I'm an upper-N3. The easiest, most enjoyable materiel I've found is Yotsubato. I don't think there's anything really at the N4 level, but Yotsubato has a lot of physical humor (just looking at the pictures is funny), so I think you can pick it up and enjoy it. If there's something you don't understand, skip it mercilessly! This is your study and you have the right to veto boredom.
After that... I dunno, I think manga's probably my best form of practice. The pictures help you, and you can find really easy manga with furigana like Yotsubato, or more complex, furigana-less manga like Mushishi or Monster for when you're stronger at Japanese and want to be challenged accordingly. I think manga will test my abilities forever...
What do you normally do in English? Do you read lots of novels? The sheer stamina that reading novels in Japanese takes makes that daunting...but you can find short stories, I guess! I've heard some recommend Murakami for Japanese beginners and I've heard some Japanese high school students say he's way hard, so I dunno about him. I've never made it very far with Murakami's works myself. I'm reading Alice in Wonderland right now and that's been great. It's kind of long (I've been working on it on and off for a month now) but I can understand most of it, or at least understand what's going on thanks to having read the English version before. I've also heard that anything Miyazaki adapted into a movie - Kiki's Delivery Service, the Girl who Leapt Through Time, Howl's Moving Castle - is a fairly easy to read and enjoyable Japanese novel in its original format. Worth noting, Howl's Moving Castle was a series written by an English author, so the Japanese version is actually a translation. It might be easier to read because of that, I think, since it comes from an English mindset. But it's super long so I haven't picked it up yet, too scary. ...sorry, none of this is N4 level at all! Just look into it later I guess.
After that... I dunno, I think manga's probably my best form of practice. The pictures help you, and you can find really easy manga with furigana like Yotsubato, or more complex, furigana-less manga like Mushishi or Monster for when you're stronger at Japanese and want to be challenged accordingly. I think manga will test my abilities forever...
What do you normally do in English? Do you read lots of novels? The sheer stamina that reading novels in Japanese takes makes that daunting...but you can find short stories, I guess! I've heard some recommend Murakami for Japanese beginners and I've heard some Japanese high school students say he's way hard, so I dunno about him. I've never made it very far with Murakami's works myself. I'm reading Alice in Wonderland right now and that's been great. It's kind of long (I've been working on it on and off for a month now) but I can understand most of it, or at least understand what's going on thanks to having read the English version before. I've also heard that anything Miyazaki adapted into a movie - Kiki's Delivery Service, the Girl who Leapt Through Time, Howl's Moving Castle - is a fairly easy to read and enjoyable Japanese novel in its original format. Worth noting, Howl's Moving Castle was a series written by an English author, so the Japanese version is actually a translation. It might be easier to read because of that, I think, since it comes from an English mindset. But it's super long so I haven't picked it up yet, too scary. ...sorry, none of this is N4 level at all! Just look into it later I guess.