しあわせ

どんどん読めるいろいろな話　著者: 秋元美晴、糸川優、寺島ミチ子、(ISBN4-8386-0368-1)

Part of my ongoing 100万字 project. Slightly daunting at first as it is completely Japanese. But I found I could understand most of the introduction so I bought it. There are 11 stories in it. I reckon the level is about post JLPT3 in terms of grammar but maybe a little higher in terms of vocabulary. It has the story 「注文の多い料理店」which I have previously read in the レベル別日本語多読ラブリー series. This version is a little harder overall but still doable at my reading level so I’m pretty confident in reading the rest of the stories. I’m looking forward to reading an excert from Souseki’s “I am a Cat”「我輩は猫である」

Everything has furigana which is useful. There is even a little plastic sheet you can put over the page that will block out the furigana so you can test your ability to read without them. Unlike the NPO books there are footnotes. These explain unknown words either by using pictures or by explaining the word in simpler Japanese or very rarely by giving the English.

My only complaints about the book are quite minor. It would be nice if the illustrations were either colour or line drawings. And the typeface the book is set in is slightly small; for beginners a larger size would be easier. However it does seem to be the standard size Japanese novels are set in, so maybe it’s good to get used to it.

北嶋千鶴子（著者）North Island Company

I actually bought this as part of my 100万字 challenge. (At time of writing not at all on target at about 2.5万字）Finding suitable texts is quite a challenge. This one seemed to kill two birds with one stone. I could have reading practice and at the same time have reading comprehension practice for JLPT. The easier and quicker I can read the easier the JLPT will be I think.

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日本語能力試験　直前対策　文法 ３級 (国書刊行会）

This is a companion volume to JLPT3 Kanji and Vocabulary Cram Session.

Again there are 15 mock tests interspersed with short sections of grammar. Again it is all in Japanese so the grammar explanations require a bit of work. There are also explanations for all the answers. However, as they are all in Japanese, they might not be simple to understand; although the extra practice might be useful.

The book is from before the changes made to the test 2 years ago. However the nature of the grammar questions haven’t changed. The only difference I can see is that section IV has an extra question. What the book doesn’t have is any questions for the 読解 reading comprehension part of the third paper.

As usual try to do these tests against the clock. Suggested times are: Section I ー13分; Section II ー14分; Section III ー8分; Section IV ー5分 . 40分 in total, leaving 30分 for the last two reading comprehension sections.

3級編　例文で学ぶ漢字と言葉 - 西口 光一 (著)　（スリーエーネットワーク）

These books could do with snappier titles. What we have here is another learn to read and write kanji book. The difference is this is the first one I’ve found that specifically covers kanji for JLPT and the vocabulary for JLPT. And it does this through reading passages. That’s what really inticed me to buy it.

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実力アップ!日本語能力試験3級 文法編 実力アップ! (Unicom Inc)

A challenging book. This is a Japanese Grammar written in Japanese. There are two pages of an English preface but after that you’re on your own. There is an English translation available separately but Part of what interested me was trying to cover the grammar in an immersive manner. It’s a bit slower than using an English book but it might pay off in the long run.

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