I need your help

Japanese
#1

.Hello everyone,

I am about to get back into Japanese after giving up a year ago. I know there are tons of posts like this, but I need some specific advice that I can’t find anywhere else. First, a bit of backstory:

I reached level 30 on WaniKani in just one year.
I spent four months in Japan trying to speak every day.
The only grammar resource I ever truly learned was the first book of Minna no Nihongo.

I was hard‑stuck at the same level in Japanese, which ended up demotivating me, and I gave up. After a lot of thinking, the reasons that led to that were the following:

My grammar was too weak, and whenever I tried to learn new grammar points they just didn’t stick (I tried Bunpro, but I couldn’t stick to it, and the same with books). I would just forget what I had learned ten minutes later, even with great effort. Because of this, I could not read manga.
I could not immerse myself enough: I tried watching anime without subtitles but without success. The reason is that WaniKani’s vocabulary is limited and I was missing so much grammar.

This left me stuck between “I need more grammar but I don’t manage to learn it” and “I need useful vocab, but it has to be linked with my WaniKani level.” This hesitation, combined with the fact that current tools could not help me, resulted in my stagnation in Japanese.

To fix this, I would like to start over and learn from my mistakes. I need something where I don’t have to mix resources and that has a clear objective (the WaniKani level system was perfect for me, as I learned so much there). I also need short‑term objectives to see my progress.

My idea is to study for the JLPT and take every level to keep me motivated. For the grammar part, I have no idea how to fix my previous mistake; I tried everything, yet I still couldn’t learn it. I probably just hate grammar, I guess. For vocabulary, I think I can’t brute‑force learn words—I need mnemonic and spaced‑repetition (SSR); WaniKani was absurdly effective. However, since I will be studying for the JLPT, I need to learn vocab and kanji in order. The issue is that every app like WaniKani that has an SSR system either doesn’t follow JLPT order or doesn’t have mnemonics and radicals.

So my questions are:

Do you know a way to learn vocabulary and kanji with radicals and SSR like in WaniKani (I want to learn reading and meaning) following the JLPT order and that includes mnemonics?
Do you have any ideas on how to learn grammar? I think SSR for grammar is not for me. Also I think that Minna no nihongo was too harsh for me so maybe genki will do the job ? My issue is that I would need to learn the vocabulary for each lesson and therefore either the SSR system that I will use will have to follow genki order or I will need to study vocab outside this SSr system which I don't want to.

Thank you so much for reading

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#2

Hi, sorry for the long post in advance …

Background

I’ve been in language school for about a year in Osaka, but I got stuck around the N3–N2 wall for the last six months there. Kinda burned out with the school (old brainwashing methods, nothing worked on me), so I ended up forgetting a lot, and now I’m slowly getting back into learning.

Here’s what’s been working (and what I wish I’d known earlier):

Kanji / vocab (JLPT vs RTK/KKLC/WK)

  • If you liked WaniKani, honestly… stick with it :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: Having fun is half the learning process, and WK’s stickiness is hard to beat.

  • About ordering, the JLPT is just weird. It mixes easy and hard kanji and isn’t frequency-based, so it can feel random. 私 is N3 or something …

  • RTK (Heisig) focuses on writing/meaning through mnemonics in a custom order, or KKLC (Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Course). KKLC also uses a mnemonic approach, but with a much smoother, more logical order (closer to usage frequency and compounds).

  • One extra option: start RTK/KKLC not to master kanji right away, but to train the process of making mnemonics. Once you’re comfortable, you can then move into your own order (JLPT, frequency, or WK).

There isn’t a perfect “WK-but-in-JLPT order with mnemonics” app.

Grammar

I’ve tried both Genki and Minna no Nihongo. MnN felt harder but, weirdly, stuck more. For self-study though, I found the early chapters of MnN a nightmare! If you want something gentler, Genki works. We used MnN at our language school.

Once you’re around N3, I really recommend Tobira (didn’t used that one at language school, but surpasses all the books we used). It puts grammar and vocab in context using passages that feel closer to native material. They even have a beginner book now, which looks like a solid bridge.

