Why Learn Japanese?

First things first, I want you to be honest with yourself. Why do you want to learn Japanese? Do you plan to live in Japan? Is that a realistic enough goal to serve as real motivation? Do you want to watch anime or read manga? Be able to understand your favorite J-Pop songs? Do you want to play eroge without needing translation patches? Do you want to become a fan translator yourself? To follow the latest JP memes on Twitter / 2ch?

Whatever your reason is, make sure it actually motivates you. Studying without a solid source of motivation will make days turn to weeks, weeks turn to months, and "eventually" into "never". You will not be able to learn a language without motivation. It's OK for your source of motivation to change over time but remaining honest with yourself and your reason(s) for learning will make learning easier because you will take it more seriously.

How to Learn

I've been studying Japanese off-and-on as motivation has ebbed and flowed over the years. During this time I've tried a dozen different approaches and discovered a lot more about learning. Learning how to learn is an invisible hurdle you must overcome before you can make real progress in Japanese. What do I mean by this?

What learning to learn means:

  • Mnemonics are powerful. To many people they seem silly or like a waste of time but I promise you they are not. There's a reason you remember grade school mnemonics such as "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" or "My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Nothing" or whatever regional/temporal variant you learned. (See also: Memory Palaces which is basically how every Grand Master of Memory memorizes things.)
  • Learn how to schedule. This means having a reliable work ethic where you have a dedicated amount of time each day to study.
  • Learn how to focus. Turn off your notifications, don't switch tabs. Learning time should be about learning. You can go back on Twitter or do other things after your study time.
  • You can learn way, way, way faster than you probably think you can. Never "stop early for today" because you feel like you've learned too much. I promise you that is not a thing. Exposure is always good.
  • It is always better to be exposed to 100 things and memorize 20 of them than to be exposed to 10 things and memorize 10 of them. You'll learn twice as fast! There is a potential downside to this which can be demotivating. You have to keep the right mindset for this type of learning and not fret things like getting 80% of your Anki cards wrong. Always focus on the progress you're making.
  • Learning won't always be fun - but try to make it as fun as you can. Make silly mnemonics, turn learning into a game, play using games! Do whatever it takes to keep things fun and interesting. Learning is always easier when it is fun.

That was quite a lot to take in. I should shut up and actually get to the Japanese learning part of this guide now. We'll be starting off with our most fundamental thing to learn.

Starting You Off - The First Week

To help you get started I am going to give you a Lesson Plan for your First Seven Days. Besides your Anki Deck reviews, which will always be every day for the foreseeable future, these days do not need to be done consecutively. Still, it's in your best interest to follow the schedule if you’re able to stick with it. This is a highly dedicated pace that will expect a lot from you and it will not be easy. You are more than welcome to go at your own pace - but if you truly want to learn Japanese this decade then the level of dedication I'm expecting of you should be the bare minimum.

The Days only tell you what to study and not what to practice. Practice is any time spent after studying and is... well... practice. Read some children's stories to practice your kana. Write them even more than I told you to write them during the study time. Throw your name into Google Translate and learn how to write your name. Go through and review Anki Deck some more times. Treat practice as free time. You can do whatever you like so long as it is helping you practice something. It also doesn't really matter what you practice! But try and keep it "within your level" or just outside it. Trying to practice far outside of your level won't do you any good because you won't actually be practicing. You should practice for at least half of the time that you study. So if you study 3 hours/day you should try and practice 1.5 hours/day. If you study 1 hour/day you should practice 30 minutes/day. Practice is how you actually learn the language. It is the single most important part of actually learning Japanese. In fact you can ignore studying entirely and only practice and you will still (eventually) learn Japanese it will just take longer (much longer). The same cannot be said of only studying Japanese. If you only study Japanese you will never learn Japanese. That is my promise to you. Studying will help you learn faster than not studying - but you cannot only study. That is the trap so many people fall into because it feels like you are making progress when you are in fact not making any progress at all.

