As many have suggested here, I started reading the NHK Easy News using TODAI (shortly after finishing the genki and minna no nihongo books). At first they felt a bit challenging, but not too difficult, more recently I disabled all the furigana to force me to read in a more natural, native-like way, and I’ve reached a level in which reading those news became quite “easy”, I can read most of those articles in around a minute or two, rarely needing to translate any words or grammar.
So, I decided to challenge myself with the Asahi “Easy” News; These feel a lot more difficult than the ones from NHK, more vocabulary, grammar and Kanjis than I’m not very familiar with, to the point it takes me around 10 minutes to read them on average, are those news actually easy or meant for beginners-intermediate Japanese students? They seem pretty advanced to me, am I barking at the wrong tree here? Is there any other source of news or native like material that I can use to bridge that gap?
Just for reference, I’m sitting at around N3 in terms of grammar and vocabulary, don’t know if that helps.
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Officially, these sites are designed for Japanese children, but many (like Web Easy) have recognized that adult Japanese learners use them.
“Easy” is a relative term here, but by my reckoning, about N4~N4 should be the level where a JLL should be approaching these.
It seems that Asahi has elementary schooler news and middle/high schooler news. I feel like the middle and high school news might be better for N2 and N1 learners.
The NHK easy news are intended for language learners (so are the nishinippon easy news btw!). The Asahi site I think you’re referring to is Asagaku (asahi gakusei shinbun) and intended for school children with native Japanese abilities – which could explain the gab you are experiencing.
News for language learners are named “easy” because of やさしい日本語 btw. There are some cool guides in Japanese about how to write and speak in ways that are accessible for people with Japanese as a foreign language. Another project with that approach is [yomujp.com](https://yomujp.com) – they have really cool articles worth checking out.
How did you disable the furigana on NHK easy?