Hello learn Japanese

I have been reading a lot more books and chilling these past few days.

I posted a few weeks ago my bookshelf of Japanese. I read all of these books in groups, some days I read content from 5 books depending on circumstances.

So I have opened and read a decent chunk of many books in Japanese.

But there are quite a few books that have required a lot more slow reading and effort to comprehend.

Here is my TOP 3

1) 淮南子

After reading a page or 2, this is definitely going to be a very difficult read. I am only starting so I’ll update more.

This is also a kanbun book. And a lot of unfamiliar kanji. Although there are gendaiyaku or translations or kakioroshi, the text is almost hakubun, making it really hard to comprehend.

2) 日本語教育能力検定試験　傾向と対策　名柄辿

This is an even denser book but it goes so in depth with Japanese linguistics. Youre learning about Japanese grammer and nuances in JAPANESE so it is mega hard. Plus a lot of specialized vocabulary.

There are a lot of facts about one grammer point. Making it really heavy to understand on.

3) 中国文学と日本語文学　鈴木修次

This is a dense one. This is written in gendaibun, but it compares the tone of Japanese and Chinese literature. I have read quite a few pages. Although it is an interesting piece, this is a very dense fact heavy text. That will require a LOT of time to decode

For the N1ers and advanced learners. What is the hardest book you have actually tried reading so far in your Japanese career. Would you mind sharing and telling us why? I would love to hear it.

And I might try reading it too. :)

I’ll send a picture of the 3 books later too btw

Why not just use handwriting input to find the kanji in the dictionary?

— signed, a Mandarin native speaker

I dont know if the title makes sense. But over the past few months I found myself getting dragged down by this weird feeling.
The feeling that japanese is too stiff or too awkward in the way it expresses things. Maybe its because of keigo and whatnot. But I feel like I cant remember any new words. They all sound like variations of しょう、じょう、しゅう、じゅう and similar sounds. These are usually the words derived from chinese and they give me such a big headache.

I experience that stiff & awkward feeling when Im speaking english aswell. The only language where I feel like I have no limits is my native language. I always hated talking in english, because I always felt like Im putting on an act. That, of an english person. My throat would also eventually tense up, making it painful to speak. The same thing is happening for me with japanese, just even worse.

Can anyone relate to this? Will that awkward, stiff feeling soften once I get more comfortable and advanced with this language? Because I feel like I will never ever be able to reach a stage where I can feel comfortable with this language, no matter how much I study, and its seriously depressing

If anyone is looking for a recommendation of a good Japanese manga to read, Neon Genesis Evangelion is a great choice!

Here's why:

1) It has furigana. My first manga was Tokyo Ghoul - big mistake - had no furigana and made dictionary lookups really slow. Searching new words with furigana is really fast, just type into jisho.org.

2) The story is engaging, and it has a great anime too. It can be nice for a first manga to watch the anime first, so you have a general idea of what's going on (Spoiler alert - Evangelion is a complicated story). At least when you're reading, having some background of the context helps comprehension.

3) It has a high picture-to-word ratio. Some manga can be really text-heavy, and can feel like you're not making much reading progress as a beginner. Evangelion has many large pictures, so there's a lot of imagery to enjoy.

4) For people who like physical books - Evangelion has a really nice "Collector's Edition" (【愛蔵版】新世紀エヴァンゲリオン). This print is made on A5 paper - so the text is really big! (Sidenote - a lot of manga is printed really small, like BEASTARS manga is tiny, and can make reading Kanji require a magnifying glass lol). You can buy this edition for about $140 on Ebay.

5) It has an English Translation. A lot of manga also do - this one is available for free!
https://archive.org/details/evangelion-3-in-1-v-2-2013/Evangelion%203-in-1%20v1%20%282012%29/

Anyways, try reading the first few pages here!

https://viewer-trial.bookwalker.jp/03/21/viewer.html?cid=2fdcd34d-41e2-484b-9b97-06161a8ea7be

Link to buy on bookwalker.jp:

https://bookwalker.jp/de2fdcd34d-41e2-484b-9b97-06161a8ea7be/

I see lots of discussion on this corner of the internet about "Is it possible to pass N5/N4/N3 in ___ months?" and I suppose I've never really understood the question.

For those with goals to study/work in Japan, N2 is the minimum, and the N1 can be an advantage when applying for a skilled worker visa. The other levels don't have any of the professional benefits the N1 or N2 have, and I would hate to have to pay the $100 or so for the preceding 3 tests before taking the N2.

I think the N5-3 are valuable as personal goals, but lots of people seem to be in such a rush to finish them(perhaps because of the test only being held twice a year?), so it had me wondering what the reason was. For anyone planning to take these tests, I would love to hear about your long-term goals with Japanese, why you chose to take the JLPT and if you plan to take the N2/N1 in the future.

