Intermediate · JLPT N3
JLPT N3 reading practice: Japanese short stories with furigana
N3 is where real books start to open up. You have the everyday grammar, around 3,700 words and 650 kanji, and you can read original texts written for children — the stories that Japanese readers meet in primary-school textbooks — with some support.
The texts on this shelf are the originals, not adaptations. Furigana are on every kanji (you can hide them for words you already know), each sentence has its own English translation, and every page lists the words and patterns that are most likely to stop you. Expect some old-fashioned or regional words: they are glossed where they appear. Many of these stories also have simplified N4 and N5 versions, which make a good first read.
Simplified retellings for N3
N3 · easyThe Police Chief and His Favourite Pastime
N3 · easyThe Wildcat's Acorn Trial
N3 · easyThe Star Twins by the Silver River
N3 · easyGon's Chestnuts
N3 · easyGrandpa Blossom
N3 · easyClick-Clack Mountain
N3 · easyHomoi and the Shell-Fire Jewel
N3 · easyThe Sorcerer of Ōmori
N3 · easyThe Boy Who Came from a Peach
N3 · easyThe Green Frog and the Yellow Frog
N3 · easyThe Lamp in Grandfather's Storehouse
N3 · easyThe White Elephant Who Wandered into Otsuberu's Threshing Shed
N3 · easyA Persimmon Seed for a Rice Ball
N3 · easyThe Dog Called White
N3 · easyOff to Buy Mittens
N3 · easyThe Rail Cart
N3 · easyToshishun and the Hermit of Mount Gabi
N3 · easyUrashima Tarō and the Palace Under the Sea
N3 · easyHow the Nighthawk Became a Star
Original stories at N3
The Samurai and the Last Sweet
The Finest Match in All the Land
Tales of the Parlour Child
Every Day at the Little Station
A Wild Rose on the Border
The Wild Pear in the Stream
Departure Morning on the Ginkgo Tree
The Stranger in the Viewfinder
The Sparrow with the Snipped Tongue
A Procession in Midsummer
The Fox in the New Clogs
Grapes from the Teacher's Window
Red Candles on the Shrine Hill
The Mermaid and the Crimson Candles
A Small Cricket
飴だま — The Samurai and the Last Sweet
飴だま is a very short children's story by Niimi Nankichi, told in a few scenes aboard a small river ferry on a warm spring day. A mother and her two small children climb down from the embankment and board the boat. Just as it pushes off, a sword-carrying samurai…
ねずみの嫁入り — The Finest Match in All the Land
This is Kusuyama Masao's retelling of a traditional Japanese folktale, told in the gentle voice of a storyteller reading aloud to children. A well-off mouse couple has a daughter so lovely that they decide only the greatest being in the world will do as her…
ざしき童子のはなし — Tales of the Parlour Child
This is a short sketch by Miyazawa Kenji about the zashiki-warashi, or 'parlour child', a spirit that folk belief places in old country houses. It is not one continuous story. A gentle narrator from 'our part of the country' strings together several small…
待つ — Every Day at the Little Station
待つ is a very short first-person monologue by Dazai Osamu. A young woman of twenty describes her daily habit of stopping at a small, unnamed railway station and sitting on a bench to wait. She cannot say whom or what she is waiting for. The story is set in the…
野ばら — A Wild Rose on the Border
野ばら is a short fairy tale (童話) by Ogawa Mimei. On a quiet mountain border between a large country and its smaller neighbour, one soldier from each side is posted to guard the boundary stone. One is an old man and the other is young. They start as strangers…
やまなし — The Wild Pear in the Stream
"Yamanashi" is a short prose poem told from the bottom of a mountain stream, where two young crab brothers and their father watch the world above them through the moving water. The narrator presents it as two slides in a magic-lantern show, one set on a bright…
いちょうの実 — Departure Morning on the Ginkgo Tree
This is a short children's tale by Miyazawa Kenji, told almost entirely from the point of view of ginkgo nuts. On a freezing, star-filled morning just before sunrise, the thousand golden nuts of a lone ginkgo tree on a hill wake up knowing that today they must…
箱の中のあなた — The Stranger in the Viewfinder
"The Stranger in the Viewfinder" (箱の中のあなた, literally "You Inside the Box") is a short psychological story by Yamakawa Masao. It is set in a provincial seaside tourist town at the start of summer. A breezy tourist from Tokyo asks a painfully shy woman in her…
舌切りすずめ — The Sparrow with the Snipped Tongue
This is one of Japan's best-known folktales, retold by Kusuyama Masao in a warm, gently old-fashioned storyteller's voice. A kindly old man keeps a young sparrow as a pet. While he is away, the sparrow licks up his wife's laundry starch, and she angrily cuts…
夏の葬列 — A Procession in Midsummer
夏の葬列 is a short literary story about guilt and memory. A young office worker, returning to Tokyo from a business trip, gets off the train at the small seaside town where he was evacuated as a child during the war. Walking out past the sweet-potato fields on a…
狐 — The Fox in the New Clogs
"Fox" is a short story for children by Niimi Nankichi, told in five brief parts. On a moonlit spring evening, a group of village children walk to a night festival in the neighbouring town of Hongō. On the way, little Bunroku, who has been stumbling along in…
一房の葡萄 — Grapes from the Teacher's Window
This is a short, first-person story in which an adult looks back on one autumn of his boyhood in Yokohama. He went to a school in the Yamanote district, where the teachers were all Westerners and the neighbourhood was home mostly to Westerners. On his walk…
赤い蝋燭と人魚 — Red Candles on the Shrine Hill
赤い蝋燭と人魚 (Red Candles on the Shrine Hill) is a literary fairy tale by Ogawa Mimei. It opens on a lonely rock in the cold northern sea. A mermaid, expecting a child, decides that her baby should grow up among human beings, whom she has heard are kind. In a small…
赤いろうそくと人魚 — The Mermaid and the Crimson Candles
This is a literary fairy tale (童話) by Ogawa Mimei and one of his best-known works. A mermaid living in a cold, dark northern sea decides that her child should grow up among humans, whom she has heard are kind. She leaves her newborn daughter on the shore below…
きりぎりす — A Small Cricket
きりぎりす is a short story told entirely in the voice of a twenty-four-year-old wife writing to her painter husband to say she is leaving him. Five years earlier she turned down safer suitors and married an unknown, poor artist because one of his paintings moved…