Beginner Level
❶ 部屋（へや） | My Room
❷ 大学（だいがく） | The University
❸ 東京の町（とうきょうのまち） | Tokyo City
❹ 日曜日（にちようび） | Sunday
❶ 金太郎（きんたろう） | Kintarou
❷ 走る名人（はしるめいじん） | The Master Runner
❸ ヘンゼルとグレーテル | Hansel & Gretel
❹ ぱたぱたとふうふう | Patapata & Fuufuu
❺ おおかみが来た（おおかみがきた） | The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf
106 Comments
leave one →
Trackbacks
- link 290314 | pvvuong
- Learn Japanese | dewi jaico
- N5 Vocab List | Japanese Ladder - The First Rung
- N5 Vocab Continued… (Topic: My Room) | Japanese Ladder - The First Rung
- The Ultimate Guide to Learning Hiragana and Katakana | FluentU Japanese
- 14 Tools and Texts Tailor-Made for Easy Japanese Reading | FluentU Japanese
- Learn Japanese – DEWI JAICO
- Booking It: Learn Japanese by Reading with 8 Steps and Over 20 Recommendations | FluentU Japanese
- How to Learn Hiragana and Katakana Fast: the Complete Guide to Two Key Japanese Writing Systems | FluentU Japanese
J-Music Album 紹介
チョコチョコ 
Count on seeing a nice small post about this great idea mate on me blog tomorrow 🙂
How wonderful! I just read the Goldfish story and picked up a few new words and kanji along the way – this is great practice. 🙂
This is great! I’ve been having problem finding something to read according to level. I especially like that it has spaces between words, makes it easier to figure out the words.
Once I have more vocab I’ll be popping in here more often! Thanks for the work!
I love these readings! I’m just discovering your blog and I find it so great with its interessing tips even if you haven’t added new post for more than a year. Will you come back soon?
Thank you, this is very helpful. I love your practice sheets and stories!
I heard of this website in a forum. So far: absolute love to Chokochoko!
Thanks for visiting Chokosan!
What software do you use to edit Japanese text get that pretty font?
This is great. It’s quite difficult to find reading materials aimed at beginners who don’t know 100s of kanji yet. Most reading materials that I’ve looked at are way beyond my current ability. I think it’s important to be doing reading practice as early on in your Japanese studies as possible. Would definitely like to see more of this kind of stuff. Nice one!
I believe the font is called Kozuka Gothic Pro
Lovely. I do wish you had more Absolute Beginner readings. They are very helpful.
Korede kekko desu. Omoshiroi desu. Arigatou
Thanks for the material! Will be going over each one of them 🙂
Although, is there some sort of translated version somewhere so I can check if my translation is correct? Would certainly appreciate it
korewa ichiban desu yo!!!!
arigatou heena-san
This. Is. Awesome. Thank you sir/madam!!!
thanks zach!
thank you for making and sharing this site….learning and writing Japanese made it easy…Arigatougozaimasu….
you’re welcome! 🙂
This is brilliant. Easy and interesting.
Thanks Roz!
These articles are a great way for me to brush up on vocabulary in context. Thank you!
You’re welcome mushroomchow!
Just one thing I was wondering – the Hansel & Gretel story has a part that doesn’t seem to make sense – “わあ ふかふかの ぺっとだ”. Am I right in thinking that’s a typo? ベッド being the correct term? Or am I just missing something in the story? ^^
Thank you for this brilliant idea! I’m French and began to learn Japanese a few months ago. I found English ressources were really helpful ans this one is just great!
Searching for reading graded materials I found this site, it’s very useful and complete, thanks a lot!
Glad that you like it!
This is some great stuff, do you plan on adding more?
Hi Table,
Thanks, I think in the future, yes
Apakah cocok
Hontoini omoshiroi desene
Shilpa, arigatou gozaimasu—!
yakuni tatemashita, arigatou gozaimasu 🙂
douitashimashite!
