I love having to actually use kanji I learn with exercises, reading, writing. Sometimes there's "special" tasks for the specific set of kanji you just learned, like for directions there were maps and you had to write where things were. I feel like no other method comes quite close to this one, feels like I'm finally progressing and I even find it fun! I'm far from done but each time I think about finishing it I feel a bit sad/worried cause not many methods seem to work for me.

Is there a similar workbook? or some kind of resource?

Not mine. Not self promotion. Anthony Fu on X just released this and I thought it was really cool.

I live on the West Coast of the United States and am looking for a Japanese conversation class in Japan that I can take via video conferencing. I've looked around online but couldn't find anything. It was mostly schools that came up. There's always iTalki, but I was looking for a class, not one-on-one.

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

Howdy folks,

I've been listening to Fujii Kaze a lot recently and I love the style of his music and its very easy to follow and understand him.

I had the same experience listening to .haku and Monkey Majik. More recently I'm listening to more R&B artists like Toshinobu Kubota. What are some 'smooth' clear vocal artists you'd recommend in the same vein as these 4?

I find I can memorize well while studying with music in the background, but not looking for stuff like ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION - Haruka Kanatahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ6A6GC_ki4 although I love that type of music, for studying I need mellow options lol

[]()

[]()

[]()

[]()

[]()

[]()

ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION - Haruka Kanata

Hello Kanji Reddit

My name is S111117 and this October on the 18th, I am goiing to be retaking my Kanji Kentei 2 exam!

Many people have asked if I passed this test, the answer is yes, I did do that last year,

BUT this time I am taking it for fun and for a better score. I only passed with a 160 last year, so I am aiming for a better score.
I have studied, analyzed contents from Kanji Kentei 10-2, and particiularily kanji kentei 2 for a very long time, and these are some of the conclusions, thoughts and feeings I can make after studying for so long. My Kanji Kentei 2 studies will probably end after I take the test, and i'll move on.

I will give very deep insight on the Kanji Kentei 2, and I invite other people who attemped the level to share experiences. I will make it short, and easy so everyone can understand.

--------

1. Its not how you study, it's how much you study.

The Kanji Kentei doesnt just require japanese ability, but requires absolute brute memorization. Especially for non native speakers. You must have the ability to write all 2136 characters correctly, use them in context and sentences appropirately, and memorize patterns.

People have told me it has taken them months of study and memorization of vocab and yojis to pass. For me, it took 7 months to get my first one. It's insane and brute memorization along with actual japanese abilities such as reading.

2) Some of your friends will fail 2kyuu, or you, and its completely ok.

2 friends of mine fell very short on the test. One by 2 pts one by 5. When they were telling me about their experience in the test, they were sharing their regrets on what they were getting wrong Plus the pass bar is higher by 15-20 pts so examinees are demanded more skill.

The reason why people fail is not content knowledge, but its the lack of stamina or quality of your characters. 2kyuu itself, writing sections on the test cover 50%+ of the final score.

-------------------

Hard sections in my opinion on 2kyuu and my thoughts.

誤字訂正 and 熟語構成: This section demands more of your japanese ability.

For 誤字訂正 you need to read a text and find error in the text and correct it. You need to know vocabulary as well. There is no partial credit, so you need to complete the entire problem. 熟語構成 asks you about composure of Japanese words, so you must understand kanji meanings, and how they connect. For example 巧拙 is opposite meanings so you would select イ.

What I found very helpful was putting everything through kunyomi. You would consider 上棟 to be エ because as a 目的語, you can assume 棟を上げる.

同音同訓語: Unlike j2k, you need to write the entire word out. You need to read the sentence and find out which is best in context**. But what is the harder thing about this is that theres so many possible questions and answers that can appear on the test.** Like 「かんしょう」 itself has 5 very possible answers.

読み and 書取り and 四字熟語 are easy to me, these type of problems frequently appear in question books but the hononym part (同音同訓語) is more sparce.

-------------

Books: I tried many Japanese books and sites for kanken, and I can have a sense of which is very good and not very good. (No DS game though!)

