What you get
23 eBooks + audio + Anki flashcards + app access
It's a digital bundle, so nothing is shipped. Right after checkout we email you a link to download:
How you'll use it
Read, listen, review, practice
- ReadOpen a lesson or story in the PDF or ePub, on any device.
- ListenPlay the audio and read along. The stories come at slow and natural speed.
- ReviewGo over the new words in Anki for a few minutes a day.
- PracticeTap through the sentences in the Makoto+ app, wherever you are.
One lesson or story at a time, following the path below.
CEFR A1, absolute beginner · Pairs well with Genki I
Two bundles in one
The foundation, then the test
Beri-Beri Shoshinsha16 eBooks: the foundation$49
JLPT N5 Bundle7 eBooks: sharpen it for the test$28Beri-Beri Shoshinsha walks you from hiragana through basic grammar, with 50 easy stories to practice what you learn. The JLPT N5 books then cover each part of the exam, so you can target weak spots.
What's inside
23 eBooks, in the order you'll use them
Build the foundation with Beri-Beri Shoshinsha, then sharpen it with the JLPT N5 books.
- Part 1 · Beri-Beri Shoshinsha
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Step 1
Learn hiragana and katakana
Start with Introduction to Japanese, then the two alphabets, with printable worksheets.
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Step 2
Basic grammar and your first kanji
100 grammar points in plain English, a short guide to honorifics and pronouns, and the 100 most useful kanji.
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Step 3
Read real stories
50 short, often funny stories about life in Japan in the five Yonde Miyo readers, plus the adventures of Frank, an alien in Japan.
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Step 4
Speak everyday Japanese
101 set phrases and power words, beginning sentences to say out loud, and two issues of Makoto, our magazine for learners.
- Part 2 · JLPT N5 Bundle
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Step 5
Every N5 word and grammar point
The vocabulary and grammar the JLPT N5 tests, with example sentences, then sentence patterns and sentence practice.
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Step 6
The 103 N5 kanji
Stroke order, mnemonics and audio for every reading, then reading drills and quizzes.
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Step 7
Reading, then a practice test
Short passages with N5-style questions, and a 45-page practice test with an answer key and audio.
- Your goal: JLPT N5
Look inside a story
Every story, three ways
あるひ、
ある日、
ある日、
“One day, Clay went off in search of a bookstore.”
The first line of “Clay is Lost” in Yonde Miyo Volume 1. Every word and grammar point is explained, and every story has audio at slow and natural speed.
In the app too
Read and listen in the Makoto+ app
Most of these books unlock in the Makoto+ Japanese Explorer app for iPhone, iPad and Android. Here are the JLPT N5 books in the app, with your progress in each, and the vocabulary book open to a page. Your unlock codes come with the download.
- Hear every sentence at normal or slow speed
- Turn furigana on or off
- Tap any word for its meaning
- Save words and quiz yourself
- Pick up where you left off in every book
What learners say
“A great set of study materials. I really like that it includes Anki flashcards. I've been using this bundle after finishing the Genki textbook.”
Anna G. · JLPT N5 Bundle
“Every sentence is broken down and explained in easy steps that helps the reader understand the structure of Japanese.”
M.J. · Beri-Beri Shoshinsha
“Excellent material. I'm reviewing the kanji level 5 reading practice. I am very happy with the results. Motivated to go on.”
Michael L. · JLPT N5 Bundle
These reviews are of the two bundles inside this one.
Who it's for
- Pay once, keep them forever
- Free updates forever
- Instant download
- 60-day money-back guarantee
Questions
What do I get?
23 eBooks as PDF and ePub files, 2,000+ MP3 audio files, Anki flashcard decks, printable worksheets, and a JLPT N5 practice test with audio.
How do I download it?
Right after checkout we email you a download link. Download everything at once on a computer, or open single books on your phone or tablet. You don't need Dropbox or any other account.
Can I read them on my phone or Kindle?
Yes. The ePub files work in Apple Books, Google Play Books and most reading apps, and the PDFs open anywhere. Our eBook guide walks you through each device.
Which books unlock in the Makoto+ app?
Most of them, including all 50 Yonde Miyo stories, both Frank and the Obaasan volumes, and the JLPT N5 books. Your unlock codes come with the download.
Do the two bundles overlap?
