I’ve been trying a lot of websites and apps for Japanese and I’va decided to put some money into my studying. What programs would you guys recommend investing in?

4 comments

1. Satori Reader: This can be really valuable when you’re at the stage where you want to read material in Japanese, but it’s still difficult to find something that’s comprehensible enough. Satori Reader makes it easy to learn from reading Japanese at that stage. But IMHO the difficulty range of their stuff is not so great. If it’s too early there’s going to be too much new vocabulary, and once you’re comfortable with books for the Japanese market to some extent, it’s going to be too easy.

   Bunpro: This one does last the entire journey, but it’s only really good at re-inforcing grammar knowledge you picked up elsewhere. Since it’s not too expensive and lasts a long time I think it’s a good investment.

   Wanikani: This one also can last the entire journey, but a lot of users actually stop somewhere in the middle. If you’re just starting out it’s a good way to learn kanji in context of words with example sentences. IMHO the biggest downside is that you can’t skip items and you can’t really decide your own pace, so if you already know a bunch of kanji, the beginning can be irritating with Wanikani. However what you’re actually paying for is the work they put into making up mnemonics, creating example sentences and audio, and so on. So I think this is also not a bad choice especially if you’re still at a stage where it’s difficult to make the decisions that go into creating such a vocabulary deck yourself (which also makes it difficult to evaluate ones that already exist). One important thing to keep in mind is that Wanikani teaches a lot of vocab, but only vocab that can be used to teach kanji. So you still have to learn a lot of words that are normally only spelled in kana elsewhere (grammar resources like Bunpro help with this but in general you want to use some other SRS for custom vocabulary, Wanikani by itself is not enough).

   Both Bunpro and Satori Reader support syncing your kanji knowledge with Wanikani. I *think* both support furigana based on kanji you know, and Satori Reader can also show words in kana if you don’t know the kanji yet.

   Regarding Drops, the only thing I have to say is that any resource that promises to teach you a language in 5 minutes a day is a scam. That’s not even enough time to maintain a language you already speak. Use apps like this if you just want to feel good about learning a language or just want to claim that you’re learning one, without having to put in any actual work (and without actually learning the language, of course).

2. Japanese language school

3. I have been using Busuu, and comparing it to Memrise or Duolingo , I like it a lot because there is a lot of explanation going on. Grammar and stuff. Also corrections for your excercises come from other users that are native speakers.

   Drops I think it’s cool, but the free version it’s only 5 mins, if you get pro version maybe it’s better.

   Satori Reader, only good if you are already at that level ( I’m not )

   Kanji study app. I think it’s really worth it to unlock it.

4. Invest in regular tutoring sessions.