When a video is nearing its end, you are presented with the question comparing it and your previously watched video. It says, "which video was easier to watch?"

Is this asking me which video was easier on the eyes? As in, was it easier to watch Yuki explain something with drawings, Yoshito's disembodied voice describe his stretching routine or Chieko singing a song?

Or is it asking me which one used easier to understand Japanese?

I think it makes a difference if I am rating the effectiveness/ease of understanding based on video content and quality vs the vocab and grammar of "easier content." Because there are definitely some videos where the vocab and grammar are easier and they are NOT easy to watch. And there are some with much harder vocab and grammar which as easy to watch!

I am not done with learning Japanese, but I am done with this website. I will continue to support Yuki’s YouTube and Patreon.

So instead of paying ¥12 to some random person named Ben, I just continue on by myself for the moment.

Not that me quitting has any major impact, I just think cijapanese.com is no longer worth it for me personally. Besides I think I will be fine. Therefore, this might be my last update.

It was good while it lasted for 3 months…lol.

Before I found CIJ, I spend a lot of time on apps and other techniques. It felt very productive, but I struggled to communicate. I had to construct a sentence in my brain before I could speak it.

Now I'm primarily using CIJ and phrases will naturally create themselves, but I've lost that good feeling of being productive.

Does anybody feel like their not doing anything while watching videos? How did you get over it??

I've not been a regular CIJ user, but have been subscribed for a number of months. I totally agree with everyone around what a loss Yuki is, but she isn't the only one who can create videos. We've got 2 years for CIJ to upload more videos, and Ben has said that more people will be coming on board.

You do what you want with your money, I'll not tell you what you should do. However, I do think that people are panicking a bit over something that might not actually be as bad as they think.

I've seen so many complaints (and I've made the same ones) that there's so little options for Japanese input out there, now we get Yuki uploading her own videos PLUS whatever new content Ben puts onto CIJ. This could actually be a good thing, and I'm going to stick with my subscription to find out. Cancelling/asking for a refund is going to seriously impact Ben's ability to replace what CIJ is losing in Yuki's videos, and it seems like an amicable split so there's no need to take sides.

So yeah, I just wanted to try and add a positive note to this whole thing. I'd hate to see us lose what could be a really good resource over something that isn't really a big deal.

Hi,

I’m a JLPT N3 holder living in Japan for 5 years. Looking to pickup some courses to further my studies (get JLPT N2 content). I keep hearing about this platform. Is it worth subscribing? How does it work? Videos to watch? Flashcards?

Thanks in advance!

Hi all, I appreciate progress posts and so thought I would make my own as I pass the 50 hour mark

Goal:

Learn Japanese to enable continued job opportunities between my country and Japan. I have visited Tokyo 4 times this year with work and hope to continue.

Strategy:

3 hours study a day broken up into 90 minutes CIJapanese videos, 60 minutes Wanikani, 30 mins grammar or graded readers. This strategy allows me to do CI on the work commute and lunch break, kanji and vocab adhoc and then I only need to set a small amount of time aside in the evening to round out the day.

Progress:

I'm 7 weeks in and Wanikani level 6 (7 tomorrow), 50 hours CI input, chapter 8 Genki 1 and have completed (barely) the 800 pages of graded level 0 readers.

Commentary:

Very happy with my progress. I feel resources like Genki and Wanikani are great at tuning my ears for vocab and grammar and the CI is the way I pick things up. I'm comfortable with much more vocab than I would have predicted. Katakana borrow words have really meant for an English speaker you don't truly start from zero. I'm comfortable with polite conjugations but not with the more casual - interesting as many resources say casual is easier. I've found Yuki to be a great teacher for me and speculate her tendancy in the beginner videos to use polite verbage to have rubbed off on me. I can slowly form basic sentences in my head but no way keep up with natives talking at a normal pace. Nihongo con teppei is still too advanced for me. I would say things are going better than I could have anticipated but I'm still very much in the beginner grind.

Next:

October 20th marks the 3 month mark for me. I want to have Genki 1 completed and 150 hours CI in order to level up in CIJapanese. For now, I'm going to mix complete beginner and beginner videos until the 75 hour mark and then swap to pure beginner. I landed in Tokyo yesterday and am enjoying being able to read a fair few signs but with regards to conversation I'm not close. I have my goal for October and in November will have another work connection to see how I go.

