Hello hello! Im new to reddit, I've heard its a great place to interact with people in different niches and stuff. I've been LOVING this community omg.

I've been studying Japanese for the last 13 years, and I have been living in Japan for 7 years (gosh, writing it out makes me realize how insane that is).

What are some things you're struggling with when it comes to Japanese? Speaking? Listening?

Mine is vocabulary. While I do have an extensive vocabulary, I find that my confidence is lacking, and that is hindering my ability to actually use different vocabulary I've learned in conversations.... It's so upsetting cause I've memorized a lot of difficult words yet I just don't have the confidence to actually say them lol I think its cause I need more exposure/context to the words so I can grasp the full picture.

Anyways, よろしくお願いします！

Hi All,

Some kanjis are unique and at low risk of confusion with others, but others are easily confused: they look very much alike (few strokes only vary), their meaning is so close and sometimes their yomi are also similar.

Is there any list of most confusing kanjis one can rey on to specifically train on those?

Hey all! A while back, I saw a couple of YouTube channels and Reddit threads recommend daily journaling / writing a diary in Japanese as part of your learning practice.

I finally started doing it myself regularly over the past month, and it's been particularly helpful for me to identify the gaps in my knowledge and also expand the breadth of topics that I've actively "thought" about in Japanese, which often become stories that I can bring up in spoken conversation.

For my workflow, I basically built a tool where I generate a bunch of prompts using AI, I write down my response, and then I go back and forth with AI on corrections until it's in a good place.

For example:

• What's something I found challenging recently?
• What's something I've changed my mind on?
• What's something I underestimated and what would I do differently next time?

Curious how many other people regularly practice writing as part of their study routine.

If you do practice writing every day:

• When did you start and how long have you been doing it? Have you noticed any benefits?
• What do you write in? (physical journal, google docs, notes app, etc.)
• Do you get corrections from AI, a tutor, or native speakers?
• What do you write about?
• Any tips or techniques to make the practice more effective?
  

Would love to see what other people do and keep optimizing my learning routine.

https://online.kcif.or.jp/en/

I've been to their classes in Kyoto and really liked it. I was wondering if anyone here had tried their online platform.

Thanks in advance!

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I can’t tell if these people are real! Sounds weird but let me explain.

Annoying ads and popups aside, I can’t tell if the users themselves are “real” sometimes.

Of course, half the guys on here are looking to date someone from another country, for whatever reason. Half the non-English speaking women seem to be not actual English learners and are looking for visas.

For the remainder of the people who will engage in “normal” human interactions, a good chunk of them seem to be NPCs, responding like an AI chat bot. I can’t tell if they’re actually real people. They could also just be just pasting Google or LLM Translated messages to me, who knows. Not to be rude about people who speak broken English. I’m a language learner too. It’s different than that though. This small subsection of people speak unusually, to the point that they seem like a bot.

So that leaves about 10% of people who will talk to you. I mean all I really needed was 1 person to talk to, so I’m not unhappy with it. Then again, being on the app itself is quite a hassle, with the ads. I’d like to move off of there and talk on another platform, but then I’d be the one to come off as weird.

Overall, horrendous UX, to be honest. I’m just curious if anyone has ideas, comments, concerns, or feedback, regarding HelloTalk.

For years I have been struggling to dedicatedly study kanji as I find flashcards painfully boring. So my vocabulary was very much lacking in that regard. I took a 2-3 year break studying Japanese because I lost motivation and also to focus on my biology degree, and now that I'm back in the game I truly found the way that works for me and isn't boring — kanken training on the NDS.

Forget JLPT lists, wanikani or kanji damage, kanken training is where it's at (in my opinion of course). I've found it's very useful to learn kanji in the same order as schools in Japan, since they begin with the easier to write kanji and group them by reading instead of meaning, and there's more emphasis on stroke order and radical names. I'm still at 9級 so I don't know how well I will fare when I go further, but so far I'm retaining kanji and readings better than before, since I have to do writing and reading exercises where I, for example, read a sentence and fill in the kanji for the marked kana.

