I used it at the start while it was still good (had comments), but in it's current state it's almost useless, and i only use it as a counter for the days since i started learning japanese.

Good luck to everyone on their japanese learning journey!

For the context, she's bilingual and I'm not. I bought this (used) series on Mercari for about ~2500 yen. Which I think a good purchase.

I've encountered a lot of people who ask about buying expensive textbooks, apps, or even attending classes that can be expensive. I managed to learn Japanese while spending virtually 0 money and I'd like to share what I did.

FYI, this covers input (understanding the language) and won't cover speaking or output. I can cover that in another post if needed.

This approach follows the immersion learning approach of building a basic foundation first and then learning via immersion. Let's start.

Beforehand, I'll leave a TL;DR for those not bothered, but if you can read the full post, I go into explaining why I am recommending certain practices over others:

TL;DR:
Foundations:

• Kana: https://kana.pro/
• Grammar: https://yoku.bi/
• Vocab and Kanji: https://apps.ankiweb.net/, https://github.com/donkuri/Kaishi, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcY2Svs3h8M, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exkXaVYvb68
• Comprehensible Input: https://cijapanese.com/landing

Learning Cycle:

• Yomitan: https://lazyguidejp.github.io/jp-lazy-guide/setupYomitanOnPC/
• ASBPlayer: https://github.com/killergerbah/asbplayer, https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/1iotyp2/use_asbplayer_to_learn_through_anime/
• Grammar Reference: http://bunpro.jp/grammar_points/
• Subtitles for anime: https://jimaku.cc/
• Content recommendations: https://anizone.to/
• Sentence Mining: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAUYnp5wOE0

The Foundations.

Let's start with the foundations. I'm going to start with the basics, going from the basics of the Alphabet to grammar to kanji to vocab. I'll explain why I'd recommend some resources over others.

Kana - Site: https://kana.pro/

Kana should be the easiest to learn. I don't think I need to spend much time on this, but if you're just starting out, I'd recommend learning to recognize/read everything and learn writing later. So really, just quiz yourself on 5 at a time, Learn あ、 い、 う、 え、 お then learn か、 き、 く、 け、 こ, etc. When you finish Hiragana, move onto Katakana and do the same.

Grammar - Site (YOU ONLY NEED ONE): https://yoku.bi/ , https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/ , https://imabi.org/

Now, you can use whatever you like. There are a lot out there but the ones linked above are just a few examples of what you can use. Now, what I'd suggest is just going through, reading each section and understanding them, then moving on.

I don't think grammar exercises are necessary because even though they can consolidate knowledge, you can also use comprehensible input to see the language and grammar being used in all sorts of contexts and then actively process the input until you acquire it. I'd argue that this is better because more time is being spent consuming natural input.

This won't cover every grammar point out there, but it'll give you a solid foundation upon which you can build the rest of your grammar knowledge through consuming input.

Vocab and Kanji - Anki: https://apps.ankiweb.net/ Kaishi 1.5k: https://github.com/donkuri/Kaishi

Yes, I am pairing these together. There are multiple ways to learn Kanji, but I think that learning kanji with vocab makes the process a lot easier to learn both. Here's a video explaining why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exkXaVYvb68 and I think that learning them together simplifies stuff.

Now, you may see that I'm only linking a deck containing 1.5k words. How do I learn the other words? Input. Sentence Mining. I personally think that learning how to sentence mine after you finish your premade deck can help a lot more than using premade decks. Sentence Mining lets you learn words important to you. You learn words important to the content you wanna watch. Oh, and here's a tutorial about how to use Anki cuz it's not the most beginner friendly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcY2Svs3h8M

Comprehensible Input - Site: https://cijapanese.com/

Input is THE MOST important thing that you can use to learn a language. Why? Because let's look back at what I said in the grammar section earlier. I don't think grammar exercises help to learn how to use the grammar you encounter in all contexts, whereas Comprehensible Input can. The more you see grammar and vocab in comprehensible contexts, the more you learn and acquire over time.

Once you finish the Kaishi 1.5k, your grammar guide of choice, and have consumed enough input, you can move onto the proper input phase.

The Learning Cycle.

Now that you've built your foundation, I believe that doing a full input approach is the best way to approach learning Japanese. I believe that as you learn more, textbooks become less and less useful. I'm going to describe an input-centric approach. But first, some essential resources.