A little, on purpose. About 60% of the grammar topics and 80% of the kanji appear in both, but the books do different jobs: the Beri-Beri books teach the language as you'll use it, and the JLPT N5 books teach it the way the exam asks. Same material from two angles.
Do I have to take the JLPT?
No. The N5 books follow the exam, but its levels are also one of the clearest ways to measure your progress as a beginner. A test on the calendar is a motivator that flashcards aren't.
Is a printed version included?
No, this is the digital bundle. Several of these books are also sold as paperbacks.
What if it isn't right for me?
Tell us within 60 days and we'll swap it for a better-fitting bundle or refund you in full.
TheJapanShop.com bundles are books you own. Makoto+ is a library you join. See how they compare
We run two main sites: TheJapanShop.com and MakotoPlus.com. Here's the gist:
Books you own
TheJapanShop.com bundles
- Pay once and keep it forever
- Download every book: PDF, ePub and MP3 audio, plus Anki decks with many bundles
- Free updates forever, including new volumes we add to the bundle
- Most bundles also unlock in the Makoto app by themselves, as the full eBook plus interactive sentences
- 60-day money-back guarantee
A library you join
Makoto+ membership
- Free, monthly or yearly plans
- Interactive stories in the Makoto app: about a dozen free, dozens with Samurai, up to 200 with Shogun
- Stories in the membership rotate monthly
- A new Makoto magazine issue every month to download and keep (Samurai and Shogun)
- Members save 10% (Samurai) or 20% (Shogun) on bundles
Join once, for good
Makoto+ Lifetime
- Shogun membership for life, with one payment
- Everything we add to Makoto+ later is included
- Bundle downloads are not included, but your 20% member discount works on them
- Sold only during limited-time windows
Many learners do both. The free Makoto+ Japanese Explorer App (iPhone/iPad and Android) puts them side by side: the books you own and the stories in your membership, in one library.
Samurai or Shogun member? See which stories you can already read in the app
If you are a Samurai member, you can read these 33 stories in the Makoto+ Japanese Explorer app right now:
Yonde Miyo~ Volume 1げんかん and Clay's Shoes · Blue or Green? · マイターン My Turn · My Car · Island Country · Clay is Lost
Yonde Miyo~ Volume 2Anyway, Study Japanese
Yonde Miyo~ Volume 4Japanese Dialects · Cold Meals · Disaster Preparedness Day · Japanese Names · General Cleaning
Yonde Miyo~ Volume 5Girls’ Festival · Children's Day · Humidity · Opening the Beaches · Signage · Tomokoroshi
Frank and the Obaasan - Volume 11 The Encounter · 2 Mizu, the Best Thing in the Universe · 3 Sushi is Not Human · 4 Sushi is Something to Eat · 5 Frank is an Alien but not from America · 6 Frank Needs a Finmupputto · 7 Frank Finds the Finmupputto · 8 Frank Buys Natto · 9 Natto is Cheap! · 10 Fly Me to the Moon · 11 Take Off! · 12 How the War Began · 13 Revenge or Forgiveness? · 14 Boarded! · 15 The Judgement Seat
And if you are Shogun, you also have access to these 21 stories:
Yonde Miyo~ Volume 2めいしん Japanese Superstitions · はなみ Cherry Blossom Viewing · 手をあらう How to Wash Hands · ハエたたき Fly Swatter · Scary Wife · 和製英語 Made in Japan English · さいこう The Best Psycho
Yonde Miyo~ Volume 3日本のトイレ Japanese Toilets · 押し入れ the Closet · 日本の犬 Japanese Dogs
Yonde Miyo~ Volume 4Motivation
Frank and the Obaasan - Volume 21: Revenge of Kitti-chan! · 2: The Most Kawaii Thing · 3: Where is the Kawaii Thing · 4: Aboard a Shinkansen to Tokyo · 5: The Old Man · 6: Obaasan Power · 7: Distracted by Ice Cream · 8: Distracted by Senbei · 9: The Fate of the Universe is Over · 10: Pancakes as a Reward
Stories in your membership rotate monthly and don't include downloads like PDFs, ePubs, MP3s or Anki decks. If you just want to read these stories in the app, they're already yours. Buying the bundle keeps all of its stories in the app for good, plus all the downloads.
Not a Makoto+ member? Become one to save up to 20% on this bundle AND get access to up to 200 stories as part of your membership.
Current as of November 2026.
