Japanese Reader Collection Volume 1: Hikoichi by Clay Boutwell

Japanese Reader Collection Volume 1: Hikoichi Reviews

• 
  Oji Kenobi

  Many years ago I lived in Japan, studied the language - knew about 2/3 of the 1800 then common kanji. Fast forward to today when I've forgotten most of what I knew. Motivated by a Japanese-speaking mother-in-law who has Alzheimer's, I'm trying to reacquire the language. I crank the font size to maximum (iPad Kindle App), read an Hikoichi story with her. She laughs and laughs at my pronunciation, then I play the MP3 which comes with the tale and she nods her head contentedly. 15 minutes later, she's forgotten the experience, so we can re-read it over and over - great reinforcement for me and, in the moment, great entertainment for her. We are happy to have discovered this series.
• 
  Quasimode

  This series is virtually perfect for students of Japanese who have Hiragana and Katakana memorized but know few or none of the Kanji. The stories are from traditional Japanese folklore, which means they're interesting and clever, and most of it is presented in Hiragana, with Furigana for each Kanji character. I think there may be some sparse Katakana, but for the most part it's Hiragana.
  
  It's not only an excellent way to improve your Kana reading, it's also invaluable for improving vocabulary, something recorded language courses like Pimsleur and Rosetta sorely miss. Reading new words in context of an interesting story assists greatly in visualizing and remembering them. In this sense the formatting of the book too is excellent:
  
  Every page has the Kana at the top (with Furigana above whatever Kanji characters appear,) and phrase-by-phrase translations in Romaji (English phonetic) at the bottom of the page. Which means you can check a given word's translation instantly - a big, big help when you're using an e-reader like a Kindle or Fire, because you're thereby spared the necessity of doing endless page-flips to get to some general glossary located far from the page you're on. It's right there where you need it, but below everything else so you don't "cheat" with inadvertent glances while you read.
  
  In the third volume of this series the author inexplicably omits the Furigana completely, which makes that third book (and presumably those subsequent to it,) mostly useless to anyone without a large number of Kanji memorized. I'm currently at something like 28, total. Hopefully that decision will be corrected, but this and Volume 2 are indispensable for beginning-to-intermediate Japanese students looking to move from "stare-at-each-character" reading to fluid sight-reading of Kana and, eventually, Kanji. Just an excellently conceived and executed series (up until Volume 3,) with clever, interesting short stories.
  
  [Addendum, Spring 2018: The author recently updated all of the Japanese Reader titles to include Furigana, so... problem solved, and buy without hesitation! Once again, an excellent series for students of Japanese reading.]
• 
  Inés Chamarro

  I would not say this is necessarily for absolute beginners (I have been studying Japanese for two years and a number of grammatical structures took me by surprise) but the English explanations are a major help, and you have the possibility to make a first bilingual reading to feel your way through and see the vocabulary before you confront the full Japanese version, and for me that works perfectly. There is a glossary of kanjis and expressions at the end. I bought the full bundle and this is only the first volume, so we will have to see how far I can cope for the time being, but all in all I am very happy I bought this. The stories are quite funny, too.
• 
  Jamie

  This is an excellent resource for people who are beginning to read Japanese or who are reviewing their skills. The stories are based on folktales and manage to be simple without being boring. In fact, they are quite charming. Vocabulary is well glossed and repeated enough to be well reinforced.
• 
  Filip

  My first book with Japanese text on Kindle. Japanese script is embedded as pictures which is a pity because Kindle can handle Japanese perfectly. On the other hand this allows inclusion of furigana and dictionary for every page and thus it can be extremely effective learning tool (you don't have to use your dictionary while reading). Selected text is an elementary or lower-intermediate level. So far so good, however the book has two very major drawback: It's EXTREMELY SHORT (consists of only 2 short stories each about 3 pages) and the stories selected are historical tales with quite archaic language and vocabulary.
• 
  Ritsumei

  Excellent beginner stories
  
  The difficulty of looking up every word in the dictionary can be a barrier to language learners, but this book's running gloss goes far to solve that problem: it puts the definitions right on the same page. Just as important, the stories are engaging folk tale retellings that make the work of reading Japanese a reward of its own. I enjoyed the book for myself, and plan to use it with my kids.
• 
  Sandra Ramirez

  Easy to read if you're a beginner
  
  It gives the translation of unknown words. It's easy to use, and it can lend itself to be challenging for both beginners and moderate readers of the Japanese language.
• 
  Jidda

  With Romaji, Hiragana and Kanji as well as English, the folktale of Hikoichi rendered for and beginner level learners of Japanese.