Doraemon standard?

Someone recommended I read Doraemon to practice reading Japanese.

I've watched a few episodes and like the story, and I like the idea of using a less scholarly way of practicing. The trouble is, I'm not sure if it'll be way above or below my current level, and since I have to travel an hour to the nearest city to buy anything Japanese-related, I want to have an idea of the level first. Google thus far has mostly returned English versions of Doraemon.

I am at around an JLPT N3 level for vocab and grammar, but I only know about 400 kanji at this stage. Is this about where Doraemon is? I've found a few odd pages online and they seemed fine, but for all I know they are oddities.

And to clarify: I don't expect to learn much from Doraemon, but more to practice what I already know. I know the word for a lot of things, but until I've read them lots I still end up translating to English in my head. I figure a comic like Doraemon will be easy to find a copy of and will be a fun way of practicing. Does anyone have an estimate of about which level it is at?

how do know you're at N3 level?

I've done sample tests for N3 - for listening and vocab I'm fine, I just get stuck with the reading due to not having enough kanji at this stage. Although the current JLPT N3 is new, there are sample vocab lists and the like that I've checked myself on also. I can have Japanese conversations without trouble, and can understand most of what's said in Japanese movies and so on. I'm really just looking for ways to improve my reading, which really is quite terrible, and thought the Doraemon idea sounded like a good addition to what I'm already doing.

Do you have any rough idea what level of reading is needed for Doraemon? Thanks in advance.

I assume it would be much harder than N3, like most anime.

Darn... I was hoping that since it's aimed at children, it would be easier... oh well... Thanks anyway.

CWool said:

Darn... I was hoping that since it's aimed at children, it would be easier... oh well... Thanks anyway.

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A seemingly universal misconception.

Children need stories which are thematically simple, not linguistically dumbed down.

no hurt in watching it anyways.

Mike Cash said:

Children need stories which are thematically simple, not linguistically dumbed down.

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Yeah, I had thought that maybe they wouldn't use as much kanji, that's all. Ah well, back to the textbooks it is.

FinancialWar said:

no hurt in watching it anyways.

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I've watched several episodes and enjoyed them. But it's not the listening I'm wanting to practice here, it's the reading. I can't wait until I have enough kanji to be able to practice reading with something other than texts and practice materials.

If you want to have a go reading manga etc, Jコミ is a legitimate online source (re-prints of older, now out of print manga, there are a few ads but I don't find them obtrusive). The bonus here is that you don't have to pay your own money to find out that you're not at that point yet. They have a few 4コマ collections and some light novels as well. Some of the stuff labelled 少女 or 少年 may be kanji-light or furigana heavy (it varies: I just looked at two and found one in the generic fantasy genre called 精霊ルビス伝説 which has furigana on just about all the kanji, and another sports manga which had pretty much none). N3 is not a good guide to what you know about casual grammar so it's kind of hard to judge how you'll get on.

I've probably linked to this about 100 times but I'll do it again: ESL Reading Lesson - Using Context for Reading Literacy

And also, there's no point forcing yourself to read something that you're not interested in. If it actually turns out to be too hard for you, and it's frustrating, or if it actually turns out to be a bit crap and doesn't hold your interest, you can just stop reading it.

One of my favourite books from when I was very young starts: Each peach, pear, plum, I spy Tom Thumb. It's a great book for kids, full of rhymes and references to fairytale characters, with good illustrations. I would happily buy it as a gift for a young child. It would be terrible for someone who was learning English - it's full of references to obscure fairy tales they probably don't know and bits of doggerel that don't even mean anything.

I actually think non-fiction is an easier starting place, e.g. stuff for twelve year olds in the form of recipes, home experiments, how to build (X), manga explanations of complex things (I once saw a manga explanation of the British elections in a Japanese newspaper, it was hilarious).

Here's some randam samples pages of Doraemon. You can check by yourself if it's hard or not, or interesting or not. (I agree with nekojita-san about casual grammar or colloquial expression. It would be hard even for intermediate learners.)
As for kanji, most of them have furigana in Doraemon.

I very highly recommend the four panel comics over the longer multi-page comics for those who want to build their vocabulary, kanji, and just reading skills in general.

They're short, so you have little time invested in them. If you get lost partway through, the aggravation is much less. And since they're generally meant to be humorous each one has a built-in test at the end; if you laugh (or at least get the joke), you pass.

I read hundreds of volumes of four panel comics, and they were the bridge that let me go on to reading both fiction and non-fiction for personal enjoyment (not as a study chore) and without relying on dictionaries.

The Shonen Jump type crap I wouldn't p!ss on if it were on fire.