After your first seven days I will provide you with some guidance but you will be more on your own in terms of what and how you practice. Although I will attempt to give you some structure to things and resources for your journey.

The Sound of Japanese

I am going to lie to you slightly but I promise it is to make things easier to start off with.

Japanese has 5 vowel sounds. A - I - U - E - O. They are pronounced "ah" as in "Ball", "ee" as in "Speed", "oo" as in "Boo", "eh" as in "Ted", and "oh" as in "Toe". I'm joking we're not doing that for every sound - this is the internet. We can use audio so you can listen instead. Let's go give them a listen. Put this video on in the background as you read the next section.

One of the tricks to speaking Japanese properly is that none of the vowels ever really change. (A tiny white lie for anyone nitpicking.) The "A" vowel in あ、か、た、さ、な、ま、ら、わ are all the same vowel. This can be tricky when reading words you're used to saying like アメリカ (America) because you will probably say "Uh Mare ee Kuh" instead of "Ah Meh Ree Ka". And if you do say "Uh Mare ee Kuh" most Japanese people won't understand what you said and I'm not joking. Pronunciation is important and drilling it into your head that Japanese has only 5 vowel sounds will vastly improve your pronunciation. When you get better at listening to and speaking Japanese you'll naturally pick up on my little white lie in that vowels ever-so-slightly change but not in a way that is important for now. When you get better at speaking Japanese you'll naturally make those adjustments yourself. Do not worry: I am not setting you up for failure and having to "relearn" how to speak by lying to you because my lie is only the smallest of lies.

Japanese is a "soft" spoken language. Sounds like "ta" or "ka" from た / か are likely much softer than in your native language. Especially if your native language is English. Practicing how to make these sounds using the roof of your mouth or even almost nasally will help your pronunciation. Most Americans will make the "Ka" sound using the back of their mouths almost near the throat. Practice instead making it from the roof of your mouth closer to the back of your top teeth. You should hear an immediate difference in the "strength" of the "K" sound. This is true of all consonants. Japanese is a more nasally language than English and "speaking through your nose" a little will help your pronunciation. Don't go overboard with nasal speaking but please do keep it in mind as advice.

In the end, please trust your ears. When practicing pronunciation it is most helpful to "shadow" audio by speaking alongside it. Match your pitch and accent to the audio and repeat until you are comfortable. Then record yourself and play the audio and then your recording one after another and try to identify any mistakes you may have made. In this way you can become one of those cool foreigners with perfect Japanese pronunciation and accent. Correct pronunciation is the difference between receiving "Your Japanese is very good!" 「すごい!日本語とても上手ですね?」 platitudes and the genuine awe of flabbergasted people saying "Unbelievable! Your pronunciation is even better than mine! How?"

Kana

Japanese has three writing systems, with two of them being far more basic: Hiragana and Katakana. Each is comprised of 46 characters (before anyone nits - 48 but let's ignore the obsolete ones for now) for a total of 92 characters. If you're coming from a language with an Alphabet of only 23-28 characters this might seem like an absurd amount. Do not fear - it is far easier than you think. You can learn Kana well enough to continue learning Japanese in under 2 days. Although I will be recommending the school approach of spending 5 days on Hiragana and 5 days on Katakana.

Do not try and learn Japanese with ローマ字 (rōmaji) as you will be setting yourself up for failure. You will learn to mispronounce words because no two people use the same flavor of Hepburn romanization (and some people don't even use Hepburn at all). Even the Japanese Government doesn't consistently use the same romanization methods. If the Japanese can't even get it right neither can anyone else and neither will you. Learning Kana is not optional.

Day 1

Today we are going to learn Hiragana. In a single day. Find a day where you can set aside 3-4 hours to be entirely by yourself and focusing on your Japanese study. This is 1 of 2 days I will ask you to dedicate such a large amount of time in a single day. The 2nd day will be learning Katakana. If you can do these back-to-back I would highly recommend doing so.

