As I recently posted about, I’m starting a new series where I give a dialog in Japanese followed by one or more questions to test your understanding. This is the first post of that series, and is Level 1, which is the easiest level and targets those who have only studied Japanese a few months to a year or so. (Note: you can see all the articles in this series here).
Since I’ve given a list of all Kanji and their readings used (below the answer choices), you only need to be able to read hiragana and katakana for this exercise.
Passage
お父さんはスイカが好きです。お母さんは野菜が嫌いで、バナナが好きです。妹は甘いものが大好きです。
Question
Who likes sweet things?
Answers
a) お父さん
b) 妹
b) お母さん
d) 猫
Kanji readings and meanings
お父さん：おとうさん (father)
お母さん：おかあさん (mother)
好き：すき (like)
大好き：だいすき (like very much)
野菜：やさい (vegetables)
嫌い：きらい (dislike)
妹：いもうと (little sister)
甘い：あまい (sweet)
Correct answer
b) 妹 （imouto = younger sister)
Explanation
The last sentence says “妹は甘いものが大好きです” which means “My younger sister likes sweet things very much”.
By the way, the word 甘党 (amatou) means “tweet tooth”, or someone who likes sweet things.
Really enjoyed this little exercise – will there be more?
PS: how long does it take to read Murakami in Japanese? Do you have an idea how much vocabulary is needed approximately? Are the 2000 or so kanji enough for Murakami? I love his books and I know some very basic Japanese, just enough to solve your first Read&Answer exercise.
Thanks for putting together such a wonderful website!
Thanks Andres!
I had never done a second episode of Read & Answer but since you asked I’ll try to make at least once more in the near future.
I had stopped when I did #1 years ago since there was few likes and not too many views (although after a few years they have build up). We’ll see how it goes for #2.
To answer your question about Murakami, I think you need a good basis of 500-1000 characters so that it is not super tedious to look up every character. If you know ~2000 I think you will be OK probably 95-99% of the time.
I mentioned this in some other articles, but to main motivation I would start with some children’s books and work up your way to Murakami.
I started reading his books early in my Japanese ‘career’, but it was quite tedious to look everything up. However, if you are reading an on E-reader that has easy lookup, it will make your life easier.
I made another episode of “Read & Answer” at your request (:
http://selftaughtjapanese.com/2018/01/31/japanese-read-answer-2-level-1/