So I have been in Japan a little over a year and have tried many attempts to do the textbook studying route but I have never been one who can stick to this type of learning style and I frankly find it quite boring. Oddly enough I have picked up on a lot just being in a Japanese environment everyday and it sticks in my long term memory pretty well, but I know that simply immersion isn’t going to help me get better at Japanese. Im around N5 level, so I have at least the foundations/basics of Japanese. I do want to study, but I just want fun ways of studying where I wont lose interest quickly. I feel like people are going to tell me to read manga, watch anime, etc. However, I feel like most anime and manga are better suited for people who have around N3 level or higher of Japanese??? Unless I am wrong but I have attempted this before reading Yotsuba for example, but lost interest very quickly because even Yotsuba felt difficult. I feel like for a beginner jumping into some very difficult content like manga or anime could be pretty overwhelming, especially when vocab is more limited at an N5 level. So I wasnt sure if people had other methods they use to make studying fun at a more beginnner level or if you know of any apps that make studying Japanese really fun for beginners. Especially stuff related to learning retention.
I really do enjoy Japanese and what I have learned so far, but it is just difficult for me to learn in a more traditional way and wanted to hear from people who maybe havent learned in such a traditional way?
13 comments
It’s hard work. Suck it up and hit the books.
The other major learning techniques besides textbooks are drilling flashcards, listen-and-repeat, and of course extensive exposure.
For flashcards you can use anki or memrise (SRS is much more efficient than ordinary flashcards), or even something like duolingo or one of its competitors (those apps are basically gamified flashcard programs).
For listen and repeat, I found Erin’s Challenge really useful,
https://www.erin.jpf.go.jp/en/
You can select kana subtitles by choosing にほんご or kanji with 日本語 for each skit, or read along with the manga, or listen and read the script, etc, etc. (It’s probably best to get through all the basic skits first before tackling the advanced skits and various side content.) Not the most compelling stories ever, but pretty good for educational skits.
Of course, there’s also Rosetta, Pimsleur, etc, if you have money to burn. They get great reviews from people that have used them, they’re just pricey.
Check out also 日本語の森 and Sambon Juku. You may have to pick out just the easier content for now, but the whole studying Japanese in Japanese thing is I think really effective, 20 minutes of listening to Japanese descriptions of a Japanese grammar is just a lot more language exposure than listening to 20 minutes of English with a handful of Japanese sentences sprinkled in.
https://www.youtube.com/@nihongonomori2013
https://www.youtube.com/@sambonjuku
I can recommend the app RoboKana.
I tried pretty much ALL the ways to learn kanji there are out there. From mnemonic driven like wanikani, to just simply repeating them all over again, but I found the most useful is to write them.
I really liked the book „remembering Kanji“ there you also have to write the kanji a lot, but I tend to forget them again. Also I don’t want to carry around a huge book everywhere I go.
With RoboKana it’s the best of both worlds. It combines SRS with writing kanji to remember them. They will also release the N3 kanjis soon, so it will only get better.
Reading manga in Japanese helps a lot with learning slang, it’s helped a lot for me as a non-textbook learner. Sure, the learning process is slower, but it gets the point across.
Something else that’s worked before was putting stickers of the names of objects all over the house in Japanese.
Turning my phone, email, computer entirely in Japanese has helped learning the technology related kanji.
And of course my favourite one is karaoke in Japanese
I was in a similar situation before where I wasn’t motivated to keep up with the textbook curriculum and doing flash cards all day was draining.
And then I stumbled upon [Kanshudo](https://www.kanshudo.com/).
While it still has lessons that feel a bit textbook-like (I think some “textbook” aspect is going to be unavoidable, given that concepts need to be explained and described), it has a wide variety of interactive exercises and games which takes the monotony out of revision and testing. It also has a highly data-driven approach to keeping track of your progress and level which I find very useful. There are metrics to track your “mastery” of Kanji, Grammar and Words (vocabulary).
Give the free tier a try, and if you start to use it often enough that requires the paid subscription, I think you will find it worth every penny. You can also earn study points that give you discounts on the subscription.
Oh, and you do need to continue with media immersion. Find content that you like and interests you specifically (and not blindly follow recommendations from others). There are manga, anime and J-drama/movies that cover just about every subject/genre imaginable and there will be something that surely catches your interest.