Try before you buy
Try it free: one story and two N5 readings
Flip through story 1 of Yonde Miyo Volume 1 and the first two passages of Japanese Reading for JLPT N5, exactly as they appear in the bundle. Then hear them read aloud.
Trouble viewing? Open the sample PDF in a new tab.
Clay is Lost Slow speed
Clay is Lost Natural speed
John's Diary #1 Audio
John's Diary #2 Audio
The bundle has 50 stories like “Clay is Lost,” each recorded at slow and natural speed, plus the full JLPT N5 books.
Every sentence is broken down and explained in easy steps that helps the reader understand the structure of Japanese, something I have found to be missing from other media.
The included worksheets and flash cards means you always have a source available instead of having to scour the internet for them.
You can feel the passion that Clay and Yumi have for the Japanese language in the materials and it helps to keep you progressing.
Thank you for your review! We're so glad you found our Beri-Beri-Shoshinsha useful. If you have any questions or suggestions for future content for that bundle, please let me know. All updates are free!
My 9 year old granddaughter asked me to teach her some Japanese about six months ago. Now she and her 11 year old brother study with my on Zoom for an hour every week.
A few weeks ago, I started using Beri-Beri-Shoshinsha, and we are all enjoying it very much. The short stories are a great way for them to practice reading hiragana, and they always get a laugh out of "Kurei-san's" misadventures in Japan.
The sentences and dialogues feel very natural, and serve as a good introduction to Japanese grammar and syntax.
Since the stories (so far) seem to highlight unique features of Japanese life and culture, the children find them fascinating.
Much more interesting than Rosetta Stone, and much more realistic than DuoLingo.
Thanks!!!
It's wonderful to know that your grandchildren are enjoying Beri- Beri- Shoshinsha! That they appreciate my humor enough to use the stories for learning is very satisfying. :)
The later stories are more essays about aspects of Japanese culture (and less silly), but I'll try to add more 'Clay misadventures' soon. They might enjoy Frank and the Obaasan after they exhaust Yonde Miyo~. It's weird but cute, I think.
An excellent help for learning Japanese! not only suitable for absolute beginners but also helpful for learners who already have some knowledge of the language. The grammar explanations are detailed and easy to understand. The content is interesting and never boring, helping to improve your skills step by step. I can highly recommended it.
Thank you for your wonderful review! We really appreciate your recommendation and hope you continue enjoying your Japanese studies!
Great starter bundle and even better now that it's available in the Makato+ app.
Thank you! We have about 90% of the bundles in the app now. I hope to have 100% with revisions to the books by the end of the year. Glad to hear you like it! Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.
Very satisfied with purchase. A lot of material to help with learning Japanese.
Thank you, Kevin, for your positive feedback! We're glad the bundle is helping with your Japanese learning journey. If you need any further assistance, feel free to reach out.
I posted a review, a fairly critical one, explaining that I found the beginner bundle disorganised and confusing. Clay replied, thanked me for the feedback and very soon after produced an updated bundle which has an easily followed and encouraging bundle. I plan to start my studying soon for a trip next year - the new bundle gives me confidence that I will have at least a few useful phrases and an understanding of basic signs when I get there!
Hi Dave, thank you so much for your kind words and for the updated review! That was above and beyond :) The reorganization is done, but we still have to update about half of the books and get them in the system. One day soon, you'll be able to unlock all the content in the app as well as read from the PDFs and ePubs. Thanks for sticking with us!
The content is good but it's incredibly badly organised. An index or overview pdf would have been useful. Maybe a guide to using the materials effectively.
Not sure as a total beginner how useful it will be.
It is genuinely a bundle, which is a shame.
First, thank you so much for your feedback.
We've actually been planning to totally revamp the structure and content for the Beri- Beri- Shoshinsha bundle for a while. But instead of waiting for the content revisions, I went ahead and did the planned restructuring of the content. Please take a look and let me know if it is better now. (I probably should have done this without waiting for the full edits)
But the full revision will come in a month or two. We'll add more content and improve the current offerings. More to come soon!
I am still amazed by the quality of the content and the quantity in this bundle.
I love that you get epub files. I love reading the short stories in bed every night.
This was without a doubt the best purchase in my Japanese learning journey!
Thank you so much for your kind words and for taking the time to leave a review! Short and sweet, but we couldn't resist saying thank you!
I recently started this course and I have already learned to read hiragana and katakana! The books are very detailed and the mp3 files help with pronunciation. If you’re new to Japanese I highly recommend this course.
