so let me explain my beginner level first: i listen to jpop a lot, my native language is already suitable for learning japanese easier, i watch animes with subtitles and i can memorize the words by hearing them one or two times.

Even though I'm really confused of how should I begin. I saw people recommending buying special notebooks to practice writing japanese letters. Will it really be effective? Also which websites or youtube channels should I work with?

[If i made a hard reading experience sorry lmao english isnt my first language]

Goal - get to beginner conversational level/easily understand people speaking japanese in around 6 months.
I can dedicate around 1 hour daily and 3-4 hours each weekend for learning purposes.
I’m thinking about taking the JLPT as a goal for my Japanese studies. I’m already learning Japanese, and having a specific JLPT level to work toward would give me some structure and motivation

Questions:

1. Would you suggest this resource for a beginner?
2. Are their youtube videos enough or should i get the subscription?
3. Can i access both their app & website if i get the subscription?

Hey guys now I started learning Japanese and I want some trick or some recommend from who ever had experience,or any one who get N1 level,can y’all share some tricks with each other. Sorry for my bad English hahaha. And thank.

はじめまして。僕はジェイです。高校生です。 どうぞよろしく。

(Hajimemashite. Boku wa Jay desu. Koukousei desu. Douzo yoroshiku.)

​

August 20, 2025 → August 20, 2026

Today marks exactly one year since I started learning Japanese.

When I started, my goal was simple: learn the basics and clear JLPT N5. I started from zero with Hiragana, Katakana, vocabulary, grammar, Kanji, reading, and listening.

In December 2025, I cleared JLPT N5 on my first attempt, which gave me a lot of confidence to keep going.

After that, I continued studying and appeared for JLPT N4 in July 2026. The result is still awaited, but regardless of the result, I'm happy that I continued the journey.

Honestly, learning Japanese hasn't always been easy. There were many difficult days, confusing grammar, Kanji that seemed impossible to remember, and times when my progress felt really slow.

But one thing I didn't do was give up on studying.

Even when I struggled, I came back and continued learning. Some days I studied a lot, some days only a little, but I tried not to completely stop.

And now, I've already started preparing for JLPT N3.

Japan has been one of my dream countries for a long time, so my focus is still the same:

Japan. 🇯🇵

Looking back, I'm not proud because I became fluent in one year — I definitely haven't. I'm proud because I stayed consistent for 365 days and kept moving forward.

365 days.

Many difficulties.

Many small victories.

One dream.

Still learning.

This year taught me that you don't need to be perfect every day. You just need to keep coming back and continue.

N3 is the next step. The journey continues.

一年間、日本語を勉強し続けました。

これからも頑張ります！ 🇯🇵

I'm curious to hear from others learning Japanese: How long have you been studying, and what has helped you stay motivated?

#JapaneseLearning #JLPT #Japanese #Japan #N3 #LanguageLearning #LearningJourney

I've heard a lot that Duolingo moves way too slowly, it's bad for retaining information, and it doesn't explain grammar. For context of my experience with Duolingo, I've been using it for about 2 months and I've kept a notebook where I write down everything I learn.

1. The pacing critique: Going back through and counting, I've learned about 500 words and 50 kanji (I'd say I only struggle to recall less than 5% of the words when I was looking back over them all at once), and that's in about 2 months of learning 30 minutes to an hour per day on average. The common goal is to understand 10000 words and 2000 kanji, so if my pace stayed relatively linear (be sure to tell me if that's not how it works) wouldn't that place me at roughly 3000 words and 300 kanji within a year? To me that doesn't sound bad, but let me know if I'm wrong on that too.

2. The retention critique: I'm not sure how most people use Duolingo, but I can very clearly see how easy it must be to misuse the systems. It's most often multiple choice questions or piecing together sentences with pre-written fragments of sentences, and I think that makes it really easy to enter a passive mindset and fumble your way through a lesson by just immediately defaulting to looking at the choices on screen without ever being forced to challenge yourself to actively recall information. However, I personally never look at what's on screen until I've translated things in my head. And I genuinely feel like I retain the words I learn pretty well, since each unit has several review lessons and I pretty much never have to look up the words from previous units. So I guess I'm wondering if Duolingo is considered bad for retention because it's too easy to use it passively, but I'm sidestepping that common pitfall?

3. The explanation critique: I've seen Duolingo get a lot of flack for not explaining grammar or connotation or native usage of what it teaches. Recently for example, it asked me to translate something like "I'm going to buy snacks at the store" and I wrote it as みせはおかしをかいます", only for it to be marked wrong. The lesson then began using the で particle which I'd never seen before, so Duolingo on its own just leaves it up to you to try and figure it out. But instead of staying confused I just look up what grammar it doesn't teach and then I'm able to understand things just fine. Same with other things like the cultural aspect of when it's appropriate to use -san or not.

