulary lists, summaries and reading comprehendion quizzes.

I think this approach is very close to how Japanese is taught in textbooks with a focus on intensive reading. If the aquiring of new vocabulary and word-by-word translation is what you are looking for in a reader, then this book is a good fit.

But if you are looking for simple stories to get into the practise of fluently reading in Japanese most other graded readers for beginners would be a better choice in my opinion.

A useful learning tool. Absolutely no need to include romaji in the vocab lists, so it loses a star for that. I would've preferred the translations of the questions to be on a separate page (perhaps with the answers) as my eye automatically went to the translation before I'd had the chance to try and read and understand the question for myself. Additionally, some of the stories didn't have any story or moral to them at all really. Nevertheless it was helpful to see vocabulary in context.

A very interesting concept for a book, and is a great way to help build vocabulary, learn grammar, and read kanji. The stories are in English and Japanese, after each story is a question and vocabulary list. I did find the stories themselves a bit boring but I think this is because the stories are at an high N4-N3ish level and focuses more on learning grammar and vocabulary, through reading, so the topics are a bit dry.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review. I found the vocabulary lists to be helpful and the English versions of the stories showed that they are good material. Unfortunately this book is beyond my very basic Japanese as it was for Kanji which I'm not familiar with at all. It would be good for those at that level.

I don't feel like this book is actually for beginners. In fact I would have pitched it at a more intermediate level because despite the fact that some of the vocab lists are incorrect, it is also simply more advanced than I think beginners would be comfortable with.

That being said (and errors aside), it is a great resource and once you are ready for this level you will get a lot out of it

Some of the stories were a tad on the weird side, but overall I enjoyed all of them!

The format of the book is great, and there is variety when it comes to the utilized vocabulary. I would even argue that beginners would not really need a lot of it in a normal concentration, but hey, who am I to judge?

Very good for progressing your reading comprehension, however sometimes the printing was plain bad. The Kanji would be printed over the Hiragana, meaning I'd struggle to understand the word. Luckily it would come up later in the story.

I found this really useful for reading practice and expanding my vocabulary. Aside from the benefits, the short stories were actually very interesting! I will definitely revisit this book to revise vocabulary.