Japanese Reading Practice: Japanese Websites and Reading Resources for All Levels

You want to get better at reading Japanese, which is part of the natural process of learning Japanese! Maybe you can stumble through hiragana and katakana or maybe you've already got a few hundred kanji under your belt, but reading still feels painfully slow. Either way, you're probably wondering what resources actually help and how to practice without wanting to give up after five minutes. Let's walk you through what actually works, from beginner resources all the way to intermediate and advanced materials.

How can I practice reading Japanese

The short answer? Read stuff that's slightly above your current level, look up what you don't know, and do it every single day. But that's way too vague to be helpful, so let's break down the actual methods.

When you're starting out as a beginner, you need mostly active reading. You simply don't know enough words yet to get anything from passive reading. As you progress toward intermediate levels, you can balance both approaches.

The best daily reading routine looks something like this:

Beginner Japanese reading resources

Let's talk specifics for beginner learners. You need material that has furigana (those little hiragana readings above kanji) or you'll spend more time looking up how to pronounce things than actually reading.

NHK News Web Easy is probably the most recommended beginner resource out there, and for good reason. They publish news articles written specifically for Japanese learners and children. Every kanji has furigana, the grammar is simplified, and you can click words to see definitions. Pretty cool! The topics are actual current events, so you're not stuck reading about Tanaka-san going to the post office for the hundredth time.

Graded readers are books written specifically for learners at different levels. Each story uses a limited vocabulary and gradually introduces more kanji. They're a bit dry sometimes, but they work. You can actually finish a whole story as a beginner, which feels amazing for motivation.

Children's manga gets recommended a lot, but honestly? A lot of it is harder than you'd think. Kids' manga often has casual speech, slang, and weird sound effects that'll confuse beginner learners. That said, stuff like よつばと！ works well because it's slice-of-life with simple daily conversation. The main character is a little kid, so other characters often speak simply to her.

Tadoku free books (tadoku.org) has hundreds of free graded readers online. They're leveled from 0 to 5, and level 0 books have basically no kanji at all. You can read them right in your browser. The stories are simple, but when you're a beginner, simple is exactly what you need.

Intermediate Japanese reading practice

Once you've got maybe 500-1000 words and can recognize common kanji, you can start branching out. Intermediate is where reading gets fun because you have actual choices in content.

Light novels are the sweet spot for intermediate learners. They're written for teenagers, so the vocabulary and grammar are more accessible than literary fiction. Series like Re:Zero (Re:) or Konosuba () have anime adaptations, which means you might already know the story. That context helps a ton when you're reading.

Satori Reader is an app specifically designed for Japanese reading practice. Every story has audio, and you can tap any word for instant definitions. You can toggle furigana on or off. The content ranges from beginner to advanced, with lots of intermediate material. The stories are actually interesting too, covering everything from slice-of-life to sci-fi.

News sites become accessible at intermediate level if you pick the right topics. Sports news uses simpler language than political news. Entertainment news about movies or music is usually pretty readable. Yahoo! Japan News has tons of articles, and you can pick topics you're interested in.

Twitter (or X, whatever we're calling it now) is surprisingly good for reading practice. Follow Japanese accounts that tweet about your hobbies. Gaming accounts, food accounts, art accounts, whatever you're into. The character limit means short bursts of reading, and the casual language is what people actually use.

Improve your Japanese reading with the right dictionary tools

You absolutely need lookup tools unless you want to spend half your time flipping through a paper dictionary. Here are the ones that actually matter:

Yomitan (formerly Yomichan) is a browser extension that lets you hover over Japanese words to see instant definitions. You can add words directly to Anki from the popup. This tool changed my whole reading practice because I could read web novels, news sites, and Twitter without constantly losing my place.

RikaiKun does basically the same thing as Yomitan but with fewer features. If you want something simple that just shows definitions, it works fine.

Jisho.org is the go-to online dictionary. You can search by English, romaji, or paste in Japanese text. It shows kanji breakdowns, example sentences, and common word combinations. Keep a tab open whenever you're reading.

Google Translate's camera function can read text from images, which helps with manga or screenshots. The translations are rough, but it'll give you the gist when you're stuck.

Japanese reading resources by content type

Let's get specific about where to actually find stuff to read.

Manga:

Web Novels:

News:

Improve your Japanese reading speed and comprehension

Reading speed comes from volume. You need to read a lot. There's no hack around it.

That said, you can practice chunking, where you read phrases as units instead of word by word. In English, you don't read "I - went - to - the - store," you read "I went to" and "the store" as two chunks. Same in Japanese. Train yourself to recognize common patterns like meaning "I think" as a single unit.

Re-reading helps more than people admit. Read the same manga chapter twice. The second time through, you'll read faster and catch things you missed. Your brain is building pattern recognition.

Extensive reading means reading lots of easy material for volume. If you're intermediate, read beginner stuff sometimes just to build speed and confidence. If every reading session is a struggle, you'll burn out.

Set a timer and see how much you can read in 10 minutes. Do this once a week with similar material and track your progress. You'll be surprised how fast you improve when you're actually measuring it.

Building your Japanese reading habit

The hardest part isn't finding resources. You've got plenty now. The hardest part is reading every single day even when you don't feel like it.

Accept that you won't understand everything. Even advanced learners look up words. Even native Japanese speakers encounter words they don't know. That's normal. The goal is to understand enough to enjoy what you're reading and learn something new.

Anyway, if you want to make this whole process smoother, Migaku's browser extension and app let you look up Japanese words instantly while reading anything online. Works on news sites, web novels, Twitter, wherever. You can save words directly to your study decks without breaking your reading flow. There's a 10-day free trial if you want to check it out.

FAQs

Consistency is not hard, if it's driven by curiosity

As language learners, you've probably already known that consistency is the key. The more you expose yourself to media, the more you learn and internalize. While reading textbooks for 10 minutes a day is hard, reading a manga for 10 minutes feels absolutely not enough! How happy times fly!

Books are the gate to a greater world!