My copy of 'Breaking into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text' arrived today, and it is everything the Amazon blurb promised.

The first section, Level One, has four stories from Souseki's 'Ten Nights of Dreams'; Level Two has Ryuunosuke's 'In a Grove' and 'The Nose'; Level Three has Ryuunosuke's 'Rashomon'. Each double-page spread has the Japanese text top-left, the English version top-right, and the 'zero omission dictionary' in the bottom half of the page. This includes all kanji and the 'more difficult' hiragana words in the text, in the order they appear in.

There are mini-biographies of the authors, and a preface to each story. On the website there is an mp3 file of each story to download.

For me, this is absolutely perfect. I've read a lot of Souseki in English, and can now plough my way through the original. What a great incentive to keep studying!

Another incentive arrived today - the result of my end-of-year exam, which was very satisfying. (Me? Smug??)