Japanese Graded Readers, Level 0-5 (Tadoku ASK)

The Japanese word Tadoku means "read(ing) a lot". This is a an up-to-date (April 2024) complete collection of illustrated Japanese texts for beginners which focus on learning Japanese through intuitive understanding and reading a lot without interference from English. It starts at Level 0 with fairly easy sentences up to Level 5 (e.g. a Sherlock Holmes story). The only prerequisite is that you have already learned the syllabic script Hiragana (less than 50 characters). You can find a Hiragana table on Wikipedia. The second syllabic script Katakana (at least for Levels 0-3) and all kanji come along with Hiragana pronunciation guide. The covered topics are daily life in Japan, folk tales, history, fiction, culture, biographies and novels. Some of the texts are also available as audio (not included in this upload) on the website tadoku.org The files (200 PDFs in all) created by volonteers of the publishing NPO TADOKU Supporters have been released under a creative commons licence. See more details, audio for some of the texts and new releases at tadoku.org Level 0: 71 PDFs, Level 1: 34 PDFs, Level 2: 28 PDFs, Level 3: 39 PDFs, Level 4: 24 PDFs, Level 5: 4 PDFs The Tadoku recommendations for using the texts are: 1. Start from scratch. Read easy books you can enjoy without translating. That way, you will understand better and so you will read more. 2. Don’t use your dictionary Don’t use your dictionary when you come across words you don’t know. Guess the meaning from the pictures and/or the story. 3. Skip over difficult words, phrases and passages. If guessing doesn’t work, skip over that word, phrase or passage and go on reading. You can often enjoy the book without understanding every small detail. 4. When the going gets tough, quit the book and pick up another. The going gets tough when the book is not suitable for your level or your interest. Simply throw the book away and start reading something else.