To anybody who doesn’t know about Tofugu, please consider using it as your resource for learning Japanese. Their articles are well-researched, super detailed (check out [https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/japanese-counters-list/](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/japanese-counters-list/) for example), and they don’t just provide you with the rules of grammar, but also the historical evolution behind it as well, which was not only a joy to read but also helped me a lot in understanding Japanese language and culture.
Besides, the website is beautifully and thoughtfully designed and very easy to use. You can tell they really put their heart into making this. This is by far the best resource I’ve come upon, better than any textbook, video, or app that I have used.
And you know what? When I got so impressed with them that I decided to write a thank you email to them, I actually heard back from them within 1 or 2 days. And it wasn’t just a bot response, either. One of their employees actually took the time and wrote a very sincere email thanking my message and saying something like it’s a team effort.
I’m just very happy companies like this still exist.
15 comments
Also consider adding http://imabi.net to your repertoire
Hi Koichi, nice alt acc.
Their website Wanikani.com has been the number 1 reason I stuck to learning Japanese. The way they teach kanji just kinda clicks for me, and after all 60 levels I can read just about anything now.
great website! a couple of yers has passed since the last time I checked it
I love Tofugu. Their hiragana and katakana learning guides are the best I’ve ever seen (it’s what I used), and both their language and culture articles are very well written. It’s obvious they really care about what they’re doing.
They also run Wanikani. I’ve tried it before and it isn’t my favorite (I’m now using Kanji Garden), but it’s still pretty damn good.
I legit (re)started my journey on learning Japanese and that site is a goldmine of info. Specially with its detailed collections of reference materials and imo a very good outline on how to start from knowing nothing at all
Related to Togufu, WaniKani is great. I wish they had something similar for learning grammar.
Their guides to learning kana are the ones I used, and I stand by them to this day.
Is it a pay service?
I learned Hiragana and Katakana from Tofugu back in 2018 when I was on my trip to Japan. After that I signed up for WaniKani and did that off and on for years. Definitely love their work!
Probably the best guide to learning Kana I’ve seen around, its free, simple, and really all you need.
This is the site that helped me learn kana. I was so overwhelmed when I first started reasearching japanese. I didn’t even understand that there were more than one alphabet. Tofogu saved me so much time and patience. Love their stuff.
cool
I’ve been working through [https://www.tofugu.com/learn-japanese/](https://www.tofugu.com/learn-japanese/) and it gives you small, actionable and easily understandable steps to motivate you on your learning Japanese journey. Really effective way to start internalizing Hiragana, Kanji, and Katakana. Results start coming very quickly and the other resources they provide help you progress in small simple steps every day. And when you need the deep dives, they provide guidance and resources there as well. Unbelieve information and they’re just so in love with people wanting to learn Japanese that it’s free. Remarkable resource.
No offense intended to the OP, but…
I mean, Tofugu seems to be an excellent site as far as online resources go (I link it from time to time because its grammatical explanations are quite solid), but are three paragraphs heaping gushing praise on a site that is already quite well-known and popular among the language learning community really worth 700 upvotes?
Maybe next time instead of taking hours to select/transcribe/provide context for a reading passage from Japanese literature and following up answering everyone’s questions, I’ll just do a post saying “IMABI IMABI IMABI…AWESOME Japanese resource” or something and watch the karma come flooding in.