What is Reddit's opinion of Read Real Japanese Fiction: Short Stories by Contemporary Writers 1 free CD included?

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I used https://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292 after Tobira. It is arranged a lot like Tobira (readings -> explanations) but the readings are published fiction so it really blurs the line between textbooks and native material.

they have a free trial and some free content, which should give you an idea. Personally I think the level is solid intermediate, I looked through and can't find anything I would consider advanced... though it may still be useful if you are brushing up on listening or kanji or such (though at N1+ maybe not). As a level comparison I find it easier than the Read Real Japanese books, they also come with audio (which I find to be faster that Satori's audio, which is on the slower end of native speeds).

This book has what you're looking for. I got it last week and it's been interesting so far, though there are some points the editor makes that I felt the need to research more on my own, but for the most part it's a self contained resource.

Just focus on reading and writing... I mean they are going to overlap obviously, because that's how language works and being a literature major I would think you would realize that. If anything written Japanese is going to be a lot harder... you are going to need business Japanese and casual conversation and also know the words that tend to be written rather than spoken, really depends what you want to read. Also you will really need to focus on your Kanji. As for books, any book that teaches you vocab and grammar will help you, you just don't have to worry about working on your listening skills or pronunciation.

There are several books geared towards helping learners with reading Japanese literature, but they tend to be aimed at intermediate Japanese learners... not sure where you are at. Here is one I like: Read Real Japanese

I would find these questions useful to my own learning... & rather this than yet another post on how do I start learning Japanese (I mean I get those to a point, but they do get annoying by the 10th one in a week). Just put it in The Shitsumonday thread or start a thread just on this book and just keep all your questions contained there (people here are if occasionally snarky, generally pretty helpful). There is also language-8 and HiNative (app version)... I personally have mixed results with HiNative. Also I don't know if you know about Read Real Japanese but I find it helpful as the back has extensive explanations.

http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292

Read Real Japanese is a book series with essays/short stories accompanying sentence and grammar explanation and audio CD.

The stories are and essays are from contemporary "real world" authors and writers and the editor who compiled the volumes seems quite passionate about them and gives a good introduction to why he thinks you should read these stories.

> I feel like this just makes me feel worse lol. I feel as if I am a slow learner and I struggle a lot with remembering concepts for grammar rules. I never had good experiences with tutors in the past so I'm also extremely hesitant to do stuff like italki. I also cant produce any output because I'm very novice but it seems like people just make huge strides when they're focused way easier than me.

First of all, I apologise for making you feel worse. That wasn't my intention :(

To you address your other points, there are a few things that I need to explain. [My tone may come across as harsh, but I don't want you to take this as something against you personally, just something that I think a lot more people need to know about learning Japanese, or any skill for that matter.]

Japanese (up until around N2/N1) can seem like an insurmountable wall of grammar, so it can be frustrating to progress if you don't resonate well with grammar.

There are many ways of dealing with this:

• focusing on a different activity like listening - even if it's passive.
• reading essays or novels with grammar explanations

You say that you're afraid of using Italki because of your bad experiences with other tutors, but have you considered changing the way you look for tutors or perhaps changing the way you think about language exchange instead?

Being a novice certainly limits the activities that you can do. But you can control the way you think, and comparing yourself is only going to make yourself feel worse.

For reading, I'd strongly recommend grabbing a copy of Read Real Japanese Fiction. The stories and translation notes are a consistent delight.

Where are you at in Japanese?

I first picked this book up when I was at an ~N4 level, and I put it down after the first page because I didn't see myself getting any use out of words like "lying on my side" or something like that. I came back to it a few years later when I could mostly read the text unassisted, save the odd word or tricky structure here and there, and found it much more useful. Having all those glosses on the side of the page let me enjoy the stories without breaking a "comfortable" reading rhythm.

