Resources for Example Sentences

Japanese
#1

TL;DR: Looking for example sentence sites with no anime influence.

My question with context:
I use several sites to pull examples when I’m making vocab cards/having trouble with cards.

https://www.immersionkit.com
https://nadeshiko.co
https://sentencesearch.neocities.org

I also use two sites to trawl Youtube videos:

How to Pronounce Japanese Like a Native | Youglish
https://filmot.com/

All these sites have advantages and disadvantages. The resources above get the job done, like, 98% of the time for my skill level. But I’m trying to resolve some confusion over the terms (洋上/海上), and these resources aren’t really cutting it. I was looking for additional ‘example sentences’ sites, but most results I’m finding online are either AI frontends or projects that are all JMDict and Tatoeba under the hood. I’m not here to tell people what to do, but personally I find Tatoeba is a completely unsuitable resource for language learning with unacceptable quality control. I have less faith in Tatoeba than [insert your favorite LLM here].

So far https://ejje.weblio.jp has been the only thing that’s sort of fit the bill, but the examples there are more phrases or compound words than a full sentence. I’m not sure if such a resource exists, but alas, that’s why I’m asking - in the hopes someone knows a site with drier, more technically or academically inclined materials.

2 Likes
#2

This is my first time seeing nadeshiko and Im a long time user of immersionkit. I was curious, what kind of things does nadeshiko provide that immersionkit doesn’t have? Is the media database different?

#3

You might want to consider dictionaries sold from Monokakido as in app purchases. They cost a fair amount but are worth it if you’re looking for high quality examples. In this case it looks like those words are synonyms.

例解学習国語辞典:
ようじょう【洋上】
名 ヨー ジョー
海の上。海上。［例］ 洋上花火大会。

新和英大辞典 第5版:

ようじょう1【洋上】
＝かいじょう4.
洋上で, 洋上に
on the sea.
［複合語（見出し語が前）］
洋上会談
《hold》 talks on board; talks held at sea.
洋上買い付け
〔魚の〕 buying fish on the sea.
洋上訓練
training on the sea; practice on board.
洋上大学
a floating university; a college that sails the seas.
洋上備蓄
〔石油の〕 offshore oil storage

#4

IMHO, Nadeshiko and Immersionkit are incredibly similar sites. I often use them as fallbacks to each other. (They both seem to fail/go 404 at regular intervals). Nadeshiko’s functionality seems to be all over the place. Like I haven’t been able to download UI for their audio for awhile. I use the F12 developer mode as a work around (play the audio, then grab the mp3 as it’s loaded into memory), but it’s annoying that I can’t click “download audio” and have the audio actually download. As long as the site wasn’t 404, I’ve never had Immersionkit break like that.

If you venn diagrammed the content of each site, there would be a lot of overlap, but they still both have things the other doesn’t. Immersionkit has the Studio Ghibli films, a few video games, and some Showa-era melodramatic dramas. Also some audio from Nier Automata, even if it is awkward to search. Nadeshiko recently updated their site and hosting, and I have seen a dramatic increase in new content being ingested into their DB since then. Their used to be maybe a 50-70% duplication in content, but that ratio is starting to get thrown off. Nadeshiko also has a couple audiobooks in their DB. The nature of some measured reading is a welcome departure in audio style from all the anime-ass anime. There’s also the quality of the audio clips themselves. Not really kbps or anything, but Immersionkit has problems with where audio is clipped. I’ve had a lot of times where I found a really good example, only for the last 5 mora to be cut off. A lot of times I end up going to Nadeshiko to see if they have the same content with a proper clipping. I still think they’re both valuable sites. Anytime I want to get an example, I usually go to these two first for convenience’s sake alone.