Finally, don’t worry that you’re not understanding 90% of the content, as you will still subconsciously pick up stuff. As you learn more and more, when you consume content, your brain will start to identify stuff you just learned. After a few times of “Hey! I know that word!”, it becomes a positive feedback loop which motivates you to want to learn more and consume more content.
Good luck!
It costs money, but I am legitimately addicted to WaniKani. It’s a Kanji learning app with spaced repetition to help you learn Kanji and vocabulary as fast as possible. Most people complete it within 2 years and it covers almost all of the Kanji taught to Japanese children through high school. I think this app in combination with other resources is the funnest and most effective way for me to learn. That said, everyone is different, but if you haven’t tried it yet, give it a go! The first few levels are free.
I really like the “Satori Reader” app – it’s free but only to a certain extent. If you really want to learn well from it, you need the subscription.
I also like NHK’s “Easy Japanese” app.
I’ve mentioned this in previous posts, but I learned in an extremely unconventional manner that I absolutely wouldn’t recommend for other people, but since that’s what you’re looking for, I’ll talk a bit about my own experience. I haven’t touched a textbook in over 10 years, and most of my knowledge came from pure exposure to the language, despite never actually going to Japan until a short visit about a month ago. I think that I did get myself to a general N5 or barely N4 level from study materials at the start, but ever since then I’ve done very little active study, and picked up most of my knowledge from media such as video games, and eventually from getting involved in Japanese online spaces.
I spent the initial few years of my journey playing video games like Pokèmon exclusively in Japanese, and whilst I often skipped a lot of text due to it being extremely overwhelming, there were words that did stick with me such as items on menus and attack names and such. After a few years, probably around the time that I started to find myself more comfortably at around N4 or N3 level, I was watching a lot of Japanese vtubers and livestreamers. Again, there were a lot of things they said that I couldn’t follow, but there were bits I could pick up on, and slowly as I picked up more words, I started to find myself more able to understand what I was listening to.
I think that the gaming livestreams in particular were really helpful because often times, the streamer would be talking about the things I could see them doing, so it can give some context for the words I heard, and really make them stick. For example if they’re saying something like 「あそこのアイテムほしい！ここ登れるの？あ、うまくいった！」 and then I see them climb a wall to pick something up, it just makes it easier to figure out those words due to the context, even if some of the words weren’t ones I knew before. I found that in general, my vocabulary tended to develop with the type of content that I was watching, for example watching streams of racing games meant that I knew a lot of words related to driving, and a shooting game would develop my vocabulary for things like weapons and fighting.
Sometimes I’d pay attention to particular types of phrasing that they’d use and when they’d use them to get a feel for how they came up in natural conversation. I think it was a lot more effective than a textbook, because whilst I could write here and explain that 考えたりする is a conjugation of the verb “think” that means to do the action from time to time, like “I think about this sometimes”, you really get a feel for how and when to use it when you hear people say it themselves.
I also tried to interact with people in these spaces if it were possible. whether it be in the chat of a livestream, or joining a group or server to chat or play games in. At first, I could barely say much more than “hi” or “can I join this game?”, but as I got more comfortable, I found myself able to understand and put together more complex sentences, and I also found that simply having people to talk to meant that I was having conversations on a variety of topics. I would say that for me, having friends to talk to was one of the biggest factors that pushed my development. In particular, the fact that I met many of these people outside of the context of a language-learning space, meant that anything I wanted to communicate with them could *only* be said in Japanese, so it really forced me to get used to putting my thoughts into words.
The only resources I’ve used in the last few years are [Jisho](https://jisho.org/) and [DeepL](https://www.deepl.com/translator), the former just being a very useful dictionary to look up vocabulary that I don’t know, and the latter being a very good translator that does for the most part translate things to somewhat natural sounding Japanese sentences. I often use the translator as a guide for stuff I might be struggling to properly phrase, and one really useful feature of Jisho is that if you look up a word, you can also get it to show you that word used in some sentences, which can really help you get a feel for how to use it, and whether it’s the word you want for your situation.
