How to Learn Japanese: From Beginning to N3 (At least)

(Note: I wrote this as an assignment for a class. Please let me know of anything you can think of to maybe make this better, beyond the techniques.)

**How to Learn Japanese: A Guide to get from Beginner to N3**

## Introduction

So, you want to learn Japanese? Good! Whether you want to learn it to live abroad or to enjoy any number of Japanese media in their native tongue, any reason to learn a language is a good reason. However, it can be a grueling process, with 46 Hiragana and Katakana, 2,136 Kanji, and over 10,000 vocab words for you to learn and memorize to achieve fluency. Even harder than that is building the determination to keep learning the language. So many people starting will only learn Hiragana and Katakana and the first handful of Kanji and then lose interest. With my method, however, you *should* be able to push past this beginner’s trap and achieve incredible progress with your Japanese skills in relatively little time.

## Background Information

For the sake of transparency, I think it’s important to let you know where I am in my language-learning process. I am not fluent in Japanese, far from it. I’ve attempted to learn Japanese several dozen times throughout my life. I’ve continually reevaluated my learning methods, lost and regained interest, and restarted from the beginning more times than I can count. My method is born from the non-stop trial and error that I have endured throughout my entire adolescent and early adult life. I began regularly using this method back in May of this year, and with it, I’ve been able to make incredible progress in my Japanese Language skills, going from an N5 to an N4 level in only three months, and I am currently well on my way to be at an N3 level by the end of January.

(For any who don’t know, the Japanese government has a language test called the JLPT, with the lowest level fluency test being the N5 and the highest level being the N1. I use these levels as a sort of study guide. If you’re just starting or you’re simply learning Japanese for the hell of it, I wouldn’t worry too much about these. I will be referring to these tests a few times throughout this post, so I feel it’s important to define them for anyone unaware.)

This guide is not an end-all-be-all for learning Japanese. I am not close to fluency in the slightest, so this guide may not touch on any techniques that are needed for the N1 or N2 if new techniques are even needed for these levels. Either way, this guide should be a good path for at least up to the N3.

Another thing to mention is that my technique can be intense and it is important to find a study schedule that works for you. In all, I study Japanese for around one and a half to two hours every day, which is very intense, but I never do it all at once. I space it all out throughout the day, in roughly 15-minute time fractions. All of the resources I use for study are on smart devices as well as on desktops. Use this fact to your advantage. Use any time waiting as study time whether that is in line, at the train station, or what have you. That time will add up fast, and with it, you’ll be able to study, even with a busy schedule

**So now what?**

That’s a great question. I believe starting to be the hardest part of learning any language. This is the point where you’re going to need to start building these study habits. Unless you’re currently living in Japan or are in desperate need of language skills fast, I would start slow. It’s important to not burn yourself out early on. It takes roughly 21 days to build a habit, so the most important thing at this point is to build this habit.

What I believe to be the biggest beginner’s trap for new learners is Duolingo. I started with Duolingo and kept using it for longer than I wish to admit. I cannot attest to how Duolingo is for other languages, but at least for Japanese, I believe it to be very rough. It loves to throw you in the deep end with little explanation of what anything is or why it is. That may work for other languages, but Japanese is, structurally, a world apart from English. As such, it seems counterintuitive to me to learn without the help of an explanation.

So where should you start then? The answer is Hiragana and Katakana. Before learning any words, you need to be able to read the words. Hiragana and Katakana are the building blocks of the Japanese language. They make up the sounds and characters that are used in the Japanese language. You can think of them as the Japanese equivalent of letters. The nice thing is that Hiragana and Katakana are very similar. Hiragana is used for many set phrases and grammar structures and is the most common thing you’ll see in the Japanese language. There are 46 Hiragana for you to learn, with some extra that are a bit unique.

I can not recommend Tofugu’s guide enough for this. It’s what I initially used to learn them and it gives some great memorization techniques. You can find that guide [here](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/).

Once you’ve finished learning Hiragana and have gotten comfortable reading and writing it, Great! It’s time to do it again! Katakana is very similar to Hiragana, using all of the same sounds, except that it is primarily used for words that originated from other languages. If you were able to learn Hiragana, learning this should be no problem.

Tofugu’s guide for learning Katakana is also incredible. You can find it [here](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-katakana/). However, Tofugu’s guides for Hiragana and Katakana are not great for learning how to physically write Hiragana and Katakana. If you want to learn how to do that, there are several apps on both iOS and Android that can help you with that. I haven’t used any, so there’s none I can recommend, but feel free to look around and find one that works for you.

