I don’t really care about reading manga or light novels, but there’s a ton of Japanese users on X who post interesting stuff.
Are there good mobile apps I can use for dictionary lookups or vocab mining from tweets? I’m willing to copy text or take a screenshot to get the data into another app, but it needs to be a fast process.
A considerable portion of my immersion comes from X as well, Japanese SNS is pretty fascinating. I can’t help you on the mobile part because I genuinely barely ever use my phone for anything JP-related but mostly do everything on Desktop, where you wuold just yomitan whatever you don’t understand. However, I want to point out that the landscape of those tools differs wildly between Android and iOS. So for other people to help you, it’d be helpful to add which one you have, to receive better suggestions.
Good point, I actually have both, but my primary device is iOS.
I guess I could vibe code my own thing that scrapes tweets and does text processing in the backend, but surely someone must have figured out something clever already…
One thing I’d like to highlight: keep in mind X has some % of bots and people that are pretending to be Japanese. This is resulting some content to be artificially generated, take it with a pitch of salt.
I found this app that gives a Yomichan-like experience on iOS Safari. It doesn’t have sound, but aside from that it looks good enough for what I want to do.
Manabi Reader and Migaku also might work, but they both require a paid subscription, so I’m leaving those on the back burner for now.
I have not used migaku on mobile for a while now but pretty sure I browsed twitter and was looking things up with migaku
Migaku doesn’t let me open the app unless I pay for a subscription. Not even a trial option. Completely locked out
yall are making me wonder if I need to get into using x…
I’ve also heard going through posts of native Japanese on X is a great way for learning. But honestly, I’m not willing to touch that cancer of a website even with a stick.
There’s this service called Misskey, it’s basically another X alternative like Mastodon (same ActivityPub protocol, they can crosspost) but Japanese centric. Due to reduced user base and control it’s usually a bit more geeky/underground. Takes a while to build a feed not dominated by adult fanarts from random users, but it’s good.
As for mining from it, at least on Android you can install Yomitan and AnkiConnect on Firefox, then save the website as a webapp so it feels like a normal app. If not a fan of Anki, Jiten Reader should work too, or if you’re willing to pay, Migaku.
Thanks for the recommendation!
My experience of Japanese X/threads is seeing a pic or a vid with a foreigner doing something mildly annoying with something on the lines of: 「国帰れ！」or 「外人死ね!」
Edit: Just to clarify this isn’t saying most of X is like this! Also I’ve noticed many comments like these aren’t even posted by users in Japan
Well, that’s a big reason why I criticize that platform… at least since a certain someone rules it. I don’t want this thread to get political, but algorithm on X is pushing more far right content worldwide. Call it user engagement or media manipulation (most probably both). But that shouldn’t be representative of a whole society.
This has been discussed a lot in several Japan related subreddits, and usually, as with many other problems in this digital era, things would be better if ditching these unregulated platforms that only want to make money playing political games by interference.
If you feel a platform is toxic, most probably it is, so act accordingly.
I have a lot of issues with X, but there’s a large Japanese user base posting away about news, sports, web development, the stock market, family life, pretty much whatever. Along with the usual army of influencers, course sellers, toxic rage baiters and so on.
I use xcancel.com to read threads (just change x to xcancel in any URL). That makes it possible to read threads outside the app in the first place.
Anyway, the app I linked a few posts back gives me a Yomichan equivalent on iOS, and that’s all I need for now, and it works in any website I can load in Safari.
This conversation is getting me curious about returning to X, something I wouldn’t be very happy to do but it does seem like it could be valuable for quick doses of reading
To throw another possible option out: I’m using substack as a way to get some medium-length reading in for Spanish and to help bridge to reading books. It’s nice because it’s got a tumblr-esque social media feed but people also publish essays and short stories to their blogs.
I’m not sure if it’s got a sizable enough Japanese community to be worth using for Japanese, but I’ve really enjoyed getting the opportunity to read longer prose without necessarily having to invest in an actual book.
as someone that is terminally online, twitter is one of my favorite sites for timely content. i never look at my for you page and only look at my following page and then on top of that i use chrome extensions to declutter random noise and default to my following page.
i would recommend just finding topics you are interested in and following solid jp accounts from that. my focus is health/fitness, recipes, and japanese politics. i read as much as i can in japanese and use chrome translate as needed. i dont know how the apple platform works for this, but the same process works for me in android on my tablet and mobile. mobile is actually slightly better because the native google chrome search based off of a text highlight is more efficient. although that might be a me thing based upon my search tendencies.
for me, that is what has worked best in keeping immersion focused and bots at bay.
It’s not the most seamless but I use takoboto as my Japanese dictionary on iOS and it has an integration with anki mobile. When you look up a word you have an option to add it to your anki deck.
I use 10ten for Safari on iPhone and iPad for dictionary lookups.
A nice extra feature is that they show the JLPT level corresponding with the Bunpro grammer & vocab decks. (Since I use Bunpro for my SRS reviews)
I honestly never had anything anti-foreigner in my timeline. I 80% follow people I met and places I go to in Japan, and the other 20% are random Otaku in my same Otaku-sphere. Social media is what you make of it, algorithms show you what you interact with. If you see two 外人死ね posts on X and you click “I am not interested in this content” you probably won’t see them again.
Most of my X feed is random girls doing cute things, idols, mediocre Japanese memes and pathetic displays of konbini food and the occasional Shinjuku woman lying with her face on the street with a dropped can of strong zero next to her.
I haven’t had a single political tweet in years. The AI slop is harder to fight… but that’s all social media these days
I tired it and started hating Japanese became racist with that. Of course Japanese are not the ones to blame, it’s the twitter, but anyhow, I didn’t like it.
Probably some kind of severe selection of content I stop to read is necessary or it becomes a mess in a second.
Also, it is like a text based tiktok, with that limit of words deep discussions that have meaning are extremely rare
One out of ten from me 
By the way, the closest Japanese equivalent to Substack is note.com
Anyone in this thread who likes the idea of reading more Japanese stuff online but is unsure about Twitter may want to have look.
