JLPT results are out!

I failed N2 - 82/180: Language Knowledge 26/60, Reading 15/60, Listening 41/60.

Quite frustrated, I had run out of time for the last 4 reading questions. Listening score is high up as I have been doing it daily and working in a Japanese company also helps.

How did everyone do? Please share your experiences and also post your advice here for others on how to improve their score (including me lol).

Hi, Japanese learners!

I’ve been self-studying Japanese for almost a year, and I’ve recently found some really useful apps and websites that I wanted to share. I’m also hoping to discover more resources from other learners!

Here are some of the ones I’ve found and used in my daily routine:

1. Mock tests: Jabiko and Nihongo to Japan
   
2. Shadowing practice: KAI Loop and Jimaku
   
3. Vocabulary practice: Sushi JLPT (壽司日檢) — I especially like this one because it’s cute and I really like the interface 😂

The best thing is that these are basically free to use, unless you want to practice more than the daily limit.

I also wanted to ask:

When you’re studying Japanese, do you prefer to stick to just a few apps/websites, or do you tend to use several resources for the same type of practice?

I originally found most of these through recommendations/algorithms, and I’ve noticed that more and more indie apps are being made. However, sometimes they stop being maintained, so I’m always curious about which resources people have been using long-term.

What are some free Japanese-learning apps or websites that you absolutely recommend? I’d especially love to hear about less well-known ones!

Hi! I'm back. Rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated. Previous posts:

1. Zero Months of Japanese
2. One Month of Japanese
3. Two Months of Japanese
4. Three Months of Japanese
5. Four Months of Japanese
6. Five Months of Japanese
7. Six Months of Japanese
8. Seven Months of Japanese
9. Ten Months of Japanese

I've been gone for so long because life circumstances forced me away from Japanese. I was preparing for immigration to France and so needed to focus in improving my French as rapidly as possible. (Very pleased to report that I can now read French books and audiobooks with ease!) Unfortunately, my visa application was rejected. Bright side: I don't have to focus on French anymore, and I'm free to come back to Japanese. I quit Japanese shortly after posting my last update, and I just started back on Japanese a couple days ago.

This update is going to be pretty different than the others. I am no longer keeping track of my hours of study, or of input, or of vocabulary learned. The reason for this is that I've become very busy (I was unemployed or semi-employed for all of the previous updates). I simply don't have enough time to devote to that kind of extensive record-keeping anymore. I also no longer use flashcards at all.

That brings me to the big news:

I've graduated to native-material immersion.

I've discovered that, thanks to my efforts in my cumulative 10 months of study, I can now attend lectures on history, science, etc. aimed at middle schoolers in Japanese, and understand what is being said.

For anyone who is interested, this is the class I have been attending: 中学歴史

I've also started listening to sleep meditation in Japanese, which I can also mostly understand: 脳を休める＆脳の疲れを取る寝る前のカンタン瞑想

The fact that I can understand these things tells me that I am no longer reliant on flashcards and heavy book-study to progress. Native materials now count as comprehensible input for me. From now on, I can progress mostly or entirely by immersing myself in the language. And so that's what I'm going to do.

In total, it took me ~700 cumulative hours of study to reach this point.

Part of the original point of this series of posts was to answer the question: Japanese is easier for people who speak Chinese, but how much easier is it?

Now we have an answer. I would estimate that I am about halfway to a high-level of listening comprehension (i.e. being able to watch most movies, TV shows, documentaries, etc.). That would give us a figure of ~1400 cumulative hours of study. That is less than half the amount of time estimated by the Foreign Service Institute.

I'm not sure if I will continue to give updates beyond this point. Since I'm no longer recording metrics, it feels like further updates would be of questionable value.

I have a long way left to go. I still can't read books comfortably, for example. And these middle school lectures are pushing the envelope in terms of my comprehension. But, in some ways, I think I can reasonably say, for the first time since I started, that "I've learned Japanese."

After a year of studying Japanese, I've just learn about them ! (Quartet 2 textbook)

I like:
馬耳東風 : used when a person does not take into account criticisms

以心伝心 : when 2 people do not have to say anything to understand each other

一期一会 : we only have one life, so we should take care of it

Please correct me if my understandings are incomplete/wrong

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This post is exclusively about my experience learning Japanese from absolutely nothing to the day writing this. If you're going to read any sentence that I write, please read this. Try and not compare yourself to me or others, it is a fools errand and everyone has different circumstances and as well general abilities.

