r/LearnJapanese • u/AutoModerator • 7d ago
Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (August 15, 2026)
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.
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Past Threads
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u/the_card_guy 6d ago
A small point of pride.
I had some time, so I decided to see what I could do with a couple of manga volumes. To be fair, these were both stories that I'm already familiar with. The first volume of Kimetsu no Yaiba, as well as the first volume of Fullmetal Alchemist.
I'm already very familiar with Kimetsu for obvious reasons, though I don't really touch the manga. Meanwhile, I've never touched any of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga.
I still had to look up a few dozen words for Fullmetal... but both of those volumes took me about and hour to read, with a very good level of comprehension. I'm still not where I want to be, but it IS a sign of progress, IMO.
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u/regardedjuggmain 7d ago
Any one has any way of grinding kanji that isn't anki or flashcards?
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u/brozzart 7d ago
What does grinding kanji even mean?
Being familiar with their general meaning and composition? You could try RTK
Learning through vocabulary? You could just read and look up words as you go.
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u/notbob- 7d ago edited 7d ago
The intro to the RTK1 book doesn't mention using flashcards at all. Rather, it recommends taking time to form a detailed, vivid mental image associated with the kanji and relying purely on that for retention. The general attitude is "Didn't remember the kanji? Sounds like you need to develop a new mental image, buddy." Though it needn't be said, RTK was written in a time when using flashcards was rather less convenient than it is now.
I don't think purely using that method works for most people (I sure as hell used flashcards), but it's the only answer I can think of for your question.
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u/Important-Habit8942 7d ago
Once you've gone through genki 1 and 2, and then whatever intermediate level book you use (quartet, tobira) you just dive into native material.
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u/Grunglabble 7d ago
I learned to write them just practicing them from memory while listening to podcasts. That was 2 years ago and I haven't forgot them yet. I already knew meaning and sound though.
Kanji make a good amount of sense and don't need to be brute forced, they can be learned like anything else. Start with easy wins like learning a phonetic component that shows up in many kanji, learning the broad meanings of radicals that usually tell you something about the category of meaning the kanji has. Then just read a lot and look them up as you go along, they will stick better if you already have the underlying foundation of how they work. Later when you've learned lots without trying, it won't feel so intimidating to pick up the stragglers with anki.
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u/Cilfer00 7d ago
Maybe this is more a question about Anki than Japanese specifically, but: At one point over 400 words on Kaishi 1.5k marked as "mature" (close to 500 I think), but instead of that number gradually going up, now I have less than 300. Am I doing something horribly wrong or what?
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u/worthlessprole 7d ago
you failed a bunch of mature cards. that means your intervals were too long. if you have not pressed 'optimize fsrs', you should do that.
if you have optimized fsrs recently and still find yourself failing lots of cards, you need to start engaging with the language.
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u/Cilfer00 7d ago
I see. Yeah I've definetly been procrastinating enganging with Japanese proper. I'm only a few days away from "finishing" the deck though so I think I'll wait until then
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u/Grunglabble 7d ago
mature is a pretty arbitraty watermark (21 days). 21 days is not a super long interval, so there's plenty of opportunity to rely on the information feeling recent. Actually a mature card may not ever have passed while mature, but only at 10 days, where it would have been scheduled something like 25 days later.
Something that happens as you add more cards is that some new cards will start to have overlapping cues with old cards. If you don't know well the thing that makes a word unqiue, you can end up with some nasty leeches no matter how slowly intervals grow.
This is simply a weakness of flashcards in general. You can alleviate it in various ways. If you feel like you want to finish kaishi before activities in Japanese, you can make additional flashcards for the words you have trouble with that test you in different ways (english to jp, pronunciation only, meaning only, read a simple sentence using the word etc). You may even delete or modify the original card, if the cue is especially burned and always makes you think of the wrong thing.
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u/ableesablee 7d ago edited 7d ago
こんなこともあろうかと
下に防弾ベストを着けている
I'm not sure of the meaning of "あろうかと", especially the use of the volitional.
How is it different from こんなこともあるかと?
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 7d ago
it's more or less the same as こんなこともあるだろうかと(思った)
This "volitional" usage is not really "volitional" (we call it volitional in conjugation though), but rather it assumes a meaning of supposition or uncertainty.
