Advice for Starting My Japanese Journey

Japanese
#21

It is funny. I have been studying for over a decade. Not intensely, but consistently. No concrete goal.

I have heard a lot of study advice and ideas in that time. I have not spent much time pursuing those ideas, more important to me has been to work consistently through good materials.

So my point is, this thread points to a good solid core of Japanese learning tools. Anyone can choose some of these, and use them regularly, and they will make progress.

For me:
WK
BP
Tadoku
NHK News Web Easy
Nihongo ConTeppei
a variety of textbooks

Each of these was mentioned a few times in this thread, because they are the best tools that have floated to the top again and again over the years.

I took a break from Nihongo Con Teppei for a while. I just remembered why I like him so much. He chooses a topic, and talks simply and naturally about it for around five minutes, not speaking too slowly. 10 out of 10, still my favorite podcast.

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#22

This may sound strange, but I like using NHK Web News Easy for listening practice.

Most of the stories have the option to hear a native speaker reading them. I’ll read the headline to get the gist, and then I listen to it twice: once without looking, and once while reading along.

Some of the stories have a video from NHK intended for native speakers. Those vary in length but are useful for hearing actual Japanese. Sometimes there are brief interviews with locals, so you can hear more conversational Japanese as opposed to Japanese from a polished newsroom.

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#23

I have enjoyed and learned from News Web Easy consistently for years. I like a classic “News” tone. I like that it is mostly polite speech.

I like these too. You get the shorter Easy version, plus a more extended version of the same story.

Once I reached the level of the episodes, it became a great way to expand my vocabulary and kanji of more specialized common words. I get the feeling that in Japan it is aimed at 中学生と高校生.

The other news that I watch a lot of is the TBS news feed. I get a constant feed of news articles from nationally, and from various prefectures, on my Youtube feed. So any time that I turn youtube on, I have a bunch of live and recorded news feeds. Many of these are partly or entirely subtitled in Japanese. This has been a big thing for me since 2019 or so. It was originally my substitution for not having a VPN to watch Japanese television.

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#24

NHK easy one day removed the inbuilt dictionary and the colour coded names (tho I think that part is back now?) and became my sworn enemy from that day forth…

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#25

You need to use NHK easIER to have the pop up dictionnary actually

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#26

as far as i can tell, thats a fanmade website, right? i still dont understand why the original website got rid of the dictionary…

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#27

Ho I had no idea it was a fan website!
Yes that’s strange they removed the pop up dictionnary, though you can easily use a plug in that will do it for you.

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#28

Yeah I finally installed yomitan earlier this year, but I really can’t get my head around why they seemingly decided to make their website worse with no warning or explanation… it’s really awesome someone decided to do something about it by making that site you shared though

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#29

As someone mentioned earlier Japanese podcast for beginners (Nihongo con Teppei) is the best to begin with, short episodes and also fun:

Good luck with your studies! :slight_smile:

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