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Not the best novel to start out with
This might be the one book that is most often recommended as the first native japanese book to read. Personally, i have to disagree. This being a children´s book, it suffers from the same problems like other children´s books do, which is of course the lack of kanji. It´s hard to parse and annoying if you already know quite a few of those. And don´t be fooled - this might be classified as a "children´s book" but it reads more like being aimed at young teenagers. There is some scary grammar in there every now and again, lots of abbreviated casual speech and a surprising variety of vocabularity as there are lots of pretty much self contained mini-stories in there as well as the wider narrative. This book also suffers from losing steam about midway through because of said structure.
Still, it has a few things going for it. First, just about anyone must have seen the ghibli movie by now, so it´s likely you can force yourself through otherwise too difficult and confusing parts. Mostly anyway, since the book differs from the movie adaptation - especially in later parts. Then there is the overarching theme about having to grow up eventually and becoming independent which i find quite important. Lastly, this is actually a series, so once you move on to the next volumes, they will probably be easier to read by then.
I read this when i was about N3 level and it was quite challenging, albeit doable. I wouldn´t really recommend it for this level, though. I feel like this book is read best when you are already pretty fluent and you want to take a step back a little and want to read something relaxing after all those super advanced novels with thousands of pages.