Chiyo-ni
Japanese Haiku with Vocabulary & Explanation

Twenty-five poems by Fukuda Chiyo-ni, one of the most loved haiku poets Japan has produced. She was born in 1703, was widowed young, became a Buddhist nun in her fifties, and wrote right up to her death poem at seventy-three. Her poems are small, kind, and often funny, and they are written in the real Japanese of three hundred years ago.
You will hear each haiku many times, and that is on purpose. A haiku is only seventeen sounds long, and by the end of its chapter you should be able to say it without thinking. Every time it comes back, you know a little more about it: first the sound of it, then each line and what it means, then several English translations, then the words inside each line, then the season word that anchors it, then Yumi's explanation in Japanese, sentence by sentence with English after each one, and finally a closer look at why the poem works.
Near the end of each chapter Yumi reads the poem one line at a time and leaves you room to say it back. Learn all twenty-five whole, and you will own twenty-five pieces of real Japanese, in the original words, by a poet who wrote them three centuries ago.
You do not need to know any Japanese to enjoy this; every word is explained as you go. Japanese narration by native speaker Yumi Boutwell, with English explanations by Clay Boutwell. Includes a companion PDF with every poem, furigana and vocabulary notes.