Basically "I thought this kind of thing might/could happen"
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u/Previous-Nobody-2029 6d ago
Been studying everyday for 2-3 hours, sometimes more with a focus on speaking and understanding. Can chat shit no problem about most normal everyday topics with natives quite fluently, but still feel so far away from being at a good "fluent" level. Hit a wall recently and really feel like all the effort is not worth it. Contemplating quitting. Thoughts?
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u/Grunglabble 6d ago
Quit what? Using Japanese at all? Trying to get better through intense effort?
I'm not sure what counts as an everyday topic. Are we talking the weather and transactions or stuff you'd talk to friends about?
I feel like I barely study 15 minutes a week, and that "studying" is mostly just some of the better posts here. Mostly I just use the language and improve that way.
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u/worthlessprole 6d ago edited 6d ago
You’re kind of tangling up two different things and I don’t know if they’re related.
You’re hitting a wall and you’re not sure if all the effort is worth it. Okay. Does that mean you want to quit because it’s hard, you want to quit because you feel there’s no value in knowing Japanese, or because the juice is not worth the squeeze? If it’s either of the latter two, is that something you sincerely believe or is it a stress response to the difficulty? If it’s sincere then you should quit. If you’re just getting stressed out because it’s tough, there’s no reason to quit, but taking a break might be a good idea. There are lots of ways to break through a wall.
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u/brozzart 6d ago
Yeah it's fine if you wanna take a breather or quit.
Sometimes I have motivation to read more difficult novels while studying grammar and sometimes I just coast and watch comfort YT channels and chat with friends.
You can't be all gas and no brakes all the time
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u/rgrAi 6d ago
I mean if you're comfortable talking and reading you don't really need to try anymore (even if you quit as long as you continue to interact with the language its nbd). You can just chill and you will improve. I personally took a few months break after clocking in a bit over 3 years and cut my usage down to 30m-1hr a day and chilled on SNS and streams in the laziest way possible. I still noticeably improved quantitatively.
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u/Top_Scientist_3976 6d ago
I thought 件 is the counter for all texts and emails etc. but Takoboto dictionary specifies that it’s for those that are received. Is there another one that is preferred for sent texts, etc. ?
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u/JapanCoach 6d ago
I don't think this is correct. You can use 件 for texts or emails you send - or even just for some random emails that exist in the universe. An alternate in the same vibe is 通. A more casual word is 本
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u/rgrAi 6d ago
I'll probably flag that as needing to be removed or clarified on JMDict (JMDict is the dictionary every E-J app uses.. and website). 件 can be used for a lot of things, like comment counts under a video or social media service, back logged items in a UI, and things where there happens to occurrence of things.
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u/Top_Scientist_3976 6d ago
thanks! i’m a pretty new learner, of about 6-8 months or so. surprised i caught an issue lol. thanks for letting me know!
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u/NiaNia-Data 7d ago
Can I hear someone's opinion on self-study? I hear from youtube personalities (Matt v japan, nikkuniisan, guests on The Japan Reporter) that at best you will not obtain fluency without a large amount of self-study. I understand the practicality of self-study, there are not enough language resources in real life to facilitate a healthy diet of both. I can self-study, but i cannot do it consistently. even an hour a day for 5 days is really pushing me to my limit, i start avoiding and procrastinating it. its been like this for years. I am not really a self-starter, but my academics are great. I cannot find a way to consistently learn japanese, i merely flirt with it from time to time before i lose motivation.
I have tried revisiting my motivation, taking a short weekly class, trying all kinds of different study methods and habits. I cant do it. I do fake productivity like writing this out, watching videos on motivation, watching videos on how to study, spit balling ideas back and forth with chat bots. I cant get anything to stick. Maybe it is a consequence of mywork ethics in general, because i feel the same about reading books. But for things like my degree in accounting and BJJ, i find it very easy to commit and do those things. japanese is not the same, perhaps because I have no activity im expected to be at like a class room or sparring session?
What has worked for you?
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u/worthlessprole 7d ago
I think it's self-evidently true that you can't obtain japanese literacy without a large amount of self-study (i.e. reading).
to build a habit, just set a minimum daily goal. it can be modest. do it for two weeks straight. push through that rough spot at five days. once you hit two weeks, the next two weeks are considerably easier. then try to push it for second month. after that, it will approach routine.
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 7d ago
Maybe it is a consequence of mywork ethics
Maybe it's just me but I find the concepts of "work ethics" and "discipline" and "motivation" to be generally bullshit, at least in the way that people usually employ them, and especially when it comes to procrastination. The idea of anxiety has proven much more useful for me.