Where I’m at now

After all that trial and error, I’m switching methods!

I’m going back to a little of Bunpro for grammar (none of the other methods really sticked/explained the nuances like bunpro) + a little of JPDB (like Anki, but with premade vocab decks) + lots of reading .
The reading (mangas/light novels …) will make everything stick, and I’ll have way more fun. Even if I don’t progress like those that spend hours on SRS everyday, I’ll progress on my books/mangas, and forget the JLPT even exists.

Edit : I won’t try the JLPT again—I failed miserably while in Japan, and forcing myself into that structure just killed my motivation. Now I’ll simply focus on reading proficiency, since that’s the skill that keeps me moving forward and actually makes the grammar/vocab stick for me, but everyone if different.

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#3

Grammar is basicially just the same few concepts over and over again, and once you really understand the core behind these few core concepts, you will learn new grammar as if it were second nature. Thats also why the typical ‘drill’ methods of memorizing everything slows down progress alot.

If you struggle with grammar, I can recommend Cure Dolly on Youtube. She looks at Japanese grammar from a linguists point of view. Depends on your preference of course, but I find it very interesting. Genki and Minna no Nihongo dont really go into depth, which makes understanding the language much harder, so I dont recommend it.

Btw, what novel are you currently reading?

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#4

It might also help to try to find a personal tutor. I think a lot of times having someone who can explain it and practice it with you is really helpful. I’m going to take a wild guess that you were never taught grammar in English, so it probably doesn’t have a lot to connect to, which is something I’ve found difficult personally at times.

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#5

Try satori reader, it sounds like the way they handle kanji and words would solve some of your problems, it would also help with not being able to actually understand japanese despite knowing a lot of vocab, which is something that happened to me when I tried learning words “dry” - out of context with ambiguous connotations and real world usage.

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#6

Congrats on returning to your studies!

+1 to the cure dolly recommendation; if you’re struggling to comprehend, she frames things differently but in a unique and logical way that many find helpful. I struggled so hard with verb conjugation until I watched her bit on it. Which she disagrees with the term when it comes to japanese, but that’s a separate topic.

Regarding mnemonics, I don’t know of any resource that has them in droves as abundant in Wani Kani.

Have you tried watching anime/youtube with Japanese subtitles? They are a pain to get sometimes without a vpn, but there are a few anime on Netflix that have jp subs available.

The thing with that approach is, you can’t really watch a show and get the same experience as watching it in a language you’re already proficient in. Repetition is key, so you should be watching the same episode over, and over, and over, and over again until the dialogue is practically burned into your brain. That is when it starts to become comprehensible.

What really helped me and was a big step forward:

  • finding a japanese video that I liked with tons of dialogue and japanese subtitles
  • listening to that video on repeat, every day. (Stripping the audio and putting it on my phone to listen during commutes helped)
  • I’d rewatch it and read along the subtitles during my lunchbreaks.
  • and after about a year accompanied by daily study, the entire thing became understandable and natural to listen to

It’s really easy to get discouraged and feel like no progress is being made, but keep in mind it takes children years of constant immersion before they are able to comprehend and speak proficiently.

SRS is really effective in learning Kanji, Vocab, and Grammar - but you may need to temper your expectations of its efficacy. In my experience, it took anything - whether it be kanji, vocab, or grammar - a year of forgetting, getting wrong, and relearning over and over again before it really started to stick.

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#7

With all the seriousness and good intent it feels to me like a very specific case of “just immerse bro”

Reading/listening

I can elaborate if anyone has interest

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#8

A little of topic but maybe it can find placement here?

I think you give to much credit for SRS :slightly_smiling_face:
In most Japanese cases SRS is used rather like a brute forse connector that is totally ignorant to any deep understanding and connections. With numbers it feels really significant, but as I feel now, quality is much better. If you learn 3 kanji but really well, 15 other kanji will be connected to those 3 kanji in very logical way, that the need of learning those 15 won’t even be there.

I think reading gives one of those deep understandings, where maybe you do not remember word, but you get it’s implications and contexts, and they stay with you.

