Today, 7 July, is Tanabata, a Japanese festival centered around stars, the milky way, romance, as well as hopes and aspirations for the future.⭐✨
If you want to find out more about the customs and history of Tanabata in simple Japanese, take a look at the texts and articles below. Most of these texts have a reading level fitting for JLPT N5 and N4 readers and all texts are freely available online!
The article on the website hirogaru introduces the star festival with large pictures and few sentences. You can toggle furigana for this text in theory but it might not work depending on your device. However, all text also has a read out loud function. There is also a small reading comprehension quiz at the end.
https://hirogaru-nihongo.jp/hoshi/article/tanabata/
On Kazue Ono's blog, she writes about the Tanabata festival in three levels: for starters, beginners and intermediate readers. The blog post has audio options for all three levels, can be downloaded as a PDF and also features a reading comprehension quiz here.
https://www.nihongoschool.co.uk/post/にほんごブログ：七月七日
Although the free web magazine Watanoc hasn't had new articles for a while now, their article about Tanabata still holds up and gives a great overview about the festival. You can hover over words and phrases to get the reading as well as a translation into English. After each paragraph you can also click to translate the entire sentence into English as well.
https://watanoc.com/post-1607-tanabata
If you are interested in reading about the street festivals and parades taking place, Matcha Magazine recommends some great Tanabata festivals in the Kanto region to check out. Their article has full furigana and added spaces between words.
https://matcha-jp.com/easy/367
There is a legend behind Tanabata and you can read it in a simpler Japanese version on hukumusume, which is a place for free online children's stories. Although this text is not written with learners in mind, it features both furigana and cute colorful illustrations that guide readers along.
Please scroll past the videos at the beginning of the page. The full text is just below.
http://hukumusume.com/douwa/kisetu/tanabata/s5_html/02.htm
Tadoku no Hiroba (たどくのひろば)
For learners approaching intermediate abilities (N4-N3), I can recommend this short story by Tadoku no Hiroba. It is both longer than the articles above and features more complicated grammar points and speech registers, but still features 100% furigana on all kanji.
https://tadoku.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/7gatsu7katanabata_ruby.pdf
