I put in my recommendations before reading it thoroughly, but anyway, I recommended 1. Ghibli Picture Book Totoro, as it is in just Hirigana, but has all of the text from the movie. You can always putthis into Kanji yourself as you learn it. It also has much useful grammer as spoken, and as you can learn all the words and grammar, you can then watch the moviwe in japanese only and just enjoy it without any translation-on-the-fly.
2. I purchased 1-14 of Yotsuba manga. Simple sentances. Easy to learn.
Slightly off-subject, but I am finding the anime “Teasing master Takagi-san” to be very nice simple sentances that I surprised myself how much I understood without needing any translation.
Yes I am only at the end of level 3, but that is only because I am waiting for discount coupons next month before I purchase lifetime subscription. I am more advanced on Duolingo, and with my other materials.
A graded reader is a book whose language is tailored towards a specific level of language proficiency. A very easy one will only contain very simple grammar and vocab (e.g. N5 level), and then depending on the publisher there are several levels where the books get more and more difficult, following the typical learning process of a second-language learner. (But each book stays within its level, it does not get more difficult.)
This is different from books for natives (even children‘s books) because those use all sorts of grammar and vocab which is expected to be known by a child, but a language learner just might not have reached that level yet.
I honestly don’t know any books above kindergarten level where the bulk of Kanji is restricted to N5 and N4 Kanji only.
The 3 high elementary school level-middle school novels that I’ve read so far, including 君の名は、mainly consist of N3 and N2 Kanji. I have to annotate at least 10 Kanji on every single page in that novel lmao, because I haven’t encountered them yet.
NHK Easy News is the best bet for N4 level readers.
No reason not to wait a little bit longer though, I bought the 33% off lifetime membership just before christmas, so there are chances you will be able to get it soon if they keep doing it
Anyway, just wanted to say thank you so much for all the help, I feel really grateful to have such a great, passionate Japanese learning community here.
If you have any feedback on the article, please share your comments here, or emails us at hello@tofugu.com. I’d love to continue this as a series, and regardless, I would love to have more opportunities to collaborate with y’all again.
Thank you for the nice article! Although I didn’t recommend anything, I still read a few of the recommended books with the book clubs before and could definitely relate to the comments!
I found a small typo in the part about 魔女の宅急便:
“The story follows vaious parts of Kiki’s life”
Also, the author of the わんにゃん探偵団 series is called Sugiyama Akira according to his website, but in the sources he’s listed as Ryo (I was a bit surprised by the reading the first time I googled him so it stuck in my mind )
Oh, and I was also wondering why you decided to put the first names in the sources first, instead of the last names.
Thanks for catching this! I’ll work on getting it fixed
Also, the author of the わんにゃん探偵団 series is called Sugiyama Akira according to his website, but in the sources he’s listed as Ryo (I was a bit surprised by the reading the first time I googled him so it stuck in my mind )
Oh, and I was also wondering why you decided to put the first names in the sources first, instead of the last names.
Oh the sources are all messed up, huh! I don’t know why I did that — I was probably just tired then. Thanks for pointing these out too!
Glad to see the article is out! I’m forever impressed by the lengths Tofugu goes to to provide guidance for Japanese learners of all levels. Even though I’ve stopped using WaniKani and don’t spend much time on the forums anymore, I’m excited for all future new-learners and members of the community that they get to start their journeys with such great resources and as a part of the supportive community that WaniKani fosters
For any newbies out there reading this, stick with it! Dedication > level-up speed, it’s a marathon not a sprint, we were all beginners once, etc. etc.
I assume there’s supposed to be a picture of the covers here, but I just get this broken image that links to the item’s Amazon page. I tried disabling uBlock Origin, but I think it’s the new Total Cookie Protection feature on Firefox 86 that’s causing the issue. It works for the ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂, but I assume just has the image stored locally, are you able to embed them locally for the other books potentially? Might just be an issue that I have to live with.