Thanks !!! This is great!
Hi, I think it’s really helpful, so big THANKS for you 😀 but I would like to ask you about some articles about Japan in japanese, of course 🙂 You know, I like studying language and culture at once, maybe the others too. It’s really hard to find something like that. A little about history, culture, interesting places, etc. It would be great to find it here, I think some people would agree with me 🙂
Appreciate it! Hope everything you find here is useful to you
this is REALLY great practice!!! Thank you so much!!! ^_^
Glad you like it Japanarian! 🙂
Thank you. I have been looking for stories and reading material all over the internet but this website has proven to be the most useful. Thanks alot.
You’re welcome Beldina!
thank you so much for your effort. ❤
A small question, we just have 11 lessons for N5 only? Could we get more reading lessons with same level?
Love the N5 stuff – need more at this level as I can’t find much else out there.
Dear Chokochoko,
Thanks very much for your reading material. I love these documents but I face difficulty with Lesson Kintarou. Can you please give the English version of this lesson.
Thanks and Best Regards,
Duc Tam
Email: nguyenductam04@gmail.com
Thank you so much! This is AWESOME:D
スーパー！
I love these 😀 They are really helpful and cute. Unfortunately for me, my kanji is holding me back. I am at about N4 level with speaking and comprehension and stuff, but I can’t go past level 5 on here yet ;( Hopefully these readings will help me widen my kanji abilities 😀
Hi Alice, well hang in there! I’m sure you’ll soon be able to read more advanced level stuff!
SPOILER ALERT.
I just want to check my version of the goldfish story. Here is my attempted translation below. Please help me make any corrections as well as subtle differences and nuances in the story I did not translate properly.
A long, long time ago goldfish came from China. They are bred as pets, as it is easy. Goldfish come in a variety of colours, however there is no true golden coloured goldfish. The mains colours are, orange, white and black. Gold fish like freshwater, they really do not like seawater. Goldfish eat insects and things like waterplants. Do you like goldfish? I like goldfish a lot!
Hi filmstein! Your translation is pretty much spot on. Sure you can change certain use of words but the meaning is correct. Good job!
Arigatou gozaimasu! hehe
SPOILER ALERT
Hey guys me again. I tackled the room story which I think is fairly straightforward. I just want to get my translation checked in case there are any glaring problems, he does seem to have a pretty strange setup in his room.
Mr Tanaka’s room is on the second floor. In his room there are desks, chairs etc. There are 3 desks. There are 6 chairs. There are 4 beds. There is also a radio in the room. There is no television. There is a television in the student club. The toilet is on the 2nd floor. The bathroom is on the first floor.
SPOILER – Sunday
Hey guys, in usual fashion I want to post my version of the Sunday story for any corrections. I hope I’m not affecting other peoples learning by posting the supposed answers. Let me know and I shall stop 🙂
I was confused about the various, sorekara, sorede, sohshite, usage so if anyone notices any problems let me know. Also would 二人 be more naturally translated to “they” or is it just “the two people”?
Finally I’m finding it difficult to distinguish male from female due to the neutrality of the word san. I’m assuming kimura san is a woman because she buys tea and Jack san’s a guy but even then I’m not convinced (they could both be guys or girls in my reading). Is this just a case of learning what names are masculine/feminine in Japan? .
===============================
Yesterday on Sunday the weather was good. The good weather was really unusual. The international student, Kimura san, and Jack san from the Japanese department went together by bicycle to Shibuya. Later, they went shopping in Shibuya’s shopping centre.
The Shibya shopping centre is the largest shopping centre. Kimura san bought tea and other stuff from a shop there. Jack san bought stationary and food. After shopping the two went to a restaurant. The two ate a meal over there. Then Kimura san and Jack san went to a park. There, they walked for about 30 minutes. After that the two went to a cinema and watched a very interesting film.
===================================
Hontoni arigatou.
Please post more of these!! This is a great website and exactly what I’ve been looking for in my studies; I’m so sad that there are so few essays/stories to read.