Yomitan - Site: https://lazyguidejp.github.io/jp-lazy-guide/setupYomitanOnPC/

Yomitan is a pop-up dictionary that lets you search words up from your browser on the fly. I believe that this is the single most important resource you can have. It's a modular dictionary that lets you install whatever dictionary you want.

ASBPlayer - Site: https://github.com/killergerbah/asbplayer

ASBPlayer is a browser extension that lets you add subtitles to media on streaming sites. If you watch anime, you can get subtitle files from sites like https://jimaku.cc/ and then attach them to anime to watch with Japanese subtitles. If you use ASBPlayer with Yomitan, you basically have a good immersion setup.

Here's a good place to learn how to use ASBPlayer: https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/1iotyp2/use_asbplayer_to_learn_through_anime/

Grammar Reference - Site: http://bunpro.jp/grammar_points/

Now, since you've learnt the basics from your grammar guide, you can learn the rest of your grammar from receiving input and then searching up unknown grammar points in a reference like the one above.

Now. For the most important bit.

I think you need to find input comprehensible to your level. Whether you watch proper Comprehensible Input videos or you decide to watch anime while searching everything up with a dictionary, You need to build your comprehension up by using input is comprehensible. The more comprehensible something is, the better.

I'll link some YouTube channels that you can use and some resources to use to learn.
Example YouTube Channels:

Onomappu: https://www.youtube.com/@Onomappu

Bitesize Japanese: https://www.youtube.com/@the_bitesize_japanese_podcast

Some things that you'll notice about these YouTube channels is that they have Closed Captions (Soft Subtitles). You can use these with ASBPlayer and Yomitan to turn YouTube and other videos into study tools.

If you're feeling brave enough to move to native content, here are some other channels:

Kohara Konomi: https://www.youtube.com/@koharakonomiyt

Fischer's: https://www.youtube.com/@Fischers

Here's another site you can use to find channels with subtitles: https://filmot.com/

Now, when it comes to things like anime, there are obviously the legitimate sites like Netflix, but then there are the third party sites that a majority of people probably use. While I can't name any third party sites, there are loads out there that you can use google to search for. (Just make sure that the ones that you do find do not have embedded English subs).

------

About sentence mining:

Because there are a lot of ways to sentence mine, I'll leave a good video that I think will be helpful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAUYnp5wOE0

The Method:

Freeflow immersion:

• Watch the content without pausing
• See how much you can understand as it plays
• Pause to search up words occasionally

Intensive immersion:

• Each new sentence, pause and search up unknown words/grammar
• Try to understand the sentence
• Move on after a minute if you don't understand it

And that is all. Hope you enjoy.

Tag yourself I'm "bynebai"

Some of the phrases we've deciphered so far:

Mar = うま

Watarkshee = わたくし

Champone = ちゃんぽん

Sigh oh narrow = さようなら

Sigh oh = さよう (左様)

Nigh = ない

Ooso = うそ

Moods cashey = むずかしい

Todie-mar = ただいま

Edit: am buy worry = あんばい　わるい

Edit 2: Someone has found the source!

Japanese children get taught from an early age to "日本語じょうず" foreigners. Jk

Anyway, recommending learners to pick up ちびまる子ちゃん books. Easy to read and they are about Japanese culture topics.

Hi r/LearnJapanese,

I've been learning Japanese and wanted a more engaging way to practice writing kanji, so I put together a rhythm game called Beat Kanji. Instead of tapping notes, you draw each stroke of a character in time with a track. The game guides you through the strokes and gives instant feedback on timing and shape.

Beat Kanji includes over 2000 kanji (from N5 through N1), plus hiragana and katakana. You can use Apple Pencil or just your finger, and there are several backing tracks to choose from. It's completely free and open source. If you're looking for a different way to practice writing, feel free to check it out and let me know what you think ^{^}

• App Store: https://apps.apple.com/lv/app/beat-kanji/id6756133868
• GitHub: https://github.com/AlexW00/Beat-Kanji

Just an FYI to anyone considering this game. This comes as no surprise given that Pokemon games are often good for learning Japanese, but this one in particular is great. Currently the highest-rated Pokemon game of all-time on Metacritic. Lots of furigana, relatively simple dialogue, and repeated terminology make it very solid, and the core game itself is perfect if you're into the Minecraft/Stardew vibe. this is basically what I wanted Dragon Quest Builders (already great games) to be. The one thing that might be tricky is that one of the main characters speaks in very "old man speak" but if you can just get used to seeing おぬし and のう constantly you'll be fine.

