Japanese stories for JLPT N2

Once rich, twice ruined, a young man in old Luoyang is saved each time by a mysterious hermit. Now he wants something harder: to become a hermit himself. The one rule is to stay silent, no matter what he sees. Akutagawa turned a Tang Dynasty legend into a story about what truly matters.

Two young gentlemen from Tokyo come to the mountains to hunt, but they get lost, and they are very hungry. Then, deep in the woods, they find a fine Western restaurant. At the door, a polite sign invites them in. At the next door, another sign makes a small request. And then another. A playful, eerie fairy tale that Japanese children never forget.

One morning, the Buddha walks beside a lotus pond in paradise. Far below, in the depths of hell, he sees Kandata, a murderer and thief who once did a single good deed: he chose not to crush a small spider. So the Buddha lowers a thin silver thread of spider silk into the darkness. A short, perfect fable about the one chance we are given.