I would like to introduce one of the very first books that really helped me on my language learning journey. It’s called 本当に怖い話, and is a compilation of horror stories, tailored towards young girls.
I’ve owned two books from this series for about 9 years now, and I still like going back to reread them every once in a while. Because they’re so old, I’ve unfortunately since lost the dust covers for both books. This means that I can’t share the exact editions I have sadly. All hope is not lost though, as this series is still going on today, and all of the volumes share similar themes and story types.
If you want to check this series out for yourself, please click on one of the links below! All of them can be read for free digitally if you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited.
The edition I will be talking about today offers the following types of stories:
- Manga
- One sentence ~ one paragraph short stories
- One page short stories
- Multiple page short stories
- Quizzes
- Games
- “Real” newspaper articles
Each edition of this series may or may not have all of these types of stories, and each will vary in amount. For example, the one I will be talking about today has more text only multiple page and one page short stories than anything. The other book in my collection though, has more manga than anything else.
Manga
All of the manga in this series includes Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. The readings for Kanji characters (furigana), are also always written, making for a smooth reading experience. As you may notice in the above image, sometimes words that typically aren’t written in Katakana, are in the manga in the book. This is a stylistic choice, and it adds emphasis—it’s like a little bit of flavour. Because the Katakana comes at unexpected times, in unexpected words, it can help learners get a lot of practice in.
Of course, as this is a horror book, all of the manga are scary stories!
Multi-page short stories
Probably the most challenging thing this book offers is the multiple page short stories. These stories are at times accompanied by an image or two, but besides that, it’s all text. While the language used isn’t all that difficult, there will still be some horror-specific vocabulary found. These stories really help you brush up on you onomatopoeia!
These short stories typically span from about 2 ~ 4 pages, so none of them are all that long.
One page short stories
Similar to the multi-page short stories, you will also often find one page stories in this series. These stories are usually “real” accounts told by people. For example, in the photo above, the woman is talking about something she experienced while in high school.
These one page stories are slightly more beginner friendly than the multi-page stories. They typically use less genre-specific language, are shorter, and are told in a more straightforward manner.
Personally, these types of stories were my favourite study resource for a long time.
Very short stories
Even shorter than the previous type, these one ~ four sentence short stories can also be found in this series. Rather than stories, many of them are just gossip and rumours. In the above image, we can see “ghost accounts”. Some of the rumours include things like “stare at a T.V’s static screen for too long and a ghost will come out”, and “If your ears ring suddenly, it’s because there’s a ghost near you.”
I think these types of stories are the most friendly for beginners, as they’re quite short and told in simple language. These stories also opt to use less Kanji that a typical manga would— 天じょう instead of 天井— because it’s tailored towards children who may have not learnt these Kanji characters yet.
That’s not all..!
These books also include things like quizzes (what’s your aura colour?), games (can you help this character make it out alive?), and even fortune telling! If you’re a fan of the occult, I highly recommend checking them out. As each book in this series is quite different, you really never know what you’re going to get with them. While the book I am talking about today surprised me with a “most haunted places in Japan map”, the other one in my collection surprised me with a story that returned every few stories! Something not often seen in anthology series.
If you are interested in hearing me talk more about this series, I made a little YouTube video talking about it! You can check it out below.
Maddies Manga 
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