Haven’t tried the Learn Through Haiku, so I can’t comment on that one.
How beginner are we going? I like the graded readers from Ask. At first I thought it wouldn’t be worth getting printed ones, but they’re pretty nice quality. And around level 3 (as far as I’ve tried) you get substantial little short stories in there - around 30 pages per book, and they come in bundles of 5.
I’ve tried some of the Japanese Language Park’s ‘Short Stories for Japanese Learners’ stuff, and actually it’s pretty good too. They have vocabulary lists, q&a, and a full English translation after each story. Personally, I’d rather just have the vocab list and not use so many pages for the other stuff, but it’s preference. I also have a “Japanese Short Stories for Beginners” from Lingo Mastery, which I’m not a big fan of. Typsetting and editing seem sloppy, but it does the job of providing short stories.
More advanced, the Tsubasa Bunko stuff seems like a good route. I picked up a Tsubasa Bunko copy of 時をかける少女 (Girl Who Leapt Through Time) and it seems really nice. Full furigana, a picture every handful of pages. But it’s a lot, reading an actual novel (even youth-targeted) for me, for now, just involves too many word lookups.
@emb I want to read more. anyone have any recommendations for good physical books for someone who is still a beginner at reading Japanese?
are the “Learn Japanese Through Haiku” books any good?
no manga or VNs please
#JapaneseLanguage #LanguageLearning
Haven’t tried the Learn Through Haiku, so I can’t comment on that one.
How beginner are we going? I like the graded readers from Ask. At first I thought it wouldn’t be worth getting printed ones, but they’re pretty nice quality. And around level 3 (as far as I’ve tried) you get substantial little short stories in there - around 30 pages per book, and they come in bundles of 5.
I’ve tried some of the Japanese Language Park’s ‘Short Stories for Japanese Learners’ stuff, and actually it’s pretty good too. They have vocabulary lists, q&a, and a full English translation after each story. Personally, I’d rather just have the vocab list and not use so many pages for the other stuff, but it’s preference. I also have a “Japanese Short Stories for Beginners” from Lingo Mastery, which I’m not a big fan of. Typsetting and editing seem sloppy, but it does the job of providing short stories.
More advanced, the Tsubasa Bunko stuff seems like a good route. I picked up a Tsubasa Bunko copy of 時をかける少女 (Girl Who Leapt Through Time) and it seems really nice. Full furigana, a picture every handful of pages. But it’s a lot, reading an actual novel (even youth-targeted) for me, for now, just involves too many word lookups.
For broader options, try browing Natively maybe.