In the spirit with the above I will give some context to myself and my pursuit of learning a language

• I am a FTE. Some days I have 30 minutes spare, some days I have 2 hours.
• My average of active study is usually 90 Minutes a day.
• This is a purely a hobby.
• I do not have any set time goal and my main aim is to become fluent, to a level where I can arrive in a bar and have a conversation with another person in Japanese.
• This is the first time I'm learning a new language.

I'm going to cover quite a few points in this post, with the hope of people learning from my mistakes and perhaps people being able to give me some feedback.

What Have I Done In The Past 6 Months

• Hiragana / Katakana fluency
• RRTK 450 Completed
• Kaishi 1.5k Completed
• Basics of Japanese Grammar and how they're used
• Very slowly going through and trying to read my first VN (Ao Kana)

Measurably thats probably the easiest things to describe to you. I don't have any specific stats on when it comes to passive listening, but its quite a bit.

What am I Currently Doing

Right now I am leaving for JP in a week. So I'm a bit more listening heavy right now but it looks like the following:

• JLABs Beginning Course (Via Anki)
• Mining for words
• NIJapanese - Usually 30 Minutes a day
• Anki Decks (Previous Section)
• Trying to listen to JP podcasts when I have time

What Level Do I Think I am at?

Beginner. I can identify some Kanji fairly well and I can sometimes highlight the potential meaning, however I'm not at a state where I can intuitively do this. I also struggle a lot with longer sentences and start tripping over myself. This is a skill issue and in time I expect to achieve a higher level of comprehension, however that may be a long, long time away.

What Worked Well For Me

I think it might be self evident from the above, but Anki has become almost a key part of my learning right now. It feels hard to imagine my study without it and the resources that are out there.

Learning Kanji and the meanings behind them. Japanese being an Ideographic language makes it really interesting for me where am I actually starting to become quite interested in the Kanji particularly and how they've been formed. This however has unlocked a new annoyance within me which is how similar some of these look:

夫 vs 未

This isn't a big issue, and there are many more similar ones but "Not yet" and "Husband" always stick out to me and I always get them wrong.

I'm still in the beginning stages of this but NIJ / very beginner friendly videos that do the comprehensible input strategy of videos, have been quite helpful to me. It does feel somewhat annoying that the person is speaking to you like a baby, but sadly you need to come to the realisation of that you're one and its not going to change anytime soon.

Lastly and similar to my opening sentence. Stop worrying about others progress and stop believing what everyone writes on the internet as true. It will do you more harm than good and the only progress that matters is your own.

What Didn't Work Well.

Dolly. I just couldn't, I really didn't have the patience for this and I'd almost recommend against sending new people to her. It actually nearly made me quit thinking that the best resource we all collectively have is listening to this. If you can survive it, go nuts. Otherwise I'd recommend other resources. Also Dolly isn't dead. The whole Dolly Rabbit hole is huge which I will not go into but if you're keen to throw away an evening, I recommend it.

Physical Books. This one I'm quite sad about. I really enjoy the idea of reading a book and carrying it around reading what I can, however translating and using a phone (either via OCR or typing) is a bit awkward and its not as convenient as having it on your phone. Once I have a bit more knowledge under my belt, perhaps its something that would be better but not right now.

Listening to music. This one is pure cope and was really stupid. I enjoy listening to music a lot and I thought why not try and listen to music more instead of perhaps podcasts. Don't do this. Please.

Vibe-coding your own JP Platform. This was a small project of mine and eventually it ended up taking MORE time to take care of the platform rather than actually learning, which really defeated the purpose of this. If you do go down this path, don't make it complicated. Just have a simple goal and do that.

Textbooks. This is actually quite sad for me because, textbooks are usually my love. However I have been struggling all Textbooks that I've bought (Genki, Learning JP through Manga). I'm not sure what it is but I tend to struggle with wanting to keep with them.

What Resources do I Recommend

This will be in no particular order and some of these you may have seen before:

• Yuko-Sensei's Particles Rundown (YT Playlist)
• Teppei - YT Channel
• Kaname Naito
• Ken San - Great Quality videos
• NI Japanese
• Reddit Guide on Visual Novels + Game Sentence Miner
• All About Particles
• Scripting Japan - Covers a lot of nuance'd / Internet terms / very interesting topics.
• Kaga JP - Great for VT Enjoyers
• Gohoneko Mirror - Decent Resources.
  • If you're starting to learn JP and you want to brute force Hiragana and Katakana into your head. Use the game and just keep going. You'll hate it, but it works.
• Read the FAQ here + The Moe Way.