Now you know Hiragana and Katakana. Great! Now, this is where the fun begins.

**The Grind**

I spend 2 hours studying a day between four things. Vocab, Grammar, Kanji, and Textbooks. The nice thing is that you’re able to learn all of these on smartphones, so you can take your studying wherever you go. Let’s start with Kanji

**Kanji**

Kanji is what many Japanese learners have the most trouble with. Essentially, they are symbols (originating from Chinese) that mean many different words and you can combine them to create new words. Seems simple enough, right? Well, there are 2,136 of them for fluency, all with several different meanings and pronunciations, and if you want to write them, you need to write them in a specific order. Wow.

There are many different ways to learn Kanji, and whatever you prefer all comes down to how you learn best and what you want to prioritize. The first I’ll bring up is the textbook, Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig. I could spend some time writing some details about it, but it’s not something I use super heavily, so instead, I’ll link a video, made by Chris Broad from Abroad in Japan, talking about it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sspUdoV9Il0&ab_channel=AbroadinJapan).

I learn Kanji with an app called Learn Japanese! Kanji Study by Lulilanguages. I like this app because it teaches you all of the kanji from the N5 to the N1 for free, with no ads. It even teaches you how to write the kanji with handwriting practice. So, what’s the catch? Well, there isn’t any… for the most part. The main drawback is that the app is incredibly glitchy. The app has only one developer and they are slow to make updates. For the entire time I’ve used the App, the N1 kanji have had an issue where all of their lessons are duplicated several times over. None of the glitches make the app unusable, but you will need to learn to work around them. The link for Learn Japanese! Kanji Study is [here for Android](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lulilanguages.j5KjAnd&hl=en_US&gl=US) and [here for iOS](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/learn-japanese-kanji/id1078107994)

Another alternative that you can use is WaniKani, made by Tofugu, the same people who made the Hiragana and Katakana guides I linked earlier. I’ve heard a lot of people swear by WaniKani, saying that it is the best tool there is for learning Kanji. I don’t personally use it a lot, because it doesn’t have a way to practice handwriting (as far as I’m aware) and it costs a monthly fee. I’m a college student currently, so money is a bit tight, and if I have a free alternative to anything, that’s what I’m going to go with. I still do use WaniKani however, the only things you get with the membership are lessons and reviews. You can still view all of the Mnemonics they’ve written for free. Whenever I learn a new Kanji, I always look it up on WaniKani to learn its Mnemonic.

**Vocab**

Memrise is the app I use to learn a lot of my vocabulary skills. The difficult part about Memrise is that the quality of what it teaches you depends entirely upon the study deck that you are using. The default Japanese study decks on Memrise are, admittedly, not that great. You’re going to want to use the community-made decks that other users have made. Again, the issue with this is that the quality of your learning depends entirely on the deck you are using. If a deck has numerous mistakes or is structured oddly, then it may take a while to learn what you are wanting to learn. What makes this even more difficult is that, for whatever reason, you can only browse community-made decks on desktop. Once you start learning with a deck, then you can learn on mobile as well, but you need to find it on desktop first. This fact makes Memrise somewhat unpopular for a lot of Japanese learners. However, if you’re able to push past this, then you can learn a lot with Memrise.

I recommend the Eigo Ganbare N5-N1 vocab decks on Memrise. They teach both the meaning of words (with multiple definitions, so you can have a better understanding of what the word is) as well as its reading in both Hiragana and Kanji. [Here](https://app.memrise.com/course/5624880/eigo-ganbare-jlpt-n5-vocab-audio/)’s a link to the N5 vocab deck. I usually spend around 30-40 minutes a day with these decks but find a rate that is comfortable and works for you.

There is another app that many Japanese learners will swear by, and that’s Anki. Anki is a great flashcard app and many people have been able to achieve great results with it. However, I find it ineffective for me, when it comes to learning the N5-N1 words. There are many community decks for Anki, but Anki works best if you are creating the flashcards yourself. Using the community decks creates a lot of trial and error, because the first time you see a flashcard, you will have no idea what’s on the other side. By creating them yourself, you won’t have that issue. That said, If you are studying the N5-N1, the vocab lists for those tests can get quite long, and it can be tedious to create flashcards for 700+ words depending on the test. I do still use Anki, but for something else, which I’ll talk about during the textbook section.