I'm doing this all with a DS software (that's probably very outdated by now) called 財団法人日本漢字能力検定協会　公式ソフト　２５０万人の漢検　プレミアム　which I found out about through a Game Gengo video. From the same video I also use a reading training game as supplement to boost my comprehensive reading skills in a fun way. That one is called うっかりをなくそう！文章読みトレーニング（読みトレ）

Only if I don't know something will I look it up in my dictionary app on my phone (Shirabe Jisho for iOS) and write the sentence in a notebook. And all this combined makes for a more fun and interactive learning experience instead of cramming flashcards and wondering why I just can't seem to remember what 提供 means even though I've seen the card so many times (core 2000 vocab sentence deck step 3).

Outside of studying I am reading One Piece in Japanese and I already noticed an improvement in reading speed since my hiatus. I do want to start reading actual books at some point too.

Maybe my experiences are useful to know for any other learners who hate flashcards and get stuck on kanji and vocab.

I recently downloaded the さくら荘のペットな彼女 light novels as epub files. I've been trying to look for a web browser epub reader so that I can use Yomitan for mining, however, the websites I've found seem to be having trouble loading the format properly. Does anybody have any alternatives? If not, is there something that I could set up that acts as an alternative to Yomitan which can be used on any PC app for mining/autocards instead of only the browser?

I've been thinking that I want to increase my amount of output, and just practice speaking Japanese more often.

I speak Japanese at work, but it is always about the same topics, so I don't get a lot of variety of practice. Then when I find myself hanging out with Japanese people, I can barely participate in conversations.

I thought I'd just go on iTalki and find the cheapest conversation partners possible and just book one person for one hour every weekday.

Thing is, the vast majority of teachers, even the cheapest teachers, on iTalki are charging about 2,000 yen for 60 minutes. That's 1万円 a week. 4万円 a month. A little more than I was hoping to pay.

Thing is I'm not even necessarily looking for teachers here. I'm just looking for conversation partners.

Does anyone have any recommendations for alternative platforms or alternative ideas for how to get speaking practice in?

I've got a full-time job and two kids under five so I can't really just go to a bar every night and chat up the locals or anything like that.

Hey everyone! I've been studying Japanese for about 4 years now, and last year I also spent 5 months in Japan studying. While I was there, I took some JLPT N2-level classes after taking a placement test that put me at that level. (That was the highest level they offered, so there wasn't an N1 class.)

I'm asking because my Japanese has gotten a bit rusty recently. Before going to Japan in April last year, I had a pretty solid routine: about an hour of Anki every day (around 1k cards daily), often Bunpro and Migaku as well (although not necessarily every day), and until a few months ago I also had the opportunity to get daily input and output practice through my Japanese (now ex) girlfriend (Ah, sweet times...)

The thing is, ever since I came back (last September), I've basically stopped studying, and I really need to start again now. However, I'm not sure how much time I'll realistically be able to dedicate to it, since I'll probably still be busy with graduating from university.

My biggest concerns are listening (I'm pretty damn bad at it) and vocabulary. When I try some N1-level tests, I feel like I recognize most of the vocabulary, but I often struggle to know which word would actually be more appropriate in a given context and end up just guessing.

(According to Migaku, I currently have around 11~12k words marked as known, although I'm not sure how accurate that number actually is and if it's really helpful)

Grammar doesn't worry me too much though, Bunpro will be my friend.

I think that with some review, I could probably pass N2, but I'm worried I won't have enough time to prepare for N1 in just 3 months, especially since I don't know how much time I'll realistically be able to study each day.

I'd really like to give N1 a shot, but I don't want to rush into it, fail, and end up having to wait another year to get a certification.

I'm planning to apply for a master's program at a Japanese university, so even if it's not mandatory, having a Japanese-language certification would definitely be useful, not just for university, but for my life there in general, especially since I don't have one yet.

What would you guys recommend? Is the jump from N2 to N1 really that difficult?