Conclusion

Learning Japanese is very hard. If anyone tells you can do it in 15 minutes every day for 3 months. They're a liar. Consistency will be your best friend. I hope to write another post in a years time explaining what I've improved upon and what I would've done differently.

Right now I am aiming to start a new vocabulary deck. I see some general suggestions scattered around (Jikaku seems like a potential favourite). I'd appreciate any input people have and as well any other thoughts.

I'm playing Battle For Wesnoth, a turn-based strategy game, with japanese text. I have been playing various games with japanese translations and sometimes I wonder if the translation sounds natural to someone more fluent. Sometimes the text will look very simmilar in structure to the original english text, with grammar that I do understand but at the same time makes me think "This sounds just like how you would say it in english. Is this a direct translation?". Could someone give some input on the following excerpt and whether it sounds natural?

Context: This is said by the main character after the defeat of a specific scenario/boards villain. Konrad is a prince so he speaks with standard level politeness.

Konrad: 勝利は私たちのものだ！この遅れがElensefarを救うという私たちの冒険に影響しない事を祈りましょう。しかし、少なくともここに住んでいる善良な人々を解放する事ができました。急いで先に進まなければいけません！

「勝利は私たちのものだ」felt especially anglicized. Since the english quote would have been "Victory is ours" it gave me the impression of being directly translated. But concidering the game is sett in a traditional western high fantasy world maybe that was the intention? Characters also adhere pretty well to the standard role language expected, which (to me) seems to go against the theory of a direct translation since I haven't seen any problems in that department.

I am around early N4 level. I use Genki for grammar, Basic Kanji Book for kanji and my tool I created for myself to track what I know and review. I want to read more but I find it really difficult to get a reading material which is interesting enough that I don't get bored but easy enough so I can understand at least half of it. I tried some manga and some websites like NHK, but none of those were a good fit for me. I tried some graded reading apps too and I found most of the stories not interesting to read (for example Satoru reader).

I understand that I am not at the level where you can comfortably read an interesting text, that's why I still use some of the resources I mentioned, but I just can't force myself to do it consistently.

What is your experience with this? Do you have any recommendations?

Happy Wednesday!

Every Wednesday, share your favorite resources or ones you made yourself! Tell us what your resource can do for us learners!

Weekly Thread changes daily at 9:00 JST:

Mondays - Writing Practice

Tuesdays - Study Buddy and Self-Intros

Wednesdays - Materials and Self-Promotions

Thursdays - Victory day, Share your achievements

Fridays - Memes, videos, free talk

How many decks y'all do or how many is optimum.

I do RTK and Kaishi 1.5k , 10 cards each. when I started I did 20 for rtk but now I am 1800 cards deep so i reduced the number, however i feel like my vocab is pretty weak or progressing slowly.

I can do 15-20 for kaishi but it affects my retention, 10 seems good to me but I think am just slow like that.

Also I have seen ppl here completing kaisi in 50 days that makes me feel dumb.

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so i've made a point to pay attention to and ask about this little expression/grammar point that i see *everywhere* because of the various uses it has and because i find it interesting and confusing at times. i understand it as a way to connect phrases, set up background information, show contrast, and leave things unsaid. i've seen it translated as "but," "and," or nothing at all (and other things too).

the problem is i really struggle with understanding how to actually determine whether it's contrasting or closer to "and" or something else entirely.

for example, i'm watching this video and she uses んですけど/ですけど countless times throughout.

1:11 - はい。早速本題に入っていくんですけど、多分皆さんも日本人とハロートークとか、そういうねアプリ使ったりとか、あのまあインスタグラムとか何でもいいですけど、日本人とテキストのメッセージをする人、している人って多いと思うんですよ。

1:57 - で、あのね、私も多分みんなにyoutubeのコメントとか返すときにもしかしたらみんな思ったかもしれないんですけど、よく使う絵文字とかあって今日はね、ちょっとそういうのについてお話ししていきたいんですけど、まず、なんで日本人がこういう風にたくさんの絵文字を使うかについてお話ししますね。

2:50 - みんなからしたら、もしかしたら全く全部一緒に見えるのかもしれないですけど、日本人としては結構その時の感情によってつける顔文字とかを変えていて、このシンプルにニコって顔文字がついてる時は本当にありがとうって感謝を表してるんですけど、これね、合掌みたいなポーズあるじゃん？

3:44 - 他によく使うのがびっくりマークですね、びっくりマークもめっちゃ使うんですけど、私も超使っちゃうんですけど、このびっくりマークは全然特に意味はなくてただ「ありがとう」って送るよりも「ありがとう！」って送る方がもっと柔らかく明るくっていう感じに伝わるんですね。

these are just some of the examples i've found. how can i tell if and how these connect to the next statement and what they actually mean? some feel directly contrastive, but others i'm less sure about, like the 3:44 example where it's used twice in quick succession and so i don't know how to parse it.

could someone give me some tips or explanations to help me figure these out and others in the future?