BAD SOURCES: Kanken Step (shocking), kanken jitenon, and this verision 頻出度順 (hinshutsudojyun)

The main deficient point of these is that they give you content that will rarely come out on the real test. They are good for testing your kanji, or aiming for a rly good score but this should not be your priority. Also the 頻出度順 here does not give appropriate questions that will appear on the test at all.

GOOD SOURCES: Kanken's books themselves (outside of step), takashi shoten's version of the 頻出度順, mock tests from kanken and oubunsha.

Compared to the real test, i found many of these books to accurately analyze kanken's patterns on the test.

------

My 2 recommendations for kanken studying

1. Write on paper, not digital: Writing on digital is a little bit messy, and characters you write digitally would be acccepted despite it not being okay on the paper exam. You could write 渉 sloppy and still get that as a search, but it would not look good in writing.
2. Register early, don't wait last minute: The more quicker you register, the more you'll feel locked . You will know you will challenge that level, so you can go into study stuff immediately. Do not study last minute. Kanken is a heavy memorization test, so you want more time to memorize and lock in.
3. Mock tests are your savior: Dig in as much mock tests as needed. Do it either on a blank paper, or on an answer sheet printed. Try to mimic the test conditions as much as posssible.

So to those taking, retaking the test on the 18th, GOOD LUCK. Keep on practicing. That's it, i'm ready to be done.

If you want to read 26 volumes of manga in the next year, you only need to read about half a chapter a day.
Most manga volumes have 6 or 7 chapters, so you'll finish a volume every other week.

Setting readily achievable goals are:
1) really good for consistency long-term
2) good for self-esteem (bonus!)

As a busy person with family + job, this seems like a pretty good long-term immersion method.
Sure, it's not perfect, but at least I can coast along doing something I enjoy.

Any other busy people have similar daily goals?

When you first started reading Japanese, did you want furigana (the small kana next to kanji to show how they're read) on everything?

How about now? Do you still like having it, or do you find it distracting?

Has your preference changed as you've gotten better at Japanese, or has it stayed the same?

Hey everyone, from what I've seen from recent posts in the sub, AI is not regarded as the best or well received language learning tool, but still, I'm building something that made my everyday routine much more pleasant to study. I AM NOT RECOMMEDING YOU SHOULD USE IT. I just want to share my experience as it may be interesting to some of you. I'm open to any questions, criticism or suggestions, or anything really.

How it works

Every morning, I open my iPad, download the PDF it generated earlier in the day for me, read it in the Goodnotes app while highlighting the words I don't know, and answer the reading comprehension questions. Then, I easily share the page back to Claude, it processes the PDF, checks the answers, and displays the words I highlighted (the ones I didn't know), and suggests which ones are worth creating an Anki card for. Finally, I confirm the cards and it generates the .apkg file for me to export to Anki, a few days ago I managed to get audio on the cards too.

My experience with it

Honestly, at the beginning, I was really skeptical, but i decided to explain the raw idea to Claude one day and it generated a really nice pdf, and the text quality really blew me out of the water. What really surprised me is the "tailoring" it can do, as I call it. What I did beforehand is that I explained that I just finished N4 and I'm beginning the N3 stage, and with its help I managed to share pretty much all the vocabulary I know, because it's all in Anki flashcards (up to this point pretty much all the new vocab I had been getting was from the Kaishi 1.5k deck).

We came up with parameters, such as, "aim for 4-5 new words per PDF", "one new N3 grammar per PDF", "recycle words so they show up again in future PDF's". And it keeps on going. At the beginning it was just random generic generated stories, like "the day I woke up late for work" or a conversation between two people in the elevator. But after seeing that, language learning wise, I wasn't seeing any issues with quality, as far as I can see at least, and asked more it could do, it proposed building a more structured story.

I mentioned what I liked and didn't like, and what would work with the daily reading session format. I mentioned I like sitcons like Community, Brooklyn 99, etc, and it generated a story, with characters with their own personality and gags, the story setting and everything. And I've been reading the stories and they are fun. It feels quite uneasy, not gonna lie, to know I'm having fun while learning with something created by a computer. But it works, it just works.

