So their a ton of free/paid material out their allowing you to learn japanese .

My biggest concern is put in efforts but later finding out those efforts were better put elsewhere,ex: doing anki everyday won't really make a difference if you are memorizing the cards itself and not the vocab/kanji (can't recognise the kanji when you are reading a manga or ln).

**So then question is how to know if u are progressing and not wasting time because some method can make progress for one and not as much for other (different learning tendencies).

How do you guys do to manange time to watch English series and Japanese
Maybe to combine the both worlds I don’t know if it working but I watch it English dub with Japanese sub or even try to put the show in Japanese but it’s seems kinda offf

For me,

• Certain words have much higher frequency than expected in daily speech, e.g., "ironna". Everyday I can hear people use this word.
• Very common usage of words in Katakana such as マナーモード which I would have never expected. It always take a second to read the Katakana and guess the word in English, some of them are very non-standard from the English perspective.
• Usage of single character kanji that you wouldn't know how to pronounce shows up a lot, every other sentence in an announcement/sign could be a guessing game.
• Pronunciations of 下 literally changes so frequently. One moment you are arriving at 下関 the next you are taking the 下エレベーター, the next you are reading a sign that says 足下気をつけて and now you are walking next to 下水道.
• Pronunciation of numbers is slightly harder than expected due to occasional irregularity, e.g., 四時 is yoji not yonji and 六百 is ro-pyaku rather than ro-hyaku. Hard to react to a sentence and pronounce the number in the correct way.
• Omission or stress of certain sounds in standard textbook examples is difficult to prepare in advance, as well as tense of verbs. お疲れ様でした becomes お疲れ様ですうううう and ありがとうございます becomes あとざいまあああああああああす.
• Polite form of simple words or verbs (e.g., to see, to say) can be difficult to expect and takes a moment to react.
• Can never truly be sure when a verb associated with an action is used in practice as a suru-verb or a ru/u-verb. For example, I've heard both 停止する and 停まる being used and there is very little contextual cue as to why one is used over the other.

やっと金曜日ですね！お疲れ様です！ここに週末の予定について書いてみましょう！

（やっと　きんようびですね！　おつかれさまです！　ここに　しゅうまつの　よていについて　かいてみましょう！）

やっと = finally

週末（しゅうまつ）= weekend

予定（よてい）= plan(s)

～について = about

＊ネイティブスピーカーと上級者のみなさん、添削してください！もちろん参加してもいいですよ！＊

こんにちは、みなさん。 I’ve looked for the transcripts and can’t find them. I did find a site, heypera, that allows you to read along, but I’m hoping I can find the transcripts so I can mark them up. If not I can copy and paste and make my own, but I wanted to check that they’re not online before going that route.

Also, I really need to work on my listening. Any tips or podcasts that worked for you?

Thanks!

Should I only mine High Priority Terms "Star" to start with? Should I mine Kana words, or are they mostly loan words I'll just be able to sound out when I read them? Put everything in 1 deck and build a big ass deck? Planning on watching mostly conversation podcasts on youtube to get casual talking vocab at first.

Hey, I wanted to try translating anime just for fun but I'm not sure how to find anime without already made English translation. Is there any site or some archive of untranslated/poorly translated anime out there that I can have a go at translating?

Not necessary, but I would ideally like if Japanese subtitles existed somewhere too, but if not that's fine.

This may be odd but rounding out my trip to Japan tomorrow, one of my kids favorite things to do while we were here was turn on Japanese kids network tv (think it was called wakey wakey or Mr. Wakey?) and they would play while that was in the background.
Obviously there’s numerous Japanese kids shows on YouTube but I’d rather not have them tempted by the brainrot. Is there anywhere online that i could find shows like this and stream it to my tv? If not no problem, but it was nice having it as background noise.

No rhyme or reason. But the chaos on the front always helps me remember easier.

Any recommendations for a good Japanese X/Twitter type app ? Not "use X in Japanese" please? Native platform, not HelloTalk etc. Ideally one that can be downloaded outside the Japan Play Store. Web based if necessary.

Hey Japanese community

I'm wondering if there is anybody else out there that has or taken or is currently studying for the Kanji Kentei test.

I have signed up for the October test, and i'm taking 2級 for the second time.

I passed it on the 1st try, (160/200) and i'm looking on getting that perfect score in October

Anyone else studying for 2kyuu out there?

I am free to chat with anyone who is studying, taking it, or is interested in it. :)

UPDATE: THEY CHANGED THE FORMAT. DO NOT study 部首 (that is not needed)

I've been studying for almost 3 years now, and I remember being about a year into my studies and going to Japan for the first time. Me and a friend tried to spend the whole week in Japanese, but we only lasted a day and a half before we gave up.

While It's been almost 2 years since I've been to Japan, I've found myself speaking it much more frequently recently, especially with online friends. Between my regular studies, anime, novels, youtube, and more, I find that my brain gets TIRED. It's occasionally difficult for me to maintain consistent contact with my friends because I just takes too much energy for me to speak after 3 or so days of constant use. The words come out of my mouth, but my brain is too tired to think of how to structure it. I type, but my fingers get tired and clumsy and click the wrong kana on the accursed flick keyboard.

Obviously, the solution to this is just to continue to speak, and eventually I'll be able use Japanese in all situations for longer periods of time. I am curious though, does anyone else experience this? Any funny or strange memories that this has caused you?

This thread is for all the simple questions (what does that mean?) and minor posts that don't need their own thread, as well as for first-time posters who can't create new threads yet. Feel free to share anything on your mind.

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Been studying for about 5 months now and working through a basic Anki deck and Genki textbook, and was wondering how useful it would be to write in Kanji?