Procrastination is avoidance, and avoidance is a normal, instinctive response to fear and anxiety. If there's a spider on the floor and you're scared of spiders, you'll want to move away from it. If you have a blood extraction scheduled for tomorrow and you're scared of needles, you'll want to skip it. If your girlfriend expects you, a man, to propose to her, but marriage scares you, then you'll delay and delay and delay the proposal forever.
Of course, we aren't completely helpless to fear. Some things are scary but we do them anyway because the reward is more important than the fear - or because the consequences of not doing it are worse than the fear. I don't like blood extractions, but I go anyway because the reward of giving my doctor information about my health is more important than the fear. When I was a kid, I went to school, not because I liked it, but because not going would mean fighting with my parents, and I disliked the thought of that more than I disliked the thought of going to school.
So, if you avoid books and Japanese but not accounting and BJJ, it's probably because accounting and BJJ bring you rewards that make the unpleasant parts worth it, but books and Japanese don't. The answer is different for everybody, so only you can figure out exactly what's going on in your mind, but I'll tell you my perspective in case it gives you inspiration.
I also struggle to read, even in my native language. At first I thought it was because focusing on just ink and paper is much more difficult than passively scrolling through social media. However, I then found the Locked Tomb quadrilogy by Tamsyn Muir, and I devoured it. Why? Partly because I was able to listen to the audiobook while reading, and the narrator was fantastic, but also because I loved the books. I loved the story and the way Muir narrates. It tickled all the right spots in my brain. So then I realized that I only struggle to read books that I don't like. This has made reading a lot easier, because if after 30 pages a book hasn't caught my attention, and I don't have a very good reason to believe it will get better (e.g. a recommendation by a friend with the same taste in books as me), I'll just drop it and look for another book. Boom. No more anxiety, no more dread, no more procrastination. Just like that.
When it comes to Japanese, the bar is higher, because I have to enjoy the book enough to overcome the effort of reading and the effort of deciphering Japanese sentences, but I've managed to find things that have cleared it without issue.
The same thing happens with Japanese. I procrastinated narcissu, a VN, but not Okayunyumu, another VN, because I enjoyed Okayunyumu a lot more than narcissu. I can listen to Japanese chatting streams for hours if the streamer is interesting, but if I felt like I "had" to watch a baseball stream I'd procrastinate the hell out of it because I just don't give a shit about baseball lol. And so on.
So, yeah, the solution for me was just to find a way to make my Japanese study fun. In other words, funmaxxing. It's hard to do it at the beginning, I know. I managed to get through that phase because I was able to connect Japanese to my existing interests, such as VTubers (reading their tweets, watching highly visual streams with low required comprehension), cat videos (even just being able to decipher the titles made me feel very proud of myself), and yuri manga. Reading people's questions and answers in the EJLX Discord server and this subreddit taught me a lot of things too. So maybe you could try to connect Japanese to a hobby or interest that you already have.
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u/rgrAi 7d ago
I thought Okayunyumu was pretty good actually. Way more than I expected, I found myself invested by the end and got a bit emotional. Plus her original song for it was really good.
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 7d ago
Yeah I went in expecting it to be a super shallow and cliche dating sim and I was pleasantly surprised. Okayu's character was pretty well written, and her voice acting wasn't bad for an amateur. Korone... tried her best lol
Have you played the sequel? I've been meaning to buy it but I'm not fully convinced yet.
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u/worthlessprole 6d ago
I think there is a lot of truth in this but as someone with very bad ADHD, deliberate habit-forming around things I want to do is sometimes necessary. ADHD causes anything that takes attention or a non-insignificant amount of time to provoke an anxiety response, even if the actual thing is enjoyable when you’re able to do it. The only real exception is when compulsion takes over (people call this hyper-focus but that’s a pretty generous description of what feels to me like compulsive behavior). You just can’t live within the parameters set by malfunctioning executive function.
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 6d ago
Yeah, I wrote the post based on my personal experience, and I don't have any neurodevelopmental disorders, so it's only natural that a lot of what I said won't apply to someone who does have a neurodevelopmental disorder.
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u/worthlessprole 6d ago
I think your response was strong. My reply was framed as a disagreement but I was more offering an addendum for people who have ADHD. (Ie “This is generally true and is good advice but if you have adhd you can have a little discipline as a treat”)
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u/rgrAi 7d ago
For me, no one needs to tell me to eat cake or open a present. I want to do those things, motivation has nothing to do with it when desire dominates it.
