Before moving on, you should reach level 10 on WaniKani (or around 300 kanji and 1,000 vocabulary words using your own method). There’s good reason that beginners don’t have as much to study with, though. Basically, it comes down to not knowing enough kanji. If you don’t know the kanji, resources options are limited, though that doesn’t mean it isn’t helpful to read. Reading teaches you grammar and how to use it. It also will help you with your kana and basic kanji fluency (which normally takes too long in my opinion without enough early Japanese reading practice). You’ll also learn a lot of useful, common words, which of course is useful. This collection of short stories is focused on the 1995 Kobe earthquake. It contains six short stories centered around people who, while not directly affected by the physical devastation of the quake, find their lives forever changed in its aftermath. The good news is, it’s incredibly easy to find real life Japanese resources online! You can also find resources on literally any topics. Finally, while I think it can be great to push yourself to complete something you're interested in, and really gratifying once you finish it, if you want to follow these guidelines then reading shouldn't be an extremely taxing activity for you. Instead, it's best to read things that are suited to your level, that allow you to relax and read comfortably without feeling the urge to look up every other word. Our Recommendations

The most difficult thing about learning Japanese is kanji. At least, that's what people say. But trying to save it or brush it off until later isn't going to help you learn Japanese. Almost everything uses kanji, making it one of the most important aspects of learning this language. Your learning quality of life will drop drastically if you choose to ignore it.Except for a few fancy words describing Mikage’s soul-crushing grief, the language in this book is again quite domestically focused. You’ll find reading this book is quite a calming endeavor…grab a cup of tea on a rainy day! 8. “Stories You Can Read Smoothly”

This second collection by Haruki Murakami is also very well known around the world, because Murakami is Japan’s most famous contemporary writer today. The sentence is very short: If a phrase only has three parts (ex. "[vocabulary] + [particle] + [vocabulary]"), and you don't know one of them, you're going to be at 66%. In cases like this, you can make an exception. Knowing 66% of a three piece phrase, or 75% of a four piece phrase is acceptable. This will be very common in the beginning. This is also a good time to change your phone, computer, Facebook settings into Japanese and create an immersion environment. In this article, I will introduce some of the best online resources for finding such stories, and how you can use them to build up your reading skill!In this article, I wanted to focus on books that were meant for language learners rather than native speakers, had a series of different grades or difficulty levels available, and were written entirely in Japanese. That means the list of recommendations won't include materials that offer English translations. While having the English translation can certainly help comprehension, it reinforces translation rather than natural comprehension.