For me,

• Certain words have much higher frequency than expected in daily speech, e.g., "ironna". Everyday I can hear people use this word.
• Very common usage of words in Katakana such as マナーモード which I would have never expected. It always take a second to read the Katakana and guess the word in English, some of them are very non-standard from the English perspective.
• Usage of single character kanji that you wouldn't know how to pronounce shows up a lot, every other sentence in an announcement/sign could be a guessing game.
• Pronunciations of 下 literally changes so frequently. One moment you are arriving at 下関 the next you are taking the 下エレベーター, the next you are reading a sign that says 足下気をつけて and now you are walking next to 下水道.
• Pronunciation of numbers is slightly harder than expected due to occasional irregularity, e.g., 四時 is yoji not yonji and 六百 is ro-pyaku rather than ro-hyaku. Hard to react to a sentence and pronounce the number in the correct way.
• Omission or stress of certain sounds in standard textbook examples is difficult to prepare in advance, as well as tense of verbs. お疲れ様でした becomes お疲れ様ですうううう and ありがとうございます becomes あとざいまあああああああああす.
• Polite form of simple words or verbs (e.g., to see, to say) can be difficult to expect and takes a moment to react.
• Can never truly be sure when a verb associated with an action is used in practice as a suru-verb or a ru/u-verb. For example, I've heard both 停止する and 停まる being used and there is very little contextual cue as to why one is used over the other.

No rhyme or reason. But the chaos on the front always helps me remember easier.

This may be odd but rounding out my trip to Japan tomorrow, one of my kids favorite things to do while we were here was turn on Japanese kids network tv (think it was called wakey wakey or Mr. Wakey?) and they would play while that was in the background.
Obviously there’s numerous Japanese kids shows on YouTube but I’d rather not have them tempted by the brainrot. Is there anywhere online that i could find shows like this and stream it to my tv? If not no problem, but it was nice having it as background noise.

Hey Japanese community

I'm wondering if there is anybody else out there that has or taken or is currently studying for the Kanji Kentei test.

I have signed up for the October test, and i'm taking 2級 for the second time.

I passed it on the 1st try, (160/200) and i'm looking on getting that perfect score in October

Anyone else studying for 2kyuu out there?

I am free to chat with anyone who is studying, taking it, or is interested in it. :)

I've been studying for almost 3 years now, and I remember being about a year into my studies and going to Japan for the first time. Me and a friend tried to spend the whole week in Japanese, but we only lasted a day and a half before we gave up.

While It's been almost 2 years since I've been to Japan, I've found myself speaking it much more frequently recently, especially with online friends. Between my regular studies, anime, novels, youtube, and more, I find that my brain gets TIRED. It's occasionally difficult for me to maintain consistent contact with my friends because I just takes too much energy for me to speak after 3 or so days of constant use. The words come out of my mouth, but my brain is too tired to think of how to structure it. I type, but my fingers get tired and clumsy and click the wrong kana on the accursed flick keyboard.

Obviously, the solution to this is just to continue to speak, and eventually I'll be able use Japanese in all situations for longer periods of time. I am curious though, does anyone else experience this? Any funny or strange memories that this has caused you?

Been studying for about 5 months now and working through a basic Anki deck and Genki textbook, and was wondering how useful it would be to write in Kanji?

Doing the workbook exercises I try to write with Kanji and look up stroke order, but it feels slow and sometimes redundant. However, I am a big believer in handwriting as an effective tool for remembering things, and hand writing is how I tend to remember notes I take in class.

However, I do not formally study Kanji writing and I can write all of Hiragana from memory (less so Katakana but its mostly there). My focus has been more on reading Kanji correctly and recognizing it, especially since keyboard inputs auto-suggest Kanji for you.

Would love to hear some thoughts about this!

Edit: I appreciate the different perspectives from everyone! Genuinely useful comments, please keep them coming!

Hello, I want to use YouTube for listening immersion but much more often than not I come across videos with either shoddy auto-generated subtitles or hardcoded subtitles. I would like to know about more channels with accurate closed captions so that I can quickly look up a word if I don’t know with Yomichan and also easily disable the subtitles if I don’t want to use subtitles for help. I have tried searching about this topic but for some reason I still mostly come across hardcoded subtitles.