I recommend the Tofugu Hiragana and Tofugu Katakana Anki decks. Wait, what's Anki? Glad you asked.

Anki is a Spaced Repetition System (SRS) flashcard learning program. SRS is one of the best ways to learn and memorize small chunks of information. You will be using Anki for your Kana, Kanji, and Vocabulary studies so you better become familiar with it. You should use Anki over similar websites or even similar programs due to how much has already been built on top of Anki. You will save yourself a lot of time and headache by using Anki and the hundreds of pre-made decks that exist instead of always building your own decks (although you will do that at some point).

Even if you have no intentions on learning to write - while learning for the first time you should always be writing. At least for the first week of learning new things. To learn Kana you're going to do just that. Review the decks in Anki and write each Kana as you review it. Review all 46 Hiragana in one sitting.

Once you have completed the deck get a piece of paper and a pencil and write each Kana in their 五十音 (gojūon) order starting with あ, ending in お and then moving down a row to か→こ さ→そ, etc. Here is a chart with instructions on how to write each character. If you want to learn how to write this will be important - if you are not learning how to write humor me and use the proper stroke order for this initial practice.

Write in a normal size (eg. a single line if using lined paper) and fill one side of the entire paper with a single character, for example ああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああああ.

  • Do not write as quickly as you can.
  • Focus on each character as you write it.
  • As you write each character sound it out like from the earlier video.

This is the only time I will ever suggest doing wrote memorization even if your goal does not include learning how to write. This is your first shit test. Do you actually want to learn Japanese or do you like the idea of learning Japanese? Prove it to me with a huge stack of paper.

Your hand hurts? Good. Review all 46 Hiragana in your Anki deck again. You should have a much easier time going through them.

Day 1 study time is now over. Now practice Hiragana. You can choose to keep writing them out, do some extra reviews of your Anki deck, or go to the Reading Practice section below and find a children's book written in Kana-only to read through (ignoring any Katakana until tomorrow). My personal advice would be to write them but this time only 5x - 10x each instead of an entire page and then review the Anki deck one last time.

Day 2

Review your Hiragana Anki deck. Remember to write each character at least once and read it aloud as you review them. Then do the same thing you did with Hiragana yesterday but this time with the Anki Katakana deck. Here is your Katakana writing chart - use the same 五十音 order as before. The pronunciation of each character is the same. Review the Anki Deck, fill 46 pages of Katakana, review the Anki Deck again. Today is a repeat of yesterday.

Day 2 is now over! With that you're now ready to start learning basic Japanese. Going forward you will never need to do wrote memorization like that again (unless your goal is to learn to write) although I will highly recommend that you write a single time each time you review something in Anki during your first week of studying. This will greatly increase the rate at which you learn even if you immediately forget how to write it the next week. I promise you.

Again - with study time over now is time to practice. Katakana can be harder to practice because it is primarily used for loan words. You can find a list of loan words to practice reading if you want to focus more on Katakana than Hiragana. Because you will have much more exposure to Hiragana you may want to dedicate more time to deliberately practicing Katakana than Hiragana.

Day 3

Review your Hiragana and Katakana Anki Decks. Remember to write each character at least once and read it aloud as you review them. You will continue reviewing them daily until you have mastered them. This may take up to a week - it may take two weeks. How long it takes depends on many factors like how frequently you study, if you're continuing to write them each time to learn how to write, and how good your memory is. Memory is a lot like a muscle and some people will need to train (or retrain) that muscle and so may struggle to learn things quickly. Under no circumstance should it take you more than 2 weeks. If that is the case you need to re-evaluate how dedicated you are to studying.

After you've reviewed your Anki decks feel free to start on Basic Grammar if you still have time remaining in your study time. Never end a study session early as there is no such thing as reaching a good stopping point. Any teacher who told you this in school lied to you. Sorry you had to learn this way.

Once your allotted study time is over - remember to practice!

