Hi All! 
Today we’re excited to announce another new feature here on Bunpro: Stories!
Have you ever wondered whether you’re ready to start reading longer Japanese material, but felt that Reading Passages were too short to really test yourself? Well, this feature is for you!
Let’s take a look at how Stories work, and how they can help you become a more confident reader!
Where to Find Stories
You can find Stories here: Stories | Bunpro or through the link in the top ‘Practice’ navigation bar.
This will take you to the Stories index, where you’ll see any Story you’re currently reading, and your progress through it.
Below that, you will be presented with other Stories in our catalogue.
Every Story features artwork lovingly created by one of the artists on our team, not just for the covers, but also at the end of every chapter!
All of the artwork is hand-drawn, not AI-generated.
Story Preview
Opening a Story will show you:
- A short blurb about the story
- The option to choose between Easy and Normal, along with a preview of their difficulty
- Your progress through the story
The two difficulty levels are as follows:
- Normal - Written with no specific restrictions on grammar or vocabulary, allowing for more natural Japanese.
- Easy - Uses N5 and N4 grammar, with simpler vocabulary used wherever possible, while preserving the meaning and nuance of the original text.
Both versions follow the same plot and characters, with the only difference being the difficulty of the Japanese used to tell the story!
Reading a Story
Once you’ve started reading a Story, you’ll notice that the text is broken up into smaller sections. Clicking or tapping on a section allows you to switch between different versions of that text.
Depending on the difficulty you selected, each block will cycle through the following:
-
Normal:
Normal Japanese → Easy Japanese → Translation of the Normal Japanese content.
-
Easy:
Easy Japanese → Translation of the Easy Japanese content.
The goal is to encourage you to understand as much as possible in Japanese before relying on the English translation. With Normal, you can use the Easy version to help understand a difficult passage without immediately needing to switch to English.
If you find that the default reading experience doesn’t quite suit your preferences, don’t worry! You can customize it at any time through the settings menu in the top-right corner.
The settings menu includes furigana, font, and theme options, including a ‘Warm’ e-reader style that’s perfect for winding down in the evening.
Also, keep an eye out for the hundreds of cultural notes scattered throughout Stories! You can discover them by clicking or tapping on underlined text. Whether it’s an explanation of an unusual expression, or the history behind a particular word, there’s lots of great facts to find out about.
Why Stories?
There comes a point in every learner’s journey where practicing individual sentences and reviewing what you’ve learned isn’t enough. To really develop your comprehension, you eventually need to spend more time reading and engaging with longer Japanese material.
Unfortunately, venturing out into the unknown and confronting words and grammar you haven’t learned yet can be a painful and humbling process. On top of that, it can be difficult to find material that’s both appropriate for your level and interesting enough to motivate you to keep reading.
It is our hope that these Stories can act as a bridge of sorts to the rewarding world of consuming native material.
- For higher-level learners, switching between Normal and Easy can provide just enough additional support to understand unfamiliar Japanese without immediately relying on an English translation.
- For intermediate-level learners, the Easy version provides an opportunity to tackle longer material while becoming more comfortable encountering unfamiliar words and expressions.
Beyond vocabulary and grammar, there’s another challenge that often gets overlooked: reading stamina. Even when you understand most of the Japanese in front of you, transitioning from individual sentences to pages of continuous text can be surprisingly exhausting.
Stories are designed to help you build that reading stamina gradually, without having to jump straight into a full-length Japanese novel. And with a variety of genres to explore, we hope you’ll find something that keeps you coming back for more!
About the Author & Artist
All of the new Stories were written by @Haruna, who many of you may know from her frequent diaries on the forum. She has had the chance to express her creative freedom in this project, and the results speak for themselves.
All of the artwork was created by Takaya, one of our artists whose style you might recognize from recent shop releases, Reading Passages, and even our JLPT exams!
We’re thrilled to finally share Stories with all of you, and hope they become another valuable part of your Japanese learning journey!
Will you read Stories on your own, or organize a book club here on the forums with other users? The choice is up to you!
We would love to hear any and all feedback that you have about this new feature, and wish you all happy reading! 
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