Reading practice

The following reading exercises have been taken from various sources. I have tried to split them up into basic, intermediate and advanced. But in reality I guess there are no really advanced texts here. All the texts are rather small and focus on one subject, so hopefully the words used can extend your vocabulary a bit. And if you know the words, the grammatical aspects of the sentences can be intriguing.

All exercises are written using kanji, and in all of them the difficult words are explained underneath. For each exercise there is a translation on another page. Some of the texts are copyright, and where that is the case, it is marked underneath the text. All the translations, though, are done by me.

Basic exercises

1a - Obon One of the most famous festivals.

Intermediate exercises

2a - Janken The classic game of paper, stone and scissors.
2b - Nattou This incredible article of food that most foreigners abhor!
2c - Tsukimi Short but interesting little story.

2d - Touki About Japanese pottery.
2e - Nihon no Mirai A short article from Hiragana Times about the bleak future of Japan.
2f - Sobayu A short description of the tradional soup "sobayu".

Advanced exercises

3a - Kenkyo This one has many advanced but very useful words. The grammar is not so difficult though.