Akamonkai Online Japanese Course Diary/Review

Japanese Language Study Logs (Public)
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As I was considering attending Akamonkai offerings for Japanese courses online, I found it exceedingly difficult to find reviews or stories related to it. I will be using this thread as diary of sorts but also a place to socialize with others regarding this.

I did come across older threads on these forums about the courses where some felt there are better, higher value options out there. Options such as tutors, self study materials such as Wanikani, and other options were more effective for learning. I actually agree with many of those opinions.

However, I learned Spanish through school and studying in Spain, where group classes taught me so much. I feel that these online courses will similarly help me for how I learn languages.

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May 20th, 2025 - Trial Lesson

This lesson was just a 20 minute taste of what will become 90 minute sessions three times a week (I am taking the standard course). The instructor was a nice person, who spoke both Japanese and English. Introductions were short though, as we jumped into the lesson rather quickly.

I realized at this point that the class would be taught almost entirely in Japanese. I was surprised with myself here, as I was able to keep up despite having very limited experience with Japanese outside of anime, manga, Wanikani, and social media. Of course, the instructor kept it basic.

The instructor told us to greet each other and say where we are from. I was EXTREMELY shy at this point - especially at the lack of shyness visible on my classmates faces in the group call - but barely managed to croak out my name and where I am from.

We proceeded to some listening exercises where we challenged to, in English, explain what the audio said. The topic of the lesson was “趣味はなんですか？” (What are your hobbies?) and so the audios contained short and sweet conversations about the characters’ hobbies.

To keep this short, we practiced until I eventually came to the sentence I constructed: 自転車に乗ることです。あと、歩くのが好きです。Pretty sure there is supposed to be a も in there but I’m not sure where.

So the trial lesson provided a basic grammar lesson and I managed to learn how to talk about my hobbies. We rated our performance at the end of the class. I gave my three stars out three, of course. I was so proud of myself for overcoming that shyness and actually managing to speak a little Japanese! It rained on my parade a little though when the instructor said that other instructors MAY or MAY NOT be able to speak ANY English. That scares me a bit, but with how this class went I think that’ll be fine… I think.

I feel as though my self studies through BunPro and Wanikani helped immensely. This course will give me better direction for my continued studies. I officially start taking the actual classes in early July, but I’ll update my thread if anything else happens before then.

This course, the Basic Course 1, comes out to ~$20(US) per session over the course of a few months, totaling 45 sessions at 135,000 yen/~$930. I think that’s more than worth it considering we provided the course materials at no additional expense.

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This sounds interesting and it’s the first I’ve heard of them. I’m using a similar online language school group class for Spanish now through Lingoda and I’ve enjoyed their classes. It’s not very challenging material to read and understand but it’s been motivating to get out of my comfort zone and speak more. I may make a note to look into this language school in the future. Best of luck and I’ll read your updates when you take more classes.

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I’ll keep an eye on this as well. It sounds interesting, not sure if it’s the right fit for me necessarily, especially now, but keeping an open mind and learning from other’s experiences is always a good thing! Good luck and I hope it turns out to be great for you!

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ohhh, I was looking online for someone who took the “live” course and not the “pre-recorded” lessons. I will be looking closely for your impressions as it would be very important for me to make a decision.

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July 7th, 2025 - Getting Started

My first class will be held on Wednesday and we have received all of the starting materials. We got a login to a file sharing service with the textbooks and other resources that will be used each class. I like the structure of the materials and the organization of things. It is all readily available and easy to navigate, although much of it in Japanese. There is a strong expectation of SOME level of Japanese knowledge - reading hiragana and katakana is necessary and they provide some resources for quickly learning it. Also, there were cool keyboard excercises for praticing typing in Japanese. I was able to compete these on my iPad surprisingly with my Magic Keyboard. It was just like any other typing exercise, phrases in kana came up and below that were the necessary keyboard inputs. So, 元気？ was “gennki?”

We were sent a few videos where an instructor - fully in Japanese with English subtitles - explained how the courses will proceed. We will be using the Irodori textbook, which seems to be designed for speaking what is considered necessary Japanese to live in Japan. I like the structure and design of the textbook.

I don’t really have much more to say yet. I read through the textbook in preparation for the first lesson, where we will learn how to greet others whom we know with phrases like, お久しぶりです。There was a really helpful section explaining when to speak formally. I’m pretty excited!

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That sounds really exciting! Do you know which Irodori textbook you’ll be using? There are many versions, which one do they give for Basic One level ?

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For this course they are going through the A2/elementary level 2 book. We are going through the whole thing for this course! It’s also free, which is a plus.

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that’s great! how is the course so far ?

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Update:

Classes are going great. I am glad that I chose the three days per week option, otherwise it would be too much alongside my personal studies - I use Wanikani and Bunpro. Compared to those resources, each class focuses on specific grammar points and gets us to use them. The homework does the same. It makes the pace of the course seem slow at times, but I know I‘m truly coming to understand these grammar points and phrases better by actually using them and receiving feedback.

I have felt some frustration with my classmates, they are great but they tend to rely on English when they have a question for the teacher. As I have stated, the teachers may not speak English, and the two that I have had so far are still learning it. The teachers have taught us some phrases for questions like, 日本で、何々は何ですか？ and other such phrases. My classmates keep asking how to say things that we haven’t learned, or asking questions with semi-difficult English (i.e. using colloquial expressions/slang). It can really slow down the class, but the teachers try their best to answer. This hasn’t affected my learning, and like I said other than this I like my classmates. Just be prepared to have such an experience in a course like this.

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Just curious how did your course go overall and do you feel like it was worth it? I’m considering taking this exact class.

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