Eriko Sato

It can be difficult to find good resources for intermediate Japanese learners. I think this book is a great option! Through these stories you can not only practice reading skills, but also learn foundational folklore that is a part of Japanese culture.
Separating each tale into "parts" makes it easy to not get overwhelmed with a large passage all at once, and it makes it easier to locate unknown words in the glossary included after every chapter. The usage of furigana over the kanji makes it show more easy to keep reading the story even if you don't recognize the character, but only including them on the first instance of the kanji allows for the reader to practice their recognition of new vocabulary. I thought the glossaries were very thorough, even explaining when certain forms of a verb are used. Having the English text next to the Japanese also allows for quick reference without having to turn to the glossary. 
The book also includes a useful "how to use this book" introduction, as well as verb conjugation charts in the back. 
One thing to keep in mind is that the English versions of the stories are translated to sound entertaining and natural in English, so they're not always a 1:1 translation. Readers with sufficient knowledge of Japanese will be able to realize when changes are being made in exact sentence structure/vocabulary, and why. But those who are just beginning might be thrown off by the differences. Therefore I think this book is best for intermediate learners. show less

This book makes a number of grand claims on the front cover about enabling the dummy reader to master the basics of Japanese grammar in just a couple of hours. Not that I believed it would be so for a moment, but I can verify that it wasn't so. It was good to have the book when visiting Japan all the same, and it did give us the phrases itadakimasu and gochisosama, which a gracious Japanese friend-of-a-friend explained were essentials of good manners at Japanese meals, and which unfailingly show more brought a smile to the faces of people in cafes and restaurants who had been kind to us. I now have a number of general concepts straight: ka at the end of a sentence indicates that it's a question; the words for numbers vary depending on what you're counting; the verb comes at the end of the sentence. But I'm a long away from being able to say much more than hello (ohayo gozaimasu or konnichowa), thank you (domo, or in shops much more commonly, arigato gozaimasu) and excuse me (sumimasen). My one complaint about the book, as opposed to my own dumminess, is that it spent a lot of the chapter on food telling me how to say things like hamburger, bagel and cream cheese in Japanese, rather than giving me names for the many new edibles that turned up on my plate. show less