Regardless of how you choose to do the bulk of your learning, whether through speaking and using the language, Japanizing (my new word) your environment, or by memorizing textbooks, you're going to have to delve into some native literature. Why? Because it'll get you ready for how the Japanese actually speak and write, and it can be quite a bit different from your sanitized textbook. Granted, you'll have to watch actual Japanese shows, too, in order to familiarize yourself with how the Japanese speak, namely, with how fast they speak, but that's for the next post.
No, this one concerns reading, which is easily the most difficult thing to do in Japanese. Now, I recommend you use Heisig for learning the kanji, so how do you learn the readings? Memorizing them from your textbook, dictionary, or any other reference tool just won't work. Been there, tried that, failed hard. You want to learn the kanji in context, and since the Kanji in Context book is boring for a lot of people, things like manga are much more appealing.
It's entirely up to you what you read, and you shouldn't worry about levels, or at least I don't. I've never been fond of graded readers, as they remind me of elementary school where you had to read the level your teacher wanted you to, even if all of those books were boring. If you like the books that are easy, then read them! It's not a reflection of your intelligence if you don't like the books at you're level, nor are you smarter than everyone else if you're reading books at a higher level. Read what you want, period. Even if it takes forever to get through a book, so long as you enjoy it, keep on trucking.
Now that that's out of the way, I do have some recommendations in case you're struggling, have no idea how to find kanji words in a dictionary (you know, in case you don't know the readings for a lot of them), or are just looking for good reading material where you won't have to put in tons of hours to get through just a couple pages.
First of all, this one might a bit boring for some of you, but I recommend Breaking into Japanese Literature if you're just getting your feet wet. I like classical fiction, or anything for that matter, myself, so I had no problem with this book. Some people will hate it, others will love it. Here's a quick review.
Breaking into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Texts (long enough title) is pretty much what it says. It's seven stories, arranged by difficulty, that has the Japanese text on one page and the English translation on the next, kind of like that Read Real Japanese Fiction book, except that this one is much better in that it kind of has a dictionary at the bottom under the main text. Here's a brief example of how this works.
Japanese English
猫が可愛いです。The cat is cute.
猫 [ねこ] Cat
可愛い[かわいい] Cute
So that gives you an idea of how it looks. This is very, very good for vocab building, although it does assume that you have a basic idea of grammar. If you're familiar with basic Japanese grammar and particles, you should have no problem with the first few stories. Otherwise, it really isn't hard to look up particles. J-Gram is a great, free website for this (review coming soon), although a bit of a pain to navigate; and if you want to have a handy book with you as you read, then I would recommend All About Particles (review coming soon), which served me immensely as I read at night without a computer nearby. If you don't know much about verbs, then I recommend you read the website Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese. It pretty much stays in the beginner levels, only occasionally dabbling into more advanced territory, but it'll be a big help in understanding this book.
Now, if this is way too easy for you, or too boring, but you still can't figure out what to read and you're still afraid of delving into kanji-filled material, then I recommend you read some manga published by Shounen Jump. Manga published by this group involves titles such as Rurouni Kenshin and is chock full of furigana, which is hiragana readings above the kanji. In fact, it's used over every single kanji! If you can read hiragana, then you can plug the word into a dictionary and find out what that word is. This is the best way to get used to reading kanji, in my opinion.
Don't know how to find it? Here's a good way to do it. There are plenty of places to buy raw manga online, but I prefer to do it from Amazon Japan (Sasuga is down, so there goes my #1 site). Assuming you don't know how to read kanji, download the FireFox browser and install the Rikaichan plug-in, which acts as a built-in dictionary, making it much easier to navigate the site. Then, search for the manga you want and buy it. It may seem like a lot of work, but once you get it set up, you won't regret it!
You can also check eBay, but I don't usually have much luck finding things there, except for the ICO novelization, but that was a pretty lucky search.
No, this one concerns reading, which is easily the most difficult thing to do in Japanese. Now, I recommend you use Heisig for learning the kanji, so how do you learn the readings? Memorizing them from your textbook, dictionary, or any other reference tool just won't work. Been there, tried that, failed hard. You want to learn the kanji in context, and since the Kanji in Context book is boring for a lot of people, things like manga are much more appealing.
It's entirely up to you what you read, and you shouldn't worry about levels, or at least I don't. I've never been fond of graded readers, as they remind me of elementary school where you had to read the level your teacher wanted you to, even if all of those books were boring. If you like the books that are easy, then read them! It's not a reflection of your intelligence if you don't like the books at you're level, nor are you smarter than everyone else if you're reading books at a higher level. Read what you want, period. Even if it takes forever to get through a book, so long as you enjoy it, keep on trucking.
Now that that's out of the way, I do have some recommendations in case you're struggling, have no idea how to find kanji words in a dictionary (you know, in case you don't know the readings for a lot of them), or are just looking for good reading material where you won't have to put in tons of hours to get through just a couple pages.
First of all, this one might a bit boring for some of you, but I recommend Breaking into Japanese Literature if you're just getting your feet wet. I like classical fiction, or anything for that matter, myself, so I had no problem with this book. Some people will hate it, others will love it. Here's a quick review.
Breaking into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Texts (long enough title) is pretty much what it says. It's seven stories, arranged by difficulty, that has the Japanese text on one page and the English translation on the next, kind of like that Read Real Japanese Fiction book, except that this one is much better in that it kind of has a dictionary at the bottom under the main text. Here's a brief example of how this works.
Japanese English
猫が可愛いです。The cat is cute.
猫 [ねこ] Cat
可愛い[かわいい] Cute
So that gives you an idea of how it looks. This is very, very good for vocab building, although it does assume that you have a basic idea of grammar. If you're familiar with basic Japanese grammar and particles, you should have no problem with the first few stories. Otherwise, it really isn't hard to look up particles. J-Gram is a great, free website for this (review coming soon), although a bit of a pain to navigate; and if you want to have a handy book with you as you read, then I would recommend All About Particles (review coming soon), which served me immensely as I read at night without a computer nearby. If you don't know much about verbs, then I recommend you read the website Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese. It pretty much stays in the beginner levels, only occasionally dabbling into more advanced territory, but it'll be a big help in understanding this book.
Now, if this is way too easy for you, or too boring, but you still can't figure out what to read and you're still afraid of delving into kanji-filled material, then I recommend you read some manga published by Shounen Jump. Manga published by this group involves titles such as Rurouni Kenshin and is chock full of furigana, which is hiragana readings above the kanji. In fact, it's used over every single kanji! If you can read hiragana, then you can plug the word into a dictionary and find out what that word is. This is the best way to get used to reading kanji, in my opinion.
Don't know how to find it? Here's a good way to do it. There are plenty of places to buy raw manga online, but I prefer to do it from Amazon Japan (Sasuga is down, so there goes my #1 site). Assuming you don't know how to read kanji, download the FireFox browser and install the Rikaichan plug-in, which acts as a built-in dictionary, making it much easier to navigate the site. Then, search for the manga you want and buy it. It may seem like a lot of work, but once you get it set up, you won't regret it!
You can also check eBay, but I don't usually have much luck finding things there, except for the ICO novelization, but that was a pretty lucky search.
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