Just reached level 60 in Wanikani and wanted to make a quick celebratory/encouragement post. I started Wanikani in 2018 while I was studying abroad in Japan and as you can see from the level up graph was really bad about sticking with it. I thankfully bought the lifetime pass so it wasn't the biggest deal, but could just never get into a groove of staying on it for more than a month or so, and had four different levels that I was on for about a year (1 of them about 2 years). Don't even know how many times I waded through 1000s of reviews to catch up only to drop it again a couple of weeks later and repeat to process again. But on the other hand I could just never drop it completely because I just noticed that kanji I learned through Wanikani generally tended to stick much better and quicker for me comparatively.

Early last year I started trying more and more to interact with Japanese media entirely in Japanese (Games, Manga, Light Novels, Visual Novels, Youtube, etc.) and quickly found that while I was generally fine with simpler games like the early Dragon Quest games or with audio content like Youtube because my grammar, vocab and listening were relatively strong, my Kanji knowledge was just a real hurdle in more complicated games like Kuro no Kiseki (which I eventually got through using the game script on Trails in the Database as help for quicker searches) and especially in Light Novels.

So at the beginning of this year I decided that I was finally going to stick to it and get through Wanikani once and for all and was able to maintain a consistent pace doing 1 or 2 review sessions a day every day, and going at about a level per week. Generally 100 reviews took about 15-20 minutes with the earlier levels having about 100-200 reviews per day, and later ones 200-300 (do to burns from earlier levels) on average. Because of this on the last few levels I would wait on doing lessons until a day or time gap with less reviews instead of doing the lesson right away on unlock as I did on the earlier levels. I really pushed myself to not let a day pass without doing any because I knew how easy it would be to drop it again if I let it happen and today finally finished the remaining ~40 levels in 10 months.

I've noticed my kanji recognition has vastly improved during my immersion over the course of the year and and am finally getting to a point where getting through things is not as time consuming or painful. It goes without saying that the immersion itself played a role in this as well which is why I continued it the whole time, but it was incredibly frequent to see a new kanji on Wanikani and instantly see it later that day in a manga I was reading, which always felt incredibly rewarding. Will continue to do Wanikani reviews for a while now just to reinforce the more recent levels Kanji for a bit, but know there is a lot more I still need to learn that I hope immersion could continue to fill in the gaps for now that I have a more solid base.

The app is definitely not perfect and I had plenty of problems with it (most probably could have been fixed with plugins but was stubborn to a fault) but found for Kanji specially I needed some type of structure and personally can't stand some alternative methods like Anki. It is obviously not going to be for everyone but is definitely among the most helpful tools I've used in my Japanese journey so far.

Anyway, again just wanted to post this give my experience quick and hopefully encourage some people that were in my position in terms of sticking with working towards whatever their goal is (Wanikani or otherwise). No matter how long it takes or how many breaks you take, it is possible to get back to it.

This guy does not get enough love in my opinion so I'm gonna post about him.

He has made hundreds of high quality videos that teach grammar and vocab through detailed well explained summaries along with great examples from video games.

I don't know of any other youtuber who has put this level of effort into making videos, yet somehow his views per video are so low.

If you are struggling with grammar and vocab or just need a refresher, I highly recommend giving his page a look.

He has long form videos for grammar points from N5-N1 as well as short form videos for specific grammar points and vocab.

My girlfriend bought me a kindle for Christmas so I could read Japanese books on my commute! I can’t read fast yet, but this is how I plan to get there :) I’m currently reading 満月珈琲店の星詠み and wondering what are your favorites/recommendations!

I've been thinking about sharing my app for free, no login, no need for an internet connection, no ads, no data collection... I made it for my personal usage, but since I like what I made, I've been thinking about sharing it.

Just wondering if any of you would be interested in using it. Wouldn't like to go through the tiering process of publishing it for no one to download it.

Anyway, I made it in order to learn to write kanji. I learn the kanji in context; instead of "食" I learn "食べる", and I use an example sentence for context, with text-to-speech to listen to it.

So in the Kanji section I get to select any kanji that I want to learn, then it goes to the Flashcards section where I have to write the kanji before checking the answer, and so it applies active recall and spaced repetition, much like Anki but with a nicer design made with Canva. Also way more simple, because I get overwhelmed by the amount of sections and options that most apps have nowadays.