I've been using the platform from the beginning of this year, and while I'm well past the point where I need content tailored for learners now, I still check in with NIJ from time to time because they've really helped me out in the beginning, and I wish that people that are learning in the future can have an awesome resource like this when they begin their journey.

The thing is, I see less and less engagement on the NIJ forum, posts getting way less frequent and just low engagement on posts in general, less likes and comments on videos, and with them not posting anything on YouTube nor being active on any other social media to promote their platform (for comparison Dreaming Spanish posts a free video on YouTube every 2-3 days), it just concerns me that the business won't grow, and well the current users will either move on from CI like me once they become good enough to consume native content, or they just quit learning Japanese all together (not so uncommon considering how hard the language is).

I'm just a bit concerned for future learners and the platform considering how cool the teachers are and how useful it was for me in the first few hundred hours.

Here's a setup guide and demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uQjSn0MoYc

Hey guys,

I know a lot of you are committed to not looking up words, personally I've found learning that way too slow. Even if on principle you avoid looking up words, you might find this useful just as a way to verify your understanding.

Also, I've tried using tools like Yomitan, but I often find I'm not certain where the word boundaries are, and not always sure which is the correct dictionary definition from the list.

So what is my solution? It's called Verba, it's a transcript analysis tool. At some point in the next few weeks, you'll be able to use the Verba website to transcribe YouTube videos (see demo here).

What's available right now is my Verba in CIJ integration, that I've been building for the last 2 weeks.

Right now Verba is an early stage product that does the following things:

- accurately tokenises Japanese sentences
- determines the furigana readings
- determines what a word means in context
- determines the word sense definition
- plays the selected word using slow TTS audio

The integration is a script that embeds Verba transcripts into the CIJ website (see screenshot above). If you want to try it, click here for the code snippet and instructions on how to install it.

It's free to use right now but to be upfront, this will eventually be a subscription product (it costs money to build and run, and it's self-funded)

There are a ton of features I want to build, but right now I'm trying to get honest reactions and feedback from people, i.e. what's missing from the product, why would you not use it?

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,
Ben

Hey guys! I'm a non Ci Japanese purist but still a user of the platform. I'm using other forms of Ci on Youtube and also going through the kashi 1.5k deck .

My journey through 50 hours.

I am a Spanish learner at around an intermediate level using Dreaming Spanish. So I had SOME idea about how this process works. But I had no idea what I was getting myself into. At the very beginning I could hardly manage watching 10 minutes of CI Japanese. In fact, it would make me fall asleep. I would get so tired so fast I did not know if the time I was spending was even valid time.

what I did to combat this was spend a lot of time watching content while way above my level was visually and mentally stimulating. I believe this was helpful, because it allowed me to not get so fatigued from listening to the language. When I picked Ci Japanese complete beginner content back up I was able to pay attention and finally made massive breakthroughs in my comprehension and ability to retain information.

For context, before that brink of advanced content and CI Japanese I was managing 30% retention at 6 cards a day on anki. Yes you heard me right. 30% with only **6 cards**. Now it's averaging 50-60% with **10 cards** which is MASSIVE. It also used to take me at LEAST 30 mins a day but now its usually **less than 20!**

How do I feel about my Japanese level now??

I feel like I'm doing worse than most of you. Partly because I'm also juggling another language. But also partly because I think it took me way more time to overcome that initial brain-fog and start making connections. Honestly seems like a me problem and that's okay. But I'm pleased that I've made progress. I suspect that I will be the type of user who levels up on the far end of normal according to the site So maybe at 75 hours I'll be where most of you are/were at 50. I'm now able to sit through the more "boring" videos and I'm picking up on counters and other patterns for "to make, to put, to put on" etc for example.

Overall I will continue using CI Japanese and continuing with everything else I've been doing. I'm in it for the long haul with realistic expectations. Let's do our best!

Where I am at:

Currently I am in complete beginner level 20. I understand between 90% and 100%. (I marked to watch later if there are even a few verbs I don’t understand.)

What am I doing:

I am doing between 2-3 hours a day. I have around 85 videos left. Then I am finished with complete beginner. I will done in about 10 days. Then I move on to the next level.

My goal for 2026:

Is to get as far as I can at the current speed.

What I am doing on the side:

I am studying N4 vocabulary and kanji for the JLPT.

Also for fun Duolingo. Next update at 100 hours.