Basic Grammar

You will see many recommendations for Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese and while it is beginner-friendly the last time I checked it it contained enough misleading information that I could never recommend it as a sole source of learning. It is good as supplemental material for learning since it is targeted at people who aren't linguistics nerds. So what do I recommend? I recommend Imabi which may be a bit complicated if you aren't a linguistics nerd since it is written by a linguistics nerd. So it might use vocabulary you are not entirely familiar with. That is OK - don't worry too much about those concepts. However if you are a linguistics nerd you'll find the use of such vocabulary very beneficial for learning.

Other supplemental sources include:

  • Tofugu - I have never used Tofugu so I can neither praise it nor can I speak poorly of it. It is here merely because it is another commonly cited grammar guide for which to study from.
  • Sakubi - This is like Tae Kim's guide but even more dumbed down. Good if you need a lighter explanation of some beginner and beginner-intermediate grammar
  • Japan Asubi - Good if your particular focus is passing JLPT

Day 4

Review your Hiragana and Katakana Anki Decks. Remember to write each character at least once and read it aloud as you review them. This is your life for at least the first week.

You should skim through Chapters 1-6 and then read quickly (but do not skim!) Chapter 7 and Chapter 8.

Do not worry about retaining all of that information! That is not the point of today. The point of today was initial exposure. After all, today we are studying Basic Grammar and not Kanji.

Read Chapter 9. Try to practice reading the Kana you see on the page - but do not worry about the Kanji for now. We will come back to those later. You should continue on to read Chapter 10. This is when you'll start forming your first Japanese sentences.

Use an EN<->JP Dictionary such as Jisho.org to pick a few nouns to practice with. If you are learning to write - write each word in kana form while you practice (do not write kanji just yet). If you are not learning to write do not worry about doing that and instead focus only on the reading of the word you selected.

Find 10 nouns and them form sentences using だ, だった、and ではない.
Example: ねこだ。ねこだった。ねこではない。いぬだ。いぬだった。いぬではない。

You're speaking Japanese! The most basic of Japanese - but Japanese none the less. That's a huge first step from Days 1-3 where you weren't speaking any Japanese at all. Pat yourself on the back. Then read through Chapter 11. Don't worry it might seem like a lot but it's really just introducing to you the different politeness levels of Japanese. Except for the different, polite conjugations introduced there is not a whole lot different from Chapter 10.

Good job on making it through today. Get a good night's rest for tomorrow.

Day 5

Do I need to say it again? Review your Hiragana and Katakana Anki Decks. Remember to write each character at least once and read it aloud as you review them. Yes, even if you feel like you know them by now. You'll review them every day until Day 7 at which point you can rely more on reading as your daily practice instead of Anki.

Read Chapter 12 through Chapter 16. It's a lot! I know.

Remember, while reading these chapters you should be:

  • Read any kana you come across
  • Ignore any kanji for now (we'll get there soon)

You should now be able to form more meaningful, yet still basic, sentences such as 「私の歯は健康です」 or 「 月は綺麗でした」

Or at least you could if you didn't have to keep using Jisho to find your vocabulary! Spend any remaining time you have today reviewing what you've learned in Days 3-5. Then using Jisho as a dictionary try and read the examples from Imabi and come up with a few of your own by substituting words using Jisho to find them (don't worry if you pick "wrong" words for this exercise)

Tomorrow we're going to start building our vocabulary and learning Kanji.

Kanji

Welcome to the rest of your Japanese learning life. You will never stop learning kanji for the next 10+ years. Buckle in and make sure to keep motivated as this is the single hardest part about learning Japanese as a foreigner especially if you are not already living in Japan and getting daily immersion + practice by simply existing. Remember Japanese people spend their entire school lives learning kanji. That is 12 straight years of learning kanji on an almost daily basis while having the benefits of living in Japan and having to read and write Japanese as part of their daily lives. If you are reading this guide you probably lack those benefits. You're studying by yourself in a country that isn't named "Japan". Don't expect to learn what Japanese people learn over a period of 12 years in just a few years although with the right level of dedication - it is quite realistic to cram it all in as little as 3-4 years.

