Personally what I did was replay videogames I already knew well and try and read the dialogue.
Of course at N5 you won’t be able to read the vast majority of the text without looking things up all the time, but I still found that it was valuable practice:
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You can either use your memory of the game to progress, and only scan the text for words/kanji/structures you already know to see how they’re used IRL. You’re not really reading properly if you do that, but it’s always a nice feeling early on when you encounter a word or even sentence you understand in some content you actually care about. And that will reinforce the things you already know.
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Alternatively you can painstakingly try to decode every single line of dialogue by looking everything up. That’s extremely intensive of course and early on you’ll spend 15minutes to read a few lines of text, but I think it can be interesting and motivating because it lets you gauge how much you’ve already learned and how much is left to be learned.
You’ll be able to say “oh ok this word is in the N4 deck, so by the time I’m done with it I’ll know it. And this kanji is at WaniKani level 23, so I’ll know it in x months at my current pace (replace wanikani with whatever kanji learning system you use, if any). And this grammatical construction is in N3…”
I really enjoy doing that even if it’s very difficult at first because it ties the theory with the practice, it gives you concrete objectives and makes all those SRS reviews feel more useful.
And, if all goes well, a year from now you’ll be able to replay the same game and all that text will feel vastly easier to read and you’ll feel good about yourself and your achievements, which is nice too!
I remember the first time I booted up Final Fantasy VII in Japanese a few weeks after starting to study the language, I could basically only decode some basic kana words and the odd kanji, and I basically wouldn’t understand anything but the simplest of sentences (「ポーション」手に入れた was probably the first sentence I managed to understand fully). At that point it was mostly kana reading practice really.
But now I can return to that game and understand almost everything without needing to look anything up and it feels amazing. What was an inscrutable wall of moon runes not so long ago is now something that’s meaningful. It feels like a great achievement!
More generally don’t expect to be able to really engage with native content without a lot of difficulty and having to look things up all the time before you reach roughly N3. It’s only at that point that you start reaching the critical mass of knowledge that lets you read “basic” day-to-day Japanese somewhat comfortably.
Don’t let it demotivate you, see it as a concrete objective that will motivate you to keep pushing through these grammar, kanji and vocab lessons.
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