Awesome! I'm glad you are making progress and the bundle is helping. Keep reading to build vocabulary, kanji, and grammar understanding. We recently updated the the Yonde Miyo~ books (the ones with 10 stories each) with Makoto+ Sentence Explorer integration. So, if you haven't checked that out, please give it a try. It's free.
Excellent learning material for the money, and plenty in abundance as well. Thank you Clay & Yumi for making such educational material available.
Thank you! We realy appreciate you! Let me know if you have any questions as you go along. I'll be happy to help.
I had already some basic knowledge in Japanese (because I was always into japanese content) and I have improved a lot thanks to Beri- Beri- Shoshinsha!
I purchased this bundle a month ago but I thought I'd post my review earlier that I anticipated~
I'm half into the 100grammar (I have yet to check the rest of the books in this bundle) and I practice some kanji (from the Kanji100) in my free time. This language is pure art and I'm very well into arts and crafts so as a beginner they feel like a piece of cake to me! I am also greek and I noticed japanese have few common things with greek; we pronounce words exactly as we see them, we just replace the suffix of words to direct time and to adress people (most of the times) and we don't need either a plethora of articles or other particles to produce a full meaning of a phrase/sentence - which helps me a lot in undestarding!
All in all, in combination with the knowledge I already had and Beri Beri Shoshinsha, I can already read and undestand basic japanese in just a month~!
Lastly I'd like to thank Clay & Yumi for their assistance and the love they poured into makind these books~!
And if any potential buyers are reading my review, I'd like to let you know that these books provide a thorough explanation and a large variety of examples to assist into learning the correct pronunciations (with addional sound files for everything)!
Thank you so much! You are awesome. :) I'm glad to hear you are excited about Japanese, and finding connections with things you already know (Greek) is a great way to make progress with Japanese. I think that is how our brains work--connections. So, keep at it and let me know if you have any questions as you go through the material.
Мне понравилось.
I have loved all the Japan Shop books. The grammar books give clear concise explanations and you can easily access the sounds. Plus the Yonde Miyo series are great to read and listen to.
Yeah! I'm glad you like it. We try to keep the Yonde Miyo~ books fun. :)
It's the third time I started learning japanese and I never came very far. With this set I managed to learn the hiragana in about two weeks and now I'm starting with the katakana :) The books are fun and easy to understand (even if your from Germany like me) and I'm looking forward to the moment when I really can understand the whole Storys. And a great plus is that you get free updates. Great work. I recommend it to everyone who's willing to learn Japanese
Danke schoen! I'm thrilled to hear it is helping. We are here if you have any questions. Hope you keep at it this time. :)
I love Beri Beri Shoshinsha! One gets so much material; perfect for beginners like me. The variety of materials cover all aspects of learning
(writing systems, reading, culture, etc.,) and even includes an Anki deck. I'm so glad to have discovered The Japan Shop. As I progress, I know where I will be getting the resources I will need and want.
Thank you so much for your kind words! We're thrilled to hear that Beri Beri Shoshinsha has been helpful. If you have any questions as you go through the material, we are here to help! Just ask. Thank you and have fun with Japanese!
I have a Japanese friend who looked over them and he was amazed as well.
That's great! I'm thrilled to hear you are enjoying Beri- Beri- Shoshinsha. Let me know if you have any questions. We'll add more to it soon!
Smells good, the case is awesome and I am addicted to opening and closing it lol
The worksheets are super helpful for practicing writing and the information is easy to follow. I don’t feel overwhelmed with this.
So much info in this package! The printable practice sheets for Hiragana and Katakana are worth the package purchase price by themselves, the practice sheets that I found elsewhere cost more than the entire Beri Beri bundle did. Great stuff!
Thanks for the great review! We're so glad you're enjoying it! I'll add more worksheets to the bundle in the near future.
Excellent study materials are easy to follow and to the point.
Good
I am a beginner and I really need something to read and I love these books!
Thanks for the review! We're so glad you love our books and find them helpful.
Started last week and using the methods detailed in the first section I have already memorised 27 hiragana letters. The coure so far at this early stage seems to be working well.
Awesome progress! Keep at it. Progress will slow down--so think of ways to keep motivation up, but a great start. If you have any questions, please email me any time.
This is a great bundle! Very useful for a very beri beginner. Two thumbs up!
Thank you for the kind words! We're glad you found the bundle useful.