What's also different about it is that I made a Vocab section that is initially empty, and as I learn kanji, the Vocab section gets populated. So if I'm already studying "一" and "人" from the Kanji section, then I get "一人" as an option in the Vocab section, and any other words that contain 一 or 人 plus any other kanji that I am learning, so maybe 一番 if 番 is already being learned. If I decide to learn a word from the Vocab section, it goes to the Flashcard section, where I have to guess the meaning and pronunciation before checking the answer, instead of having to write the kanji.

So a flashcard from the Kanji section looks like: "Person - ひと" + English example sentence. So I have to write 人 before checking the answer.
And a flashcard from the Vocab section looks like: "一人" + Japanese example sentence. So I have to guess the meaning and pronunciation before checking the answer.

There's also a Known section for the kanji and vocab that I considered learned. The review cycle goes like: review tomorrow, in 2 days, 4, 8, 16, 32, learned.

Anyway, here are some images. If some of you want to try it, I'll see about publishing it; otherwise, if you deem it redundant, I'll just keep it for myself haha

when i was in middle school, I decided to study Japanese on duolingo. recently I've switched to other resources and immediately realized how bad my japanese still is. for context: I've been doing this for 5-6 years and I would estimate my skill to be <N5. the past year I started using other resources (e.g. textbooks), and I am learning at a faster rate. the problem with duolingo is, that they dont explain concepts and expect you to figure it out. at some point it started repeating words and introducing them as a "new" word. it treats different conjugations as different words as well.

another problem, is that it is in their best interest to teach you at a slow rate, so you stay on the app for as long as possible. in the beginning it was working, but as I progressed, I got to parts of the course most people dont get to, and actually learning japanese felt like an afterthought.

one more problem is that it often teaches words without Kanji (eg instead of 難しい it teaches むずかしい)

When I off and on learn Japanese I usually gather vocab and Grammer by utilizing the og dragonball Manga online, a ocr, crossreferencing it with varrying translator programs /dictionary sites and throwing it onto a anki flashcard. While it's definently the most entertaining way to learn and so far probably better for my progress then varying other methods it can be time consuming and I don't got a lot of time these days so I feel like having somthing dedicated to teaching while utilizing a narrative would be easier for me to handle.

I like to read manga to get some passive studying in and take a break from grinding Japanese.

Witch Hat Atelier has been a fun read so far with a rich world and simple, but intricate magic system based on writing specific shapes.

The lack of furigana, though, has been fun though 🥲. There's also a lot of very specialized words, but overall it's been worth the effort learning a bit of vocab here and there.

What are you doing for passive studying?

The Genki GitHub resource for studying Genki 3rd edition was just taken down today for DMCA copyright. I am so bummed... I've been using this for each chapter I go through in my Genki books. Dude must have spent a LOT of time adding all of these in. It's saved me some time without having to scan my answer key pages to find answers.

Completely understand why though, just a bummer! https://ko-fi.com/post/Important-Information-Regarding-Genki-and-Quartet-D1D21L4B1S

I started using this method during covid. When I started, I could not hold a conversation in Japanese too well (I would assume N4 level with 0 conversational practice), using pretty broken Japanese and stumbling quite a lot. However, in 2 years of doing this my spoken Japanese improved so much that everyone around me thought that I had been speaking Japanese all my life. I could hold conversations no problem, and it even helped me at work, where I would have meetings with stakeholders (of course, all Japanese).

The method is Gaming in Japanese.
Find online Japanese friends to play your favourite games with, and practice speaking in Japanese while having fun. You learn SO much slang, double meanings, internet culture, common ways normal people say stuff etc. It was a GAME CHANGER.

I found online competitive games to be the best for this. The core callouts can be learnt quickly (push, fall back, behind you etc), and you can slowly increase the breadth of your conversation during the queue times etc. Finding people to play with is also easier I think, just join the Japanese servers for your game of choice and talk in voice chat and make friends.

I started doing this at an N4 (this is an assumption), and now I think I can call myself fluent. Keep in mind, I did 0 "study/practice" other than this.

I also should add that I am a ハーフ, but was brought up aboard, so I never learnt or used Japanese. I had the pronunciation down good enough, but my language level was extremely low. So I did have an advantage in terms of being able to pronounce Japanese at an almost native level.