If you're not at that point, I'd recommend looking at other assisted readers first:

• 900 pages of graded readers (~N5 - low ~N2)
• Read Real Japanese: Fiction or Essays

(Not sure what there is to "discuss", but) great job! This is more progress in terms of comprehension than I made during my first year abroad in Japan, actually.

Just some thoughts for the future:

1. What you're doing is perfect for now, but once you reach a point where you feel like your progress is beginning to slow down, look into some JLPT reading comprehension books. You read a text, it asks you questions about the text (compare and contrast two similar articles, summarize what the author is saying, why they feel that way, etc). The particularly useful bit is the answer key, as it explains why each answer was right or wrong. If you feel like "I know every word and grammar point in this sentence... but I don't understand it..." then this is how you deal with that.
2. As you keep immersing you'll eventually encounter several similar-but-not-quite-the-same grammar points. The books Read Real Japanese: Fiction and Essays are excellent for sorting that out. Each book contains several genuine short stories and essays intended for a Japanese audience, with three alterations: (1) each word has furigana in its first appearance, (2) the left side of each page is a loose English gloss of difficult sentences on the right page, and (3) the back of the book is a running grammar dictionary that gives information about pretty much everything that wouldn't be contained in Genki II -- what it means, how it differs from similar grammar points, how written vs spoken sentence structures differ, etc.
3. In terms of consistency -- three things have been particularly helpful for me. I learned about habit triggers, built trigger-action plans that bind study-time to unavoidable parts of my daily life (like walking to work, lunch time, going to bed)... then timeboxing has literally changed my life.

Good luck!

> I must say, Tae Kim is perfect AFTER you've finished both Genki I & II as a refresher of all the material learned. It's as if it was the notebook of the most brilliant student in your Japanese Language class.

I think this is a good observation, but it's probably the same case the other way around, too.

Not a lot of learners take the forgetting curve into account - you are inevitably going to forget things, regardless of how serious you take this, how smart or dedicated you are. Review is essential -- you'll review vocab/grammar in a more natural fashion when you eventually begin consuming content in Japanese, but it's still good to review more "textbook-ish" resources from time to time, too. You will probably pick up a small nuance or detail that you hadn't noticed before, and this will let you get more out of your immersion later on.

I think that your experience will be the same with Tobira, so just get through the book for now and use Anki in a way that works for you. Once you finish, go back through Tobira's table of contents and put an asterisk next to grammar points that (in the time it took to finish the textbook) have grown a bit fuzzy. Then just as you did with Tai Kim for Genki, find another resource that will let you review the stuff you learned in Tobira.

And before long, you'll be able to focus on "real" Japanese resources! the Read Real Japanese readers are great for this sort of intermediate-but-not-confident-in-myself stage.

Seconding this, also the similar Read Real Japanese series: https://www.amazon.co.jp/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292

This book and the other one in the pair (essays rather than fiction) feature Banana Yoshitomo and Murakami shorts: https://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292

Any texts in parallel I find pretty helpful. Two I have experience with are Read Real Japanese and Breaking Into Japanese Literature. They give you furigana the first time a kanji appears on a page, there's a dictionary at the bottom and the translation on the opposite page.

You could also ask in /r/learnjapanese because there's a much higher subscriber count over there than here. Also see if /r/japaneseresources turns up anything, but it's sort of dead over there.

So I read this book last year, and I really enjoyed it. It has a bunch of famous authors, and the stories are ordered easiest in the front to hardest in the back of the book. There is also an in-book reference for both words, idioms, and cultural references. The non-fiction verison was also good if you like non-fiction better.

Thanks,

I'll check out the Pimsleur.

As I added to the original post, personally I'm looking for intermediate material. I tried Read Real Japanese but find the recording too fast and with little intonation.

I like Marimoeo but they rarely submit new recordings.

Still looking...

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There's a book of relatively recent short stories with Japanese on the right page and the English on the left. Complete with dictionary and notes. Only author I can remember by name is Banana Yoshimoto.

Couple similar suggestions in this thread.