There are 2136 Kanji used for everyday life known as 常用漢字 ("regular-use kanji") that all high school graduates are expected to now. It is a lot. A seemingly insurmountable amount even. But do not worry, it is possible to learn them all! Even if you're still in school yourself or work full-time. Realistically expect this to take 3-5 years if you are not able to dedicate a minimum of 2 hours a day, 7 days a week to studying. Remember that practicing is not necessarily studying. For the purpose of these estimates I am talking studying Japanese and not practicing Japanese. You should be practicing every day as much as you can in whatever ways you can.

  • Learning individual radicals right off the bat is a waste of time. Do that after you've learned 200~300 kanji and can recognize many of the radicals. It is something worth doing! Just not right away.
  • Learn readings as you learn vocabulary. Go ahead and expose yourself to all possible readings when you're first studying but only make an effort to memorize the single reading for the vocabulary word you are learning at the time. This has the benefit of not wasting time or energy learning obscure readings you'll only see used in names or archaic, obsolete vocabulary. If you wish to learn how to read names there's an Anki Deck for that knock yourself out. Although I wouldn't recommend doing so until you can ready 1000~1200 kanji.
  • The order you learn them is ultimately up to you. Some people learn them in the order they get exposed to them in games, manga, anime, etc. Others decide to stick with Grade Order. Others still use "radical optimized" approaches like Kanji Damage. Many people will swear by Heiseig's Remembering The Kanji (RTK) which I personally detest. There is probably not a best way - although I will personally recommend by Kanken level.
  • If you are interested in writing use this deck.

Vocabulary

This is where things get a little tricky. You'll need to be studying vocabulary alongside kanji - and often times the vocabulary you are studying will include kanji that you haven't learned yet. My recommendation is to do both and don't worry about any overlap that happens. You may feel tempted to learn vocabulary through kana or rōmaji readings to avoid double-dipping kanji. Do not fall for that trap; you are only cheating yourself.

Vocabulary is both one of the easiest things to waste your time studying with but also the worst thing to be studying because it isn't "real" progress. This is where a lot of learners fall into traps of "studying every day" but never actually being able to speak the language. Repeat after me: "You cannot speak a language by only knowing words." Let me repeat myself one more time. Vocabulary is a trap. It seems the most important to study but is actually the least important thing to study. Vocabulary should be picked up by practicing and not studying as much as you can help doing so. That doesn't mean don't study vocabulary at all - it only means don't spend 6 hours grinding vocabulary thinking you're making any kind of progress.

I recommend using a "Core6K" Deck or a JLPT Graded Deck if you do not have any media to consume. But the best way to build vocabulary is by building your own Anki decks and using an EN<->JP dictionary to create vocabulary lists for the media you consume daily. This is more effort because it means creating your own Anki decks (Google how this guide isn't here to teach you that). But that effort is worth it because it will make studying more personal.

  • Get the lyrics to songs you like and create Anki Decks out of the vocabulary used in the song
  • Look up words in your books/manga/games and create Anki Decks for those
  • Pick a free children's story from Story Weaver

Don't just use any piece of media. Don't grab a random news article and create a vocabulary deck out of it unless you plan on reading that news article every day as practice. Add vocabulary you'll actually use and can practice daily. Don't just pick any song - pick your favorite songs that you can listen to 50 times a day and never get sick of. Pick reading material that you can read daily and actually practice with. Read the first chapter of your favorite manga RAW in Japanese so many times you can recite it by memory. Not only is this way of learning vocabulary more meaningful - you're more likely to remember the words because you're using them daily in real practice. If you use Core6K or JLPT decks you'll learn random useless words that you never have an opportunity to use in a sentence and so you eventually forget the word. Any time spent forgetting is time you wasted studying. The more things you can study in such a way that forgetting is impossible the more progress you will make because the less time you will be wasting.

Day 6

I bet you almost forgot about the lesson plan. But we're back on track now and it's that time again! Review your Hiragana and Katakana Anki Decks.

