Japan

Rachel Bladon

Oxford Bookworms LibraryLevel 1

A level 1 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Written for Learners of English by Rachel Bladon.

What is Japan? It is everything new and modern: the Tokyo Sky Tree, 634 metres high; amazing cameras and phones; karaoke and manga; trains going past at 300 kilometres an hour. And it is everything ancient too: beautiful palaces; high mountains and hot springs; cherry blossom in the spring; quiet gardens with water and trees. Here the past meets the future all the time. From sumo wrestlers to robots, Japan has something amazing for everybody.

RACHEL BLADON

Japan

JAPAN

Some things always stay the same in Japan. In the countryside, farmers grow rice, like the farmers of hundreds of years ago. Year after year, people stop to see the beautiful blossom on the cherry trees. In a small wooden house, tea is made, and visitors watch carefully.

But some things change very quickly. Better robots and newer phones! More exciting computer games! Taller buildings and faster trains! This is Japan – the old and the new together, always changing, and always the same.

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ISBN: 978 0 19 423669 0

A complete recording of Japan is available on CD. Pack ISBN: 978 0 19 423661 4

Printed in China

Word count (main text): 5,354

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Cover image: Corbis (Mount Fuji, Japan/David Ball)

Map by: Peter Bull p.2

The Publishers would like to thank the following for their permission to reproduce photographs:

Action Images Ltd p.21 (Yomiuri Giants Lee Seung-youp/); Alamy Images pp.13 (Traditional Japanese house/Misha Gordon), 22 (Sumo wrestlers/Nic Cleave Photography), 25 (Princess Mononoké/Photos 12), 37 (Bento box/Japanese Foods), 37 (Japanese restaurant/Salvo Severino), 40 (2012 Mitsubishi i MiEV electric car and a charging station/Oleksiy Maksymenko Photography); Corbis pp.0 (Ornate Toshogu Shrine/Jeremy Woodhouse/Spaces Images), 1 (Women in kimonos/Haruyoshi Yamaguchi), 5 (Samurai warriors/Kimimasa Mayama/epa), 8 (Sony LCD televisions/EPA/Kimimasa Mayama), 10 (Mt Fuji in Winter/Dex Image), 12 (Shinkansen/Jon Hicks), 14 (Japanese family meal/Datacraft Co., Ltd.), 15 (Women reading newspaper/Franck Robichon/epa), 19 (Picnicking under cherry blossom/Michael S. Yamashita), 20 (Geisha/Peter Adams), 23 (Bunraku performance/Michael S. Yamashita), 24 (Under the Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai), 27 (Tokyo’s City Hall building/Jose Fusta Raga), 29 (Senso-Ji Temple, Asakusa/Jose Fuste Raga), 29 (Shibuya, Tokyo/Joachim Ladefoged/VII), 30 (Golden Pavilion/Keith Levit/Design Pics), 31 (Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima/Kimimasa Mayama/epa), 34 (Tempura soba/Studio Eye), 36 (Table d’Hote/Studio Eye), 38 (Rice harve