The Great Library
hen learning Japanese, reading often makes up the bulk of it. Needless to say, by reading a lot of different material, you can learn and pick up various new words and phrases. Learning words in context this way is useful since you can see the actual word ‘in action’.
I often come across many interesting reading articles on either the internet, magazines, my textbooks, news clippings etc. Here in The Great Chokochoko Library you’ll find articles I’ve collected over time (or written myself). Each article is either one or two pages long, written in a clear and easy to read format (easy levels feature big fonts) and includes a handy word list. The articles are arranged according to difficulty level and cover a range of different subjects such as culture, history, biology etc.
Be sure to check back often as the collection will grow and more reading articles will be added each time. All articles are ofcourse in high quality PDF and print-ready. Choose your difficulty level first, browse for your favorite article, then click to open or right-click to download.
Trackbacks
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- Tổng hợp hơn 10+ Website luyện đọc cho kì thi JLPT tiếng Nhật | Study Japan Daily
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- Cách từ trình độ đọc tiếng Nhật cơ bản sang cao thủ nhanh chóng – MIT Solutions
Do you like the articles? Or do you think the articles according to your reading level are too easy or too difficult? Found a typo? Let me hear your feedback and help me improve the quality. If you have a great article that you think has to be included in the collection, this is the place to shout out! Happy reading everybody!
Hello ^^
I`ve children storys graded by Japanese school classes from the 1st till the 6th class and would like to share them with the other readers.
So, if you like I could type them up and you could post them here.
Hi Ringonofureba! Sure ofcourse! I’m sure everybody would super appreciate it! You can send it to my email (see About page, bottom) and I’ll add convert them. Really appreciated! Thanks!
that would be great
Yes that’s a good idea. Thank you.
Hey guys, this site is dead but I found a full backup of all articles n1-n5 in a handy pdf online. Sharing this back with you guys.
(ignore multiple posts just trying to get this high enough in the comments so people can see it before they give up!)
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=05529289049728009562
I had send you the e-mail with the first story one week ago. Hope you get it ^^
Hmm strange, I never received anything… What’s your email? I’ll send you a message so you can just reply then.
It’s: toshinoakaitako@googlemail.com
Do you have a document format you prefer, so I could send you them as an appendix in the e-mail and not typed in the e-mail itself?
PDF is ok.
This is really great… I’ve been looking for reading material geared towards my comprehension level. Reason being, I can read most of the vocab words in the N5. Actually, I study quite a bit outside the JLPT. The JLPT vocab isn’t all that practical for me. I’ve been learning by “grade level x JLPT”. This method seems to be working wonders. Now, these articles, can improve both my reading and writing ability. Though, I do wonder if children stories will be added.
-best of luck,
I’ll follow up on this event and check out the FB page.
Your reading materials are so great and they would be greater if you can put more English version so that some beginner can understand the reading lessons better.
One question, are these articles in hiragana or katakana?
Hi Josh, they’re like any Japanese text, so they use both although it depends on the level. Difficult or new kanji words have hiragana in the word lists. So you at least need to know hiragana.
Hey guys, this site is dead but I found a full backup of all articles n1-n5 in a handy pdf online. Sharing this back with you guys.
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=05529289049728009562
I love having a nice library to turn to, when I need something short, that I can grab, and read on the go 🙂 Honestly, I think this was a great idea. I read all of the ones for N3, and one for N2 , ( 人類最初の文字 – 楔形文字), which seemed a little too easy, but it might just be me. I did have to look up 収穫 (harvest), which wasn’t included in the handy tango list, though.
This entire site is great, and I really hope you’ll continue to develop it. Thank you for all the hard work you’ve put in.
Thanks, glad you liked it! The feedback is appreciated so I can improve it. Yea, I scrapped 収穫 because this way, the tango lined up perfectly haha. And I thought it was a somewhat easy word. I’ll work on adding more challenging articles soon. 🙂
Great Idea!!! I SO badly need beginner and little kid level material to read. It’s terribly hard to find simple material to work on (the type that I can comprehend 80% or more as I read). This is fabulous.
