reading | Japanese By The Book

Finding resources for intermediate level Japanese can be very difficult! On most language learning shelves, it’s easy to find beginner textbooks but at some point they just won’t cut it anymore. You need to find a textbook that will push you to the next level in Japanese all the while building on top of what you have already learned. But don’t worry! I have just the textbook for you!

I would like to introduce you to “An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese” (ISBN: 978-47890-1307-9 ) by Akira Miura and Naomi Hanaoka McGloin. This book has 15 chapters and each chapter is packed with dialogues (about 3 to 4 会話, “kaiwa”), a slightly more difficult reading exercise (what they call 読み物, “yomimono”), a slightly easier reading exercise (called 速読, “sokudoku”), vocabulary lists, grammar explanations with example sentences, study exercises that you can do alone or with a partner, and cultural notes. The book also includes 2 CDs with a recording of all the dialogues so you can practice your listening skills as well.

First, let’s talk about the dialogues. In this book, they move away from the beginner’s rigid “textbook” Japanese and quickly throw you into natural Japanese phrases. Students will use politer words when speaking to their teachers while friends will use colloquial expressions with each other. The very first dialogue lets you know right away that we are no longer dealing with beginner expressions like “私はJamesです” and introduces you instead to the much politer construction “Jamesと申します”. Many of the dialogues are interactions between foreign students and native Japanese speakers. This is very interesting for the intermediate level student because you get to see how Japanese people explain certain ideas and concepts in their native language. Also, from chapter to chapter, I really get a sense that the reading difficulty gradually increases at just the right pace.

The more difficult reading materials (or 読み物, “yomimono”) in each chapter take on different styles. Some read like journal entries while other read like reports or brief articles on a specific topic. These will give the intermediate student more practice with reading written Japanese at a higher level than what they may have studied before. However, the less difficult light reading materials (or 速読, “sokudoku”) are designed to reinforce what was learned and only sparingly throw in some new vocabulary.

At this point, I should mention that the dialogues and reading materials are all in Japanese and do not have English translations in this textbook. Depending on how you like to learn, this could be good or bad for you. However, as an intermediate student, a lot of these words in these texts are words and constructions that you already know. This textbook simply builds on that and there are plenty of vocabulary lists and furigana (hiragana written above the kanji for pronunciation) to help you push through and read on your own without relying on an English translation of the whole text. The grammar explanations are in English though, don’t worry! The grammar explanations are where this intermediate level Japanese textbook really shines. In the dialogues and reading materials, new grammatical constructions are underlined and given a number. You can look that number up in the grammar section of the chapter and get a full explanation on the grammar point along with example sentences and things to watch out for (such as similar looking constructions that may have a different meaning). After looking through the grammar section of the chapter, you can confidently go back to the tricky parts of the dialogue with a new understanding of the Japanese sentences being used.

If you have finished that beginner Japanese textbook that has been sitting in the corner of your desk for way too long or are itching to figure out where to go next in your Japanese studies, I highly recommend this intermediate Japanese level textbook.

What textbooks have you used to break into intermediate level Japanese? Let your fellow Japanese learners know by dropping your favorite textbook titles in the comments.

Now that you’ve progressed a little bit in your study of Japanese, you are probably wondering where you can get your hands on some authentic Japanese reading material. I have asked myself the same question and hit a wall of kanji and grammar questions when delving straight into Japanese books by Japanese authors. So what to do? The answer: “Read Real Japanese Fiction” (ISBN: 978-4-7700-3058-0) edited by Michael Emmerich. You might be familiar with another title from very same series called “Read Real Japanese Essays” (ISBN: 978-1-5683-6414-8) which was edited by Janet Ashby.

Out of the two books, my feeling is that “Read Real Japanese Fiction” is the easiest one to get started with. The sentences in this book seem very straightforward once you read the provided grammar explanations. Also, the fact that this is a compilation of fictions stories means that they are a little strange and interesting. This means the stories are more likely to grab your attention and keep you reading. The more you read, the more Japanese you’ll learn, so I see that as a win-win!

The structure of the book is simple. There are 6 works of fiction in this book, each from a different contemporary Japanese author. Each piece is introduced with a short description in English about the author and some other works by them you might wish to check out later. Then comes the story itself. On the right-hand side you have the actual Japanese text with kanji and furigana (Japanese characters written above the kanji to help with pronunciation) and on the left-hand side you have the English version of each sentence. Now, if that wasn’t helpful enough, they have actually rearranged the Japanese sentences on the left-hand side so that you can more easily grasp how the structure of the Japanese relates to the English translation! The English translation is interspersed within this arrangement so that you can break down the translation piece by piece. I think this is a remarkable method and really helped me see the logic in the composition of the original reading material.

interspersed japanese english sample reading material — Example of interspersed Japanese and English translation that is found on the left-hand side of each story.

When the translation on the left-hand side of the page is not enough, there are grammar explanations in English for the trickier sentences in the back of the book. Each sentence is numbered for easy lookup. The explanations are very clear and remove all doubt about the meaning of the sentence. They also explain a bit how the structure of the sentence affects the story as a whole. One example of this is when one of the explanations draws your attention to a certain animal character who insists on speaking in very polite speech (remember, these are fiction stories!). A word of advice to the reader though: Use two bookmarks!!! This is real Japanese, so you will find yourself flipping to the explanation in the back quite often. I keep one bookmark for the story I am reading, and another bookmark in the grammar section corresponding to that story. There is also a small dictionary in the back where you can find a translation for just about every word you would want to look up in the stories. Luckily, the edges of the dictionary pages are marked with a gray square (one for each starting kana character) so you can quickly flip to the part of the dictionary you need without using another bookmark. Very handy! The book also comes with a CD so you can listen to a reading of all the stories and work on your oral comprehension skills as well.

Have you had luck finding any digestible Japanese reading material that you could study and learn from? Tell your fellow Japanese learners by leaving some titles in the comments.