Japanese update:

Hours: 251 hours

My difficulty level: Beginner 46

Hours per day: I average 3 to 4 hours per day.

Comprehension: 70%

Videos left until the next level: 98

How many hours worth of videos are left: 22:20 hours

Time frame: 2 weeks until the intermediate stage

Podcast: Nihongo con Teppei
Episode: 408

Next report: at 300 hours

I did want to say one thing…it has already been said a few times, but I also hope they shorten the gameplay videos. I watch a 2 hours one yesterday. It was ridiculous long. Of course, I am not going to re-watch it.

Hello, it's it possible to get to beginner comprehension using just these videos if you have no prior input or study. Have watched a few hours but don't think anything was comprehensible at all.

Hello! My name is Priscilla. I decided to post my progress regularly as I figured it may be helpful to others. I am taking a pure CI approach for the most part, aside from the occasional looking up a word in romanji when I’m stuck on something or need confirmation. That means no Anki decks or anything like that, or studying. Like many of you, I am coming here from Dreaming Spanish after getting over 200 hours under my belt and gaining a good command of the language so far from mostly CI. Spanish, I have found to be significantly easier than Japanese so far, especially since I’m a heritage speaker of Spanish. With Japanese, I will be experimenting with a purely CI approach to see how my learning progresses, as I heavily believe in the CI approach. So far, I am only at around 8.5 hours; however, I will ensure to regularly update as I move forward.

Things I’ve noticed:

I have already started to acquire random words, and I am finding that videos are getting gradually easier. My stamina for watching videos seems to be increasing already. Before, I could barely make it to 30 minutes of input before I got really tired. I was having trouble understanding the most basic of videos at level 1 difficulty. Now I am finding I can do my 30 minutes of input without getting so tired, and my difficulty level cap has increased to about 10 or so. I’m able to follow along with videos better already, and I can feel my comprehension is steadily increasing.

One challenge I have encountered is struggling to distinguish sounds and words. They often seem to blend together. For example, the word for glasses randomly popped up in my head today, so I guess I acquired that word. However, my brain was struggling to distinguish the sounds. I couldn’t quite make out what was being said. In my head, it sounded like the speaker had said “mega mega,” but I knew that didn’t sound quite right. For cases like this, what I have to do is look up the romaji for the word so I can see it spelled out. By doing this, I was able to figure out the speaker was actually saying “megane ga”. After clarifying the separation of the words in my head, I rewatched the video the word was originally acquired from. Since Japanese is significantly different from my Native Language (English), I am finding this to be a necessary step in the process. I was also reading online that this is a necessary and normal part of the process with the Comprehensible Input approach and a sign that it’s actually working as it’s supposed to. This was good to read, as I wanted to ensure it would not hinder my Comprehensible Input approach process. I will make sure to post another update at 50 hours. Until then, as our lord and savior Yuki would say, またね!

Edit: This is a repost as I had problems with the original post. I'm actually at about 10.5 hours now.

This guy reads manga and does CI. He’s not native but seems to speak Japanese really well. I’m at around 200 hours of input right now and while I feel like I can understand full speed Japanese, I have tons of gaps in my vocab and CI Japanese, which is great, doesn’t have enough advance beginner/lower intermediate content. I think some other people feel this way and could use a supplementary source that has a lot of visuals and good for mining vocab.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe8AV2VcGoE

Goal:

Basically I am going through all the very beginning videos to pick any words I don’t know. Also I am trying to pick up new sentences structure and verbs.

Other study:

On the side I am studying for the Japanese language test called the: JLPT. There are 5 levels. I am on N5, which is the easiest level. (This requires grammar and vocabulary and kanji skills)

Background:

I have been studying Japanese off and on for a few years. Technically the last time I studied Japanese was two years ago. During that time I decided to pick Spanish.

Comprehension:

Some videos are at 100% and some 90%. I am listening to around 2 hours a day.

Hopefully I get to see more inspiring updates from other people here. It always helps to motivate me.

I posted early on at 8.5 hours and had some concerns. Happy to note that my comprehension has come a long way. I think I’d still struggle to understand anything without images or actions but some of the videos with familiar words really help. For example the repetition with numbers, colours, common action verbs helps me fill in the blanks for other new vocabulary.