The more elementary material the better!
Mark
Isn’t it?! 🙂 I’ll keep on adding more material including lots of ‘kiddie’ beginner material 🙂
This is excellent, as per usual. Now I have more material to practice before the start of Intermediate next semester ^_^
Hey Jacki, how’re you doing? That’s great that you’re starting your intermediate semester upcoming semester. Where are you studying Japanese? And what kind of course is that? Well just click the N2 intermediate option for intermediate reading material 🙂
Shows how little attention I’ve been giving on WordPress. I rely heavily on your FB posts -_-|||
Anyway, I’m having fun reading these, thanks!
I’m not remembering how I found your website. I was looking on internet to find some material to read japanese. But it’s pretty hard to find something not to childish or to difficult for a beginner like me.
I know only 55 kanji for the moment and I’m learning japanese since more two years.
I just read the beginner level about Goldfish. This text is very wonderful. ^^
This method is really good to help us to read in japanese without spending a lot of money.
Thanks a lot for your help!!
Thanks for visiting and hopefully you’ll be able to read the other texts soon as you progress! Ganbatte!
はい、がんばります!あなたも。
Thanks a lot for your quickly answer.
I read the text about “the room”. Because, first, I didn’t know the order of the text. I understand everything at the first reading. ^^
I’ll read all the others texts in the right order.
Thanks a lot for everything!!
Genki de ne.
De ha, mata ne. ^^
こんにちは、偶然にこのサイトを訪ねて、びっくりした。
お疲れ様でした。すっごくいいサイトです。本当に。
多分長い時間がかかりましたね。
このサイトを見てから、こんなサイトを作りたいだなぁって、こういうふうに頑張りたいなぁって、なんとか熱血になりました。
僕もがんばらなきゃ…日本に行くためにね…
今後もよろしくお願いします。
ありがとう!こちらこそよろしくね〜
ちょうど今pathofwindさんが作ったサイトを見ました。自分の好きなことや感想とかが載っているし、面白そうサイトだと思います。サイトを作るのにぜひ頑張って下さい!フォトグラフィーに関心があるみたいでしょう、よかったら僕のフォトグラフィーサイトもご覧下さい〜
http://www.starsquid.com
もしかして中国人ですか?应该来自香港或台湾吧~
こんにちは、Squire Starsquid は取った写真を見ました。凄いですね。
hi!! i like a lot the articles..there are very usefull…please download more…if you have a web site that has every kind of article in japanese.. i would appreciate a lot..thanks…
I just came across this site, it is FANTASTIC! Thank you thank you thank you!!!
For children-level news-stuffs, try 毎日小学生新聞 http://mainichi.jp/feature/maisho/
Great link, thanks Clemens!
What precisely truly motivated you to write “The Great Library チョコチョコ”?
I reallyhonestly enjoyed the post! Thanks for your effort ,Tia
Just what exactly truly encouraged you to compose “The
Great Library チョコチョコ”? I actuallytruly enjoyed reading the blog post!
Thanks a lot -Coy
To provide all different level Japanese readers with reading material in one place 🙂
Great site, thanks so much for sharing!
Any chance of getting a copy/paste-able version? I use the site Learning With Texts for intensive reading (as opposed to 多読, which I also do) and these would be excellent material for it.
Hi Delenir, for now I don’t have a copy/paste version, but that could be something useful for future articles. Good tip!
Thanks! I’m looking forward to it! 🙂
I am loving these they are great! so useful, I was just wondering if this is all of them because the article number in the top corner doesn’t seem to go in order, I can only download #4,#5,#14,#15 etc. Is there 1-3 anywhere? Thanks again, not complaining just loving these and wanting more! 🙂
Hi Steve, actually the article number in the top corner is the numbering of all level articles. So 1, 2 and 3 are other level articles. It’s just the numbering.
Excellent thanks a lot, just making sure im not missing anything.
Thanks so much for this! It’s really encouraging to be able to read some very simple texts. Otherwise it gets pretty discouraging (like when trying to read a novel or article). For the other languages I’m learning, I was able to find old books (from 1910 for example) for elementary school students at flea markets, that were intended for school use, and they’re always full of short/easy stories and poems. Here’s an example for elementary schoolers:
The weather was cold and snowstormy out.
