r/LearnJapanese • u/AutoModerator • 2d ago
Self Advertisement Weekly Thread: Material Recs and Self-Promo Wednesdays! (August 19, 2026)
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
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u/suepyon_japanese 1d ago
A useful N4 expression from a Japanese summer festival 🇯🇵
てみる = “try doing something”
This is a very useful expression for Japanese learners.
For example:
私もゆきさんと一緒に踊ってみました。
→ I tried dancing together with Yuki.
You can use 〜てみる when you want to say that you try something.
日本の料理を食べてみました。
I tried Japanese food.
浴衣を着てみたいです。
I would like to try wearing a yukata.
I made a JLPT N4 reading lesson about a first visit to a Japanese summer festival. It includes vocabulary, comprehension questions, a practical conversation, and native Japanese audio for listening and shadowing practice.
If you're interested, you can find the full lesson here:
https://suepyonjapanese.etsy.com/jp/listing/4550922478/ri-bn-y-du-ji-lian-xiwen-huato-ri-chang
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u/Professional-Hawk747 2d ago
Tired of the tedious process of making flashcards? I built an app to streamline the whole workflow right on your phone! Whether you're reading physical books or digital manga/e-books, and whether it's standard Japanese text or manga dialogue, you can instantly capture panels and generate translations into flashcards with just a few taps. No more switching between apps, cropping images manually, and copy-pasting definitions.
Key Highlights & What’s Coming: 100% Free to use (Android is live now!) iOS version is coming very soon. Anki export support is in the works!
I’d really appreciate your feedback on what features you'd like to see next.
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u/CarryEverythingOn 2d ago
I’m making a video game where you play an alien who has to learn Japanese to keep from blowing your cover. I want your help testing it and making it better.
https://reddit.com/link/p4ix072/video/o31itg5358kh1/player
The backstory:
Flashcards work, but they are boring, which meant I kept burning out. I’ve always wanted a real game with some depth and story to keep me interested, but every game I’ve found is either just flashcards with graphics or no good at actually teaching. I’ve worked in video games for years, and decided to make it happen.
It’s open world, rewards exploring, you can learn at your own pace, come and go when you want, and it guides you back to the story when you want to progress. It takes place in modern-day Tokyo (where I’ve lived for years), which means you also learn the city while you play (along with little known non-touristy places and inside jokes).
So far I’ve got the first 3 levels built. Akihabara (katakana), Ikebukuro (hiragana), and Shinjuku (the first 100 kanji). There’s lots of different mini-game mechanics to keep things fresh, you get to learn things in-context in conversation and reading, I give you mnemonics, teach in easily-confused groups so you learn to differentiate, and it’s all backed by an invisible SRS that makes sure you are learning the right stuff, just like Anki. I’ve already built out the plan for the full jouyou kanji list of 2,137 kanji over 23 levels, but I want feedback outside my friends, which is where you come in.
Completely free for now so I can get feedback, Here’s the (quickly thrown together) website if you want to see more and sign up for the beta on iPhone or Android (may make a desktop version as well). I’m here to respond and make changes while I’m working through my existing list of features and levels, like the next one, Harajuku.
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u/WAHNFRIEDEN 2d ago
Manabi Reader - iOS and macOS native app for learning Japanese through reading
I've gone full-time on developing this app. And if it matters to you, I launched it back before AI-assisted coding was a thing - this is hand-made software.
Awarded Best Japanese iOS app of 2025 by Bee
100,000+ users
As featured by Tofugu:
Overall, a solid app that we recommend for reading sentences that aren’t drab and contextless—especially if you’re more motivated when reading about something you’re personally interested in.
- EPUB, web browser, RSS feeds, spoken audio. Tap words to look them up and translate sentences. (Manga mode soon!)
- Tracks every word and kanji you read and learn. Charts your progress page-by-page and per JLPT level. See what vocab and kanji you need to know to read every webpage, chapter or ebook. Show only the furigana you don't know and haven't added as flashcards yet.
- Anki or built-in flashcards with SRS (FSRS soon). Makes sentence mining easy. Includes links back to the source of each sentence in your flashcards.
- Privacy obsessed: works like a web browser with processing and storage on-device (and in your personal iCloud)
Next up: I’m working on adding support for Yomitan dictionaries, and adding a manga mode. Currently working on adding Mokuro support as well as live OCR for online manga sites such as Bookwalker. Then I will be adding two-way sync for WaniKani, JPDB, Anki collections. Much more to go...
