I was wondering if it's possible to pick up a simple series of manga written in hiragana? Most likely something aimed at young kids. It'd be a fun way of practicing my characters and words as an alternative to the endless flash cards and memorisation.
If you're in London and that's what you want to do I'd recommend going to the laundrette in Soho which is actually a used manga shop and buying some childrens books/manga. Most manga aimed at youths has furigana (hiragana spelling the word out) over pretty much all of the kanji, so even though kanji's there you'll be able to use it to practise your basic characters and maybe pick up some kanji at the same time.
Adding to what Rui said, if you want stuff written purely in hiragana, the main thing I would say to look for is e-hon, children's picture books, as they can be quite nice things to have anyway.
If you want a manga that is incredibly easy to understand, I recommend Yotsubato!.
Kind of ambitious, but it might be worth having a hunt for a few of Kodansha's bilingual manga. They have English in the speech bubbles and original Japanese on the edge of the panel.
They're totally out of print though, so may be hard/expensive to get ahold of. I'm not learning Japanese, but finding some genuine obscurities from the range has been fun.
Other than that, maybe importing some Kogepan or something maybe?
They sell books too, with a few CDs/games/posters/VHS tapes and a tiny stock of other nicknacks. It's aimed squarely at Japanese fans so there's not much English at all within and if you know the secret handshakes you can set up a video rental account or use the karaoke room. Worth a look if you're nearby
(Also, the supermarket further down the road sells mitarashi dango, mm...)
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