Having lived in Japan for two years, I am always interested in Japanese literature and storytelling. While learning Japanese has not been my strong suit, this was a great way to learn more about the culture.

I consider myself an Intermediate student of Japanese by pretty much any metric.

This book made me reconsider that. The stories are overly complicated for Intermediate learners (in my opinion) and are really rather dull.

"Japanese Short Stories for Intermediate Learners" by "Language Guru" delivers exactly what the title promises. However a more accurate title might have been "Practice Reading Japanese with 10 Easily Consumable Episodes of a Typical Salaryman's Life Including Glossaries, Comprehension Questions, and Excellent Language Advice."

I completely agree with the author's premise that reading is an excellent method to develop language skill. People with a good command of any language are typically avid readers. As an educational tool, this book provides an excellent framework for an intermediate student of Japanese that would be well suited for a formal learning environment. Each chapter covers an aspect of the life of Makoto, a typical single male college educated worker at an insurance company. The topics are well chosen to showcase a variety of vocabulary and situations that are stereotypically representative of life in Japan. These include medical care, dieting, food, hobbies, exercise, dating & relationships, work environment, house work, family, and education. The glossary that accompanies each chapter is sufficiently comprehensive that a separate dictionary is unnecessary for the intermediate learner.

The target audience for this book is accurately described as "Intermediate Learners". This book assumes that the learner can read Hiragana, is not afraid of Kanji (But don't worry! All kanji are annotated in Furigana!), and has a decent grasp of Japanese grammar (but here too, some of the grammar is explained in the glossary). In other words, the target is someone who can already read Japanese, but needs some more practice, and could stand to learn more vocabulary. For advanced learners (or even intermediate learners that do not need formal structure), I would suggest reading something a bit more entertaining, perhaps a novel by a Japanese author that writes in a genre that you like.

For Netgalley users: For me, the only provided version of this book that was readable was the one in the NetGalley Shelf Smartphone Application. The pdf version displayed no Japanese characters at all, and the Kindle version had the Furigana AFTER the Kanji which was nearly impossible to read. I am confident that the paper version is fine, as I verified that the ebook version available directly from Amazon shows Kanji and Furigana correctly. (Though to be very picky, in a future edition, I would suggest using a slightly larger font for the English words in the glossaries.)

I thank The Language Guru for kindly providing a temporary electronic copy of this work for review.

tl;dr 3.5/5 stars. Not a bad addition to your collection for early intermediate (N4 or between N4-N3) learners. Hard to recommend it if you're above that level, as it may be too easy and thus not worthwhile.

Not tl;dr:

The opening of this book definitely had words of advice I both agreed with and appreciated seeing mentioned. The author stresses the importance of quantity over quality in terms of language consumption, and while they could've gone more in depth with it, the basic concept is there. Many language students stress too much on understanding everything, which slows them down in how much content they can consume. Whereas if they learned to rely on context clues, they could surprise themselves at how quickly they could come to understand things naturally.

If you've read any of my reviews on Japanese materials before, I'm definitely a reader who has done a little of everything. I've read intensively (looking up every word), extensively (as the author calls it, where you look up nothing), and in between. I don't discount intensive reading entirely, as the author seems to, as I do think it has its place, but I do think extensive reading is a process overlooked or under-discussed in the language learning community, so there is value in pushing it.

For the actual contents of the book, for each short story, there is a vocab list, quiz, and English translation, in that order. I would recommend readers to go through the story first without looking up anything, (potentially read it twice), then look over the vocab, go back and reread, do the quiz either after reading or after the vocab, then read the English translation. The answer key for the quizzes are in the back of the book, and there are ten stories total.

Each story has a central focused theme, which I think is great, as you get to see similar vocabulary together, and can revisit stories with vocabulary you wish to study. (Medical, food, excercise, etc.) We follow Makoto's life effectively in order after a medical diagnosis, it's very 日常生活 （にちじょうせいかつ）. I do wish the stories were a little more exciting, but given the real-life nature of them and the practical vocabulary, it's hard to complain much there.

The English translations here and there felt a little stiff or awkward. It's obvious they were aiming for a more literal translation, rather than localization, which is fine, but perhaps a little more touching up would've been nice.

Quote: "The first girl he met from yoga class was Sachiko, who seemed really smart right away. She was a big reader of fiction but not non-fiction. She liked literature and could talk for hours about the novel she was currently reading."

I did appreciate some carry over with some vocabulary and grammar, so you get more instances of them in action in later stories, which is another chance to remember them.

The title and cover on Net Galley (where I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review) differs from Goodreads and Amazon, where it states it is for intermediate learners, rather than beginners and intermediate. I have to say, that is a welcomed change, as the text in this book is not for beginners. (I do agree with another reviewer, where mentioning the more specific level, such as JLPT or CEFR, would've helped a lot in determining their demographic and attracting learners.)