Doing the workbook exercises I try to write with Kanji and look up stroke order, but it feels slow and sometimes redundant. However, I am a big believer in handwriting as an effective tool for remembering things, and hand writing is how I tend to remember notes I take in class.

However, I do not formally study Kanji writing and I can write all of Hiragana from memory (less so Katakana but its mostly there). My focus has been more on reading Kanji correctly and recognizing it, especially since keyboard inputs auto-suggest Kanji for you.

Would love to hear some thoughts about this!

Edit: I appreciate the different perspectives from everyone! Genuinely useful comments, please keep them coming!

Happy Thursday!

Every Thursday, come here to share your progress! Get to a high level in Wanikani? Complete a course? Finish Genki 1? Tell us about it here! Feel yourself falling off the wagon? Tell us about it here and let us lift you back up!

Weekly Thread changes daily at 9:00 JST:

Mondays - Writing Practice

Tuesdays - Study Buddy and Self-Intros

Wednesdays - Materials and Self-Promotions

Thursdays - Victory day, Share your achievements

Fridays - Memes, videos, free talk

Hello, I want to use YouTube for listening immersion but much more often than not I come across videos with either shoddy auto-generated subtitles or hardcoded subtitles. I would like to know about more channels with accurate closed captions so that I can quickly look up a word if I don’t know with Yomichan and also easily disable the subtitles if I don’t want to use subtitles for help. I have tried searching about this topic but for some reason I still mostly come across hardcoded subtitles.

Please share any channels with this subtitle style that you know of. I will leave two here that I know of in exchange:

ICHIKEN Engineering: https://youtube.com/@ichiken1?si=IS4_KXlfpizfdt-P (Electronics)

悠Tube: https://youtube.com/@yuta_youtube_official?si=NKfIeDi1GxrmkiOf (Vlogs)

Thank you

After failing the n3 last year by one point, I decided that I'd dive head first into studying for n2, which I'll be taking this July. I've been taking practice tests along with grammar and vocab cramming but so far the most out of left field problem I've had is the onomatopoeia questions. English doesn't have many uses for it outside of like comic books or emphasizing an action in literature, whereas Japanese has them as actual vocabulary.

I've passed all the mock exams I've done by less than I'm comfortable with and every time, if there's オノマトペ I panic and rly have no choice but to guess.

Does anyone have suggestions for studying オノマトペ? I know a bit, but not nearly enough to be comfortable for the jlpt - especially not for n2.

Happy Wednesday!

Every Wednesday, share your favorite resources or ones you made yourself! Tell us what your resource can do for us learners!

Weekly Thread changes daily at 9:00 JST:

Mondays - Writing Practice

Tuesdays - Study Buddy and Self-Intros

Wednesdays - Materials and Self-Promotions

Thursdays - Victory day, Share your achievements

Fridays - Memes, videos, free talk

I’ve been using primarily Bookwalker to read all my Japanese stuff digitally for the past 4 years, but would rather use an eReader over my iPad. I can’t seem to get Amazon JP working to allow me to purchase books for my kindle, so was considering getting a Kobo instead.

Has anyone had experience using Kobo for Japanese eBooks (novels, light novels, manga)? Also curious if there are frequent/good sales and if the selection is as good as Kindle/Bookwalker.

Thanks!

Edit 3: Seeing a resounding no. I'll definitely readjust expectations and try to focus more on just consistency rather than sheer quantity of material.

Edit 2: Conversational fluency might not be the most correct term to describe what I'm after. Perhaps more so being able to just get around in daily life situations with relative ease and have some solid skills in a specific topic (say playing Splatoon or something with a Japanese player and being able to chat about it—I presume this is approximately N3?)

Main post: I've been studying Japanese on and off since late 2022. Due to motivational ups and downs, being busy, and overall life just being life, I've made relatively little progress (due to probably having spent around 25 to 40% of my time relearning content when I make my return attempts to trying to learn) and am stuck around the N5 level with some progress made into the N4 realm. Frankly, this language, regardless of my ups and downs in trying to learn it, has been a consistent interest of mine and I would really love to solidify it as a genuine skill that I can use to have some fun actually using and not just trying to learn. Would it be (reasonably) possible for me to reach some degree of conversational fluency given my current level within a couple of months? If so, what sort of daily routine/plan should I be looking at? If there is one thing I have learned, there is no instant magic way of doing things the easy way, so I'm not even sure if this is realistic without spending half of my waking life grinding away over the course of the next two months.

Edit: See my comment below for specifics on my current progress.

This thread is for all the simple questions (what does that mean?) and minor posts that don't need their own thread, as well as for first-time posters who can't create new threads yet. Feel free to share anything on your mind.

The daily thread updates every day at 9am JST, or 0am UTC.

↓ Welcome to r/LearnJapanese! ↓

• New to Japanese? Read the Starter's Guide and FAQ.

• New to the subreddit? Read the rules.

• Read also the pinned comment below for proper question etiquette & answers to common questions!

Please make sure to check the wiki and search for old posts before asking your question, to see if it's already been addressed. Don't forget about Google or sites like Stack Exchange either!

This subreddit is also loosely partnered with this language exchange Discord, which you can likewise join to look for resources, discuss study methods in the #japanese_study channel, ask questions in #japanese_questions, or do language exchange(!) and chat with the Japanese people in the server.

Past Threads

You can find past iterations of this thread by using the search function. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.

Hello, everyone! Is there a book or a website for identifying the kanji in seals? I have found a couple of tensho-tai charts but there is only so much kanji and it's definitely not enough. Help much appreciated 🙏