Using the Kanken level deck go through the first 80 cards. You can go quickly - read the reading, look at the kanji, try and memorize it, go next. This shouldn't take you more than 40 minutes. "Wait what - are you insane? There is absolutely no way I am going to remember anything from that!" Oh, I know that. I promise you I am not insane. Remember earlier what I said about exposure? This is the first way to show you the magic of exposure. You may not realize it yet - but you are likely to have already learned approximately 5 of those 80 kanji. If you have already have a well-trained memory you may even remember more. Magic is what that is. Your brain is smarter than you are and certainly smarter than it lets you think you are.

Delete your data for those 80 cards and now review just the first 20. 20 kanji/day is my recommended pace and of those 20 I expect you to actually only remember about 8-12/day depending on the difficulty of the kanji you study on any given day. If you go to an accelerate school in Japan you will be expected to learn approximately 10~12 kanji/day for 4 days with day 5 being review (so 40~48 kanji/week). They teach you all of the 常用漢字 in only 1 year. Although you have the actual benefit of living in Japan and using those kanji daily - so do not worry if you go slower.

For each card you should:

  • Read the readings
  • Look carefully at the kanji
  • Write it at least once for the first week any time it appears in your Anki reviews; even if not learning how to write! You'll only ever write the kanji 7~10 times or so and then you never have to write it again but this will make a drastic difference on your ability to memorize them. I promise!
  • Feel free to do actual wrote memorization if you care to actually learn to write but writing is not the goal of many people unless they are planning to move to Japan. My recommended amount is the amount I was given in Japanese school in Tokyo: 30x for each kanji and 50x for any that you know you particularly struggle with.

From now on you should always be reviewing your Anki decks daily and studying 20 (or more) new cards each and every day. There is no upper limit to the number of cards you should study each day as it will increase your exposure to them. Do not get discouraged if you're constantly failing your Anki quizzes - at the pace I am suggesting you go that is normal. You should be failing almost half of the time give or take. If you find this too demotivating then go ahead and slow down. If you can focus on your faster progress and let that faster progress serve as motivation then maintain this pace or go even faster!

Motivation is important for learning. So doing something that kills your motivation is always bad for learning. However I want to instill upon you again that you can most certainly learn, at a minimum, twice as much as you think is your maximum. If you think you can only realistically learn 5 kanji/day - I promise you that you can handle 10. If you think you can realistically learn 10 kanji/day I promise you you can do 20. If you think you can realistically learn 1000 kanji/day you're not actually being realistic. Set yourself a goal you feel is actually realistic. Then double it and do that instead. I promise you this trick works or your money back.

Once you have reviewed your Anki Decks - go back and review Imabi chapters 7 through 16. It's OK to skim read the parts you feel familiar with but be sure to focus otherwise. Depending which Kanji/Vocabulary decks you picked yesterday you may even be able to read some of the kanji this time around! Go ahead and read any kanji you're familiar with (or be a bit extra and use Jisho to help you read them).

The 7th Day

Review your Anki decks - this should be the last day you ever need to review Kana. If you have not learned them by now then you have not been reviewing them daily like I told you to. "But..." yeah no buts. If you feel like you need more time then practice them but do not study them. Go read a children's book (all kana book). Write the vocabulary and kanji you are studying as its 送り仮名 (kana transcription) so instead of 学校 write がっこう and practice reading it back. You should not be using the Anki Decks to study. If you are absolutely struggling and truly feel like you need the Anki Decks still - then fine go ahead. But please take your studying more seriously this time! You should delete your Kana Anki Deck data and start again from Day 1 - including the wrote memorization again.

After reviewing your kana - review your kanji and vocabulary from Day 6 and then study 20 new kanji.