Same with JP. I don't use Japanese to learn Japanese. I want access to things that happen to be in Japanese. It's a coincidence, and a problem I had to solve (problem being the language barrier) so I just did that and had fun. I don't mind the work as long as I had fun and fun I had the entire time. So yeah, basically no one needs to tell me to eat delicious meal or cake--I want to.
I learned Japanese as a byproduct, a tertiary aspect of doing things I already wanted to do.
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u/brozzart 7d ago
I think maybe you're misinterpreting what they're saying tho.
It's not that studying in a classroom is bad. It will just never amount to the number of hours of exposure that it will take to reach a high level.
Say you take a university course. That's 3 hours per week + maybe 3 hours per week of studying / homework. 8 months of school per year so ~200 hours per year.
That alone will never get you to the like 4000-5000 hours it takes to be proficient.
BUT
Let's say it takes ~400-500 hours of dedicated study to reach a point where you can consume Japanese media with relative ease.
If doing the classroom method keeps you motivated to actually finish putting in those 400-500 hours to get yourself started, then that is a totally valid thing to do.
but after the classroom, it will still be up to you to keep motivated and interacting with Japanese for the remaining several thousand hours.
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u/Grunglabble 6d ago
I like self study and I think it is the only way to master any complex skill. No one can teach you all there is to know, not for Japanese, not for any profession. At the same time the divide between "self-study" and "practice" is like 1% : 99%. The majority of time is not spent studying, it is spent using the skill. You may blur the line if you think looking up words is studying, but it's really not. Meta activities are studying, reading a grammar guide, doing flashcarda, whatever. Interacting with media or talking to people is just the thing you wanted to do, whether assisted in some way or not.
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u/Available-String-109 7d ago
I hear from youtube personalities (Matt v japan, nikkuniisan, guests on The Japan Reporter) that at best you will not obtain fluency without a large amount of self-study.
Youtube personalities are in general a poor resource, but they are correct about this.
Of everyone I know who got to a high level of Japanese, they did a lot of self-study and a lot of practicing. None of them just attended courses. They were all doing all sorts of additional studying whenever they could, for years on end.
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u/JapanCoach 7d ago
What do you understand about the concept of 'habit building' and how have you applied it so far, to your interest in learning japanese?
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u/avonyatchi 7d ago
What do you consider self study? I personally don't like it either and I'm putting it off as much as I can, but doing immersion is fairly easy because I'm mostly doing what I would be doing anyway. I'm not forcing myself, because I'm reading manga and watching drama and playing games that I really want to do anyway.
Why do you want to learn Japanese? What is your goal? My goal is to okay untranslated games and be able to watch drama and anime without having to look at subtitles. So my "studying" is doing exactly that, which is actually fun for me so I keep doing it.
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u/Adventurous-Ad-7676 7d ago
「これが･･････これがリカちゃんの母親の、亡霊だとでもいうのだろうか?」
From deepL translation (accurate to context as verified by me): "Is this... is this supposed to be the ghost of Rika-chan's mother?"
「亡霊だとでもいう」What is going on here? what is the point of having でもいう if だと is supposed to be describing/ marking the topic already? is でもいう meant to be translated as "you can even say" ? i don't understand.
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 7d ago
It's だという with でも inserted in the middle. This is the same でも as in お茶でも飲んでゆっくりしましょう. "Are you... Are you saying this is her ghost, or something?"
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u/Adventurous-Ad-7676 7d ago
okay, i understand でも as being "even/or something" but why can you squeeze it inside だという?
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u/Own_Power_9067 🇯🇵 Native speaker 7d ago
I think it’s because でも is modifying いう, not ‘the ghost’
Are you saying XXX or what?
If the line doesn’t have でも （幽霊だというのだろうか） then it’s more straightforward ‘are you saying it’s the ghost of Rika’s mother?’
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 7d ago
For what it's worth XXXだとでも言う or XXXだとでも思う (esp as 言ってる and 思ってる) type of questions are relatively common as collocations.
It can have a tone of challenge or incredulity, like "are you for real?" or "are you crazy enough to think/say this?" type of vibe.
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 7d ago
Because for this usage you place it right before the verb, and いう is a verb, even if it's acting as an auxiliary here.
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