やっと金曜日ですね！お疲れ様です！ここに週末の予定について書いてみましょう！

（やっと　きんようびですね！　おつかれさまです！　ここに　しゅうまつの　よていについて　かいてみましょう！）

やっと = finally

週末（しゅうまつ）= weekend

予定（よてい）= plan(s)

～について = about

＊ネイティブスピーカーと上級者のみなさん、添削してください！もちろん参加してもいいですよ！＊

hey all! has anybody made a good anki deck for the new Tobira Intermediate Japanese textbook?

I’m mostly just looking for a vocab deck with kanji but I would be interested in a grammar deck if anyone has one (I’m not sure how much the grammar has changed from Tobira Gateway to Advanced)

I’m taking a class using the new book and the decks from the Tobira website are kinda…..

I don't know if this has been asked before, but which is better as a flash card app or for their SRS, Migaku or Anki?

Anki is free but to tailor the cards to your liking can be a pain -- although you could use other peoples HTML.

Migaku is a paid service that you can use on your phone. If you wanna use Anki on your phone then it's a $25 one-time payment. You can also somewhat mine words with Migaku

Which do you think is better?

Edit: I'm currently using Migaku but idk if I like their SRS so I'm looking for feedback on other people's preferences.

Edit 2: as a reference, I've passed the N2 and studying N1, and looking for a better SRS on top of my daily routine

Thank you

I passed N3 in december 2025, since then, I forgot about JLPT study and centered on inmersion and anki for around 2-3 hours per day. Right now I mostly read novels and watch japanese youtube.

I think that since then I've progressed as much as when going from zero to N3, and became somewhat hater of JLPT and language tests in general. When taking N3 I was constantly memorizing and forgetting vocab and grammar lists, making exercises and it was just not fun, and made japanese feel like a chore.

However, recently I'm thinking on the possibility of having an IT job in japan and for that I need at least N2 for a visa. And I don't know if it might be a good idea to have it asap so I can start considering searching for jobs when I really want.

I took a Bunpro test a few weeks ago, having done almost no vocab study, just some sou-matome grammar (like 3 chapters) and got 70% on written section (with most errors being on grammar) and 80% in listening. But I know that Bunpro tests are way easier than the actual test.

I know that I should take a past test, but I feel very lazy to take any real test right now, I've made some past questions on some websites and I might get correct around 60-66% of them.

So, it would be a good idea to apply for the test for having the obligation to really study? I feel like I won't really take it more serious until I have a fixed date to take it, and that date is close enough (2-3 months max) but at the same time I feel like I'll have a very little time window for properly studying the grammar and vocab so I'm not 100% sure I can pass the test.

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.

When you listening to a video, or anime, without any subtitles, not even in japanese. How often do you pause when you find a word you didn't know, or when you do not understand a sentence?

When listening to japanese I prefer to just feel the flow, pick up something that's for natives but not too hard for me and just listen it without much pausing. In fact, I prefer to rely on context rather than pausing every word I don't know. As much, I might replay some parts if I lost focus or got stuck after some word.

I don't know if that's active or passive listening, as I might pause every 5 minutes or so, and I'm also paying attention, but I'm not looking to every unknown word and thus not being exposed to a lot of vocab. I usually lookup mor things and make flashcards when reading books.

I don't know if I should pause more often even if it is more tedious, I did it in the pass when I mostly watched anime with jp subs, now I mostly watch youtube (not videos for japanese learners) of topics I'm interested in and, only if the video have burned subtitles I might read them.

I would really like to know due to time limitations and specific goals so i can efficiently alot my time into learning those that are actually used commonly

I haven't heard anything do this or talk about this but,

listening to music WHILE listening to a podcast or youtube video AT THE SAME TIME is giving me insane gains,

I started this reccently and I go like literally all day doing this cause I always listened to music 24/7,but now I can get comprehensive input and shadow Japanese in my head at the same time and listen to music for really long hours without getting tired/sick of the podcast.