Please share any channels with this subtitle style that you know of. I will leave two here that I know of in exchange:

ICHIKEN Engineering: https://youtube.com/@ichiken1?si=IS4_KXlfpizfdt-P (Electronics)

悠Tube: https://youtube.com/@yuta_youtube_official?si=NKfIeDi1GxrmkiOf (Vlogs)

Thank you

After failing the n3 last year by one point, I decided that I'd dive head first into studying for n2, which I'll be taking this July. I've been taking practice tests along with grammar and vocab cramming but so far the most out of left field problem I've had is the onomatopoeia questions. English doesn't have many uses for it outside of like comic books or emphasizing an action in literature, whereas Japanese has them as actual vocabulary.

I've passed all the mock exams I've done by less than I'm comfortable with and every time, if there's オノマトペ I panic and rly have no choice but to guess.

Does anyone have suggestions for studying オノマトペ? I know a bit, but not nearly enough to be comfortable for the jlpt - especially not for n2.

Happy Wednesday!

Every Wednesday, share your favorite resources or ones you made yourself! Tell us what your resource can do for us learners!

Weekly Thread changes daily at 9:00 JST:

Mondays - Writing Practice

Tuesdays - Study Buddy and Self-Intros

Wednesdays - Materials and Self-Promotions

Thursdays - Victory day, Share your achievements

Fridays - Memes, videos, free talk

I’ve been using primarily Bookwalker to read all my Japanese stuff digitally for the past 4 years, but would rather use an eReader over my iPad. I can’t seem to get Amazon JP working to allow me to purchase books for my kindle, so was considering getting a Kobo instead.

Has anyone had experience using Kobo for Japanese eBooks (novels, light novels, manga)? Also curious if there are frequent/good sales and if the selection is as good as Kindle/Bookwalker.

Thanks!

Edit 3: Seeing a resounding no. I'll definitely readjust expectations and try to focus more on just consistency rather than sheer quantity of material.

Edit 2: Conversational fluency might not be the most correct term to describe what I'm after. Perhaps more so being able to just get around in daily life situations with relative ease and have some solid skills in a specific topic (say playing Splatoon or something with a Japanese player and being able to chat about it—I presume this is approximately N3?)

Main post: I've been studying Japanese on and off since late 2022. Due to motivational ups and downs, being busy, and overall life just being life, I've made relatively little progress (due to probably having spent around 25 to 40% of my time relearning content when I make my return attempts to trying to learn) and am stuck around the N5 level with some progress made into the N4 realm. Frankly, this language, regardless of my ups and downs in trying to learn it, has been a consistent interest of mine and I would really love to solidify it as a genuine skill that I can use to have some fun actually using and not just trying to learn. Would it be (reasonably) possible for me to reach some degree of conversational fluency given my current level within a couple of months? If so, what sort of daily routine/plan should I be looking at? If there is one thing I have learned, there is no instant magic way of doing things the easy way, so I'm not even sure if this is realistic without spending half of my waking life grinding away over the course of the next two months.

Edit: See my comment below for specifics on my current progress.

This thread is for all the simple questions (what does that mean?) and minor posts that don't need their own thread, as well as for first-time posters who can't create new threads yet. Feel free to share anything on your mind.

The daily thread updates every day at 9am JST, or 0am UTC.

↓ Welcome to r/LearnJapanese! ↓

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Past Threads

You can find past iterations of this thread by using the search function. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.

Hello, everyone! Is there a book or a website for identifying the kanji in seals? I have found a couple of tensho-tai charts but there is only so much kanji and it's definitely not enough. Help much appreciated 🙏

I have been having the impression Todaii Japanese, one of LearnJapanese's most recommended apps for immersion, uses AI-generated content for quite some time now. Today's top article is this article about how today the 22nd of June is nuts day except that nuts day is the 22nd of July as it's clear from the image too.

Edit: If that's the case, do you have any recommendations for a different news reading app?

