Personally, my recommendations for someone new to the genre would be something like this:
* Dragon Quest 3. This is a classic game where you get to make your own party members, and then go out on an adventure to defeat the demon lord. It may not be the easiest game out there, but it isn't the hardest. If you're playing the game in English, It's also interesting in how it starts linear, but becomes less so as the game progresses, aside from one particular choke point where you have to kill a major boss to access the final world of the game. I recommend the Game Boy Color version (but reset if you get a stat decrease while playing Pachisi; there's a bug here); if playing in Japanese the Super Famicom version is recommended. Note, however, that if you're planning on playing more of the series, I would recommend playing the original Dragon Quest first, as you'll appreciate the later part of DQ3 more if you do. (For DQ1, play either the NES version, if you like to spend hours fighting the same enemies over and over to earn experience, or the GBC version if you don't; the SFC version, IMO, actually has worse graphics and music (especially music) than the other versions.)
* Final Fantasy 4 and 5. FF4 works as a nice introduction to more story-focused games; the version released as "Final Fantasy 2" in the US is a decent beginner option. (Don't play the 3D version first; that version is significantly harder than other versions and has permanent missables that weren't in other versions. Also, avoid the GBA 1.0 version (the one that the US got) because of bugs; the European GBA release (which is 1.1) is OK.) Final Fantasy 5, on the other hand, is a more gameplay-focused game, allowing for a wide variety of character builds without making it easy to break balance. FF5 can be hard, but it takes a bit for the difficulty to ramp up; in fact, I'd argue that FF5's early game might actually be easier than FF6's.
* I wouldn't recommend the SaGa series, however. (If you're used to WRPGs, Romancing SaGa 1 or 3 (not 2) might be a reasonable choice, while SaGa Frontier (and the Game Boy SaGas) are interesting entry points for existing JRPG fans, but the series is very unconventional and shouldn't be your introduction to JRPGs.)
mqstout: Of other FFs, for Orkhepaj
FF8 would be my next choice, though stop at the end of "disc 1". It's a trash story after that -- even for most people who do like it. So I can't recommend it overall. But its mechanics are a bit obtuse and it's definitely less "this is what you get in a JRPG".
FF8 is one of the least conventional and worst balanced games in the series, so I wouldn't recommend it (or FF2 for that matter) to somebody new to the genre.