Easy Japanese Books

A friend of mine and I often find ourselves spending too much money every time we visit the bookstore. We sometimes go together with the intention of stopping each other from buying more than we should, but we still end up buying a lot of stuff. Tonight we again went to the bookstore. Instead of just hanging around the Japanese language learning section, however, I showed her this section that I visit often: the Kids’ Book Section.

My first Japanese teacher was really good. He used to let me read Japanese kids’ books so I discovered early on that reading Japanese kids’ books was not only interesting it was also a good way to develop my reading skills. There’s actually a Doraemon comic book series that aids in school learning. There are Kanji dictionaries for first to sixth graders, kotowaza and yoji-jukugo books, and even Japan travel guides in the series. In addition to the really beautiful pictures in Japanese kids’ books, the language and the Kanji are also really easy to read. Most books have furigana, and easy explanations of things in Japanese. The best part is these books cost a lot less than Japanese language textbooks. The yoji-jukugo book cost me ￥630.

So, after buying four textbooks too many… my friend also bought kids’ books about World History and Kanji. Some book-buying-controller friend I turned out to be… Sorry G :-)!