Ok so I lied when I said I wouldn’t be posting more of what I’m reading. I realized that all my previous posts were for very high intermediate or advanced levels. So today, I read a very cute children’s story about a baby snake. Children’s books aren’t great for learning Kanji and often don’t really engage adult readers but you know what? Maybe you have a child and you’d like to read a Japanese children’s book to him or her. Or maybe you’re a beginner and you want to be able to enjoy reading something in Japanese without having to spend weeks on the first page.
The site 「パブー」 has a bunch of other free stuff to read and it’s even available in PDF format.
Anyway, the one I read about the baby snake is really cute and it’s even got some Kanji in it. So it’s actually pretty awesome. Maybe I’ll load the free children’s books onto a tablet to read to my baby instead of buying them from Kinokuniya, which can get pretty expensive very fast (unless you have to buy the tablet).
Difficulty: 1/5
My rating: 5/5
Wow, that’s a really well done kid’s story. The others I’ve found have been dreadfully boring, but that one was really good.
Yep, it’s definitely hard to find quality stuff for free.
When I first started learning Japanese (not that I know much of it now) I bought a few children’s books, thinking it would be an easy place to find simple sentences. But every word had so many possible definitions, and there was no Kanji to help show you which one to go with! Once you have a few of those in the same sentence, it is too difficult to even try to guess which meaning to choose.
I find it much easier to work with full Kanji with furigana. Sometimes it helps to have a translated copy as well to check the sentences you really can’t figure out, or to at least choose something you’ve read translated before (or seen the movie) so that you remember the general idea.