This text explains, from the perspective of an exchange student from Kenya, how a mushroom farm works and why there are so many of them in Ōita Prefecture. It was written by 渡辺若菜 for the 「大分発わくわく読みものをつくる会」and published as a level 3 story on the NPO Tagengo Tadoku’s free graded reader site.
I liked how this story moved somewhere between fiction and non-fiction. There was a first person narrator and some plot as well as historical facts about Ōita Prefecture and biological facts on shiitake mushrooms. I had almost no prior knowledge of mushroom cultivation and the science behind that so it really felt like I was learning a lot while reading.
Languagewise, there is some technical vocabulary involved in those biological explanations, but it is usually explained in more detail in the next sentence, so I found it rather easy to follow along.
You can find the full text here: https://tadoku.org/japanese/book/8184/#bd-look-inside
Length: 34 pages