By JLPT level
Japanese stories for JLPT N3
Stories in the Japanese of everyday life. Some are the originals; some are our easy retellings. You will meet longer sentences and some written-style grammar, but the story is easy to follow.
Stories at N3
4 stories
竹取物語 - Part 2 of 3
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
Five noblemen want to marry Kaguya-hime. She asks each of them for a treasure that may not exist: a jeweled branch from a magic island, a robe that cannot burn, a jewel from a dragon's neck. What follows is a thousand-year-old comedy of lies, fakes, and failed heroes.
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ごん狐
Gon, the Little Fox
Gon is a lonely little fox who loves to play tricks. One day he steals an eel from a villager named Hyōjū, and when Hyōjū's mother dies soon after, Gon is filled with regret. So he starts leaving chestnuts and mushrooms at Hyōjū's door in secret. Every child in Japan reads this story at school.
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竹取物語 - Part 1 of 3
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
An old bamboo cutter finds a tiny girl glowing inside a stalk of bamboo. She grows into the most beautiful woman in the land, and word of her beauty spreads far and wide. Written over a thousand years ago, this is Japan's oldest surviving story, called "the ancestor of all tales" in The Tale of Genji.
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注文の多い料理店
The Restaurant of Many Orders
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.
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Podcast
6 episodesEpisodes of The LITIM Japanese Podcast whose Japanese matches this level (an estimate).
JLPT levels are our estimates of how difficult each text is (N3 on this page). All stories are in the Library.