#9

I started just like you w/ minna no nihongo I and then Minna no nihongo II. I then switched to genki to consolidate my knowledge, and by far I prefered Genki.
however the game changer for me really was bunpro. As it forced me to have daily input/output for the grammar point I’ve learned/ I’m learning, instead of relying on something I’ve red once in a textbook and that I’m supposed to know forever from just one reading.

what you are missing is a routine, you seem to be willing to undertake the various JLPT levels and I think this should be manageable if you dedicate a set amount of time daily to your japanese learning.

I never used mnemonics or wankikani so I’m sorry in advance if my study plan doesn’t include those.

Learn vocabulary w/ kanji: the best approach is to stick with one tool. Bunpro have everything a japanese learner could dream of. Learn new vocab based on your jlpt level using the dedicated decks (start with N5 then N4 etc…). Start with a light routine of 5 new vocab a day, add more if you feel like you already knew the daily words in your learning queue. The aim is to get 5 new words a day and 50 vocab review per day, the sweet spot is having 10x the amount of your daily new vocab in your review, if it’s exceeding this ratio, reduce the amount of new words until you hit the sweetspot again (i had a period with no new words for 3 months because I messed up a lot).
As for the reading of the kanjis. Learn them while learning new vocab, learning the onyomi and kunyomi of a individual kanji is pointless (IMO). learning the pronounciation of a kanji with context is what interest you (for the JLPT test). It’s okay to use furigana but you should aim to not use furigana in the long term.
adjust
tldr: x new words a day + 10x review of learning words. Don’t learn kanjis individually, the kanji pronounciation will come naturally as you learn the vocab.

Learn grammar: I think that SRS is the way. In the same way you can build a routine of daily new grammar point + grammar review. I started with 6 new grammar point a day (because most of the grammar was already known) and reduced it to 3 new grammar point a day since I’m focusing on vocab input currently.

You mentioned that you always forget what you just learned 10 minutes ago, I’m no different. I consider that I don’t know a grammar point at all until I dealt with it at least 5 times. It’s okay to fail, it’s the whole point of SRS. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t know something or forget something. Failing on a vocab/ grammar point is actually beneficial for your learning quest.

You’re affraid of mismatching your grammar level/ vocab level / wanikani level. By learning using bunpro’s ressource only you can’t mismatch anything. You can 100% trust the decks content. And yes 100% of the vocab/ grammar point used in those decks are used in daily japanese usage so there is no point ommiting a grammar point/ vocab.

You’re also worried about not being able to understand your source of immersion outside of your japanese learning tools (ie mangas/ watching animes). I can also relate to that. I friend of mine bought me a shonen jump from japan and I couldn’t read anything. Simply because the content wasn’t graded to my level. I gave up on reading it because it was discouraging, and I never tried reading anything else because I was too scared of failing and facing the harsh truth that I can’t read japanese. The solution to this problem is to search immersion source that is scaled to your level, and acknowledge that it’s okay to not understand 100% of the content at first. It took me 20mn to read my first news article on Toodai… You don’t start with a 100kg bench press on your first day at the gym, you don’t start running a marathon when you get into running. Yes there are plenty of people in the community who can do it, but they all started somewhere, don’t be ashamed of starting lightweight reading content aimed for teenagers/ kids. Bunpro also have graded reading section if you’re interested.

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#10

Seeing that Cure Dolly got mentioned, I’d like to recommend a book that inspired her: “Making Sense of Japanese” by Jay Rubin. She herself has also made a book which compiled many points from the video into a more concise format.

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#11

Thank you for all your kind responses; they really motivate me even more.

I’ve seen several of you mention Bunpro because it’s straightforward and carries no risk of getting me lost among various resources. I understand the appeal, but it isn’t right for me. I tried it for several months, and I just don’t feel that spaced‑repetition (SSR) for grammar works for me.

Many of you also recommend Cure‑Doll videos, since they feel less school like class and still provide solid explanations. That could definitely work for me; I’ll need to check whether there’s a proper order that fits me needs.

