How to read Japanese before you feel ready
Waiting until you know enough kanji is how adults never start. Pick a source you can finish, then look up less than you want to.
Reading is the input that makes review worth doing. It is also the habit people postpone until a mythical week when every character is known.
You will not feel ready. Start anyway, with a source that expects beginners.
Pick a finishable source
NHK News Web Easy publishes short news with furigana and audio. Finish the article. Do not open twelve tabs.
Satori Reader annotates stories and dialogues. Use it when you want notes beside the line, not a raw newspaper.
A textbook chapter from Irodori or Genki counts. A finished page beats an abandoned novel.
Look up with a rule
Install Yomitan for hover lookup, or keep Jisho in a tab. Allow yourself a small number of lookups per page. If you look up everything, you are compiling a dictionary, not reading.
Write down only words that appeared twice or that you needed to understand the point of the piece.
Pair, do not replace
Reading does not replace a review tool, and a review tool does not replace reading. If you already use Inku or Anki, feed them words that came from pages you finished. Cards without a source go stale.
Ten minutes of a finished Easy article, three days a week, will teach you more than a perfect plan you never start.