This is the first book about John-san in Japan by Kawamoto Kazuko. This part has two chapters – one about his arrival in Japan and one about a visit to the Kabuki theatre.
I especially liked the characters John-san and Yuki in this book and how they were illustrated by Miyakawa Satoko. Their interactions remain a bit flat because of the simple language, but I like how they met and that they kept in touch.
There are two more books about John-san in this graded reader series by ask, but the other two differ a bit from this one. On the one hand, the illustrator changed and with that went a lot of the charm unfortunately. On the other hand, Yuki doesn’t appear in the other two stories and John-san on his own is depicted a bit clumsy.
I’m not sure, if I would recommend the other books about John-san, but this one was fun to read! It is part of a graded reader set that also includes the tale of Hachi, Urashima Tarou and two more interesting fictional stories.
You can order it as a set through Amazon Japan or OMG Japan (affiliate links)
dokushoclub.com 