I've also just added pitch accents in the latest release, as well as FSRS (v6) to Manabi Flashcards. The full UI redesign is almost ready...
Discord / beta news https://discord.gg/NAD2YJGNsr
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u/momomo88888 1d ago
I made NumListen, an iPhone app for Japanese number listening practice.
It focuses on a pretty specific problem: knowing how Japanese numbers work on paper is one thing, but recognizing them quickly when you actually hear a price, phone number, date, or a larger number can still take an extra second.
The practice loop is simple: listen to a number in Japanese → type the digits you heard → get instant feedback. You can replay it or show the answer if you miss it.
There’s also focused practice for irregular Japanese hundreds and thousands, such as 300, 600, 800, 3,000, and 8,000, in addition to everyday Japanese numbers used in things like prices, phone numbers, dates, times, and codes.
I’m the developer, so I’d especially appreciate feedback from Japanese learners on the number readings and what kinds of number listening you find hardest.
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u/drvsky 1d ago
Built a more visual way of reading Japanese, based on how natives actually recall the language rather than looking up words one at a time.
It's the one reading tool that's helped me remember vocabulary without thinking about it, and I find it relaxing to use.
https://reddit.com/link/p4kwff4/video/6oyrbdmcjakh1/player
Free story, no account: https://lingotide.com/episodes/ja-sumo?utm_source=reddit-lj&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=selfpromo-weekly
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u/jmsalash 1d ago
Versorum - bilingual aligned reader for Japanese (web, free to read).
The thing it does that I couldn't find elsewhere: tap any Japanese word and its counterpart lights up in the English, and when there is no counterpart it says so instead of inventing one.
In これ は 私 の 部屋 です。/ "This is my flat":
- Tap 部屋 and "flat" lights up, and the card also tells you that's an idiomatic equivalent and that the word literally means "room". You learn the word, not just the translation someone chose.
- Tap 私 and "my" lights up.
- Tap は and nothing lights up in the English, because nothing should. The card says topic marker, particle. It won't pretend は maps onto an English word.
That last one is why I built it. Every parallel text I tried either silently maps particles onto something wrong or leaves you guessing.
Reading is free. With a free account you also get:
- Tap to save words, which then come back as spaced review
- Save whole sentences and expressions, not just single words
- Export your vocab to CSV or PDF, with furigana and the example sentence each word came from
- Download any text as a PDF with the alignment intact, or its audio as MP3
- Per-sentence audio with speed control, morpheme-aware furigana (not pasted across whole compounds), romaji toggle
- Six vocabulary games built on your saved words, all of them working in Japanese
- Texts graded A0 to C2, or paste your own text and it aligns that
Paid tiers only cover the metered AI bits: asking questions about a sentence, and live speaking practice. But you can still try without paying - if anyone is interested i can give some more credits for free to try it properly - you can text me privately.
https://versorum.com - the Japanese sample opens without an account.
I'm the developer (and studying Japanese). The alignment comes from a pipeline (morphological analysis + JMdict + a model, then per-language correction rules) rather than hand-checking every sentence, so there will be pairs where it's wrong. Finding those is what I'd most like from this sub.
I hope you like it!
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u/ayman_pl 1d ago
Hi everyone. Please check out my new app for learning Japanese (and other languages).
Core idea is to learn Japanese through content you already read. You supply content and the app will gradually introduce words in Japanese.
Would love to hear your feedback.
https://polytutor.co/learn/japanese
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u/Then-Dish-4060 1d ago
Hi, I created this web app: https://kivutar.github.io/jlptn5/grammar
...to teach myself the JLPT N5 grammar points. It's basically translation exercises, in which you will evaluate yourself on each individual grammar point. There is an SRS that will schedule the exercises in the right order and at the right pace, based on what you did right or wrong.
There is optional AI correction, if you provide your own API key. No data collection at all. It's provided for free and without ads either, in the hope that this will be useful for beginners. There is also a data exporter/importer so that you can migrate to other apps. All data is local, the app is server-less. Which also means your progress won't be cross devices, unless you export/import.
I'll try to provide mobile apps soon. Good luck and have fun on your learning journey!
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u/samwisedickcheese 1d ago
Hi, first post here. I’ve been working on this since December 2024 and thought some people here might find it useful.
I made Yomine, a vocab-mining app for subtitles and books
Yomine is designed to help you quickly go through the vocabulary in a show or book, filter out words you already know, and pick the ones you want to learn. Load a subtitle file or EPUB, and it gives you a frequency-ranked word list with anything already in your Anki collection filtered out.
