Bookwalker
Its legal and free. Every month there are different manga volumes that are completely free to read. Sometimes its just the first volume. But sometimes you can read 2 or even 3 volumes of some series! There are free samples for most if not all manga and light novels.
If you have an account, you can even read for free some light novels for 10 minutes…
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I’ve used different tools
Beginner
1: Genki with workbook and listening CD
2: lingo deer
3: kanshudo, I switched from this one because there was alot of great stuff, disorganized so I never knew what to do next. It feels like a collection of minigames.
4: kanji damage
5: I didn’t use these anki decks, I saw them recomened in the Japanese reddit before it went dark
Japanese course with anime example sentences Or Japanese core 2.3k
Intermediate
1: My favorite intermediate tool “Jalup” is now gone 
2: NHK News Easy
3: Let’s learn Japanese from Small Talk
4: Japanese Netflix
5: thesaurus.weblio.jp I recomend trying to put Japanese definitions on your anki cards if you can
for example I added the example sentence from my text book
“日本の伝統的なスポーツと言えば？
何と言っても相撲だと思います。”
Which my text book said
“What would you say is the Japanese tradional sport?
I think it is undeniably sumo”
and what I wrote on the card is
何と言っても:考慮される何かを強調する
類語：結局、やっぱり
copy pasted from thesaurus.weblio.jp
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Thanks for the suggestions. I started reading “Yotsubato” so I want to keep an eye out for similar manga that I can actually read. If you know any that are similar 
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For tools, I only use Wanikani and Bunpro. Together with a textbook and recently started having lessons 1-1 to help out as well.
I came across this tool here yesterday https://www.nativshark.com
Has anyone tried it before?
Sorry, I’m more into other manga like るろうに剣心, 今際の国のアリス and 約束のネバーランド 
Out of these three, the last one is probably the easiest. In general, I just read what I genuinely like to read - even if I have to heavily use yomitan or Kaku (a kanji ocr dictionary for android).
I agree with Kazue that that the manga you enjoy is the most important
for me, D Gray Man and Blue Excorsit were the only two manga the I’ve kept up reading since I was a weeb in 2012. So I still enjoy reading new chapters now
I didn’t enjoy One Punch Man in Japanese. The saying goes “if you have to explain a joke, it’s no longer funny”. I couldn’t get the jokes in Japanese.
other stories about 5 year olds I’ve read:
甘い々と稲妻, sweetness and lightning
コタロ一人暮らし Koratu lives alone
初めてお使い Old enough - reality TV
ソマリと森神様 Somali and the forest spirit about a human 5 year old in fantasy monster land
ウサギドロップ Usagi Drop
In Kotaru and Usagi Drop a theme of the story is about how they had to grow up quickly because they’re orphans. So it feels a bit diffrent than Yotsuba
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I recently subscribed to https://migaku.com/ and am really enjoying it. You can get the same results using a combination of free tools, but this works right out of the box and I am able to quickly create cards from the anime I am watching.
It works with Netflix, animelon, and a bunch of other streaming services. The cards include the word, sentence, audio, and a screenshot. The cards can be edited on the fly and you decide if you want to create anki cards or cards in their own SRS system.
It tracks what words you know and are in the process of learning and will compare that against the words in a piece of media to give you a good idea as to how difficult it might be for you.
No credit card needed to try it.
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I’ve tried Nativeshark. It seems pretty good as it’s all encompassing but it’s super expensive. Their lifetime membership is $1,500 and the monthly is $30. I felt like I could get the same quality of education using Bunpro, Wanikani, and native materials. There are sections where you’re encouraged to speak through shadowing and I feel those are valuable but you don’t need their course to shadow.
One complaint I had is you couldn’t “test out” of any of the units. You have to do them all one by one regardless of your level. I did learn some things that had not been covered in Genki, and my current Wanikani / Bunpro levels though.
The guys that wrote the course are very earnest and passionate about it. And I enjoy watching some of the YouTube videos the founder puts out. It’s just the darn price.
You can sign up without a credit card and try it if you want.
Nah, Migaku is less than 10€ per month. Sometimes there are discounts where you get 1 year for like 5€ per month. The only thing was, it doesn’t work on mobile and it didn’t work properly on my old laptop (card creation from Netflix was out of sync). On my SOs desktop pc it worked very well and I just let it bulk export some series and movies to Anki listening cards.
Now I’m using language reactor on my laptop (free version), which works fine for making Netflix subtitles “scan-able” for yomitan, but does not export to Anki.
I see what you mean. If I manage to build up more confidence I might give a go to a manga I like.
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Oh cool. Thanks for those recommendations! Will add them to my list
Oops, I was trying to say Nativeshark was that much. I realized I didn’t clarify and the back to back posts would imply that out of context. I made an edit to make it more clear!