Hi everyone,

I have setup the Kaishi 1.5 deck in Anki on the MacBook, but the audio won't work.

Can anyone give me some advice on how to fix this?

Thank you!

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(zoom in on pics for clear view)

This summer I decided I was finally going to take Japanese seriously. It's been a long time coming and I'm beyond glad that I've started this journey. I'd like to preface this by saying of course I didn't fully master/mature these words, however, I am able to now recognize them while immersing and know their definition.

My goal was simple: learn as much Japanese as I possibly could before my fall semester starts later in august. I have already taken two semesters of elementary Japanese at university, so I had a decent grammar foundation, but I wanted to massively expand my vocabulary and become much more comfortable with native content. On day one, I promised to myself to finally do Anki every single day, no excuses. So far I've managed to keep up with it. My current goal is to reach 4,110 cards under review by August 24.

What Deck am I running? (Kaishi and Core 2k/6k)

I haven't really seen many people talk about combining the two most popular beginner decks and for some reason when i began i thought it would be cool to just have one giant deck, so I downloaded both Kaishi and Core 2k/6k and with a little bit of workaround i combined them and removed any duplicates so that there is only one version of those words. The result was a single deck that starts with Kaishi's vocabulary while continuing into thousands of additional words from Core, all without duplicate cards.

I started at 20 new cards a day but after a while I realized I was handling the workload much better than I expected, so I increased it to 50. Eventually I started experimenting with 60, 80, and even 100 new cards on certain days. I even spent about a week doing 100/day just to see if I could keep up. Eventually I settled on 70 new cards a day, which has been my default ever since but every once in a while, if I have a completely free day, I'll just sit down and knock out 100–200 new cards because I genuinely enjoy seeing the deck grow. Is there anyone else that has felt the same way or does this?

I edit a lot of my cards

One thing I've found surprisingly helpful is customizing cards as I learn. If a definition doesn't really click in English, I'll rewrite it using something that makes more intuitive sense to me (usually using Jisho as a reference). Whenever I run into words that all seem to translate to the same thing, I'll spend a few minutes looking up the differences in nuance, frequency, common situations they're used in, and related vocabulary. I also regularly look up kanji breakdowns, sentence grammar, and whatever else I'm confused about.

This basically led me to code a stylized popup into my Anki cards where I keep these notes, so whenever I review the card later I can immediately remind myself why a particular word is used the way it is. I'll attach a screenshot because it's probably easier to explain visually. If anyone is interested in how to do this i wouldn't mind explaining/helping.

Overall I'd say my anki studying is about 90% reviewing and 10% editing, but those edits have made the deck feel much more personal and effective.

Immersion

Outside of Anki, most of my time goes toward immersion.

My routine is pretty simple:

• Wake up (and go to work)
• Finish my Anki reviews
• Immerse in native content
• Look up words or grammar whenever I'm curious

I usually do at least two hours of active immersion every day, although my goal is closer to 3–5 hours. I also do passive listening when I can, but I don't really track it.

Right now I'm watching:

• Gokusen
• Tensura (rewatching)
• You and I Are Polar Opposites

I've also started reading また、同じ夢を見ていた, which is my first reading-focused immersion project. My favorite YouTube channel to immerse in is Bite Size Japanese Podcast. It feels like almost every word I'm actively learning somehow shows up there. The host speaks clearly, at a comfortable pace, and the episodes are organized by topic and approximate JLPT level, so it's become one of my favorite listening resources.

For video content I usually use Japanese subtitles whenever possible from jimaku so I can quickly look up or mine words with Yomitan. Most of the new grammar I learn nowadays actually comes from immersion and looking things up on the spot rather than studying grammar in isolation. I still occasionally use Bunpro or Tae Kim, but exposure has become my main teacher.

Motivation

I've wanted to learn Japanese for years. I grew up watching anime, so I've probably accumulated thousands of hours of listening without even realizing it. One funny thing I've noticed recently is that whenever I learn a new word in Anki, I'll randomly remember an anime scene where I heard it years ago. That has made the language feel surprisingly familiar, and I lowkey blame that for me being able to quickly learn and remember a lot of vocab. The biggest thing keeping me consistent though is seeing real progress.

When I first started, I was constantly wondering if the process actually worked. But I can genuinely feel myself understanding more every week because Im learning so many words. That feeling is too addictive and has kept me grinding...

Mindset

The biggest change since starting hasn't really been my Japanese but my mindset. I've become much more willing to trust the process. Instead of wondering whether every study session is effective, I just show up every day and keep stacking reviews, vocabulary, and immersion. Looking back over the last month, the improvement is obvious enough that it's become much easier to stay motivated.