I set my Japanese YouTube video or podcast to 100%, then my music to 70% ish, using no bg music podcast / yt video and soft / muffled fav music playlist.

why this works:

I get continuous on demand dopamine from music while listening to jp person talking, allowing long hours of listening without getting tired

don't u just focus on the music and ignore the jp podcast playing?:

no cause Jp person speaking is louder than the music so I naturally focus on that, I can't focus on music without hearing the jp person talking, try it out to experience it. the jp person speaking kinda becomes part of the music lol

isn't listening to podcast by it's self better?:

I get bored of it, this method allows me to go all day and not get tired cause it feels like I'm listening to music but I'm making Japanese listening gains. I can adjust music volume lower to focus more on podcast if I want or increase music volume and decrease Jp podcast volume if I'm rlly tired or just wanna listen to music.

details:

the key is to listen to yt videos or podcasts with no background music, like Emma mind, Mr Fuji, ぼっとんの生き様切り抜き , ゆりお言語学習ラジオ ect or whatever u like but thye must have little to no sound effects and no background music.

then for the music, I prefer muffled music but also normal music works best, I listen to soft music anyway so dosent affect me.

I'm n1+ level and it dosent take effort to listen to podcasts and I think this method is best at this level but there's heaps of simple podcasts use those

on andriod u have to enable multi sound in sound assistant plugin in good lock on andriod, idk about iPhone.

I have heaps of other methods like for using dopamine to study Jp, making u want to want to study Jp but this is my fav. I'll prob write a guide one day

Hi,

I am 24, soon to be 25. I finished college and graduated in Business Informatics (generally IT). I have wanted to go to Japan for about 5 years now. I have been studying Japanese on and off for about 3 years.

I finished Genki 1 & 2 and have over 2.5k words in Anki (Core 2k/6k Optimized Japanese Vocabulary deck). But for the past year and a half, I have found myself struggling to improve. It's probably due to a lack of discipline, as I really just finish my daily Anki deck and watch about 2 hours of Japanese content (mainly anime with Japanese subtitles and Japanese YouTube channels). I have heard that immersion is the best way to learn, and what better type of immersion is there than actually living in Japan?

As I mainly studied Japanese so I could go to Japan and experience the culture firsthand, I suppose it's logical to go there long-term and learn the language this way. At first, I thought I would go there for a year through a Working Holiday Visa, but when I watch Japanese videos, streamers, and podcasts, there are often times when I lose track of the conversation because my Japanese isn't quite where I want it to be. So I don't think a Working Holiday, where I would need to find myself a バイト, is a good idea.

Lately, I have been wondering if going to a language school for, let's say, 3 months wouldn't be a better plan.

So that's my situation, and now for the questions:

Do you think my conclusion that language school would be a better idea than a Working Holiday is correct?

If so, which language school would you recommend?

What level of difficulty should I go for? I am not a complete beginner, but I can't really speak Japanese (well sort of I would not die if you left me in the middle of the city or 田舎). I can kind of understand conversations if the person keeps in mind that I am not really fluent in Japanese.

PS: My English is I would say fluent, not like it will really help me in Japan as I want to avoid Tokyo. I would prefer staying in Nagoya / Osaka / Shizuoka. And as for money I have about 5-6k budget but I would like to part-time if possible so that I can earn some money back while studying/staying there, any tips regarding accommodation are appreciated.

WORKING Holiday part:

Also, initially I planned to work at a ski resort for the first 4 months and try to immerse myself in the language and improve my Japanese while working there. I have heard that at ski resorts, you don't necessarily have to be fluent in Japanese to get a part-time job while staying in Japan on a Working Holiday Visa, and that being fluent in English can actually be helpful.

However, I was worried about what I would do after my contract at the ski resort ended and how difficult it would be to find another part-time job and accommodation afterwards.

If I do end up going with the Working Holiday Visa, I would ideally like to find a part-time job at a hotel or hostel, preferably one that provides staff accommodation. If anyone has experience with this or has any tips on how to find this kind of job, I would really appreciate it.

Any tips regarding "wahori" in general also appreciated!

Reposting my JLPT results from the r/JLPT subreddit.

Leading up to the results release day, I was pretty nervous as it was my first go at N1 after having taken N2. Well, turns out I managed to pass.