I feel like it's the dream scenario of Stephen Krashen's Comprehensible Input Theory. The language level is always in the desired i+1 level, tailored to your skills. The story can be something you like, it's enjoyable and pleasing to do - e.g. I like sitcons and I'm having fun reading some quirky characters clumsy mess up. And on top of all off that, there's no friction for me. I just sit down, do my thing in the reading sesssion, send it back to Claude, and boom, I have Anki cards to review.

tldr: AI makes me PDFs tailored on my level and taste, constantly keeps up with my japanese level, and generates Anki cards directly for me to use.

For example, people that watch Japanese livestreamers, but want to see subtitles to learn Japanese along with it could possibly download the livestream and then sub it?

Want to know if there's a usecase for such a tool. As I have done up something for my own purposes that batch generates Japanese srt files for Japanese videos in a folder

Edit: Ignoring rage-baiting comments.

I'm looking for things to listen to or watch in Japanese recreationally (as opposed to feeling like I'm studying), but I'm not generally into anime or Japanese movies. I am into sport, and I think that if I could find, say, a podcast that talks about the Premier League in Japanese, that would be more up my alley. Soccer would be nice, but other sports would also work. Bonus points if they also talk about women's sports. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks in advance!

Many thanks to the creators of the Core 2k/6k, Kaishi 1.5k and Manabi 2.7k decks! Having completed Kaishi 1.5k and then jumped to Manabi 2.7k, here are a couple thoughts I had about what the next iterative improvements could be. If I were one of these selfless, magnanimous people who pour hours of time into creating a learning tool for no reward other than helping others, I would do this myself. But alas...

Looking at the types of cards that consistently became leeches for me, I noticed two main archetypes:

1. Kanji compounds where that word is the only time those particular kanji/readings are used within the deck.

Memorizing the one instance of a kanji/reading is hard. But learning a second word that shares that kanji/reading unlocks a pattern to be recognized. Vocab gets easier when new words increasingly become combinations of the word ingredients you are already familiar with. Like how familiar every new Taco Bell menu item tastes.

Solution: Add another frequent word that shares that kanji/reading. I would expand to 6k frequency to find a match. Two words will be learned in less reviews than it takes to learn one. Efficiency!

2. Short grammatical phrases masquerading as "words"

Manabi 2.7k is particularly guilty of including these. Jumping from Kaishi to Manabi, it felt like the first 100 words were things like それにしても. Is there really any point to trying to learn this through a vocab deck? You will only really understand the meaning through grammar study and/or exposure. Memorizing whichever of the many possible translations the card assigns is not just difficult, but mostly pointless too. At the point I jumped to Manabi I was able to see these for what they were, but beginners will not.

Solution: I am tempted to say just get rid of all of these knowing they are far better learned as grammar points through Genki, Tae Kim, Bunpro, etc. A more nuanced approach might be to keep in ones that have very specific, direct, and consistent translations. Figuring that out sounds like a lot of work though...

Anyway, just my two cents; take it with a grain of salt; thanks for attending my TED talk; easier said than done; those who can do, those who can't criticize; etc.

When mining visual novels, I often come across sentences where yomitan mis-identifies kanji. For example, here I feel like 床 could either be ゆか or とこ, and 後 could either be あと or ご. 吐きつける similarly could either be はき or つき.

I'm not sure which are the correct readings in this case to be honest. ​

Similarly, given games that use many names, a name like 杏 might be read as あんず or きょう, and although I know it's きょう for this VN, it's always given あんず as furigana.

Is there any way to deal with this? Is it a matter of setting up my dictionaries differently? For the kanji that the card is made for, it's possible to select which dictionary entry is used, but the remaining kanji are auto-aasigned.​​​ Sometimes I fix it after making a card if it's really aggregious, but ​​​​​​​​obviously that becomes cumbersome and it'd be nice to reduce resistance.

Any tips are ​​​appreciated!!