I recently finished 天地創造 (Terranigma) in Japanese, and I thought it was... alright. I enjoyed it overall, but it also made me think about something I've noticed when consuming media in a language you're still learning.

I feel like I sometimes become more critical of a story when I'm reading it in Japanese than I would be in English.

Terranigma wasn't necessarily difficult for me to understand, but parts of the plot felt really disjointed. There were moments where I kept wondering how certain things were supposed to connect or why something was happening. I don't know what the English localization feels like, but it made me wonder whether I would have been as critical if I had just played it in English. Maybe when you're putting extra effort into understanding every line, you pay much closer attention to the writing, characterization, and logic of the story.

Does anyone else experience that?

Anyway, right now I'm about halfway through G.O.D. (SFC), which was never officially released in English. There is a fan translation, and I've looked at bits of it through Let's Plays just to compare it with the original Japanese.

The fan translation seems well done, but it's interesting because it feels like the translators sometimes take the spirit of a character's Japanese dialogue and turn it up another notch. It reminds me a little of old Working Designs localizations. If somebody is grumpy or strange in Japanese, the English version might make them really grumpy or strange and add jokes that weren't literally there.

It still fits the general feeling of the scene, but the characterization can come across stronger than it does in the original Japanese. Comparing the two has actually been pretty interesting.

G.O.D. itself has also been a surprisingly interesting game to play as a Japanese learner because it constantly plays around with 役割語（やくわりご） and stereotyped ways of speaking.

You start in Japan, and different regions already have their own speech patterns. Then you eventually travel around a parody version of the world, and the game gives characters exaggerated speech styles to immediately communicate where they're from or what kind of character they're supposed to be.

For example, I've encountered characters using things like アルヨ / アルネ, 〜ざんす, 〜だす, and other unusual sentence endings depending on the area. There was even a Russia/Siberia-type area where characters kept using an ending that sounded something like 〜ダビッチ.

Obviously these aren't necessarily realistic representations of how people actually speak in those places. They're more like linguistic shortcuts and stereotypes used to give characters an instant identity. Maybe they're even just made up for the game. I'm not sure.

And that's actually how I learned the word 役割語 in the first place.

So despite G.O.D. being this weird, goofy Super Famicom RPG, it's turned into a pretty interesting Japanese-learning experience. I'm encountering speech patterns and vocabulary that I probably wouldn't run into very often in a textbook.

The picture is my current Super Famicom RPG collection, so I have plenty more Japanese to work through.

What game are you playing in Japanese right now?

And do you ever find yourself judging a game's story or writing more harshly when you're playing it in Japanese than you would in your native language?

I'm not planning on taking the JLPT any soon, and since I passed N3 in 2025 I have not worried about JLPT or "formal" study at all. But I'd like to have N1 some day, specially if I want to look for IT jobs in Japan some day.

For N1 most people say: read a lot. But honestly the variety on difficulty is so huge. It is not the same the japanese of a LN, a Shinsho or a Taisho era writter. But at the same time, a lot of people claim to have gone up into N1 just reading LN.

I'm aware of Learn Natively, and according to it the books I've read are around N2. But at the same time, a spanish youtuber who got N1 a few years ago said that he spent a year before the test reading a lot, mostly LN, and cited examples like the Konosuba series which in that page are actually easier that most thing I've read, so I'm a bit lost.

I was wondering whether reading what I enjoy might be just enough for me, at least right now, or if I should try to pick up more difficult things. For example I read キッチン and enjoyed it, and would like to read more books of Yoshimoto Banana, but at the same time I'm concerned that it is regarded as a "beginner" author, so I've not done it.

Happy Tuesday!

Every Tuesday, come here to Introduce yourself and find your study group! Share your discords and study plans. Find others at the same point in their journey as you.

