The Pieces Press

Within 14 days of moving in, take your passport and residence card to the ward office, then wait for your My Number letter. Issue 96 · B1 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/registering-your-address-at-a-japanese-ward-office

Four old animals, each told they were no longer useful, found a new life by working together. Issue 94 · B1 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/the-town-musicians-of-bremen

A sento is more than a bath: simple rules keep it clean and relaxing for everyone who visits. Issue 93 · A2 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/how-to-use-a-sento-a-japanese-public-bath

Autumn does not paint new colours onto leaves; it removes the green that was hiding the colours already there. Issue 92 · B1 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/why-leaves-change-colour-in-autumn

A kind fisherman saved a turtle, and it changed his whole life. Issue 90 · A2 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/urashima-taro-and-the-palace-under-the-sea

Japan sits where several of the Earth's tectonic plates meet, and this location, not bad luck, explains both its frequent earthquakes and the advanced engineering that keeps its buildings standing. Issue 89 · B2 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/how-japan-learned-to-live-with-earthquakes

A vending machine checks a coin's size, speed, and metal in a fraction of a second before it decides whether to accept or reject it. Issue 88 · B1 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/how-a-vending-machine-knows-your-coin

Living yeast feeds on the sugar in bread dough and makes a gas, and that gas is what makes the dough rise before baking. Issue 87 · A2 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/why-bread-rises

Jet lag comes from a mismatch between the body's internal clock and the new local time, and only a few well-timed habits actually fix it. Issue 86 · C1 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/jet-lag-resetting-the-body-clock

Coffee passes through several distinct stages of picking, processing, and roasting before it becomes the drink people recognize. Issue 85 · B2 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/from-cherry-to-cup-the-journey-of-coffee

The sky changes color during the day because sunlight is made of many colors that travel through the air in different ways. Issue 84 · B1 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/why-the-sky-is-blue-and-the-sunset-is-red

In many Japanese cities, sorting rubbish correctly turns household waste into a resource instead of a problem. Issue 83 · A2 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/how-a-city-in-japan-sorts-its-rubbish

Sending a letter from a post office takes a few simple steps: an envelope, an address, a stamp, and a mailbox. Issue 82 · A1 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/how-to-send-a-letter-at-the-post-office

Anthropic's new Opus release matters partly because it points to a more powerful class of AI still being prepared for wider use. Issue 81 · B2 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/what-mythos-class-ai-means

SpaceX's Starship reached a key milestone on May 22, but a crewed Moon landing still requires solving several hard technical and logistical problems. Issue 80 · B2 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/after-flight-12-what-starship-still-has-to-prove-0txx

A high-profile summit between the US and China ended with more ceremony than substance, leaving markets disappointed and Putin ready to follow Trump's footsteps to Beijing. Issue 77 · B2 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/beijing-s-busy-week-trump-xi-and-putin-on-the-world-stage

A Japanese director brings a grief story and a humanoid robot to the world's most-watched film festival. Issue 76 · B1 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/a-robot-son-kore-eda-s-new-film-arrives-at-cannes

OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have each placed an AI agent inside Chrome, but each one works in a different way. Issue 74 · B1 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/three-ai-assistants-move-into-your-browser

While most people sleep, a small store works through the night to keep everything ready for morning. Issue 71 · A2 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/inside-a-japanese-convenience-store-at-3-a-m

Sometimes a small thing breaks, and you find a way to keep going. Issue 70 · A1 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/the-day-my-umbrella-broke

GPS is more convenient than a paper map, but convenience is not the same as understanding. Issue 69 · B2 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/still-worth-unfolding-the-case-for-paper-maps

The metric system was born from a political revolution and perfected by a scientific one, creating a shared language of measurement that now underpins global science, trade, and everyday life. Issue 68 · C1 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/measuring-the-world-a-short-history-of-the-metric-system

Nearly all international internet traffic travels not through the air but along cables lying on the ocean floor. Issue 67 · B2 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/the-undersea-highways-of-the-internet

Between April 22 and 28, the company behind Claude released a stronger model, tried a quick pricing test, kept its most powerful system in the lab, and opened a new office on the other side of the world. Issue 66 · B1 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/a-busy-week-at-anthropic

An old bamboo cutter raises a girl from the moon as his own daughter, and one autumn night, he learns he must give her back. Issue 65 · B1 reading · The Pieces Press Read, mark words, and ask the annotator AI: https://piecespress.com/read/the-bamboo-cutter-and-the-shining-child