At the moment I’m reading the first ショートショート (ボッコちゃん) by 新一星 which is a collection of short stories. I would really recommend as a way to get into reading in Japanese as the stories are all really short and simple.
I’m having no issue understanding anything in these stories: I can follow along and understand the plot entirely. However I am having some issues understanding why certain tenses are used seemingly randomly. For example the first story is written in past tense, however there are random sentences that are written in present tense:
エス氏が手にとってみると、本物の金貨にまちがいない。(This sentence crops up randomly after everything preceding it being in past tense.)
I noticed this in 川端康成の掌の小説 as well, where everything will be in past tense but then there will randomly be a random sentence ending in ている or である: and not in a way where I can use context to justify it in my English speaking mind. I guess I’m just curious if anyone has any insights as to how tense works in Japanese fiction? And how it differs from English fiction? Again, I’ve never had any issue following the stories I’ve read, so maybe I’m overthinking it. It just makes me curious!
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Does this help?
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Satori Reader stories also make use of this “mixing” of tenses for storytelling purposes, and they have good explanations throughout.
Anyway, you’ll soon get used to it methinks… 
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