Return to Imabi and read Chapter 17. From now on your goal should be reading at least 1 Chapter/day from Imabi. Every fifth day - review the previous 4 chapters. Once a month, at the end of each month go back and review every chapter that you do not feel you have a solid grasp of. If this is too much to review in one day then let it bleed over to the start of the next month. However do not spend more than 3 consecutive days on review. It can wait until the end of next month to review again if you're still struggling. Don't worry - the grammar rules don't change on you in a month. What is more important is learning more grammar so that you are capable of saying more things. Sometimes learning new grammar will make old grammar "click" and make sense. Avoid getting hung up on reviews and continue marching forward. Constant never-ending review without progress is a learning trap people fall into.

Congratulations. You survived the 7 day bootcamp. You're roughly about 0.5% of the way to Japanese fluency. If you can put up with another 199 weeks of studying at this pace you should be fluent in just under 4 years. If you're studying slower than this pace then expect fluency to take 6-10 years. If you're studying faster than this pace first off - good fucking work! - but also do not expect fluency much sooner than 4 years. You might squeak closer to 3 years or hell maybe even 2 if you're living in Japan and dedicating your entire life to obtaining fluency. 4 years is an impressive amount of time to become fluent in a language. It is not easy and the journey will be tough. Japanese is a tough language and many people will give up before ever obtaining fluency. Stick with it and you will get there - I promise you.

And for purposes of discussion "fluent" means "like an average 16 year old". You will still have a seemingly endless amount of things to learn and that learning those things will take time. There's culture and history to learn and even certain ways you'll need to learn to talk to sound native. You may well be spending the rest of your life chasing that level of fluency. Immerse yourself in as much of Japanese culture as possible. Embrace all aspects of the culture and not only the niche pieces of media that originally inspired you to learn Japanese.

The End

I have to organize my thoughts better in places and decide how I wish to organize all the extra goodies I want to link people to for studying resources, YouTube channels, etc. I typed this entire guide up in one-go sort of free-form from my head with only light amounts of editing here and there. If I repeated myself too much or my train of thought feels off that is why. It will become more polished and less rambly over time.


Extra Resources for Beginners

While I heavily encourage you to find media that you like at your skill level, I recognize that it can help when starting out to have beginner-friendly media to consume and practice with.

Listening Practice

This is the most important form of practice if you actually want to speak Japanese or consume verbal Japanese media like anime, music, and movies.

  • もしもしゆうすけ - Kana JP Subtitles of Yuusuke walking around Tokyo doing everyday mundane things like buying stuff from convenience stores or chatting to himself / his viewers about random topics. A great resource for practicing to read kana quickly and train your ear by comparing what you hear against the subtitles.
  • Speak Japanese Naturally has a similar playlist but with a woman for the speaker. It is good to practice listening to men and women because they have different ways of speaking. I find women easier to understand.
  • WALKS Japan - Same deal as the above but without baked-in English subtitles (you can use YouTube's closed captioning for translations). The sentences are very, very basic and are more to train your ear than to build vocabulary or everyday life skills.

Reading Practice

If you are only interested in manga, visual novels, light novels, and books then you'll want to focus more on reading practice. Reading JP subtitles like the videos from the Listening Practice section also makes for good reading practice. You have to be able to read fast enough to keep up with the subtitles!

  • Tadoku - Many free-to-read children's books. The site can be a bit tricky to navigate but once you get the hang of it it's not an issue. Books are sorted by difficulty - start with the lowest level ('Start') and work your way up. These are good to practice daily to practice kana, basic kanji, and basic grammar. Although the stories themselves aren't terribly interesting (the are children's stories after all!)
  • Huku Musume - Again, you might need a guide to browse the site properly but these stories are a little bit more interesting for people interested in Japanese culture! These stories are primarily fairy tales and folk tales told to children. Everyone in Japan will be familiar with many of these stories. There is a story for every day of the year! So you always have something new to read. I recommend bookmarking the ones you read so you can go back and practice and compare your improvement over time. Record yourself reading one of the stories then visit again in a month and record yourself again. Then compare your two recordings by listening to them back to back to see how you've improved! Huku Musume also has audio readings of the books so you can get listening practice in as well!
  • Reading Japanese Signs - A channel to practice reading signs you'll see everyday in Japan. Both highly practical and quite useful! Most of the signs you will learn will be related to various shops, services, and construction. There are a limited number of kanji you'll be able to practice this way.

