MarMarMakes

A question I encounter often is "How much Japanese should I study before I can begin reading in Japanese?"

From my experience as a learner and reader myself and from managing a Japanese book club for other learners I can honestly say that you can start way earlier than you probably think!

There are many resources that only require knowing hiragana. Those texts usually teach vocabulary through pictures and only use basic grammar.

Some are even simpler than that: The Japan Foundation's Hiragana Books are great for those, who are still remembering hiragana characters. Every short book introduces only 1-2 new characters, so it's a great reading exercise for those who've just started.

The free graded reader 「どうぞ、どうも」 by the NPO Tagengo Tadoku only uses the words 「どうぞ」 and 「どうも」 to write an entire story. Again, this makes for a great exercise in reading hiragana and understanding context. Another "level 0" recommendation by the same NPO would definitely be 「しろい？くろい？」. This book uses the full range of hiragana characters but the grammar is simple and all used vocabulary is illustrated.

Another site with great resources for absolute beginners is Nihongo Tadoku Dōjō. If you have memorized both hiragana and katakana and know how the particles を and で work you will be able to read this text about stationary (ぶんぼうぐ) and understand everything by looking at the pictures!

The resources linked so far can all be accessed completely free on the linked websites. If you have the money to spare, please also have a look at the box 「スタート」 from the series reberubetsu nihongo tadoku raiburarī published by the NPO Tagengo Tadoku and ASK (affiliate link). This box includes 8 little books in very simple Japanese.

All these texts for absolute beginners will get you started reading in Japanese with very little knowledge of characters and vocabulary.

As of today (January 2026) there are three adaptations of Japanese folk stories. I had a look at both おむすびころりん and たけとりものがたり. The stories are bilingual and the main text is in English, while character names and some nouns are in Japanese. The speech bubbles in the illustrations feature exclamations in Japanese as well. There is only hiragana, no kanji, no katakana.

I needed to put all my reading resources in one place lol

Tadoku - free books from beginner to advanced aimed at language learners. The books from level 0 - 4 contain furigana.

YomuJP - More free japanese graded reading material. N6 is the easiest and N1 is the hardest. Contains audio, furigana and pictures.

Jgrpg Sakura - Japanese graded reading material. You need to create an account first though

Watanoc - Web magazine aimed at language learners in easy japanese. N5-N3. Contains audio, pictures and you can hover over unknown words to reveal the meaning.

Soseki Product - This website is dedicated to the works of Natsume Sōseki and it's also aimed at language learners so there's furigana, audio and translation. These novels are from the 1900s so it might be a bit difficult but I think it's really fun

MeikaSensei - Blog posts aimed at beginners. There's beginner versions and intermediate versions of the same post. Contains furigana

Bunsuke - Contains excerpts from books with translations and vocabulary lists. Also has links to the books used. Made by a fellow language learner :)

Ehon - Picture books aimed for 0-6 year olds. Doesn't seem to contain kanji. Some books contain audio

Lingual ninja - This website is for learning hiragana/katakana/grammar/vocab/kanji but it also has a folktales section that contains audio, vocab lists and optional furigana. There's also youtube videos of each story available

yomou syosetu - Over a million free novels! I believe a lot of it is user-submitted works

Syosetsu - Similar to the above.

Bookwalker (jp) - You can read the first few volumes of manga for free here. There's also light novels and doujinshi

Aozora Bunko - digital library that contains a lot of out of copyright books

Note - User submitted posts about various topics

Easy NHK News - News in easy japanese. Contains furigana.

NHK News - The news. In Japanese

Apps

Pibo - Picture books aimed at children

Todaii - Aimed at language learners. News with furigana and pop up dictionary.

Satori Reader - Paid

Yomu Yomu - First 3 chapters are free on edit: some stories!

A free craft pattern based on the heraldry and motifs found in the Nilfgaardian Empire. Screenshots taken directly from the game "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt". Usable for any craft that uses a grid.

Also, a version with a grid overlay!