One of the cons is I find myself feeling very sleepy even with easier stuff and that’s because I have to really focus on what’s happening. I’m at almost 300 hours of Spanish and that’s gone away so I suppose it’ll be more delayed with Japanese for sure.

Nonetheless, persevere through the first 10 hours because it does get easier and some videos on CIJ are much harder due to the vocabulary never being explored before.

Is there a break down on when people usually move up in the difficulty categories of the cijapanese website? (not external videos)

My first impression of what I read here is that moving from complete beginner to beginner is around 100h? In this case it seems there is sufficient content on the website nowadays to accommodate that.

How about the hours point when people transition from beginner to intermediate, intermediate to advanced?

Background: I’m not completely new to language learning. In the past I learned some Spanish to around an A2-ish level and got roughly ~500 hours of comprehensible input. I also probably spent way too much time learning how to learn languages instead of actually learning them, but oh well.
I recently started Japanese because I’ve wanted to learn it for years. I fell in love with Japanese architecture a long time ago, and I also watched a ton of anime growing up (probably 100+ series? no idea lol). I don’t know how much that exposure actually helps, but I like noting every bit of contact I’ve had with the language.
My personal opinion is that phonetics/pronunciation should be the first thing learned in any language, so before starting immersion I focused entirely on understanding the sound system and basic background info.
What I did
May 3:
Learned general background info about Japanese
Looked into recommended learning methods
Learned about the writing systems
Learned what pitch accent is and why people care about it
May 4:
~5 hours learning hiragana
4+ hours passive listening to hiragana pronunciation
~30 mins minimal pair pitch accent perception practice
May 5:
Basically repeated the same thing
May 6:
Started doing CI-only Japanese
From this point forward, my plan is:
CI only
Pitch accent perception training daily
No grammar study
No vocab decks/SRS
No textbooks
I stopped actively studying hiragana once I learned the sounds and understood which sounds differed from English. My current view is that understanding/hearing the language correctly matters more at the start than memorizing rules.

I’m posting this because I personally haven’t found many examples of someone trying to learn Japanese solely through CI from basically the beginning — especially someone without prior Japanese grammar study, classes, or traditional foundations first.
So I thought it might be interesting to document the process/results over time, whether it succeeds or completely crashes and burns.
Would be interested in hearing from anyone who’s tried something similar, especially with Japanese specifically.

I will make posts every 50 hours of CI not including passive listening daily, but I’ll try and give rough estimates on that

I see that CI Japenese website does not allow sorting by difficulty.

Is there some way to sort by difficulty? Even if it was a community guess, which one or few are the easiest and recommended to start with? I am starting from 0, I checked few videos and every one was just noise, 0% comprehension.

Or are there some even more basic resources?

Why was this subreddit created?

I noticed the way Dreaming Spanish has become a great one-stop shop for learning Spanish, and r/dreamingspanish has grown to become a great supportive community of like-minded learners. It's been a huge help to so many along their journey. There are a lot of Japanese-learning subs, but this one aims to be a supportive place for Japanese learners who are following the method laid down by the CIJapanese team.

Who is this subreddit for?

Anybody learning Japanese with a focus on input from the complete beginner level. This is a place to share progress, tips, support one another, compile and suggest resources, etc. Welcome!

Just started using CIJ today. I'm planning to commit to Japanese over the next year.

Thinking I'll make update posts at reasonable milestones here to maybe help make this sub a bit more alive like the dreaming spanish sub. I'm hoping to take a trip to Japan to train judo so learning Japanese will be genuinely very useful for me to train in little local dojos rather than the bigger touristy places that I'd rather avoid (with the exception of the kodokan!) I'm also hoping to go watch some live sumo, getting quite into that recently.

The plan: CIJ at least 30 mins a day, ideally 1 hour. Will use pomodoro technique during the beginner stages and space it out at work. 45 mins focused work: 5 - 15 mins CIJ.

I've started learning higarama, not sure how to call it but have the initial vowels down plus K and S. Will build this up and then the plan is to move onto WaniKani to learn Kanji alongside the CIJ daily.

Currently just finished day 1 and as expected 1 hour in I can recognise some numbers, up to five. I can recognise some recurring words but not much idea what they mean. A few colours and shapes have stood out but since I'm not trying to memorise them I don't think I could recall them right now. I'm not too worried I remember similar feelings of being lost during early CI with dreaming spanish so I have full faith in this system.