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'm kind of in a rut here. What worked for me from N4 to N2 was flashcards. I never failed, but I always felt like me passing was just pure luck because my comprehension was terrible. I did not expect to pass any of those exams, and yet I did, mostly with vocabulary knowledge pulling my scores up. My reading results were mostly in the 20s and listening was in the 30s.

Before N1 last July, I used flashcards as well to study the Sou Matome Kanji and Vocabulary textbooks for a year and a half. I had some trouble figuring out my grammar routine because of the similarities in N1 grammar, but I still depended on flashcards. Around 2 months before the exam, I stopped using my flashcards and fully focused on immersion -- reading novels and listening to podcasts to be specific. I did some reading and listening while doing flashcards before, but never dropped everything just to focus on those 2 things. When I took the exam, I felt that I could really comprehend the passages, and I was able to finish the whole reading section for the first time. But I didn't pass. Now, I'm back to doing flashcards, but frankly I'm still not confident that I'll pass this December.

to those who passed N1 after failing (especially those who failed multiple times), what did you change in your study habits? what did you realize when you failed, and what do you think helped you pass?

I've done a lot of research on how to properly immerse, and I've found advice ranging from "dissect every sentence and look up every word" to "watch content with no subtitles even if you understand nothing." Advice in the middle includes looking up a few words per episode or watching the show first in English/with English subtitles and then re-watching fully in Japanese, sometimes multiple times. It doesn't help that most of the resources say X is the only/best way to do it, all the other ways will actively hold you back for some reason or another.

At the moment, I'm... kinda doing everything because I've gotten so confused by it all.

Twice a week or so, I'll dissect every sentence of a 15 min episode of Aggretsuko while looking up vocab and grammar points as needed. I don't memorize any of it, I just get an understanding of every sentence. Then I watch the episode and use the condensed audio for passive immersion until the next episode.

Daily, I'll watch an ep or two of Shirokuma Cafe and try to only look up words that seem pivotal to understanding a conversation or joke. There are quite a few puns, so I end up learning some random vocab that naturally stick since I associate it with a polar bear dressed as a samurai or something equally memorable lol.

And then I'll also watch a few episodes of either Ouran High School Host Club or Youtube videos with no English/subtitles at all. My understanding of Ouran is obviously much lower than the other two shows, but honestly its been fun trying to parse what's going on each episode and in general (the twins are related right?? are the girls swooning over them acting kinda gay or is incest just more chill in this show lmao?).

On one hand, this combo approach might be the best of all worlds? I don't have the mental stamina to dissect multiple episodes every day or absorb infinite vocab, and I find it easier and easier to pick out words I know the more I listen to anything in Japanese.

On the other hand, it is quite a time commitment on top of Anki and grammar lessons. I have the motivation and am sticking to a schedule now, but I worry about burnout if my work or outside life gets any busier.

What do you folks think? How do you immerse, and did you try multiple methods before settling on one?

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.

I want to share a method I've used through 8 years of learning Japanese, and hear what you all think.

Whenever I hit a katakana word that comes from English, I switch it back to the original English word, while the grammar and everything else stay Japanese. I call this "Enpanese" (English + Japanese). Here's a short news snippet as an example:

Normal: 元女子レスリング日本代表の浜口京子さんが、Xに新しい私服写真を投稿しました。いつものスポーツ姿とはまったく違うファッションが、SNSで大きな話題になっています。黒いトップスとワイドパンツを合わせ、胸元の大きな黄色いリボンがアクセントになっています。

Enpanese: 元女子wrestling日本代表の浜口京子さんが、Xに新しい私服写真を投稿しました。いつものsports姿とはまったく違うfashionが、SNSで大きな話題になっています。黒いtopとwide pantsを合わせ、胸元の大きな黄色いribbonがaccentになっています。

For me it makes learning way easier and takes a huge load off my brain, with almost no mental resistance.

I think it works because of "scaffolding," a well-known idea in language learning. When you build a house, you put up scaffolding first and take it down once the structure can stand on its own. The English words act as that scaffolding: familiar anchor points all through the text that help you keep going and actually reach the end.

