The most enjoyable and effective way to learn new vocabulary is through reading, since the words are not only learned in context, but also while your interest is high. However, it is often difficult to find texts that are easy enough to read and are still intellectually rewarding. The stories in this book were written using as many words from the JLPT N3 level as possible, with exciting plots that will make you want to keep reading and hardly notice you are studying, and they are full of enough mystery so you will want to read them again and thereby further review the vocabulary. More than three quarters of the kanji and vocabulary needed for the JLPT N3 test are included and there are no words from the N2 and N1 levels except in a few instances where there is no substitute, in which case they are marked with a star and their definition follows soon after. Following each story is an English translation and a sequential list of all the N3 words used in the story along with their English translation so that new words can be learned quickly without the need of a dictionary. The stories will also introduce many sentence structures required for the N3 test in a fluid way so that you can pick up the new grammar naturally. Reading stories makes learning new vocabulary and grammar fun and easy. But to make your learning most effective, try to implement "intelligent guessing" before turning to the Vocabulary Word List, try to guess the meaning of new words from context. This builds stronger associations with the words you are learning.