キャラメルと飴玉
A caramel and a hard candy start a quarrel inside a sweet box.
- Authentic text: the opening of a public-domain original
- Word-by-word glosses and translation in English or Chinese, free
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Sample: three-line reading
Each word has its meaning in this sentence underneath, and each sentence has a full translation. Read the original and glance down only when you need to.
About the book
The text tells how a caramel and a candy in a sweets box mock each other's names, wrappers, and ingredients until they scuffle, and the mother finally smashes them with a hammer so the children can eat them for a snack. It reads like a lively fairy tale, with fast-paced bickering between the sweets and a comedic ending.
Cultural notes (selection)
Background a translation can’t carry: social roles, history and allusions. While reading, tap “Note” at the end of a sentence to see them all.
Kasutera (castella) is a Japanese loanword from Portuguese, originally meaning "bread from Castile (Spain)"; it was brought to Japan by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. In the text, the foreign country name is written with the kanji 西班牙, a common way of rendering such names in Japanese of the modern era.
Konpeitō derives from the Portuguese word confeito and came to Japan in the sixteenth century—it is not Russian. When Amedama says in the text that it is a Russian name, this is idle nonsense spoken offhandedly by the character, not a fact.
About the author
Yumeno Kyūsaku (4 January 1889 – 11 March 1936) was a Japanese author whose pen name roughly means "a person who always dreams"; his real name was Sugiyama Yasumichi. He wrote detective novels and also worked as a Zen priest, post office director and sub-lieutenant, and is known for his avant-gardism and surrealistic, wildly imaginative and bizarre narratives.
How the glosses are made
Word glosses and sentence translations are generated in context by AI models (DeepSeek and Zhipu GLM), and every word is checked to have a gloss. AI can make mistakes; you can report problems from the book page.
FAQ
Is this the original text?
Yes. The library holds the opening section of the public-domain original, taken from 青空文库.
Do I need to pay or sign up?
Library books are free to read without an account. Other gloss languages and importing your own texts need an account and credits.
What level is it?
This one is marked “Beginner”. Every word is glossed, so you can keep reading even with a small vocabulary.
Can I use another gloss language?
English and Chinese glosses are prepared in advance; signed-in readers can generate other languages.