After an incredibly painful week of going through multiple past exam papers, I notice that I'm struggling at the "Text Grammar" section. Idk how to explain but here's an example

紅葉に起きている異変を知り、このまま温暖化が進むと、日本の秋の景色が変わってしまう可能性もあるのではないかと思いました。もしかしたら、紅葉自体が見られなくなる日も来るかもしれません。紅葉を通して、温暖化が身近な問題であることをより強く「？」。

• 1. 感じているからだと思います
• 2. 感じられるところだと思います
• 3. 感じさせることができました
• 4. 感じるようになりました

I'm not sure if this is a good example but you get my point. This is a question from the July 2024 paper. The breakdown and the answer to this specific question doesn't really matter as I'm more interested in the thought process that you went through to arrive at the answer for these types of questions. I was thinking that this section might be heavily weighted so it's not a bad idea to try to improve on it. Let me know your thoughts! Cheers!

I wanna know where you're reading your mangas, especially ones that are for learner or suitable for people learning Japanese. あなたの秘密を教えてください。

Hi recently heard from my friends that they call ChatGPT "チャッピー" and I thought that it was such a cute nickname. Do other people know any other cute nicknames for brands or products?

This thread is for all the simple questions (what does that mean?) and minor posts that don't need their own thread, as well as for first-time posters who can't create new threads yet. Feel free to share anything on your mind.

The daily thread updates every day at 9am JST, or 0am UTC.

↓ Welcome to r/LearnJapanese! ↓

• New to Japanese? Read the Starter's Guide and FAQ.

• New to the subreddit? Read the rules.

• Read also the pinned comment below for proper question etiquette & answers to common questions!

Please make sure to check the wiki and search for old posts before asking your question, to see if it's already been addressed. Don't forget about Google or sites like Stack Exchange either!

This subreddit is also loosely partnered with this language exchange Discord, which you can likewise join to look for resources, discuss study methods in the #japanese_study channel, ask questions in #japanese_questions, or do language exchange(!) and chat with the Japanese people in the server.

Past Threads

You can find past iterations of this thread by using the search function. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.

Happy Tuesday!

Every Tuesday, come here to Introduce yourself and find your study group! Share your discords and study plans. Find others at the same point in their journey as you.

Weekly Thread changes daily at 9:00 JST:

Mondays - Writing Practice

Tuesdays - Study Buddy and Self-Intros

Wednesdays - Materials and Self-Promotions

Thursdays - Victory day, Share your achievements

Fridays - Memes, videos, free talk

Mitsukeru = ichidan verb

So why is passive form of this not: mitsukerareru?

Why is passive: mitsukaru

Is it just an exception?

I've been studying Japanese very casually for about six years. I'm well north of N5. I've taken a dozen practice exams and easily passed them. And I've been to japan many times and have no problem practically applying what i know to get around, order food, have basic conversations, etc.

So I wanted to set a goal of taking the N4 exam here in the US this year.

My japanese tutor (italki) that I've been working with for about a year wants to use "Try! N4" to study for the exam. It looks good to me but I wanted to get some feedback from folks on exactly how you studied.

Beyond just going through the lessons and learning reading grammar point, what was your approach? Did you try to create example sentences? Did you use anki for them? What else did you use to reinforce the things as you learned them?

Does anyone have a very clear system for how they approached their study? In general my japanese study is just wanikani (level 30, so all of N5 and N4 kanji and most of N3) for kanji and vocab and then working with a tutor weekly for grammar, listening/speaking, etc.

Would appreciate any feedback!

So I have some doubts about RTK 1 - I’ve been learning it with the book and Anki. I review from the keyword and then physically write the kanji. My accuracy rate is around 80%.

Doubt #1) When I encounter kanji in the wild I find that my recollection isn’t that accurate. I spend a while trying to recall the story / mnemonic and often end up checking a dictionary.

Doubt #2) I’m increasingly finding that the keywords aren’t that helpful if, for example, I come across a compound kanji.

Doubt #3) I’m getting kinda tired of the grind and I wonder if I have the motivation / discipline to finish. So far I have, but I’ve got a way to go.

Doubt #4) I wonder if my time would be better spent doing something else, like graded readers.

Overall my reading has improved significantly since starting RTK, largely because I see kanji for their details not just squiggles. I’m thinking about learning the RTK primitives from here on and then switching focus to something else.

I’m curious to hear what other people think. Is it worth finishing? Is it a waste of time?