I would personally place this between N4 and N3, as far as JLPT levels go. So early intermediate. (I was a little surprised to see a more advanced grammar when I read the first story, but the author included it in the vocab list, which was great to see.) Though if you are more advanced with kanji, the furigana may be distracting. The author notes that they purposely made the font size larger there, so I found it annoying myself, but I could see how it could be helpful for those less familiar with kanji.

Honestly, not a bad book. I was a bit disappointed with the ending though. The last story, after all that build up of reading through Makoto's life, just...abruptly stops. I see what they're going for, but it was still a little :/ to read. An additional section of further reading could've been a nice addition too, felt like a missed opportunity there.

Otherwise, it certainly delivers what it promises. If you're looking for more materials to learn from, especially when it comes to reading, and you're at least N4, this could be worth considering.

As a quick aside, the Kindle version I received from Net Galley did not have the bold text in the stories to match the vocab list. Not sure if there was an editing error there, but mentioning it just in case.

As a beginner, I thought it’d be nice to read some stories in addition to the study material I’m using. However, I’ve only covered -desu and -masu verb endings so in the first story, I only found one verb with these endings. Having looked through the rest, this seems to be the case for all the stories so I couldn’t go any further.

This ultimately is the problem with this book at the moment - what do they mean by “beginner”? I’d recommend that the publisher include some details on either the back cover or inside detailing what grammar/vocabulary is expected and link it to a language learning framework (CEFR, JLPT, etc.) so that the right people pick this book up.

If I had understood the stories, the multiple choice questions afterwards are a good idea to check that you’ve understood what you’ve read.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This book is solidly in my opinion in the intermediate learners category. As someone who has both been classroom taught and self-taught Japanese, I couldn't see a beginner using this book in anyway. I will say that this is excellent supplementary material to really get your brain working on the things you should be learning at this level. As an intermediate myself I found the book a good challenge. The furigana helped a lot and I spent time really thinking about the context clues of the things I didn't know off hand. That being said, I don't know if I'm the type of learner or reader they were looking forward. I did find it a bit difficult to navigate for me personally. So, all in all I give this a 3.5/5. Thank you so much to NetGalley and Language Guru for the chance to review this ebook.

I can not express how disappointed I am. Beginners? Nope. No way. You start off with some crazy stuff, not nice and easy. I got seriously demotivated.

The cover looks nice, though?

And maybe it is good but for Intermediate level, for sure.

Anyone who is a beginner: stay away.

A mostly useful little guide. I like that the stories are fully in Japanese and utilizing all three alphabets and furigana to help with learning. Even the questions after are in Japanese so you're constantly practicing apart from when checking your translation.

However, it's formatted like an English book. It could have been more useful to have it read down like an actual Japanese book for more natural practice.

However, I would recommend this book and though it says it only needs to be read once. I'll definitely be using it again when my vocab and reading skills have improved.

This could possibly be a good supplementary tool for students of Japanese, but it certainly cannot stand alone as a reading tutor for beginners and even intermediate learners. Also, there are errors in the Japanese text as well due to overly literal translations that simply don't work.
I think that there are some students who may find value in this, but there are no real shortcuts to learning to read in Japanese. You put in your time and you get there.

Those stories are very hard to read for a beginner.
I also would recommend some vocabulary register in it. Otherwise it's good that it still has hiragana over the Kanji so those are easier to read.
I like that it also has some quizzes.

It is impossible for me to properly review this book because of all the problems with the EPUB file. I tried downloading a couple of times, but all I could see each time was skewed formatting and only the English text with blank spaces in between that I assume are where the Japanese text should have been, but none of it was visible. I glanced at other reviews. One person also mentioned the lack of kanji, by which I assume she means the same problem I am having. The other reviewer didn't mention it, so perhaps it downloaded okay for them - maybe they used the Kindle version and that was okay. Clearly, though, there is an issue with the EPUB formatting that needs to be addressed.
Given that I couldn't read and review this book properly, I am only sharing my thoughts here for the publisher's reference and will not leave negative feedback elsewhere in the hopes it is just a glitch with the file uploaded here.

I am studying Japanesse for 1 year couple years ago. And as beginner we mostly read cute Japanesse children picture books with big hiragana letters and how to read it. This book is similar practice read contains with ten daily topics such as illness and medicine, food, exercise, hobbies, work etc. All stories are written in hiragana, kanji and furigana. Mini dictionary is attached in each story for vocabulary help. There is provided mini quizzes as well.

For me this book is too advance for people who starting learning. The story are short but kanji characters itself need more practice. As beginner learner I will enjoy additional explanation, how to read the hiragana/kanji, and maybe illustration picture to make this book more appealing and standout.

Thank you Netgalley and Language Mastery Publishing for let me read my copy. I am grateful and my thoughts are my own.

Interesting reference book for beginners and intermediate learners of the Japanese language. I enjoyed the short stories and the English translations provided. more so, the vocabulary is great for readers. The only issue I had was the the lack of kanji. The kanji portion of the mini stories were missing and that may be in part of the e-pub downloaded for review. Nonetheless, decent learning tool.