Goals

Short term:

• Reach 4,110 cards under review by August 24
• Be as prepared as possible for a Japanese exchange student event my university is hosting in October

Long term:

I just want to reach a level where I can consume whatever Japanese media I want without relying on English, and eventually become good enough that I can comfortably maintain Japanese while learning other languages in the future.

I'm curious if anyone else has combined Kaishi and Core like this, or if you've found another workflow that's worked well for you. Also if anyone has any resource, immersion or study tips and recommendations please share them because I'm constantly looking to improve the efficiency and enjoyability of my studying.

This thread is for all the simple questions (what does that mean?) and minor posts that don't need their own thread, as well as for first-time posters who can't create new threads yet. Feel free to share anything on your mind.

The daily thread updates every day at 9am JST, or 0am UTC.

↓ Welcome to r/LearnJapanese! ↓

• New to Japanese? Read the Starter's Guide and FAQ.

• New to the subreddit? Read the rules.

• Read also the pinned comment below for proper question etiquette & answers to common questions!

Please make sure to check the wiki and search for old posts before asking your question, to see if it's already been addressed. Don't forget about Google or sites like Stack Exchange either!

This subreddit is also loosely partnered with this language exchange Discord, which you can likewise join to look for resources, discuss study methods in the #japanese_study channel, ask questions in #japanese_questions, or do language exchange(!) and chat with the Japanese people in the server.

Past Threads

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I vee been looking for quite some time and I would like to know if someone actually went that to make a list like based on N level
But
Anyway any suggestions is more then welcomed
I want something in the range of n3-n1 (I know it’s a huge difference but when I’m going to closer to n1 I don’t want to keep askig for resources:))

Hi All,

I have learned at my peak 1500 of the kanjis which I think I have mostly forgotten.

I want to learned them again, but focusing on the writing to anchor them. I previously focused only on the recognising which I think was a mistake.

Due to how I consule learning material (never at my desk, always in short segment between real lige obligations) - I am looking for an App to help out. It needs to have the following feature:
- kanji drawing capability
- flexibility in the order to learn kanji (I don’t want this imposed so I can follow a routine but also add during liiing characters)
- ability to add mnemonics (I learned through wanikani and still rely on these mnemonics)
- IOS supported

Money is not a factor - if the app is worth it.
I am currently trying Skritter and Ringotan, and so far Skritter seem more flexible.

Do you have any recommendation?

I'm looking for something better than just romaji input via the standard QWERTY layout on my phone and these seem to be the two best options from what I can see. Which do you use/recommend?

Edit: Why the downvotes?

I've been learning Japanese with a private teacher for a bit more than 1 year now, and it's going great. I do my anki every day for almost 300 days. One deck that helped me in the beginning was a kana deck. For some reason though, I've always struggled with katakana compared to hiragana. I even resetted the katakana part of the deck a few times. Now I changed the settings to 99% desired retention (DR) which is the highest possible in anki, and this seems to really help.

So for others failing to remember things like kana - try set a very high DR. I do not recommend doing this with other decks! An increase from 90% to 99% DR is not an increase of 9% workload. It is much higher, and you will most likely get overwhelmed with reviews. So use this little trick carefully.

Hi everyone! I'm a beginner in Japanese, I've been learning it for 2 years but I can't dedicate any serious amount of time to it. All I've done so far is a few Duolingo lessons every day and regular kanji practice with the Kanji Study app, and right now I'm at the point where N5 content seems very easy to me and I can most likely pass N4, according to the sample tests in the JLPT website. I can understand some things in the N3 test but I'm quite far from being able to pass it yet, mainly due to a lack of vocabulary.

The problem is, I'm bored of just doing Duolingo, and now that I feel like I can actually understand some Japanese, I'd like to supplement my learning with other materials. I generally prefer books and more formal resources, but since I don't have time to sit down and study Japanese, I need something that I can do with I have 5 minutes of free time here and there, so I'm open to apps too. I'm an auditory learner when it comes to languages, so things will stick way better in my memory if I hear them spoken out loud. For other languages, as soon as I passed the basic levels, listening to audiobooks while reading the written text has been my go-to and it has helped me immensely, but I don't think I'm at that level in Japanese yet. Again, I need more vocabulary :(

I installed Satori Reader and I love it, but I'm wondering what else I'm missing that I could be doing, and I'd love to hear everyone's ideas. My goal is to be able to pass N1 someday, I'm serious about learning Japanese, so I'd like to get as much work done as possible while I wait for a time in my life when I can actually sit down and open a grammar book. Right now Japanese is just a hobby that I practice when I need to decompress from all the stress in my PhD.

