虻のおれい
A six-year-old girl is playing in the garden when a horsefly comes.
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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
This text tells how six-year-old Chieko finds a gadfly trapped in a soda bottle in the backyard; after several failed attempts she tries blowing water into the bottle to drive it toward the opening, and finally gets it out safely. The reading feels brisk and childlike, full of playful dialogue and close attention to the little rescue's every step.
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.
サイダー means cider, i.e. a lemon-flavoured carbonated drink introduced to Japan from England in the Meiji period. From the Taishō era to the early Shōwa era it was a fashionable drink served to guests in ordinary households. It came in narrow-necked glass bottles, and the scene where the horsefly falls into the bottle but cannot find its way out through the mouth relies on this bottle shape.
「麦わら」 literally means wheat straw; here it refers to a straw made of wheat stalk used for drinking cider. Chieko uses it to suck up the liquid and then blow air into the bottle, making use of the fact that the straw can both suck and blow.
A formal tatami-matted room in a Japanese-style house, used for receiving guests. Simply rendering it as "living room" loses the context of traditional Japanese architecture.
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.