The general tl;dr is that I learned mostly from immersion in the language, but I do think it’s worth explaining how and why I managed to do that. I really did jump pretty far into the deep end, which is why my methods aren’t something I particularly recommend, but they did work for me, and so I think that if you are looking for a more unconventional way to gain proficiency in the language, it’s worth considering. Just find something that you enjoy doing and try to get familiar with some of the words involved with that activity. Find some friends to do that thing with, because even if the only thing you can say or understand are just a few words, you’ll find that more of them stick just because you can mentally associate those words to a specific action or object. One of my Japanese friends is an absolute beginner at English, but when she plays games with me she’ll sometimes say English words like “survive” or “I kill boss” or “we did it”, which to me shows that she’s making those connections, and I think it’s an amazing start. You mentioned that you live in Japan, so I think it should absolutely be possible for you to meet people to do activities with that you can use to both have fun and learn from.
Having a textbook can be helpful for setting an outline of what you should be learning and when. Doesn’t mean you have to go through it start to finish and use little to nothing else. To be honest I’m not using a textbook at this point in time, mainly for money reasons and because I’ve found resources that are free or inexpensive that seem to cover what I’d be learning from a textbook anyway. I do plan to invest in italki lessons or some other kind of class as I get to N4 level because I feel like progressing from beginner to intermediate and working on speaking skills will require a little more structure and guidance for me.
I disagree with the attitude that “learning isn’t fun, get over it” yeah learning isn’t always fun and sometimes you do just need the self discipline to work through the less fun or more difficult aspects of a new skill. But like, people generally do learn better and are more motivated to study when they’re interested in something and it’s not hard to find ways to do that. I’m having lots of fun learning and don’t need to push myself often to do it (except for when I’m feeling tired or distracted). Especially in the early stages of learning a language I think there’s nothing wrong with keeping things fun and approachable, and for a lot of people relying heavily on a textbook to study might not work with that
What resources I’m using right now to learn:
**Reading**
* [Tadoku Graded Readers](https://learnnatively.com/resources/search/?q=NPO%20Tadoku%20Supporters) – these are extremely basic stories to ease you into reading Japanese and they are free to download. I also recommend Natively for finding stuff to read and getting an idea of whether a book is around your reading level.
* [NihongoBlog](https://www.nihongoschool.co.uk/nihongoblog) – Blog for Japanese learners that has basic, beginner and intermediate versions of each post.
* i follow a lot of Japanese accounts on social media related to my interests. I would consider this separate from my main study routine but still helpful for picking up more casual styles of writing
**YouTube**
* Comprehensible Japanese – I found this channel to be EXTREMELY helpful. I would start with the complete beginner videos. She talks about a variety of everyday topics but she does design the lessons around introducing new phrases, verbs and grammar points (like past tense, negation, possession, comparing and contrasting things, etc). She also has a Patreon tier that’s like $5 a month with more videos and transcripts for practicing reading
* Japanese Immersion with Asami – similar to the above channel, I find the videos cute but a little less engaging personally but still good for comprehensible input
* Nihongo-Learning – also a good comprehensible input source. I like some of the videos he’s come out with recently like building a terrarium
**Apps**
WaniKani – SRS based app for learning kanji and vocabulary. first 3 levels are free and cover a decent amount of content. If you find the radicals + mnemonics system helpful and don’t feel like paying for a plan you can always adapt it to your own flashcard study
Renshuu – free app that covers SRS-based lessons for vocabulary, kanji, and grammar. Has its own lesson center that covers basic grammar points, as well as study sets imported from other popular textbooks.
Anki – I have yet to use this very much but of course most language learning communities will highly recommend this for studying.
**Online Grammar Guides**
Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese
Tofugu’s grammar articles
I started rewatching anime on netflix with japanese subtitles, because I heard that’s better than having subtitles translated. I actually learn new words and phrases and it’s pretty fun despite not understanding that much! ^^
“Learn Japanese! Kanji” app. Even if I get shit on for saying this: duolingo.
I also like to look at lyrics of songs I know and learn from them. Most of them are from Kodomo Anime I watched as a kid so the vocab tends to be simple enough that I can understand them on my own with only some translate and about 1 hour per song.
Have you tried http://www.crystalhuntersmanga.com ? The learning PDFs at the manga’s site make things a little easier to digest. Hope it helps.
Find another learner, practice with them. Do the “With a classmate” exercises textbooks usually have, they’re lame but they serve a purpose. Getting you used to speaking and listening a few simple things at a time, but they add up.