New penguin Japanese short stories by Michael emmerich
Real-world texts are not generally written with JLPT levels in mind. It’s the JLPT level you meant, yeah?
Looking at the sample text on Amazon, all kanji comes with full furigana, so kanji knowledge isn’t an issue. Mostly it’s gonna be grammar and vocab. It doesn’t have any of the extreme casual language that’s common to manga, so I’d probably peg the grammar at around… N3, maybe?
According to community grading over on Natively, reader averages set it at a L30 (or JLPT N2) difficulty.
Just had a look at the sample, first one seems more n3 but second seems more n2 so too difficult. I’m currently reading Japanese folktales for language learners by eriko and Anna sato and so far the grammar is okay but constantly having to check the vocabulary list. Do you know of something similar like that level, desu masu form stories with vocabulary list for words and grammar they don’t expect you to know and with furigana?
they also have a short stories book in that same series, if that’s helpful. breaking into japanese literature has vocab lists but only for kanji words and no grammar list. its natively level is also higher than all other books listed here
I know about the short stories book in the same series as the book I mentioned but I was unsure cause people on the reviews said the first two stories are n3 but the other ones are more n2 so was unsure if the sentences would be too far above my level even with a vocabulary and grammar list
you can always try! n levels are helpful as a general guideline but you don’t necessarily need to avoid a higher level just because you haven’t studied everything that might possibly be in that level yet. no matter what you’re reading, you’ll almost certainly come across something you don’t know or don’t understand. if you’re reading n3 level, you can read n2, it’ll just take longer and inevitably involve looking more things up.
if it ends up being more stress or work than it’s worth, you can always put the book down for now and come back to it again later after some more study and general reading experience
I haven’t studied n3 but the book I’m currently reading has the vocabulary list which includes the odd n3 grammar but it says what it means in that story so I’m managing slowly with it but the other one in the series is harder though still has a vocabulary list