Advice for Starting My Japanese Journey

Japanese
#1

Hey, guys! Nice to meet you all. My name is Seven (yes, that’s my real name) and I’ve been learning Japanese with Bunpro for about 2 weeks now. I’ve tried to properly study Japanese on and off a couple of times for the last 2 years, but after beginning to use Bunpro I’ve found it a lot easier to be consistent about it.

What I wanted to ask is: What resources have people been using to supplement their learning? I’m planning on at least taking the N5 in Chicago this December (maybe the N4 if I’m feeling confident). I’ll list the resources I’m using right now in case they’re helpful to anybody else:

  • Bunpro’s JLPT Reading Practice
  • WaniKani for kanji and additional vocab practice
  • https://www.youtube.com/@FujiのJapanesePodcast/featured - This YouTube series for listening comprehension
  • The Japanese from Zero! textbook series
  • A tutor for me and my friend so we can practice speaking and learn at a similar level together

I’m already starting to think about the best ways to gain confidence in my speaking and reading, so if anybody has any advice on a studying structure, please share! I like what I’m doing right now but am open to changing things up to perhaps move a little faster. Also, please reply with any suggestions/link any resources you personally like! I’d be happy to discuss. :grin:

ALTERNATIVELY: If anybody has any advice for how best to use Bunpro/how to explore some of the features, I’d be happy to discuss that too! I just read the articles about Cram, Reading Practice, etc., so any advice with regards to that would be appreciated too.

5 Likes
#2

Those sound good, from your profile picture I’ll say throw in your favorite anime too somewhere in the mix (Without english subs). You won’t understand much but it’ll probably be still enjoyable

1 Like
#3

I was thinking about doing that, but I wasn’t sure if it would be too helpful since I really wouldn’t understand too much - just picking out words here and there when I’d like to be able to pick out grammar structure. I was looking for a place to watch children’s shows… or read children’s books since that’s the level I’m at.

#4

I would recommend Free Tadoku Books - にほんごたどく for reading, at pre-N5 level nothing native is really going to be understandable but I found these graded readers a really accessible entry point

4 Likes
#5

As someone nearing 25 years in my learning journey, my advice would be to set realistic expectations as you progress. Always revisit your motivations as well to avoid burnout. It is also important to make your learning experience fun. The topic of additional resourced comes up quite often, so search through the threads to get additional ideas.

Here are some options for shows/books with respect to your ask:
Tadoku: Free Tadoku Books - にほんごたどく
Chiikawa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPSMqoEaMk8&list=PLHIKP_Dyl1zwJy0JjSvVV5l8Kyg-8sjdv&index=1
Pororo: https://www.youtube.com/@ポンポンポロロ/videos
Bosanimal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79L1QVHwDI0&list=PLdqogoZbDJdhcwM3ydTvUkuuGV8MW89wy

2 Likes
#6

Welcome Seven!

Sounds like you already have a pretty solid study plan.
I will shill my usual free reading ressources :smiley:
Tadoku graded reader have free books for kids and beginners up to low intermediate with a lot of images to help you along the stories.
Then by the same people you have JRPG sakura which will give you longer text with less images (you need to create an account to access all the free text), their level A text are already more difficult than level s or 0 from Tadoku so you need a bit of vocabalary to tackle those.
Finaly satori reader has a lot of stories and detail grammar points in them, all stories are free up to the second chapter so you can try a few easy ones to see if you like it. They are very responsive in the comments if you have any questions about the grammar or wordings of stories and they don’t use any AI (tried a bit of generation for images but stopped quickly).

Sounds like you already have some listening on there but just in case I highly recommend comprehensible japanase. They have a few hundred of free video to try out and lately Yuki,one of the founder ,left with all her catalogue that she is slowly reuploading for free.
Her new website Nihongo jikan already has 800 video for all level, check it out!

Hope some of those sites are useful for your learning journey.

4 Likes
Sensense manin and listing to japanse
#7

I’m ~4 months into the study and I was lucky to meet people that recommended me some useful resources to play with. Some of those were already mentioned, but maybe you’ll find those interesting:

I would recommend to get at least some N5 grammar and vocab before visiting second item and further. Nothing is stopping you if you want to tho. You can always look up words you encounter and add those to the reviews (I do it for N5 words mostly or the words I encounter often than ~2-3 times).

Good luck on your path! :v:

2 Likes
#8

Tadoku fanclub let’s go :clap:

5 Likes
#9

A podcast called “Nihongo Con Teppei For Beginners” has been great for me to get some passive/ active listening in while doing chores and what not. There are over 1200 episodes, and they’re fairly short, so they are easy to just jump into and listen.

Wanikani is amazing, great choice for Kanji SRS.

4 Likes
#10

You guys are gonna have me hooked on this, I’ve been looking for a good graded reader source!

3 Likes
#11

Hope you will like it!
They keep updating so there is always fresh material and you can download the pdfs, also check out this link :eyes:

1 Like
#12

I studied with bunpro, Kanji Damage, Genk (I recommend the listing exercises) Kanshudo (for the dictionary mostly) and ichi.moe, when you feel the urge to use machine translation. It’s tells you each word one by one, but you have to put the sentence together yourself.