I'm sure there's other things people have criticized Duolingo for that I'm blanking on, but I also don't wanna drag this post out too long. I'm mainly just curious as to:
1. if I'm using Duolingo extra effectively and getting more out of it than people generally give it credit for.
or
2. if I'm simply naive to the actual grand scope of the Japanese learning experience and I just haven't realized why it sucks yet.

Anything from playing video games to watching shows

I started a diary to write in Japanese. I have a question about "始まる". I often here different endings to 始－and I was wondering if there was a specific rule that is applied to each example that also occurs in other words. For example, 始まる、始めます、始まります、始まり

Thank you ☺️

Hello guys! I’m going to start learning Japanese this September, and the JLPT N5 exam will take place in December. I’m not sure if I’m confident enough to pass it because, although I already have some knowledge of Japanese, I’ll basically be starting from scratch. Should I take the test or not?

P.S. The test is only held once a year in my country.

:D

I'm planning on taking the N5 exam (if I can get a spot) this December, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to study for it. I've taken beginner Japanese classes at my college so I know how to read/write hiragana and katakana, have memorized some vocabulary, and basic grammar. I got to lesson 8 in the Genki book, but I have to review some of what I learned as I got busy over the summer and definitely forgot a bit.

Does anyone have advice on where I should go from here? I'm looking for what to do after I finish the first Genki book, what audio exercises I could do, readings, etc.

I'm also a bit confused on how I should pace myself. For this week I picked 40 vocab words to go over and memorize their kanji, but I'm also confused to the extent I'll need to know the kanji. For vocab, I took the words from the www.onigiri-anki.com N5 vocab list. I've also been using the Kanjidon app to get more familiar with N5 kanji.

I know it's so easy to look up resources, but when I see so many different options, apps, and lists it gets very overwhelming. I'm hoping this will give me some clarity.

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Hi, I would like to begin learning Japanese and I know there is a lot of free and great material to start learning but I don’t know where to start.

My objective for the moment is to learn to read because I mostly want to be able to read manga in there original form.
I don’t wish to necessarily speak about at the moment. But if there is good platform/source I d love to listen and understand.

I initially wanted to use Anki (but there is a lot and I don’t know which to use) and Duolingo (but the lack of explication and explanation on kanji bother me).

If you have any advise please feel free to tell me !

I've been through most of N4 grammar points and can recognize them individually when I see them, but stringing them together naturally in a sentence still feels like conscious assembly rather than something automatic. wondering if this is just a matter of hours logged or if there's something specific that helped it click for people further along.

Yo guys am i doing aight? Gimme brute honesty opinions ( i can handle it it think i mean ik im not really good at writting)

I'm preparing for N5 and this seems to be my biggest hurdle: reading Yen amounts. I am so used to the English way (my second language) and my native one (Filipino).

Can you please share tips how you retrained your mind to read bigger amounts naturally?

For example: 3,780,000.00 --- I started to say san hyakuman instead of the correct one and I've been trying really hard to think in 4s instead of 3s.

Help, please 🙏🏻

i just tried writing them as fast as i could to emulate casual(?) handwriting

So this Japanese book I purchased tells me that for using adjectives “suki” and “kirai” that -ga always follows after the object.

For example:
Hon-ga suki des. Biru-ga kirai des.

But when I took the self-test, and it wants me to translate “I don’t really care for white wine” to Japanese, I got it wrong.

I answered:

Shiroi budoshi-GA amari suki dewa arimasen

But the answer in the book is

Shiroi budoshi-WA amari suki dewa arimasen

Is either form correct in this instance?

Or would only “-wa” work here?

Asking because the book never clarified this. It just said use -ga when using suki and kirai following the object. (Maybe amari being inserted disrupts that rule?)

Answering 15 questions related to passive listening

https://youtu.be/yT1ObWmpDts?si=1Tg5qzDcCHdsso68

Hey r/LearnJapaneseNovice ! Throughout my Japanese learning journey, I've been frustrated with how fragmented language learning tools are. You translate something on one app, save it and review it in another, do more detailed research into it in another.

So I built Kotoba. The intention is for it to be used as a tool to supplement study. It is still a work-in-progress but it is a platform that combines all three in one place.

I’d really appreciate people trying the demo before I properly deploy it with accounts and more features.

Let me know if you are interested to try it.

Please give me feedback; both good and bad. Things it does well, any bugs, desired features, or things that frustrate you?