Never saw this thread before, what a treasure trove of useful YouTube videos and information!
2 Likes
Now’s my chance to finally recommend some books I’ve absolutely fallen in love with!
I’ve been having such a hard time finding reading content for my level (a little bit above N3). A lot of manga has started to become too easy and reading the news is still too hard. At the bookstore I discovered the 鬼遊び series which is a series of short ghost stories geared toward a junior-high school level. There’s a lot of grammar I’m now seeing used in real context, a perfect amount of furigana, and a perfect amount of vocabulary to where I can really get a word’s meaning via context and not my dictionary. The stories themselves are decent; nothing too exciting but enough to keep me wanting to read more. It’s been my first “real” Japanese books and I absolutely cannot recommend them enough if you’re at my level and are looking for some good reading practice.
6 Likes
52$?! + 33$ shipping?! Ya bud that’s a bit much for me but I’m really glad you found something
1 Like
I’m just giving the link to show you the book. Of course you can find it cheaper if you look around. I live in Japan so, yeah, I’m going to show books using Amazon Japan. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
2 Likes
Great resource! Apparently they updated the video, so the old one is unavailable. Here are the new ones (they split it into two):
1 Like
Thanks for the update! Yeah they went from a free model (group of uni kids I think), to a full business and redid a lot of their videos.
Wow, I thought they just hid the videos, but it looks like they really did delete most of them, that is such a shame, they were really good. Luckily I downloaded them all before they changed ownership 
1 Like
ARGH I’m probably missing quite a few videos from the last 2 years.
If you have it more updated, wouldn’t you happen to be able to upload it?
They really helped me pass N4 and N3, such a shame.
1 Like
Sure, I’ll PM you to a temporary link of all their vids. (If anyone else needs a link, let me know, I won’t be adding these ones to my google drive, but can provide a link if necessary)
2 Likes
Thanks! Highly appreciated.
1 Like
Opinions on koohi.cafe vs jpdb.io ?
Looking for a SRS website to complement, and at some point to replace, wanikani.
For what I have been trying, jpdb.io I like more how they manage the decks. You just add a volume you want to learn the vocab, and all the vocabulary and kanjis you didnt learn with them will actually be added to your lessons backlog.
Also really userfull how easy they make to see how many words do you know of a certain content
Also they teach like wanikani the kanjis in the sense of using radicals to build the kanji. And if you are going to learn a vocab, first they teach you the radical, then the kanji, and then the vocab. Also in a new deck if there is a word you have already learned, they will ignore it, so you just need to focus in keep learning new words
But their reviews and lesson sucks, since it dosn’t test you if you know it or not, and instead, just ask you if you remember it correctly.
Basically, I feel like they manage the content you want to learn really well, but the review process is a big negative point for me (creator says they will add also something similar to wanikani for reviews, but it could take a long time and we dont know how it will end up being)
For the other part, koohi.cafe I dislike the management system and the stat system compared to jpdb.io , its confusing, you need to go item by item to add them to lessons, it dosnt teach kanjis with radicals or may not teach you the kanji first than the vocab, and I dont know if they know to not show you vocab you have already learned. Its really confusing so maybe I have said something wrong.
But, koohi.cafe has the strong point that the reviews are actually really similar to wanikani, asking you to type the reading and meaning. I feel like while I like less the rest of the website compared to jpdb.io, the review system could make it worth it, but not sure.
I guess one option, but not the perfect one, is to find a way to import what i learn in koohi to jpdb.io to use their stats, and make it easy to move there if one day the add typing for reviews. Not sure if this is even possible.
Other option I guess it would to just wait for jpdb to add typing, but it could end up not being even this year, so I dont think I will do this
Other one, just use koohi.cafe, and accept their imperfections
And some other ones.
I want to do the correct decision, since there is a big chance I will be trapped with it forever. This will affect me for years, maybe decades
So, opinions on people that have used more this websites? I have mainly used each one 30m to figure what they have
2 Likes
They are a very nice concept but what I don’t like about these services is that they try to tie you in.
I haven’t found a way to easily export the vocabulary to Anki or some other format, and they try to force using their own SRS.
Aside from that, you can pair such services nicely with learnnatively, which provides gradings for books with an estimated difficulty level, and it will also help you keep track of your own reads.
4 Likes
koohi has a csv export feature, so if someone wants to, could do something with it, but yeah, I would not call it easy right now since the raw data is probably not compatible with most alternatives in a direct way. jpdb.io indeed does not seem to have any export feature yet
2 Likes
Then if I had to choose between the two, I’d give the priority to the one that has some access to exports / your data. Kohii also seems to be working on an API so there’s room for improvement even.
1 Like
Thats what I will do then, going to probably try first the vocab for yuru camp manga since seems like one of the entries with lower vocab requirements
1 Like
Hi Asher, if you’ve still got the link, I’d definitely be interested as well! 
1 Like
The link I have is not expired yet, but I’m not sure if I have the green light to share it away with others, probably yes, but better wait for @Asher I guess.
Be ready for a 57GB ZIP file, and an extract tool that allows you to convert from ShiftJIS to UTF-8 if you don’t have your OS in Japanese.
2 Likes
Yep, no problem. Will PM you the link 
.
1 Like
Hi, I know it was over a year ago, but do you still got those videos? I would really appreciate it.
2 Likes
Still got them it seems. Will swing you a link tomorrow once it’s uploaded to Gigafile. 57GB takes a while to upload haha.
3 Likes