1 Like
#13

I recommend something that’s fun even if you can’t understand anything. Like Dkun’s cat videos on tiktok or old enough on Netflix

1 Like
#14

I recommend the following textbook:
https://www.irodori.jpf.go.jp/en/

It’s made by the Japan Foundation and the whole thing is online for free. It is aimed at people living/wanting to live in Japan, but I think it’s worth checking out.

1 Like
#15

I started watching Frieren while doing stuff like dishes, cleaning, etc. from the first week of my learning, and I was watching it basically every day. By the time I got to my 13th watch though I could understand almost everything, but the true magic was when after each circle I would notice a lot of things I didn’t the last time.

It still has probably at least a few hundred words I won’t recognise if seen in a wild by the way

1 Like
#16

Dogen’s photetics course is really good, I recommend starting from lesson 36. Also, his app is really cool emurse.io, you repete after the native, listen to your own voice, try again to sound more like a native. Its main purpose is to teach pitch-accent, but I think it’s good because it helps hear what sounds you produce incorrectly (even if they sound right in your head).

I recomend starting with vowels of Japanese, as they are the fundamental morphemes upon which Japanese is build (I feel like that at least).
For that you’ve go this channel

But his explanations are limited, and slow, so you might just end up asking LLM “how do I make あ sound? Where should I produce it, in which part of the mouth do I feel the sensation? What is the tong position? How aspirated that is? Is that sound nasa? How it’s different from my language?” (It’s one prompt), and usually it would give really clear instructions that would make me sound so much closer to the recording. Just learn the seven places of articulation in Japanese language first (teeth, hard palate, soft palate, etc.)

Japanese is mainly spoken in the front part of the mouth, you never open your mouth wider then one finger, you don’t stress the muscles of mouth.

So ye, phonetics is also an interesting part of a language that might interest you if you like it, or maybe if speaking is your main objective and/or you like being complemented on your spoken language abilities.

But really the best thing you can do is funmaxing as it’s the most efficient way to get your hours of effective japanese practice.

1 Like
#17

I think people here already provided you with plenty of good resources, so I’ll just repeat what’s already been tol.

For reading: satori reader is awesome for when you get to N4 level, since you are starting tadoku readers should be good enough

For listening: start with “Nihongo con Teppei for beginners” and from there you will be able to find more podcasts later on.

For watching: “comprehensible japanese” is really good, and a personal favorite of mine that I don’t think people mentioned so far is “けんさんおかえり”.

Anime: 10 episode slice-of-life romance animes are the easiest ones, don’t try kaguya sama or anything with a similar complex narrative or sci-fi/supernatural theme, because the vocab gets significantly more difficult. A good one to start is something like ‘からかう上手の高木さん‘

Memorizing words/kanji/grammar: I think its great your using bunpro for grammar, and a good thing about bunpro is that you can also use it for vocab, but I think you should definitely use Anki, with anki not only can you download a 6k core vocab pack, but you can also add your own new words as you find them (and it will happen a lot), I also use wanikani specifically for kanji. You don’t have to do 3 SRSs at the same time, but If I had to choose only one, I would keep Anki. Its free, and Vocab is the most important thing to memorize, when you have a lot of them memorized, it becomes easier to understand the grammar just by the context.

And the advice: Language learning is not about intelligence, its about memorizing, memorizing and memorizing, it can be vocab, kanji or grammar patterns. So, to learn a language, is to have patience enough to spend a bit of time daily for potentially years without any reward. But when the reward comes finally…its glorious!

Also, AI can be really good for finding very specific resources. Either shows that match your current abilities, also suggestions of new content to engage with. And of course this forum as well.

1 Like
#18

Firstly, do not get overwhelmed. Create a reasonable routine you can stick to - with Japanese slow and steady definitely wins the race.

These are some supplementary materials you might consider adding in when you feel comfortable and like you want to challenge yourself a little more. I was self-taught as a very beginner and quickly noticed some big gaps in my abilities, so I think you are doing the right thing by using a tutor. If I could go back, I would introduce these things earlier:

Good luck, and sounds like you’re doing all the right things to start! :blush:

2 Likes
#19

I started using it as a complete beginner with the easier story (spring, then summer now kiki mimi radio) and it’s very approachable with all the explanation and build in card system.
You can export to anki if you want but I don’t mind the build in one.
So I would highly recommend to jump on it ASAP!
Maybe when you have all the kana down and know a few hundred basic vocab plus the basic grammar. It will help a ton recognizing patterns.

Also I found the site gakken kid that have a lot of free manga on a specific subject!
There are quite high quality but feel a bit too difficult for me right now so maybe high n5 or n4 is a good level to enjoy them.

Poor dude is going to drown in ressource lol

Edit: typo

2 Likes
#20

lots of great resources advice here.

just remember that you’ll get better at the things you practice, and won’t get better at the things you don’t.

kinda obvious but have seen a lot of posts over the years, “I can do ABC but I can’t do XYZ… oh I hardly ever practice them though”

2 Likes