This is great stuff ! Can we work on more essays / stories which will be helpful for learning purpose
Korewa.ichiban.desu….motto.onegaishimasu.
This.is.number.1..desu……more.please……((((rough.translation))))
This.is.the.best….more.please..
Thanks! Hope it was helpful!
Nice reading materials! Many thanks! 凄い読み物のため、ありがとうございました！
Wow, this is so great! It really helps me, and I believe so many other people out there, who are scrambling around looking for reading materials. And yes, I also believe that increasing your reading frequency really helps a lot in improving a language skill.
Thank you very much doing this! Really appreciate it.
とても便利だとおもいます。ありがとう！！！！！
Awesome. This is really helpful. Thanks!
The best resources I’ve found so far. Thanks!
Really awesome, exactly what I was looking for ! ありがとう !
Thanks a lot for this work. Very nice simple texts for the beginner, please continue this project – I shall recommend it to my Japanese related friends.
Very helpful indeed! thanks for sharing.
I’ve read the first story with the golden fish. You use the 金魚は way way too much. When you use は you establish the subject and then you never use it again unless you change the subject. It’s a bad habit to use it so much.
On the other hand awesome resource, thanks 😀 I will continue reading
すごいですよ
Hiya! It’s for complete beginners, so they still need to learn and establish using は. 🙂
This is such an amazing resource for practicing reading and expanding vocabulary. I have been using it on and off for a little over a year now. I logged on today and found that none of the story links are working anymore, I was so disappointed! Is this a temporary problem? I sure hope so, this site has been great!
Thanks for these! Really! 🙂 it helps a lot since most of things online are “free” (you either have to sign up or pay premium and the free ones are just excerpts) i’ll start reading stuff now but i have to build up on my vocab first. hehe. again ありがとうございます!!!
This website is perfect for picking up vocab and reading practice. Thank you so much !
For Hansel and Grettel, page 2 should it not say 家に かえると お母さんが ない
て よろこびました?, I’m a bit confused
brilliant speech
Hello thanks so much. these are amazing for new learners however seems the links from firegrub are down and i forgot to save them locally. could you check please ?
I just found this site and it looks like a great resource for my students but as mentioned above the Firegrub server is down or at least the links via the server for the documents themselves. Will they come back online?
Links are broken!!!
argh why aren’t the links working???
None of the links are working 😦
Hello there, thank you so much for your website, I’ve spent lots of time reading these stories… but now the links don’t work anymore and I didn’t download them all before 😦
Could you fix it please, or find a way to upload all the content in just one zip file and provide the link…
Best regards.
please fix the links! All of the links in categories N1-N5 are down! This website has such good resources, it’d be a shame not to re-upload them 😦
Download is not working. I loved the passages . they were very helpful.
All of the beginner level reading samples and quite a few of the other level samples can be recovered from the wayback machine (just google for wayback machine)
Thank you so much for the great suggestion! I only found 3 or 4 stories among the entire collection that did not work. I didn’t know a website like that existed 🙂
None of these links seem to be working D:
None of these links seem to be working D:
Can you please post those links again? I really want to get all those sheets D=
Links are broken, sadly :C
The links still work in web archive’s snapshot, here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20141111085607/https://chokochoko.wordpress.com/the-great-library/beginner-level/
nekomanc3r, thank you so much!
why is not working??
It’s not available anyone 😭
Could you please upload again please 🙏
Super-Duper blog! I am loving it!! Will come back again. I am bookmarking your feeds also.
hi maybe I’m doing something wrong but it says no file when I download I would appreciate your assistance
The same goes for me. Seems like it was abandoned…
Same 😦
No habia regresado tu sitio web por un tiempo, porque me pareció que era aburrido, pero los últimos posts son de buena calidad, así que supongo que voy a añadirte a mi lista de sitios web cotidiana. Te lo mereces amigo. 🙂
Saludos