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JANET ASHBY is a freelance writer and translator who has lived in Japan since 1975. She has written a column in the Japan Times for several years on Japanese books and has a particular interest in Japanese popular culture.
The leap to authentic text is a challenging hurdle, but a necessary one to achieve. Text books are usually made of carefully calculated dialogs and passages, designed to teach a grammar point rather than transfer information. However, once you have reached a certain level you want to go beyond that and into the real thing. That is, after all, why you are studying the language.
"Read Real Japanese" can help ease this transition, providing a guided tour through a few short stories of some of Japan's most prominent modern authors. Murakami Haruki ("Wind-Up Bird Chronicle") and Yoshimoto Banana ("Kitchen") are familiar with most students of Japanese, and it is a true pleasure to read their writings in the language in which they were written.
Janet Ashby has provided translations of the text, piece by piece, allowing you to check your personal translation against her professional work, as well as being a quick reference to unknown kanji, vocabulary and grammar. This is an excellent resource, not only for comprehension but also for seeing how some tricky Japanese grammar can be properly ordered into English.
The only drawback of "Read Real Japanese" is that Ashby has unfortunately chosen to give her translations in romaji rather than hiragana. Quality Japanese learning aids always reinforce hiragana rather than romaji, and anyone at the level necessary to tackle authentic text should have no trouble with kana.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Another fine title from Kodansha's bilingual series (also check out the wonderfully titled 'How to Sound Intelligent in Japanese') - this is indeed better for intermediate readers, and features an intriguing selection of essays by contemporary Japanese writers/ culture vultures.
This is an excellent stepping stone toward the ultimate goal of reading written Japanese quickly and effectively. Even advanced students will probably find many of the concepts and phrases contained within of great benefit. It is also useful for people who are looking for stimulating Japanese writers, to get a taste of some of the best contemporary authors, before exploring in depth.
The explanations and translations are uniformly excellent - this is a must-have for anyone serious about reading Japanese fiction in the original language.
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I have only made my way through the first three of the essays in this volume but must say that I am highly delighted. Ashby does a fine job of annotation here, and although this volume lacks parallel text translation, it more than compensates for this through superb explanation of the syntactical forms encountered.
The selections seem well-chosen and relevant to modern Japan, and indeed a tremendous satisfaction is afforded to even an intermediate student like myself by reading these texts in the original.
Five Stars without reservation!
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This book is awesome! All of the lines are written in romaji below the actual Japanese writing so you can read the text without any furigana if you wanted. Each line is also translated into English and the dictionary form of all of the verbs is in parentheses next to the word (in the romaji, not in the actual text)! There are even detailed grammar notes for every story, which is great. This book is a really great addition to my Japanese reading collection. :)
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Since I have reviewed the two other titles with "Read Real Japanese" prefix, I might as well add this too. Even if the book doesn't seem to be available as new now and 2) the edition I have was published in the Power Japanese Series 1994. The Essays here are NOT the same as in the new "edition".
Someone should really send a hint to Kodansha that they should make the effort to add Look Inside previews of ALL their books. As it is now, potential customers don't have a chance to really appreciate what effort and attention to detail found in (almost?) every release from them.
The layout in the edition I have is really great, although a bit too stuffed, IMHO. What makes it better than the later editions is that everything is on the same fold. No need to flip back and forth. But again it's rather dense looking at the comments page with few or no paragraphs. Toss a coin and see what you prefer. Personally I find that this book very much deserves the low price paid and the little space it takes on the shelf.
As all other books with GENUINE Japanese it contains some rare or rarer Kanji. In case you can stand studying/reading in front of a computer this is really minor: bring out the looking glass, go to your word process, select IME Pad if you have installed Japanese support, and try to draw the Kanji there. Copy and paste into a an online dictionary or whatever. I am pretty sure there is some Japanese dictionary online with character recognition. Just a little tip.
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