Regarding the ability to export Yomitan to Anki, there’s a plugin called AnkiConnect that allows you to do just that.
Tokini Andy made a video covering his setup: https://youtu.be/OJxndUGN8Cg?si=k_6fEE2eE-V0I25_
There’s a written guide here: DJT Anki guide (scroll down to Yomichan Anki integration guide).
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It has been reborn under the name https://lessons.nihongo-app.com/
You should contact the dev for a discount if you bought the app if I recall correctly.
How did you find the Jalup experience?
For Japanese listening practice: Comprehensible Japanese
Someone else on this forum (Brand_S) mentioned this resource and I’ve taken quite the liking to it.
I’ve studied kanji, vocabulary and grammar sort of in isolation, but nothing has really brought it all together and figuring out what the next step should be wasn’t obvious. Going straight to native material is hard and can be very inconsistent with its difficulty. Comprehensible Japanese gives material that’s more manageable and has a predictable difficulty. It also has JP subtitles to help as well.
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I used a website for learning RTK a few years back which I thought was absolutely perfect called Kanji Koohii and gave me the same consistency I get from Bunpro to complete RTK.
Apparently it is still around and I am not sure why it doesn’t get more attention next to wanikani as it is completely free and perfectly designed (run by one single guy that was super responsive)
Basically it combines study for each character and SRS.
You have to fill yourself each character study card, you are helped with lots of stories and a dictionary with related vocabulary to each Kanji.
Its main strength is the possibility for users to add their own mnemonic stories to the database and they are voted by usefulness, so some of them were absolutely brilliant and you can share your own ones.
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I have also tried Nativshark for a year subscription as an upper intermediate and while it has lots of qualities I regret it personally. (the devs were great and gave me a discount though given my starting point)
They say you should do a lesson a day but if you are not a beginner this restriction doesn’t make much sense to be honest, I would average 4/5 and was not pushing myself. the first phase and half of the second was just plain waste of time trying to do even up to maybe 10 or 15 lessons in a row.
I just think someone over intermediate will have a lot of familiarities with many lessons and like you sayed you can’t skip content which is ridiculous and just feels like they try to justify a subscription period that can’t necessarily fit everyone’s needs.
I have completed the whole course in less than 3 months (they still add 4 lesson every week), At this point a lot of N2 as yet to be covered (N1/N2 is mixed towards the end).
However I must say skip entirely their flashcard feature as I do anki+bunpro and have completed RTK already in the past.
They have fantastic audio and the lessons are very well written so the memorization of a new grammar point is much more natural and effective than what you’d get from bunpro or a regular grammar ressource, once you read the lessons it usually sticks immediately.
My main issue aside from the slow pace is that their example sentences are very often just weird trying to be unusual for the sake of it, it gets a bit absurd in the last phase were most of the vocabulary and situations are completely impractical. (I am now taking almost all my grammar point example sentences out of bunpro and immersion, almost none from nativshark at this point)
Now I would recommend it highly for a beginner level or slightly further, but otherwise I think there are plenty of cheaper better tools (bunpro included!)
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I’m still using Jalup. Pros
- I’ve been using Jalup for 4 years now with 1 one time fee.
- I like that’s in Anki. KanjiDamage, Jalup and my selfmade cards are all in anki. I use the card browser as my pocket dictionary
- i+1, you learn each grammar or vocab word first so you understand all the words in the example sentences
- and all the words in the definintion. Most words are defined in Japanese using words you already learned
- in anki I have two cards on the note type, a listening card and a reading card
- has vocab from the first volume of 22 manga
- now if I look up a word in weblio, I can understand the definition
Cons:
It’s an anki deck, if you don’t like anki it’s not gonna work for you
Defintions in Japanese are scary
It’s all input. Won’t help speaking or writing much
it’s a one time fee
Not much explanation
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This is great! I have no idea how I never found this one. ありがとうございます、頑張って👍
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I’ve used a lot of different resources, and these are the ones that stuck for me!
- Wanikani
- Bunpro (Of course)
- Yomu Yomu
I’ve tried Anki, Renshuu, Satori Reader, Lingo Deer, Busuu, Duolingo etc, but these three coupled with immersion (I’m playing ポケモン緑 right now!)
Satori Reader is a great resource but Yomu Yomu is completely free and a much better entry point for beginners in my opinion! I’ve never seen anyone talk about it so I wanted to mention it here :]
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I use a mixture of resources. I use Satori Reader and Tadoku (free) graded readers for reading. The Comprehensible Japanese website got redone recently and I’m now using the website more than their YT channel. Not having to sit through YT ads is nice! I do have a collection of other YT channels that I use for listening practice and grammar explanations. Speaking of grammar, I also use this website called Bunpro. Anyone ever heard of it? 
…Anki? Nope, don’t know them.
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