★★★☆☆ Three more Japanese stories

Learn Japanese with Stories Volume 10 Urashima Tarou

John Clay Boutwell, Yumi Boutwell

Although the Goodreads page for the series doesn't list it, Learn Japanese with Stories Volume 10 Urashima Tarou is book ten in the Learn Japanese with Stories series by John Clay Boutwell and Yumi Boutwell.

I use these books as a way of slowly learning Japanese vocabulary. Every morning I open Anki for a flash card drill. If there are less than five new vocabulary items, I read a page of Boutwell and add the new terms to my decks. Since every new term generates two cards, that means, at five new cards a day, I am averaging 2.5 new terms a day. It's slow going, but it's an easily sustainable rate.

Installment number 10 of the Learn Japanese with Stories collection contains three stories.

三年寝太郎 - The Young Man Who Slept for Three Years
はなさかじいさん - Hanasaka Jiisan, the Blossoming Old Man
浦島太郎 - Urashima Tarou

These are like traditional children's stories from any culture. The first two are moral stories meant to teach lessons about how the people who do good win in the end. The last one, "Urashima Tarou" is like a Japanese Rip Van Winkel. In broad outline, these three stories could have come from Africa or North America or Russia. But the details are distinctively Japanese. In 三年寝太郎 we are concerned with the irrigation of the village's rice crop. はなさかじいさん is about an old man who, through his kindness, acquires the ability to make flowers bloom, a characteristically Japanese concern. In 浦島太郎 a man is taken on the back of a turtle to the underwater palace of the dragon king.

If you're familiar with the Learn Japanese with Stories collection, this will be what you've learned to expect.

When I began this project there were only ten of these books, and I decided after finishing them that I would move on to the Japanese translation of The Little Prince, There are now 18 of these books listed on Amazon. Because I read them so slowly, the Boutwells write faster than I read. However, I think I will stick with the original plan and quit here at number 10. Time to attempt a Real Book!

Amazon review

Goodreads review

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