BunPo (yes, BunPo) is a fun app that is approached more JLPT-like . They have several different exercises for grammar and comprehension. I see they switched to a subscription model recently but they do have the some free access to sample. Their list isn’t as comprehensive as BunPro 
, but sometimes a different approach just helps keep it engaging.
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I only quickly read through it but it looks like saying it is about N2 may be a little bit of overstatement. It looks more like “N3 but we will use some N2 if there is absolutely no way around it” kind of deal. On top of that it seems the aim of NWE was to make it even easier and it is likely they manage to pull that off between now and the time this paper was conducted.
I have no much idea how hard N2 is suppose to be, but if the NWE is anyway close to that then clearly N2 is much easier than I consider it to be. I hope you are right it is since it would great news for me 
I will opt out from using it though if there is no way to turn furigana off… It makes me too lazy. And articles look boring as hell D :
There is a way to turn off the furigana on NHK Web Easy. The right button toggles furigana:
Edit: Maybe its just me, I always considered NHK Web Easy more close to N5/N4 with a mix of N3…
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Lol, I am a moron xD
I did not read the button, but I clicked it and I don’t know why my brain registered it as turning kanji into hiragana xD
Hmm… probably i was looking for a word 振り仮名 or ふりがな and just ignored it 
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That’s what I’ve been thinking of it as, too.
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One question: I am lagging behind with my listening comprehension by a lot (I did not give it almost any love…) and I wonder if listening to NWE after reading it can be consider a good start. Any chance that this ultra slow pace can be more harmful than useful? I listen to HP audiobook and I started trying watch those YT channels but it quite expensive in terms of energy (and I don’t understand that much anyway)… I would much rather prefer something more relaxing since most of my energy is already allocated to vocab and it will stay that way at least for next 2 months. 
I should care more about listening from the day one I guess…
Maybe you can recommend something ultra simple but reasonably enjoyable? If that would be for example some TV show (anime or whatever) that is often references by adults as something important for their development, then I can manipulate myself into believing it is important to study for the sake of understanding the culture xD
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It’s very unpopular among the “cutting edge” Japanese learners on YouTube and forums like these, but I got a LOT of listening comprehension from the 1500 or so hours I spent completely finishing the current Japanese tree on Duolingo. 
Other than that, things that I have found useful are:
Watching content I liked on Netflix with the “Language Learning for Netflix” plug-in on.
My go to stuff is Terrace House and Midnight Diner (深夜食堂). But maybe for some people it is Anime or different kinds of content.
In any case, I switch between really trying to get every single thing that’s being said for periods of time (rewinding, re-reading, repeating what they’re saying, looking up kanji I don’t know) and just letting go for a little bit and enjoying the show with an occasional pause or glance at the Japanese subtitles. I like being able to just be as hard on myself at my current day/mood/lockdown exhaustion allow. And then switching over to lazily enjoying a show I like.
Podcasts: my favourite one is “Let’s talk in Japanese”. I have listened to each of his episodes at least once. In the first episodes, the background piano music keeps going and that gets annoying, but in later episodes he fades it out after the intro. I started out listening to only the ones marked “N4” or “N5” but then after having listened to all of those I moved on to N3 and N2. Turns out being able to understand/follow is more dependant on the subject matter (is it vocabulary I know from Duo or Wanikani) than on the grammar/jlpt level.
Japanese music. I didn’t know any, but through some googling I found a couple of bands that I’m really into. My favourite is Maison Book Club. A weird cross between girl group pop and avant garde modern classical stuff. Right up my alley. But again, to each his own.
Good luck everyone.
頑張って
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Thank you a lot. I will have a look at your suggestions. They look very useful to me.
Hmm… Maybe I will have to review my opinions about Duolingo. I don’t like it for the way they “teach” Esperanto (I am shock they manage to make this language difficult…) and some of their business ethics, but…I remember that some time ago (2-4 years? not sure) I find this useful for getting accustom to the language. I will give it a try if it is worth the time.
Btw if duolingo works for you then I heard a lot of people are doing “reverse tree”. To be honest I feel I learnt more English than Japanese or Russian on Duolingo so there can be something to it. Hmm… I just got some ideas to test out
I was under the impression I need to buy VPN for that. Not true?
If you can share some nice bands then it would be great. From looking at you avatar I would bet we have very similar taste in music if I would have to make a bet.
Thank you a lot for taking time and helping me out.
