I agree that short stories are probably a good place to start. Personally I found Yoshimoto Banana (よしもと ばなな) an easier read than Murakami (I read the first little bit of Sputnik Sweetheart and got stuck; will try again at some point.) Here's the first para from her short story うたかた, to give you an idea of the level (and the general subject matter, I guess :-)):

       嵐とは一回キスしただけだ。
       ここが日本だからまだよかったが、外国だったらそんなのほとんど友達以前の範疇 だ。そしてすぐに彼は遠い所に行ってしまった。だから、私にはまだこれが恋かどうかも本当にはわからない。さっぱり、わかっていない。
       それでも嵐を好きになってから私は、恋というものを桜や花火のようだと思わなくなった。

Murakami (スプートニクの恋人), for comparison:

    22歳の春にすみれは生まれて初めて恋に落ちた。広大な平原をまっすぐ突き進む竜巻のような激しい恋だった。それは行く手のかたちあるものを残らずなぎ倒し、片端から空に巻き上げ、理不尽に引きちぎり、完膚なきまでに叩きすぶした。そして勢いをひとつまみもゆるめることなく大洋を吹きわたり、アンコールワットを無慈悲に崩し、インドの森を気の毒な一群の虎ごと熱で焼きつくし、ベルシャの砂漠の砂嵐となってどこかのエキゾチックな城塞都市をまるごとひとつ砂に埋もれさせてしまった。みごとに記念碑的な恋だった。恋に落ちた相手はすみれより17歳年上で、結婚していた。さらにつけ加えるなら、女性だった。それがすべてのものごとが始まった場所であり、(ほとんど)すべてのものごとが終わった場所だった。

Akagawa Jirou (赤川次郎) has written an enormous number of murder mysteries. Here's the first para of his 'humour/suspense' novel ミス :

       健全な目覚めは誰でも似通ったものであるが、二日酔の目覚めは　ー　まあ、これもたいてい似たようなものだ。
       真由美は頭痛と胸のあたりの重苦しさに、しばらくベッドから出られなかった。
       しかし、カーテンを通して射してくる光は、もう昼を示していたし、午後、早めに片付けておきたい仕事があることも、真由美の頭にしっかりと刻み込まれていた。

I found this a slightly harder read than Yoshimoto Banana but I really liked it (the plot is a combination of murder mystery and the farce resulting from the efforts of the lead character to extricate herself from a beauty contest she entered whilst drunk...)

If you like SF then I've seen Hoshi Shin'ichi (星 新一) recommended here and elsewhere. Again, para one from the short story エデン改造計画:

     どこから手をつけたものか、私には見当もつかなかった。まったく、とんでもない星だ。これといったものは、なにひとつない。猛獣もいなければ、毒性を持った昆虫すらいない。
     あるものといえば、いい気候と、みどりの野山と、美しくゆたかな海と、平穏きわめる生物。それに、おとなしく純真な、地球人タイプの住民たちだけだ。いいかえれば、どこか抜けている住民たち。見わたす限り、文明と呼べるものはいとかけらも目に入らない。このいまいましい野蛮人どもめ。

(None of these books have furigana for anything beyond people's names on first use and the occasional weird kanji. There may well be typos and henkan misses in what I've typed above.)

If you're actually in Japan you might try having a look at the children's-fiction section of the bookshop. That will get you definitely-simpler language and lots of furigana, and also most books ought to have the suggested age range on the back, which might help in finding one that fits the level you want. Much easier reading if you can live with the aimed-at-kids subject matter.

For the adult section of Japanese bookshops, I found that the best approach was to look up in advance the names of half a dozen authors that might be interesting, and then find them in the shop and try reading the first page or two of something. General browsing was pretty hopeless for me.

If you buy your books second hand from Book-off then it doesn't matter much if you find that they're dull/too hard/whatever because you can afford to buy lots anyway.

Last edited by pm215 (2009 February 28, 1:47 pm)

Tobberoth wrote:

If you're at JLPT2 level, there really shouldn't be any book above your level. Sure, you might only understand 60% of 壬生義士伝 simply because of vocabulary but all the better, learn tons of Japanese!

I think this is decidedly optimistic (speaking as somebody who passed JLPT2 several years ago). Sure, you have a fighting chance of wading through just about anything with the aid of a dictionary, but that doesn't mean it's going to be a fun experience. There's still a lot of merit in finding books which stretch but don't demoralise you (and there's also merit in mixing in a few easy books which boost confidence and encourage you to learn to read fast).

キノの旅! Negligible amounts of furigana, but fairly simple sentence structure. Also, immensely entertaining.

The full collection is rather long, but since it's structured as a series of short episodes, it's easy to put down if you want to read something else for a while.

~J

I think tokyostyle was referring to the manga of haruhi while Alyks and mentat are referring to the 小説. I would agree here that the manga is pretty much just fluff that was made to capitalize on the success of the anime, but the novels (or light novels, as they are) really are quite entertaining.

Here's a link to a site that was posted a while back with all the Haruhi novels typed up: http://www.sos-dan.ru/novel/01.html

Also, if you finish one, you can change the number in the 01.html part to 02.html and get the second book.

However, I do recommend that you buy them, if not for the support of the wonderful writer (we need her to finish the damn thing already!), then just to be more comfortable than on your computer while you read

Haha-

I think you should read "Love at Night".
pretty easy to read and understand!

I think short stories are a great way to go at the beginning. If you like them I recommend 筒井康隆（つつい　やすたか）'s 笑うな collection, or any of his short stories. I also kind of enjoyed 芥川龍之介（あくたがわ　りゅうのすけ）'s 蜘蛛（くも）の糸 collection.