Online Reading Material

[Leprechaun]

Does anyone know of any good sites with Japanese reading material for beginners? Reading with the kanji and kana is hard because I still don't know more than a couple hundred kanji. Are there sites with either easier material or that can show furigana? Google searches haven't gotten me very far. I don't retain as much when I have to stop and look up every other kanji, but I get bored with the basic '私はアメリカ人です。 猫が好きです。'type stuff.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Buntaro]

Leprechaun,

It is very difficult to find beginning reading material on the Internet. The only thing I have found so far is Hiragana Blog:

ひらがなぶろぐ

 

[epigene]

As Buntaro-san said, there isn't much you can find online. The two websites I know use easy kanji but they are designed primarily for children to read, so some parts may not stimulate your interest. Still, it makes good Japanese reading practice:

Yahoo Japan for Kids

Foreign and Japanese Folk/Fairy Tales for Children

 

[Vagrant]

www his.atr.jp/~ray/stories/

 

[Leprechaun]

Thanks so much, I'd spent a couple hours searching and hadn't found anything... are there any flesh-and-blood texts that I could buy/order since there's so little online?

 

[Libre]

Why don't you try this:
hiragana.jp/

 

[magevampjoe]

That system is REALLY good.
To anyone who doesn't visit it; it adds furigana on the top of kanji. Nice tool.

I suggest also to go to anime websites, such as the official japanese naruto page.
www,tv-tokyo.co.jp/anime/naruto/
Those websites will have a large percentage of the traffic as children/teens, so it probably won't be too hard to read.
My dad put a parental control on MY PC so I can't check it out for you, sorry.