One thing that helped me with grammar in Minna no Nihongo (the first 20 chapters) was the repetitive exercises. Each lesson gave essentially the same question five times—for example, ～を食べます—so I saw that pattern ten times in a single chapter and repeatedly in subsequent lessons. After chapter 20, however, the grammar points become more specific, and that repetition disappears.

I also tried hiring a teacher, but that didn’t suit me. I think I need to accept that grammar requires 100 % active learning, whereas vocabulary with SSR is less demanding. I think that what I need to do is to use my newly learned grammar every day by thinking in Japanese and constructing sentences. The problem is that I need clear, structured practice, such as “complete the sentence” drills; more open‑ended exercises are difficult for me. I like to monitor each small step and be able to look back at the end of the day and say, “I worked well; I did 10 exercises.” Yet language learning doesn’t always work that way. I guess. Any tips on shifting my mindset would be very helpful.

Here’s what I’m planning to do for now: I found an Anki deck that contains all the “damage‑kanji,” reordered by frequency, and it starts with the order used in Genki. It seems that the memoniaque works in the vast majority of case even after the reordering. This could create a nice synergy. My idea is to use this deck to learn the kanji needed for the upcoming Genki chapter, while also using the Core 2K deck to study vocabulary—filtering it so I only learn words that contain kanji I already know. What do you think of that approach?

Finally, regarding immersion: the grammar used in anime is often a abbreviation version of what I learnt, so I don’t recognize it. Many people suggest watching with subtitles and looking up every unknown word and grammar point, but that can take a month just to finish a single episode. Do you actually do that?

Thanks again!

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#12

I do think that the combo book with exercices with the video can really work for me. I will check that also. However it is missing the convenience of my anki deck that follow genki order with memoniaque.

#13

Be aware that “radicals” are not the building components of kanji, so learning mnemonics will not provide you with a deep understanding of kanji, and if you stop spaced repetition you’ll probably forget everything.

What gives deep understanding is the understanding of functional components, how they work, and how it happened that kanji has them, which of them give the kanji it’s sound, which of them give the meaning, which of them there just because of the mistake (corruption).
Please look up here: Kanji Radicals in Japanese. Don’t Do It. – Outlier Linguistics (while reading this one jump to two other connected articles that explain 4 types of functional components)

#14

There is a nice thing called Yomitan that everyone uses to look up words with ease directly in the browser.

#15

When I can’t grasp a grammar point because either the exercices are too difficult for me (especially when it’s mixed with vocabulary that I don’t know) I ask chat gpt to generate me 5 to 10 simple questions on a specific grammar point just so that I can drill and understand its structure fully. Another website that helped me a lot coupled with genki was this : Genki Exercises | Genki Study Resources it’s full of ‘simple exercices’ on grammar up to N4. It’s based on the genki books, since you’re not gonna use bunpro fro grammar I then recommend that you buy genki 1 and genki 2 (or get a pdf of it on the net) and drill using the website I sent above

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#16

I don’t think it’s gonna be useful, what you need is comprehensive input scaled on your level, watching an anime while pausing every second to look up words that are not even in the jlpt list is gonna be counter productive, after that watching anime with jp sub is gonna be seen as a dreadful task and you’re never gonna do it again.
what I recommend though is Animelon.
It’s a streaming website where there are a satisfactory amount of anime you can watch with both japanese subtitles AND english subs, you can also chose to display furigana or not.
IMO it’s better to watch an anime while the translation is directly shown on your screen. having to look up words + guess the meaning of the sentence from a grammar point you’ve never seen will drain your energy FAST
Start with an anime you’ve already seen.
https://animelon.com/

#17

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#18

That way of watching/reading content was my primary focus and it worked out well enough I think.
It’s can be really difficult, but it trains your grammar ability and ability to understand sentences with lots of unknown words really well. You basically trying to understand every sentence slowly. I wouldn’t say it’s less efficient then reading with less percentage of unknown words, it’s just another type of activity.