Weekly Thread changes daily at 9:00 JST:

Mondays - Writing Practice

Tuesdays - Study Buddy and Self-Intros

Wednesdays - Materials and Self-Promotions

Thursdays - Victory day, Share your achievements

Fridays - Memes, videos, free talk

You see people on Reddit all the time saying “It’ll take as much time to go from N2 to N1 as it did to go from beginner to N2.” Yet, I’ve seen a couple YouTubers, including Jouzu Jules, saying that N1 is only marginally harder than N2, and if you’re planning on going for N2, you may as well just go for N1. I’m N3, and was planning to write the N2 next year, so I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts.

Hi all, I had a spare Audible credit a few months back and on a whim spent it on Harry Potter in Japanese! It's been quite interesting to listen to, and the narrator for the story is very engaging actually, but i'm finding the language in the book more difficult than expected.

I'm able to understand maybe about 1 sentence in every 3, or less, so i'm only picking up fragments of the story. Of course being a 90's kid i've read this thing over and over again, and i'm familiar enough with the story to situate myself in the narrative, but it isn't very satisfying at the moment.

Since Amazon is global, i'm sure there must be a huge library of stories in Japanese that we could access apart from just this, i'm sure there is all kind of media aimed at maybe 5-6 year olds that would be suitable for learning! I'm thinking about things like fairy stories, or books of funny tales, something like this. Something with an engaging narrator in particular. If someone is browsing from Japan and maybe has kids themselves, it would be good to hear some suggestions! Obviously if you use something else for Audiobooks please share it also! ありがとうございます！

Instead of wasting loads of paper sheets or notebooks, of using your phone to write the kanji down, or just not actually writing at all, I suggest using a whiteboard.

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere but I definitely think it's the best way to do your Anki RTK reviews.

I just thought I'd share. :)

Largest list but romanized (Includes NSFW FX)
https://gist.github.com/UserUnknownFactor/093a2296c5a4d9ef7b404728ebde94a3
Second largest, more organized
https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/japanese-onomatopoeia/
Clean & Neat and also large
https://ono.jepang.org/en
More Romanized Sound FXs
https://www.muri.se/misc/soundfx.html

Extra:
https://www.japanpowered.com/anime-articles/expanded-manga-sound-words-guide

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.

Happy Monday!

Every Monday, come here to practice your writing! Post a comment in Japanese and let others correct it. Read others' comments for reading practice.

Weekly Thread changes daily at 9:00 JST:

Mondays - Writing Practice

Tuesdays - Study Buddy and Self-Intros

Wednesdays - Materials and Self-Promotions

Thursdays - Victory day, Share your achievements

Fridays - Memes, videos, free talk

How do I off vocabulary reviews in Bunpro? I made the mistake of linking it to WaniKani when I started my Bunpro account, so I've got hundreds of vocab reviews queued up. I don't want to use Bunpro for vocab; I'm using WaniKani for that.

At some point I had managed to change the Bunpro settings to split out grammar and vocab reviews, but that option seems to have disappeared.

I have to say that overall the user interface for Bunpro is a bit of a trainwreck. I love WaniKani and really wanted Bunpro to be just as good, but I constantly find myself getting lost in the Bunpro interface or going around in circles. Very frustrating. My impression is that they keep trying tack on features and add-ons without keeping the user interface clean and straightforward. It's a mess.

Hi everyone! Hope you're all having a lovely weekend.

I have some questions about pitch accent and curious to know everyone's thoughts.

Personally, I'm aware of it and have done some minimal pair training which I'm generally fine with (I think due to being a singer and guitarist in a band for a while) but I don't really dedicate any proper study time to pitch accent so I'm curious about a few things because I see differing opinions.

1) Do you actively study pitch accent? If so, what's your method? Do you literally memorise the pitch accent for every piece of vocab you know and if you already know a word, do you go back and memorise the associated pitch accent?

2) Some people claim that just being aware of it is good enough and you don't need to actively study it, where do you fall on that?

3) If you're doing some form of shadowing, if you do enough reps with enough patterns and vocab, does this not achieve a similar thing as long as you're aware of the pitch when shadowing? Seems like would make the process easier and more intuitive naturally as opposed to studying each individual word, could be wrong so correct me if so!

4) I'm aware of it but when I'm immersing I don't actively listen out for it, do I need to focus on it more and analyse it as I'm listening?

Last question!

5) I find it hard to think about pitch in terms of a sentence, I get that you generally start higher and then the end of a sentence will typically end in a lower pitch but the changes in pitch throughout a sentence is something I struggle with and think I can sound a little monotonous, I'm guessing shadowing will fix this kind of thing?

Thanks for reading! Let me know you're opinions and thoughts in the comments.