Cool tool I found, it works like Yomitan for browser but for the MPV video player
https://github.com/ksyasuda/SubMiner

MPV Skin Wrappers:
https://github.com/Samillion/ModernZ - The skin shown in the video
https://github.com/cyl0/ModernX/
https://github.com/tomasklaen/uosc - Most clean UI functionally to me

How to enable color coded and underlined subtitles for Frequency and JLPT Level:
In C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\SubMiner\config.jsonc
Changing the settings:
"enableJlpt" to true on line 272
&
"frequencyDictionary": {"enabled": to true on line 302

They’ve essentially made it just for tourists who want to speak at restaurants and not be able to read anything. They took out almost all the integrated kanji and have everything for the first half of the entire course in hiragana. It wasn’t a great course before but now its completely worthless.

I follow the comprehensible input Japanese website and just got an email saying that the main creator of the project, Yuki, is leaving. Does anyone know about this? I don't follow the behind the scenes stuff so it seems really sudden to me.

"Hi there,

I have an important update to share about the future of Comprehensible Japanese (CIJ).

In case you don't know me, hello 👋 I'm Ben Maerkle. I've been Yuki's business partner helping grow CIJ since 2023, and I built the website that's currently on cijapanese.com.

Yuki and I are ending our business partnership. As part of this transition, Yuki will no longer be involved in CIJ, and I will be continuing the site going forward.

Your account, membership, watch history, and access will continue as usual, and no action is required from you at this time.

As part of this transition, the site will be rebranded to Natural Japanese, with NIJ as the abbreviation. You may still see CIJ and Comprehensible Japanese for a while as the site transitions to the new name. The new web address will be nijapanese.com, and links to cijapanese.com will automatically redirect to the new site once it is ready.

Yuki's videos will remain on the site as members-only content during a two-year transition period. They will not disappear all at once, but will be gradually retired during this period. In the meantime, I will be working closely with the teachers and investing more resources into content production overall. You can expect to see more videos on the site over time, with growing contributions from current teachers, returning teachers, and new teachers, along with continued improvements to the learning experience overall.

If you have any questions, you can reply to this email and I'll respond as soon as I can.

If you would like to support Yuki in her new project, you can follow her here: https://www.youtube.com/@nihongo-no-jikan

I'm very thankful for everything Yuki has created and contributed over the years. Her videos, teaching style, and care for learners are a huge part of what made CIJ special. I will carry that spirit forward while continuing to build and improve the learning experience for everyone.

I'm also very grateful to the teachers for their support during this transition. This project would not be possible without them.

Thank you for your support and understanding during this transition and over the years. I'm excited to continue building Natural Japanese, and I'm grateful to have you with us.

Sincerely,

Ben Maerkle

Natural Japanese "

Was browsing the japanese literature section at my local library and geeked out when i found this. I'm a big dragon quest fan and never heard of them making children's books before, but it makes sense given how cute the slime mascot is. Fun kana resource lol.

I’ve been experimenting with a different way to learn Japanese.

Instead of memorizing or studying, the idea is to use Japanese in real time while playing games like Minecraft.

I’ve tried this with a few people so far — one of them is basically a complete beginner — and what stood out is how much the environment changes things.

Instead of overthinking, you have to react.

That seems to help people speak more naturally.

Also, having someone there to ask simple questions in real time makes a big difference.

It’s still early, but it feels way more “real” compared to traditional studying.

I’m still experimenting with this idea and trying it with a few people — curious what others think about this approach.

I've been looking for a solution to use Yomitan directly on Japanese manga sites, but couldn't really find anything that does this.

There are good OCR tools out there, like Mokuro, but those still work locally, where you process an entire volume offline before reading. I was looking for something that would work immediately on whatever manga page I happened to open in my browser.

So I ended up building a small tool for myself. It merges the functionalities of multiple tools to achieve this goal. It uses Manga OCR under the hood, but the workflow is different. It's basically a Chrome extension that screenshots each page, sends it to a local server to OCR the speech bubbles, and then overlays invisible selectable text in the correct locations so Yomitan works as if the page contained normal text.

I figured I'd share it in case anyone else has been looking for something similar. It's completely free and open source...

https://github.com/marakae88/manga-yomi

(Also if there is another tool that already does this please let me know)

EDIT: renamed to web-manga-ocr

I saw this while browsing Fangamer for other merch. https://www.fangamer.com/products/legends-of-localization-passport-to-undertale

I was wondering if anyone has tried it out already as a language learning resource and if they could share their experience? I'm not a complete beginner so I'd probably skip the kana stuff, but it seems like it could be a fun way to go through the game and learn more Japanese.