**Grammar**

This is probably the most important part of learning Japanese, in my opinion. If you come across a Kanji or a Word that you don’t know while reading, it’s easy to find out what it means online and add it to a set of flashcards. Grammar doesn’t have that luxury. It is very hard to suss out where a word ends and a grammar point begins in a sentence when you don’t know what the grammar points are. Fortunately, there are many resources for you to learn the grammar of Japanese. During this section, I will only talk about one of these resources, with another resource coming from the textbook section.

It is difficult to create flashcards based on grammar points because you need to know how to use each grammar point in a variety of situations. Unless you are dying to create 20+ flashcards for 600+ grammar points, I wouldn’t use Anki or Memrise for grammar. What I’ve found to be the best app for learning grammar is Bunpro. Bunpro is an app that gives simple, easy-to-read explanations for every grammar point and adds dozens of sentences using them to your review deck. To be frank, I find Bunpro to be perfect. I have had no issues with it. It is incredibly intuitive and easy to use, offers great ways to pace your learning to fit your needs, it can even teach grammar in the same order your textbook would. The only issue you may find with it is that it does cost a monthly fee. However, it gives you a month for free (without needing to put in CC details) and it’s only 5 dollars a month. That’s a small price to pay for how much it will level up your Japanese.

**Textbooks**

Finally, Textbooks are probably the most self-explanatory. All you need to do is spend just 20-30 minutes before bed reading a textbook. Most textbooks are made for classroom settings, so there may be some activities within the textbooks that are meant for groups, but it is easy to edit them to fit your needs. All you need to do is create flashcards for these vocab lists in Anki and stay on top of reviewing those flashcards before reading your textbook. These are the textbooks that I recommend.

N5 – Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese I

N4 – Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese II

N3 – Quartet: Intermediate Japanese Across the Four Language Skills I

N2 – Quartet: Intermediate Japanese Across the Four Language Skills II

N1 – I don’t know yet. I haven’t gotten that far yet. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

The reason I recommend these textbooks, in particular, is because they all have guided study videos made by the youtube channel [Tokini Andy](https://www.youtube.com/@ToKiniAndy). I make sure to watch these videos alongside reading the textbook. They help elucidate some of the more confusing parts of the textbook and even go over some of the things the textbooks get wrong.

**Small things**

I’ll close this off by going over some small things that you can do to help your Japanese Skills.

If you are an avid consumer of Japanese media, once you get to a certain point in your Japanese learning journey, try your hand at enjoying that media in Japanese only. It will be difficult, and you’re going to want to have a dictionary by your side, but getting some experience seeing your knowledge being used in fiction will help that learning stay in your mind.

You are going to want to try sharpening your conversational Japanese skills. This will largely depend on what resources are available around you. If you live in a big city, there are likely Japanese language meetups around. Even if you don’t have anything to contribute to the conversation, just listening to native speakers can be a valuable experience. If you are a student and your school has a Japanese language program, try speaking with some of the Japanese professors. I don’t think it’s necessary to take any Japanese courses, considering you can get all that knowledge for much cheaper online, but you can probably still receive tutoring sessions from some of the students and faculty in the department. If neither of those is an option, you can find online meetups for Japanese learners on [M](http://meetup.com/)[eetup.com](https://www.meetup.com/). If you have a disposable income, you can also find tutors on [Italki.com](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.italki.app&hl=en_US&gl=US). I don’t like using Italki, just because I’m a college student and money is very tight. Admittedly, sharpening my Japanese conversational skills is something I have a lot of trouble with, especially because I have a very busy schedule. Still, it’s important to make some time to improve your conversational skills.

There are many videos on Youtube that deal with Japanese learning. I’ve already mentioned Tokini Andy, but there is also [Japanese Ammo with Misa](https://www.youtube.com/@JapaneseAmmowithMisa) and [Dogen](https://www.youtube.com/@Dogen). They all specialize in very different things, with Dogen being especially great for learning pitch accent. Many more Japanese learning channels exist, so feel free to search for one that works for your needs.

With that, we have reached the end. I hope this has proved somewhat useful, or at the very least was interesting. Japanese learning is something I spend a lot of time doing, and it’s something I am truly passionate about. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know. I’ll try to edit this post as needed to include some information I may have forgotten or if I find anything I find to be important. I hope you all have a good day and happy holidays.