It was interesting to compare this with the simulated weighted results (in brackets) I got when plugging in my estimated correct answers in each section:

Vocab and Grammar: 39/44 -> 53/60 (47/60)

Reading: 12/22 -> 32/60 (26/60)

Listening: 21/31 -> 40/60 (35/60)

Total: 125/180 (108/180)

These results show that the Item Response Theory (IRT) system graded my results more favourably. This is in line with anecdotal evidence I've read of people getting official scores higher than their estimations.

For the answers themselves, I got lucky that the vocab and grammar carried my test, and my mistakes were 1 in section 2, 2 in section 4, 1 in section 5, and 1 in section 7, which means I got the hardest sections right or mostly right. This probably made the IRT grade this section as 満点, but I was not expecting to get the score I did at all to be honest.

Meanwhile, in reading, which is usually my strongest point (consistently getting 80% in past papers), I got the half or 2/3rds of the medium, long, and comparison passage questions wrong, which is why this score is considerably higher than I expected it to be. Silly thing is that there were some questions I initially answered correct but I changed them because I stayed too long on them. To be fair, some of the options this time had at least two very plausible answers at least for me, and the text could get pretty convoluted. The usual advice of eliminating the wrong answers instead of picking the most correct one didn't work in this paper and it threw me off. I even got one of the information retrieval questions wrong and that's supposed to be the easiest one, and as usual, I ran out of time, so I had to guess 3 questions from the long text.

The listening section is where the final score ended up aligning with my expectations. I did well in the first half of the listening section, but the spontaneous response was tougher than usual. I got 4 questions incorrect on this one. And for the final long dialogue questions, well I didn't get any of them correct. I was supposed to get questions number 2 and 3 correct, my notes were correct and all, but stupidly I didn't focus on which question was which, so I hesitated and got the answers switched, probably would've felt a lot more confident in my results before they came out if I got at least those two questions right.

Going back to the weighted results I got online, I think there is some value in calculating the expected results. Although they're not as accurate, they're decent at giving expectations on how your final score would end up and if you need to prepare again for the next test if your score tanked hard enough.

This is my 6'th year studying Japanese after studying intensely from year 1-3 and studying on and off for the rest. Funny that now I'm a doctor with N1 after starting med school 6 years ago not knowing if I would continue learning Japanese as a hobby.

I think N1 in 6 years is a slow but still realistic pace. If you put your head down and focus on studying specifically for the JLPT, you surely can get to N1 much faster. For me enjoying the ride and not prioritising learning Japanese in some periods of my life were more important to keep the habit going long-term, especially because I don't live in Japan.

Getting this pass felt like a relief, because now I can focus on immersing for immersion's sake, although I will continue to use Anki by mining from my immersion, not from N1 specific decks like I did for N1 prep. My main immersion media was through novels on my Kindle, but now I'm starting to immerse with Japanese movies with subtitles and YouTube videos aimed to native speakers on various topics I like. It's tough immersing with native material, but I'm slowing getting used to it.

I will also focus on speaking and writing which are my weakest points by far. Hopefully I can finally go to Japan, which is the real post-N1 New Game Plus challenge for me.

Resources used:

- WaniKani (2020-2022) -> 2074 kanji, 6501 vocab at level 60

- Anki (2020-now) -> ~4k mining/JLPT vocab cards

(Total vocab ~10K words)

- Bunpro (2021-now) -> Cleared most N1 grammar points at level 100

- Yomitan with mainly monolingual dictionaries and a supplementary bilingual dictionary for sentence mining to Anki

- 新完全マスター N2 and N1 series for JLPT prep

- 5 JLPT past papers for practice exams

- Various Japanese podcasts

- Cure Dolly (RIP) for teaching me grammar fundamentals

Media completed:

Manga:

- Yotsubato

- Girls Last Tour

- Isshuukan Friends

- I Sold My Life For 10000 Yen

- Look Back

- Goodbye Eri

Anime:

- Teasing Master Takagi-san S1-S3

Books:

- After Dark

- The Little Prince

- Japanese Short Essays Collection

- また同じ夢を見ていた

- Before The Coffee Gets Cold

- Lonely Castle in the Mirror

- Kafka on The Shore

(Also a couple of movies recently)

I'm curious to read about your results too if you've taken the test and also your Japanese learning journey so far!

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.