I don’t want to argue or anything else, if I were to be given a shekel every time I’m wrong about how the method is going to work out I would have had like what, 30 or 40 of them, but I just want to give the perspective that it’s not the truth in it’s instance and a very arguable topic (deep diving in a sentence vs more extensive approach) and there are people who choose one, another, or both (I choose both)

#19

No, I don’t. I would go crazy ^^ And if it takes you a few months for a single episode your choice of anime wasn’t appropiate for your level. Some people like doing that, though, but if you’re not one of them, then please don’t :sweat_smile:

Personally, I never used stuff like yomitan and also don’t use subtitles for anime (and also haven’t started with kanji yet) and despite all that my grammar is ok enough to read manga and watch anime subtitle free as long as I make sure it fits my current level.

As my goal is not output but only input, I am at a place, where I don’t have to use grammar, just recognize it enough to get the meaning. My personality also allows me to not mind if I don’t get any nuances right away, enough immersion will fix that problem in the long run anyway.

So the mix of my personality and my goal lead me to do all my bunpro reviews (grammar and vocab) in reading/listening mode with translate and selfgrade. I later noticed this combined with tons of immersion led to me actually being able to use the grammar okay enough in written output.

Having my reviews set to reading AND doing all my vocab here also in reading mode, gave me tons of practice recognizing the grammar, as every review comes with a fully translated sentence to check myself. If you haven’t tried this, it might be a nice way to ease yourself into grammar. Especially if one of your goals is reading immersion.

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#20

Q)My grammar was too weak, I tried to learn but they just didn’t stick … I could not read manga.
A)For making the grammar stick, I recommend buying/printing the workbook worksheets. I put the CD that came with the genki textbook in my car and listened to it commuting everyday which helped loads.

Q)I could not immerse myself enough: (My) vocabulary is limited and I was missing so much grammar.

A) So how to immerse your self enough… I’m not sure exactly what stage you are at.

Less than 1000 words, you are immersing is mostly to build good habits for later.
pick something that you like to look at, even if you can’t understand. For me cat tiktoks TikTok - Make Your Day, cooking, old enough, somali to mori - even if you don’t understand the words it’s so pretty. But I recommend learning 1000 words first.

2000-5000 words you know some, but not all words in each sentence. at this stage immersion is important practice. You may feel “I don’t understand anything”- with out English it will feel like ‘a guess’. Just like you need to do the worksheets yourself to get the grammar, guessing is an important step in learning.
Here is a random page from somali to mori.
珍品稀者奇貨奇物 世のお宝も世のガラクタも巡りお巡ってたどり着く
競市とくりゃ あの浮島さ
さあさあ皆様 ご開帳
"タマキノガマ"に到着だよぉ
And here it is with only wanikani level 30
品_者奇_奇物 世のお宝も世のガラクタも__着く
競市__あの浮島
__皆様 ご開＿
"タマキノガマ"に到着だよ＿
Which is 90%. 90% is plenty. you could look up the remaining 10%, but it will still feel like a ‘guess’. Sitting with the stuff you kinda know is how you learn. Since you are level 30 in wanikani I really think you can read manga.
5000+ words. At this stage you should look up all the words you don’t know. and spend more time immersing than “studying”

Q) Anki deck that contains all the “damage‑kanji,”
That’s what I used. I loved it. make sure to change the keyword to what you are used to in wanikani (on PC. Sometimes the formating adds tons of white space if you edit on mobile) if you have interference.

Q) “Many people suggest watching with subtitles and looking up every unknown word and grammar point, but that can take a month just to finish a single episode. Do you actually do that?”
I can’t do that at all. you need to learn new vocab, and you need to practice comprehension, but I practice my vocab from pre-made decks and don’t look up any thing. If I take out my phone to look something up while reading manga its a one hit KO.

Core 2K deck - one with audio and example sentence is better than just the word.

Q) often a abbreviation version of what I learnt, so I don’t recognize it- I recommend only look it up if this is your 3rd time seeing it and you are still stumped. ichi.moe is how I look up grammar stuff. Once ichi.moe gives me the full version, I’ll look it up in bunpro.

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