The Story Pit
Welcome to The Story Pit, a collection of flash fiction, vignettes and short stories for Japanese students and teachers. Inside the Story Pit there are 20 Bakemono Classroom short stories. They’re short, punchy and often a little sillier than the stories you’re probably used to, but they aren’t without their darker moments (we can’t have rainbows without a bit of little rain, right?).
The genre of the stories also vary greatly: there is a space opera, cumulative kid’s stories, allegories, a few yokai related tales, some sweeter moments and there is even a “recipe” and a limerick. Keen-eyed students may notice some easter eggs spread throughout the book as my universe expands… some of my students are calling it the ‘Pettyverse’ (they might be more right than they know). Joining all the stories together is 3-part story, kind of a haunted house tale, introducing a place called Whitley Mansion. These are the first, tenth and twentieth stories. I wrote these stories first and they are kind of like language ‘mile markers’, so I knew where I will start, where I will end and what the middle should look like.
So who is this book for? Well to quote myself (because I want to finish this post and get back to writing/drawing), the back cover says:
“If you’re holding this book, then chances are it has found its way into the right hands – a potential language student, a language student of potential or a teacher caught in comprehensible input’s web.”
I created this with both student and teacher in mind, but I suppose, in part, I created this book for myself. Not myself right now, but for the kind of student I was when I was much younger. When I was a Japanese student (well, I suppose we kind all are still), I always wanted to learn more, but there wasn’t really a beginner-friendly resource out there that could take a student like me and direct me to the next level. This book, in the hands of that kind of student, is a tool to take control of your own studies. Allowing them to gain independence from a curriculum or set them on the path towards JLPT N5.
Conversely, in the hands of a teacher who knows the ins and outs of Comprehensible Input, this could be a mighty resource. Personally, I use it for Story-Listening with my beginner and beginner-intermediate students, but you could use them as a skeletal-structure for TPRS, look and discuss the illustrations or a myriad of other activities. I knew that CI teachers needed A LOT more ready-to-go stories, so this is my contribution (aside from everything else on the website). I’m hoping it can sit somewhere on your workspace for those times when you need to fill a gap with something fun but in Japanese, it has the potential to do this 20+ times.
The stories in this book are clay for your imagination to meld. I invite you to explore, change, adapt, illustrate, speculate, complete, continue, recreate, share, or simply enjoy these stories. Do so and the language will come.
Do so and the language will come, I think this is the crux of how we learn right?
If you are an Australian learner or teacher, you can purchase The Story Pit directly from my webstore at a reduced cost. For international learners and teachers, the book is available on ALL Amazon marketplaces (there’s a tab at the top of the screen, just ensure your local market place is selected). But I believe transparency is authenticity and most textbooks don’t usually provide much insight into what the book is like. So if you’re curious or skeptical of what I’m trying to do, you can click below and and download a free 27-page ‘Sampler edition’ of The Story Pit.
