Some comprehensible input Youtube channels. Beginner-to-intermediate-ish.

Here’s some Youtube channels I’ve come across that post videos in all Japanese that heavily involve gestures, pictures, and simple explanations to help viewers understand the meaning of the content without relying on too much direct translation:

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[Daily Japanese with Naoko](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMNVKIaw8hV8ln3dDE5z-hA) – This is a newer channel with not a ton of content yet, but the quality is superb. There’s hard subtitles with both kanji and furigana, and she provides links to full transcripts. The videos have a very relaxed vibe, with fairly simple sentences, and she’ll even stop at things she thinks may be more difficult and edit in explanations or examples. Pictures and gestures are pretty plentiful.

[Comprehensible Japanese](https://www.youtube.com/c/ComprehensibleJapanese) – This channel has shown up on this sub a lot for good reason. There’s 3 playlists broken down by difficulty. Subjects are varied, and she has fun stuff like “spot the difference” or “guess the animal based on the description”. She does an awesome job on making things comprehensible, often drawing what she’s talking about or using props. She also has a website where you can sign up for additional videos.

[Nihongo Learning](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Xtu6v_op552SsOr5_jWrg) – This channel has a fair variety of video types. There’s specific lesson stuff, vlog-type videos, and videos talking about some class of things (“these are the colors”, “here’s some useful every day items”, etc.). They are great about repeating things, often using the pattern of X, explanations of X, repeat X again.

[Simple Japanese Listening with Meg-めぐ-Smile](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2fAVBdw5_dCArVba3grDzg) – Here’s another newer channel. The videos are heavily inspired by TPRS, and she’s putting up a bunch that are basically stories using lots of pictures and moving the pictures around to try to get the meaning across. Despite being a newer channel, the uploads are coming in pretty regularly, so this channel may end up with a ton of content in the near future.

[Japanese Immersion with Asami](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIciBLpZ6BP2XNYTFXb6eRQ) – Sadly, it seems Asami’s channel is no longer being updated. The playlist of absolute beginner stuff is top notch at demonstrating the basic basics of Japanese in Japanese, which is awesome. Beyond that there are a bunch of playlists where Asami reads a book to a Japanese learner, and they often make up little details about the people in the story. She does a super good job of pantomiming to get ideas across. The pace in these story videos may be a little slow for some, but they make up for that in being super easy to follow.

Honorable mention:

[あかね的日本語教室](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh-GhnQ7qDQmS6Bz3pGc1Mw) – This channel doesn’t quite fit in with the rest, as there’s much less focus on context heavy videos. It has a mix of lesson videos, vlogs, interviews, and miscellaneous other things. The reason I’m including the channel is that among its content, there is some that could belong in the above mentioned channels. For instance many of the videos in the 日本語の単語 playlist involve showing an object or picture of an object and explaining what it is and what it’s for. For people who are more intermediate, there’s a lot of other content that’s really cool showing off different places or explaining interesting stuff.

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I’m not going to comment too much on difficulty overall, since I don’t feel qualified to pinpoint what levels each channel should fall into (and there’s things of varying difficulty within each individual channel). I will say, though, that the absolute beginners playlists on Comprehensible Japanese and Japanese Immersion With Asami are the easiest and probably most suitable for people who are at the absolute beginning. Much of the content there can be understood on day 1 with a little bit of effort.