While native stuff might feel a bit far off, here are some suggestions for working up to it ^^
Podcasts: I really liked Nihongo Con Teppei for early listening practice. He doesn’t speak unbearably slow, instead repeats stuff a lot and gives lots of examples e.g. どんな料理が好きですか？どんな料理が好きですか？甘い料理が好きですか？辛い料理が好きですか？ご飯好きですか？麺が好きですか？僕はめん好きですよ。うどんとらめんとそばを食べます。etc etc, not actually a transcript i just made it up in the style of the podcast but as you can see, even if you don’t understand a word, for example 料理, he gives examples like sweet or spicy, then rice or noodles, which kind of helps you figure out what that word means without the english translation (cooking/food). So I’d suggest trying that, its on spotify, about 5 min for one episode and like hundreds and hundreds of them. Theres also easy and harder versions too.
Manga: (maybe not starting straight away because it is quite difficult to be able to, but you could probably do this after N5/start of N4 stuff)
For starters, pick an easy manga, preferably that you’ve read or watched in english/english subtitles before. Its best to purchase a physical copy for this. (With furigana)
Start with the first page or couple of the whole chapter and read through it, if you rely entirely on the furigana thats algs too.
After reading the first couple pages or however many you did(I like to do just a couple of pages maybe 2 or 3) grab a pencil and read through a second time, but this time, when you come across a kanji that you know, cross out the furigana with the pencil.
Either during that time, or after, I go through and search up the words I don’t know and write the meanings in pencil next to the japanese words. Then I pick the most useful looking words(or search them all up and add the JLPT n3 and below or whatever), and add them to my bunpro queue(of if you use anki or smth else u could do that too).
Then like a week later, after you’ve learnt more of the words, you go back to the manga, and erase the translations of the words you’ve learnt (and maybe cross out the furigana if you know the readings now), then re-read.
Repeat!
It’s a bit slow, and focusing on learning rather than enjoyment but its a good way to start reading! As you continue it gets a bit faster since you will know more words. The struggle with this is if you don’t know all the grammar yet, so focus on studying grammar, and skip over the stuff you don’t know.
Theres a site called Natively or learnnatively, which grades japanese and korean manga, novels, kids books, video games, anime, etc so you can look through to see what would be at your level. The N5 stuff is very limited in the manga section, but if you follow what i suggested, you can do stuff thats a bit harder too
Kids books: theres lots of reading practice stuff for JLPT n5 level online, heres some links of stuff I used:
I hope some of this helped!
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