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I live in Belgium and I don’t use a VPN. There is quite a bit of Japanese content available on Netflix here. The learning languages plugin is free of I remember correctly. (But I might have forgotten that I paid for it if I did.)
Here is a link to my japanese playlist on Spotify. It’s not all good but it’s a starting point.
Bonne chance
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I will give it a try tomorrow
I don’t know why I did not even think about Japanese music xD Maybe because when I think “Japanese music” I hear this:
(I didn’t even remember they sing anything meaningful…)
Or this:
…
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(Yeah that’s kind of racist of you, to think that is the only music Japanese people make. 
)
Here is the article that started my inquiry. Most of the music in the list is from this article:
That article is also the first thing that comes up when you Google “best Japanese records”. So even though it all seems very cool and underground, it isn’t really.
Diviertete
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I know it is a joke, but it so truth at the same time… It sucks that our brains like those kind of shortcuts. I am a bit of a racist, but I am not proud of it and try to mitigate it. I think we all are unfortunately to some extend (even Black people. Claiming otherwise would be racism on itself… They are normal humans after all)
But I consider Kenji Kawai to be one of the best creator of classical music our kind managed to produce. I dare say almost as good as Chopin or Paderewski (polish ones 
).
That’s remind me of something:
I am about to try enka tomorrow for years now… It looks like good time to finally give it a proper try. Anything you can recommend to me, @severian? If there would be some text to allow me to study it that would help.
I like that one too!
But I also have the same complaint about the background music Especially because I really can’t stand the melody, it’s just… so annoying. I practically only listen to the later episodes because of that 
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I tried a little bit of reverse tree on Duoling and I have to say that “learning” English in Japanese on Duolingo is very pleasant experience xD (except the audio…)
I can recommend it to everybody as a nice and pleasant side quest.
Maybe I will try out Chinese for fun sooner than I considered it possible. I don’t think I will be able to get that pitch stuff without getting Chinese tones - which are easier to hear - first… I think 1-4 months and I can start spending 10-20 min a day on Chinese from time to time 
Bothering people with stupid questions has to yet fail me. I would never even spent 5 sec considering duolingo useful again if not the fact somebody has different views than me. Thanks a lot again, @rikvg
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Speaking of that, grammar lessons on youtube for languages I already know were among the first videos made for native speakers of Japanese that I understood. It’s kind of fun too.
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There’s an app called Speechling. The focus is pronunciation and you can pay them to get your own recorded sentences reviewed, but IIRC everything else is free and they do have a listening comprehension mode where you hear a sentence in Japanese and then you hear a translation to English. You can configure whether there should be a pause etc. and it will display the sentence in text form afterwards.
I haven’t actually used it much so I’m not sure how much content they have, maybe someone else here can say more?
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For reading comprehension, one tool I’ve used is clozemaster in multiple choice mode but with no translation shown. It’s supposed to be for vocabulary learning but unfortunately the translations are too far off for Japanese for it to be useful in the mode where you have type the answers (the sentences are taken from tatoeba etc., i.e. crowd-sourced amateur translations). And sometimes there is only one choice that works grammatically or they didn’t even identify word boundaries correctly (e.g. when it asks for つれ as part of 失礼…) etc. And of course the audio is just TTS.
So I think it’s actually terrible and borderline useless for vocabulary at least when it comes to Japanese, but you can certainly use it to verify your understanding of written Japanese sentences.
(But don’t expect anything useful from the JLPT level based lists. They’re sorted by the cloze only, e.g. N5 has a lot of somewhat complicated sentences just because they happen to have an N5 word in them. Just use Fluency Fast Track or something.)
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Finally, it’s already been mentioned I think, but IMHO the reading comprehension exercises in the 新完全マスター series’ 読解 volumes are pretty good. They’re multiple choice but, unlike the 文法 volumes, the key will usually say why wrong answers are wrong etc.
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One very important thing to me: do easier levels use kanji with furigana or just hiragana? I can’t read with hiragana alone…
This is revolutionary idea to me actually, thanks!
That duoling thing is the first thing I really enjoy since starting. It looks like something I can use to rest while technically speaking still learning, but not feeling this way. I almost forgot how joyful doing even simplest stuff in new language is. I can totally understand people chasing that feeling their whole life and learning insane number of languages. It is addictive xD
Thank to all of you for meaningful input. It will take me a while to process it but by no means: please feel free do add more stuff. " Opulence does no harm."
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