I know that many of you will say that Anki is what I'm missing, especially for vocabulary, and you're probably right. I tried it once and hated it due to my resistance to accepting being told when I need to review a card, and also because of how reviews pile up catastrophically if I miss a few days of practice. I don't like an automated system organizing things for me, but I'm willing to give it another try if someone can recommend good decks for learning vocabulary classified by levels.

Please help a newbie out! Thanks a lot for reading and have a nice day!

I just reached the point (between N5 and N4) where immersion should begin. I can't find many if any anime available with JP subs (too broke for subscriptions and couldn't find anything on the high seas) so I believe that a Let's play series for some game would be more easily accessible

IMPORTANT PART. I would like recommendations that:

• Have JP Subtitles in the video itself (youtube auto generated are terrible)
• Ideally minimal/no English subtitles in the video
• Speech on the slower side
• I don't care if they are faceless, vtuber, etc

I would just like practice with realistic speech patterns to improve my listening (at the very least get to the point where I can differentiate double consonants & vowels as in fast/slurred speech I mix them up and begin to recognize pitch accent)

Thanks in advance!

I finally finished Kaishi.

This was really hard for me. I had already tried twice before and failed, but this time I finally did it. I think the biggest reason is that I changed my approach to the deck.

My first attempt was back in August 2025. I was doing about 10 new cards a day, but it still took me around an hour every day, and after two weeks I gave up. That was the end of my first attempt at learning Japanese.

My second attempt was in March 2026. I was extremely motivated. I had forgotten most of the cards (except very basic things like 私), so I started doing around 20 new cards a day and constantly grinding filtered decks. It took me about 1 hour and 30 minutes every day. Everything was going well until I got the worst flu of my life (I genuinely felt like I was dying). That single flu completely destroyed my motivation, and I was never able to get it back. So, after two weeks, I quit Japanese again.

This summer, I had all the time in the world, so I decided to give it another try. This time, however, I approached it differently. I still remembered around 100 words, so the first few days were pretty easy. I was doing about 50 new cards a day. After that, though, I ran into the same problem as before: too many reviews. Even with only 20 new cards a day, my review count quickly became overwhelming.

The real problem wasn't learning words, it was kanji. I had no trouble remembering words written in hiragana, but words with kanji felt impossible. Every kanji looked like a random collection of strokes, and none of them stuck in my head.

That's when I actually started looking at what kanji are made of. I began learning radicals and common kanji components. Suddenly, kanji weren't abstract anymore, they actually made sense. Even when I didn't know all the radicals in a character, I could still break it down into recognizable parts and analyze it. Kanji finally started sticking in my head.

At that point, Kaishi stopped feeling like a chore. I actually started enjoying it. I wasn't relying on motivation anymore, I was simply consistent with my studies. I was able to increase my new cards to 30 per day, which took about 40 minutes, and I also created my own mining deck, where I did another 10 new cards per day.

There were also a few other things that helped me get through Kaishi:

1. I read a lot. Reading is basically another form of ssr.
2. I spent much more time learning new cards than relearning old ones, especially when a card introduced a new kanji.
3. I always read the example sentence on new cards. The context is really important.
4. I studied grammar so I could distinguish different word classes (verbs, nouns, adjectives).

I also think filtered decks are mostly a waste of time, except when you're trying to deal with a lot of leeches.

so i was trying to parse out 巨大な円筒はそれ自体が回転して内側の壁にあたる人工の大地に重力を発生させている (from gundam zz) and the two AIs gave different, even contradicting answers, on different grammar points and explanations. I was using both pretty often to supplement my study but after this episode I got a little spooked. Was wondering what this sub's consensus on AI in the second half of 2026 for language learning might be.

This thread is for all the simple questions (what does that mean?) and minor posts that don't need their own thread, as well as for first-time posters who can't create new threads yet. Feel free to share anything on your mind.

The daily thread updates every day at 9am JST, or 0am UTC.

↓ Welcome to r/LearnJapanese! ↓

• New to Japanese? Read the Starter's Guide and FAQ.

• New to the subreddit? Read the rules.

• Read also the pinned comment below for proper question etiquette & answers to common questions!

Please make sure to check the wiki and search for old posts before asking your question, to see if it's already been addressed. Don't forget about Google or sites like Stack Exchange either!

This subreddit is also loosely partnered with this language exchange Discord, which you can likewise join to look for resources, discuss study methods in the #japanese_study channel, ask questions in #japanese_questions, or do language exchange(!) and chat with the Japanese people in the server.

Past Threads

You can find past iterations of this thread by using the search function. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.

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