Writing Practice

Paper. Lots and lots of paper. While there are some apps that try and teach you how to write I cannot recommend any of them very highly because none of them are "strict" enough and it is hard to get the proper immediate feedback of your strokes. Wrote memorization is your friend here. Write out the kanji 30 times (50 times if you're struggling to remember it) and be sure to follow the proper stroke order. Use a JP dictionary if you're unsure of what the stroke order should be.

You should write every time you do your Anki Deck reviews as part of your studying. For practicing you should create sentences and try to write them out. Or write what you're reading from a manga/visual novel. Or for a real challenge try to write down what someone is saying! You'll have to pause and rewind constantly so I'd recommend video playing software that allows you to create an "A-B Repeat" for playback such as VLC. Download whatever video you are watching locally and play it back in VLC so that you can make use of the "A-B Repeat".

You can get the kanji practice books that you trace over. I would probably even recommend it for beginners until you get accustomed to determining stroke order without the need to look up everything in a dictionary.

Resource dumps

  • Sites like Nihongo e Na link out to tons of resources of various quality. It's a massive collection of resources that people submit and while they do some quality control it can be a bit hit or miss. However it can be useful to find something specific for which you want to practice with.
  • The learnjp Rentry post links out to a number of resources as well. It's basically a less opinionated and far less wordy version of this post. My issue with it is that it is not opinionated (eg. Imabi is the last grammar guide listed)

Avoid At All Costs

Do not use the /r/learnJapanese subreddit under any circumstances. It is moderated by people who legitimately do not want you to learn Japanese. They will ban anyone who actually knows what they are talking about or who posts about passing N1 or have had any amount of success with learning Japanese.

If you use DuoLingo, Memrise, iKnow.jp, or any other kind of Anki-alternative gamified websites beware how much time you sink into them. They can be more convenient than Anki in some ways but can also be less convenient than Anki (eg. in terms of creating your own decks - which I highly recommend for you to do). The issue is with the gamification and that is why Anki is genuinely better than using the sites. If you search around you can find ways to sync your Anki deck between your phone/computer/devices. The extra effort to use Anki instead of relying on one of these websites is worth it.

Learning Traps People Fall Into

Throughout this guide you may have seen me mention a bunch of traps people fall into while learning that prevent them from progression. To make it easier to keep track of these important notes I have collected them (and added some new ones) in no particular order into this section.

  • Do not fall into the trap of "Only Studying, Never Practicing". Practice is a special form of studying and is the only way that you will actually learn the language. Studying can create the illusion of progress, even when you're not really improving.
  • Do not fall into the trap of Reviewing Too Much. Some reviewing is necessary and good but if you're reading the same thing for the 10th time and it still isn't "clicking" skip it and come back to it in the future. It is hindering your progress and progression should always be your primary goal.
  • Do not fall into the Anki trap. Memorizing 10,000 flash cards isn't going to magically make you fluent. If you do fall into a trap, this is the least harmful one.
  • Do not fall into the trap of "I'm too tired today, I'll study more tomorrow." Keep yourself accountable and be sure that "1 day" remains "1 day". You'll be surprised how often 1 day turns to 5 days turns to "I haven't studied all month!" to "I last studied 2 years ago." Studying is a lot like riding a bike. You can stop pedaling for a short time but if you stop for too long you're going to fall off the bike. Getting back into the habit of daily studying can be very difficult to build the motivation for. This is why it's so important to keep studying as fun as you can! The more fun you are having the easier it is to find motivation to study.

Final Words

Feel free to leave feedback on Twitter or DM me.

  • 山田未来
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Pub: 05 Mar 2023 20:49 UTC

Edit: 07 May 2025 16:46 UTC

Views: 408