It also makes Japanese feel friendly. Spotting words you already know is like changing schools and finding a few old friends there: suddenly it's not so scary. I suspect that's a big part of why Chinese speakers find Japanese less intimidating, since kanji feel familiar.

Has anyone else learned this way? Do you think it helps, or does it get in the way of learning katakana properly?

(SURVEY IS NOW CLOSED)
UPDATE: I am speechless... We made it to more than 400 responses. At first I was hoping to get around 100 responses but thanks to the generosity of this community I now have a much juicier sample, I am both excited and a bit scare to start the analysis. Again, from the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank all the lovely strangers that decided to help me with this project, I will see you in a few months once my thesis gets (hopefully) published!

(Asked for mod approval in the daily thread)
Hello hello, I am currently looking for Japanese learners in online communities for a survey concerning the motivational aspect of SRS (Anki, Wanikani, Bunpro, etc). The requirements are pretty simple:
-You are currently using SRS to study Japanese or have used SRS in the past but stopped
-Your mother tongue does not use kanji/chinese characters
-You are mostly studying outside of traditional institutions/classes

https://forms.gle/ef8xymLx1HL1yLxT8

A few months ago I was allowed to post my first survey on this fine subreddit, and I must admit I received way more answers than I expected... It made quite the impression in my lab, as well as providing a sound theoretical background for the first half of my thesis. From the bottom of my heart thank you to all the kind strangers who have answered the previous survey, you are helping me chase my dream of becoming a Japanese teacher.

A quick word about the guy behind the research, I'm a MEXT student currently enrolled at a Tokyo university to get my master's (and hopefully phd) in Japanese language education. I'm trying to paint a clear picture of the study habits of people who self-study in online communities such as Discord or Reddit. In recent years we have an explosion in the number of tools/software available in the online Japanese learning landscape, and while SRS are often praised as effective tools for learning new materials, there is still much to be learned about how people link SRS and motivation. This survey will serve as the main argument for my masters thesis and (hopefully) carry me all the way through graduation and the PhD entrance exams next winter.

Every answer helps; you have my full gratitude if you decide to contribute to this project! Don't hesitate to give any feedback, I'm constantly trying to improve myself and my research！

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.

There's a lot of japanese language games on flashpoint of all kinds of genres. While they aren't always of the highest quality, it feels like the variety more than makes up for it, and they're pretty good if you want a window into what web games at the time were like.

There's also lots of other indie games on sites like freem but they're more classic rpg maker instead of flash, so you might see a more uniform style of gameplay with those.

The only downside with flash (as far as I can tell) is that you can't easily look up words since they run in the flash player, and being net games you might encounter more slang (I haven't yet but it's hard to discount the likelihood) than most games.

For a language filter you can use in the search bar, try

language:ja -language:en

the -language:en excludes games which were originally made in english and translated to japanese, so you should hopefully only get games made for japanese viewers. There's also a lot of tags like visual novel, touhou project, toy etc.

Happy Tuesday!

Every Tuesday, come here to Introduce yourself and find your study group! Share your discords and study plans. Find others at the same point in their journey as you.

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 recently started trying to immerse with Visual Novels. My problem is that spending hours on a single VN that I'm not super invested in I start to get burned out. And when I start one that seems more interesting I lose interest due to having trouble following whats going on.

My current plan is start small with bite size VN's to get used to reading VN's and reading Japanese in general and build up my reading "endurance" and ability before tackling something longer and more interesting. So far I've read 4 ranging from 30m to 1h20m according to vndb and I take about 3x as long to read as listed.

Are there any VN recommendations that are short and sweet. I'm hoping for something 4h or less for an average player outside of the standard school slice of life stuff that is frequently recommended. I'm currently N4 level but am willing to lookup difficult sections. I've been using jpdb to find stuff and have read so far

I have been trying to understand the differences between them. If anyone could helpful, that would be great!

I’m autistic so it can be difficult to understand at times.