You can click the buttons at the top to switch between romaji, hiragana, and full Japanese (with kanji). It’s unusual to find reading materials for beginners that aren’t children’s books, but I managed it! This site publishes very short news articles in simple Japanese. Here you can find fantastic instructions with screenshots to help you get set up. The whole site is in Japanese, so it’s a bit difficult for beginners. The only downside is that you have to register. Yes, there are even books for babies with just one of two words per page, making this a great resource even for complete beginners! You can browse books by age, from 0 up to 12. There is the option to show or hide romaji and English translation line by line.ĮhonNavi is an amazing site that lets you read hundreds of different Japanese children’s picture books, all for free! Unlike the above sites, there are lots of modern books (not just traditional tales). Scroll to the bottom of the linked page and you will find links to several Japanese fairy tales, written in very simple Japanese. Here’s a very simple site for Japanese reading practice in hiragana only.

Many of the stories also have audio or video tracks. Start with １ねんせい (1 st grade, which uses hiragana only) and work up to 6 th grade as you learn more kanji! This page lists the stories by Japanese school year.

Most of them don’t have English translations, but they are written in very simple Japanese so you can have a go at translating them yourself! Once you’ve read those, you can explore the rest of the stories here. I recommend that beginners start with this page which has four stories written in hiragana with English translations. It’s is an absolutely huge site and it is written for Japanese children (not language students), so it can be a bit confusing to navigate. Hukumusume is a site full of traditional Japanese children’s stories. Some of the free L0 (beginner) Japanese books to read online at Tadoku.

Kanji in context workbook free download