(Name) was loitering about in the kitchen and smithing himself a sled.
He thought about, that he was often outside all day.
Twilight came.
(Name) went into the living room to his mother.
“Dear mother! Won’t you tell me more stories?” said (Name).
Then here is one for slightly older kids: (probably junior high)
It was becoming night, but I lay awake in bed and could not sleep. Everyone in (town name) was talking about hidden people. …
“What nonsense! There’s no hidden people in existence.” said (name).
“You should speak about that carefully,” said my papa. “I remember one clear morning, when I came out into the farmyard, that I saw a blue-clad woman going out of the yard and directly into the big stone in front of the courtyard.”
If they’re not translated from somewhere else, these older texts are really full of cultural stuff and that’s interesting even if it’s extremely simple text. But then, when I tried looking for more modern beginner’s stuff, it was all a lot less interesting. For example, I don’t want to read a children’s book about a talking blue blob. So if you have trouble finding more beginner’s stuff for this site, maybe Japan is the same and you can find older things meant for children to put up here (probably you could modernize them when necessary). Or you could read that kind of stuff to get inspiration for your own simple texts that you translate for us : P
You’re welcome! Thanks for dropping by!
Many thank for the webpage. I am enjoying reading these article very much. Any chance we can have audio ? Sorry if that’s asking too much.
It might be too much effort for the original author of the post, but there are some sites where you can go to request that people record audio for text. Rhinospike.com is one of them, although many people request audio for shorter things on there, I’ve had luck asking for whole book chapters : P
I was gonna suggest that one too, but you beat me to it 😉
What a mistake on the N2 and N3 label. 上 is upper , while 下 is lower.
Chan, you’ve probably never had/seen a book or volume divided into 2 parts, 上 refers to part 1 and 下 refers to part 2. You’ll learn that when your Japanese advances. You’re welcome 🙂
These articles are handy, as it is difficult to find reading material on the internet. However, it would be even more helpful if you provided an English translation so that I can check if I’m translating them correctly. As it is, I either understand the reading or I don’t, but I’m not given an opportunity to learn from my mistakes.
good point!
あああ!このブログとてもいいよ。日本語が勉強している。だから、便利と思う。
ありがとうね。:D
Hey there. I just wanted to say I’m really pleased I found this site. It would have been really useful back before the JLPT in December 🙂 This is exactly the sort of stuff I’ve been trawling the internet for.
Good work.
Nik 肉
Glad to hear that! Good luck with your study.
Hi there. I just found out this usefull site. now i’ve been trying to learn your beginner material reading and apparently there are some kanji words that don’t have the translation on the list below. how do i know what kanji word is that?? thank you for your help btw…
Thank you so much for this site! Been wanting to find something like this to learn Japanese!
It would be great if there is translation for the articles
Dude, none of the pdf links work anymore…
The links are defect 😦
links are deeeeead
is there any chance that you could upload the pdfs again? seems like all the links are dead
thanks beforehand
You can find most of the pdf files in the wayback machine, just google wayback machine.
I can’t find the articles there because it gives the messege: “Page cannot be displayed due to robots.txt.”. Did I do something wrong to find the N5 texts?
Hi! So, I’ve been trying to download your pdf files here but they’re not loading for some reason. Could you look into that? Thanks.
Urgently looking for candidates in JLPT N3 for Gurgaon India.If int rested please email your profile VRohilla@TrimaxAmericas.com
PDF links no longer working! I wish I discovered this site sooner.
the link doest work, would you fix it please..
hi, i cant download the articles of beginner level 😦 how can i get them?
Am I missing something? Where do I go for this?
Hey guys, I found a full backup of all the articles N1-N5 in a handy pdf online. Sharing this with you guys 🙂
http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=05529289049728009562
the great Laibrary different material, you can learn and pick up various new words and phrases. Learning words in context this way is useful since you can see the actual word ‘in action’.
https://www.learnsafari.com/