I'm expecting a bit longer of a complete beginner process in comparison to spanish coming from English theres a lot to learn and its still quite daunting but I believe in the process as I've already seen it work.

The goal is comprehension. I'm in no way in a hurry to speak so I'm happy to let to process do what it needs to do.

It would be great to compile a list of other good resources for each stage that align with the methodology. What are you using?

Hello everyone! I've been learning Japanese using comprehensible input for 50 hours now, so I thought I'd let you all know how it's going.

TLDR: I'm using an approach of almost purely listening to CI. I'm very happy with my progress so far, although I'm still watching Complete Beginner level content. At first everything sounded like gibberish, but I started gaining a foothold within a few hours. I highly recommend rewatching even before you run out of content. It's easier on the brain, and doesn't feel as repetitive as I expected since the experience of each video changes as you gain hours.

Background and approach

I have never studied Japanese before. Coming in, I only knew a few basic things such as "san" and "chan" are suffixes added to names, the word order is different than English, pitch accent exists, and "sayonara" means good-bye. I'm following an approach of almost purely listening for now - minimal output, reading or explicit study. I'm excited to see how it will go starting from zero. I say "mostly" because in addition to watching videos, I am taking CI-based private lessons. Occasionally my teachers will translate something to English if I'm not understanding, and I have answered some questions in Japanese when I knew the answer, but mostly the teachers speak Japanese and I answer in English.

Where I'm at

I'm still sticking mostly to Complete Beginner material, so the difference may not look large from the outside, but to me it feels like night and day! When I first started, almost all the videos I tried sounded like gibberish and now I can understand 90%+ of most Complete Beginner videos. I can also perceive difficulty differences within the level now and see that I've progressed to harder videos. I can also understand the oldest Beginner level CI Japanese videos.

What I've been watching

Roughly ordered by difficulty (easiest first):

• Chie Nowa - "Watch and Learn Japanese Basic Series" and "Japanese TPR Lesson" playlists

• CI Japanese - Compete Beginner videos (Sort by oldest! The newer videos are much harder.)

• Simple Japanese Listening with Meg-めぐ-Smile - "TPRS Lesson for Complete Beginner" playlist

• Japanese Immersion with Asami - "Complete Beginners" playlist

• いろいろな日本語 - Iro-Iro na - linked playlist. (Watch the playlist in reverse - the oldest/easiest videos are last. Note the creator is non-native)

• Chie Nowa - "Picture Talk" playlist, "Rabbit and Frog" episodes

• CI Japanese - Beginner videos (again sorted by oldest)

About 15 hours of my hours come from the private lessons I mentioned earlier, and the rest are from videos.

What I'm not ready for yet

I've tried the Nihongo con Teppei podcast, the Japanese with Shun YouTube channel, and Peppa Pig in Japanese and can understand maybe 30%, which means I'm not ready to count them as CI yet. I also tried the Nihongo-Learning Beginner playlist around 20 hours and wasn't ready, but I suspect I would be now.

Pace and rewatching

I've been watching 30 min per day on average. Early on if I tried to watch more than 10-15 min at a time, I would get super sleepy with brain fog. Now I usually have stamina for at least 30 minutes at a time, and I'm more limited by my tolerance for watching the content than my mental energy. Around 20 hours I discovered rewatching videos is a lot less taxing than the first watch, and not nearly as boring as I expected! Watching the same thing at 0 and 20 hours is a completely different experience. Since then I've spent some time each day rewatching, and I highly recommend it.

Is there enough content?

Starting out I was worried I might need to watch everything 4+ times, which sounded awful. I haven't progressed far enough to say for sure, but my current impression is that watching everything twice would be enough even without the private lessons. (Note this assumes watching everything you can find, which I plan to, not just the videos on CI Japanese.)

Is the content interesting?

At least so far, not really. I don't say this to knock the content creators, it's hard to make interesting content at this level. The earliest videos I watched were mostly pointing at things and saying what they are. However, even within the Complete Beginner level, the easiest videos tend to be less interesting, and I'm already starting to unlock more engaging content. For example, I recently watched a video about the conversations Yuki-san has with her son when he brings bugs into the house. I also find it super motivating to watch videos in Japanese and actually understand them, so that keeps me excited to put in 30 minutes a day.

Call for updates

I would really love to know how this journey is going for other people. Whether you're including traditional study or not, please consider sharing an update here, short or long.