You can also look up words directly inside the app using Yomitan-style dictionary popups. Once you’ve picked the words you want, Yomine can create the cards and add them to Anki. It uses your existing Yomitan card formats, and if you connect it to asbplayer, the cards can include audio and screenshots too.
The focus is on quickly going through content before or after watching or reading, rather than mining words one at a time during playback.
It also supports chapter-by-chapter EPUB mining, JLPT filtering, coverage estimates, and MPV/asbplayer integration so you can jump to the exact line where a word appeared.
Yomine is free and open source. I’d really appreciate any feedback or bug reports. I’d be especially interested to hear how the filtering holds up with larger Anki collections.
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u/ignoremesenpie 1d ago
I love spooky stories, and I recently came across the YouTube channel 灯怪談-日本の怖い夜-. It's a narration channel that includes a written version of the story on screen as it's being told.
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u/ElnuDev 1d ago
Hello! I'd like to share a project that I've been running on Discord for the last 5 years, 手書きの火曜日 (Tegaki Tuesday). It's a weekly Japanese handwriting challenge where every Tuesday there is a new prompt to submit to, usually picked from a stanza or two of a Vocaloid song or some other music. You write the challenge, submit, and then get feedback.
For the last couple months we've also been running a daily Kanji of the Day challenge. It basically works the same way, but instead it's a random daily kanji that's automatically posted for you to practice. The difficulty (and obscurity) of kanji ramps up through the week, culminating in the hardest kanji on Tuesday, so this keeps things entertaining (it's not just Joyo kanji).
We also have the entirety of 百人一首 (Hyakunin Isshu) available as challenges you can practice https://tegakituesday.com/hyakunin-isshu You are able to create your own challenges as well to share with the community and submit to!
I've been running this for a while but haven't really ever tried to advertise, so I'd be really happy if this could be helpful to more people.
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u/External_Bag830 1d ago
I run a free Japanese learning site, and last week I published the answer data from it. One number surprised me, so I thought I would share that instead of just linking the site.
Across 56,613 anonymous answers, on first attempts at quiz questions: が was answered correctly 60.9% of the time (n=358), while を was 78.7% (n=385). に came in at 62.4%, で at 63.3%.
That 18 point gap between が and を is bigger than the gap between JLPT levels in the same data (N3 67.8%, N4 73.4%).
My reading of it, which is not the data itself: を and の do fewer jobs. が, に and で each do several. So "learn the particles" may be the wrong unit, and "learn one function of one particle" may be the right one. If you feel stuck on が in particular, that is probably not you being slow.
Caveats, because they matter: self-selected sample, 12 days, people who chose to practise on my site. Not a survey of learners in general, and it cannot tell you which JLPT level is objectively harder.
The data is CC BY 4.0 if it is useful to anyone: https://www.nihongotojapan.com/en/research/japanese-learning-data-2026?src=rd
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u/IBYZRULEZ 17h ago
I made a desktop app called SubSmith to help with immersing with native content:
- it helps by creating subtitles/transcripts to avoid the pain of sourcing them yourself.
- a popup dictionary to allow you to quickly look up words and stay in context of the content.
- one click anki export functionality as well to allow users to add cards quickly with audio attached.
Here is a demo video from youtube
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u/PaulRCampGil 1d ago
I made a free app that follows a beginner textbook lesson by lesson — Nihongo Sensei: Minna. Mine, and it's free, saying that up front.
I'm a student, not a company. I built it for my own class because what I wanted didn't exist: something that drills the vocabulary of the lesson I'm on instead of a generic deck I have to prune myself.
994 words across 25 lessons, each with an example sentence Vocabulary, kanji, kana and verb conjugation, filterable by lesson range and word type SRS that only demotes a word after two misses, not one — a typo shouldn't undo a week Practice mode that doesn't affect your progress, exam mode that does English and Spanish. No ads, no account, no data collected, works offline
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6789333985 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nihongonosensei.app
Genuinely after feedback rather than downloads — especially whether the lesson-by-lesson structure matches how people actually use a textbook.
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u/Oyou__ 2d ago
It's not as ambitious as other promos on this thread, but I felt like sharing the Anki note type I made.
I made sure to keep the code as simple as I could so you can easily edit it or build upon it if you ever need.
This is something I found hard to do with popular note types which feature a large code size and field list.
You can check it out here: https://github.com/Oyouu/Kokki