Can anyone suggest any Japanese Media?

Japanese Language
1

I’m currently on level 6 and want to start consuming Japanese Media to help with my recall and studies. Please could anyone share any Japanese media that would be suitable for my level. Can be anything; books, manga, anime, shows, films, even magazines.

2

Are you on FB? I follow only a few select Japanese content creators. Their content kind of matches my interests.

3

I’m not very far along myself. In fact, I’m not really studying any vocabulary or grammar outside of WaniKani right now. What I can say is that practicing my listening skills is where I’m at right now.

I know a lot of people will say that you won’t learn much watching Japanese media with English subtitles on. I read ahead a bit on subtitles for words I might know and then try to listen for them. And try to recognize patterns that don’t match the English subtitles at all. I don’t know nearly enough words to keep pace even attempting to listen to full sentences.

The other thing I do is if I hear a repeated phrase, I will have Google translate open and try to type in what I hear to see if I can discover the actual words being said. This will really help with making sure you know the accurate vowel and consonant sounds and how to write them in kana. Sort of easy for Japanese compared to Korean.

Two great shows for this on Netflix for me are The Hotspot and Jin. On YouTube, there’s quite a bit of Atashin’chi with subtitles.

And then I found some Japanese music to listen to. At first I didn’t think I liked any of it, but Pandora is a great tool for discovering music based on likes. Downside is the app crashes when you search for any song or artist names that are written in kanji or kana. Short tracks you can listen to over and over, look up the lyrics and listen again. And there are words and phrases that show up again and again in music and like English the language is a bit different in music.

4

Well, here are just a few links:

There’s also great app called

However, unlike the previous links in this post – it’s not free. It does have some free content though.

And there’s also

However, this one was created with the help of AI, so this needs to be taken into consideration. Still, at least the beginner levels are quite useful.

Anyway, best of luck with your studies! wricat

5

I like this youtube channel. It’s good for beginners like me.

6

Made for learners while still being interesting. Has free vocab and grammar sheets

7

I am although I tend to keep it separate from my other social medias.

8

Both Hospots and Jin look interesting. Going to be a fun watch. Didn’t think of music. Any suggestions?

9

Thanks. I’ll have fun browsing through them.

10

And subscribed. Thanks

11

I enjoy a good fantasy story. Thanks.

12

As someone previously said, Satori Reader is great as you can input your WaniKani level and they adjust furigana/kanji to match.

For listening, at that level, I started with Nihongo con Teppei for beginners because he repeats a lot of what is said, he speaks at a comprehensible level and there are a LOT of videos. I used to consume these on my commute and they helped me.

13

Jin is a good drama. The Hotspot is the driest humor but very funny to me. My interest in Japanese music is all over the place and each for different reasons. These are all music I can listen to over and over because it’s good music but then l hear the lyrics repeatedly because of that.

  • Suzume - both the title track of the movie but also the movie itself. I heard this song on Pandora and got so captivated by it that I looked up the movie and watched the whole movie.
  • Radwimps - the band that happened to be involved in the writing of the music of Suzume but not singing the vocals.
  • LiSA - started listening because I heard the song Gurenge, which is the opening theme of an anime I haven’t seen.
  • Phantom Siita - whole new genre of music to me (called retro horror). One of the songs invokes a Mario 64 ghost house music turned into girl group sort of feel.
  • Atarashii Gakko - they’re fun. Weird music video dances.

I know I’m leaving something out but these all have relatively easy to hear lyrics and I don’t get bored with them even when I don’t understand the lyrics. I do occasionally look up lyrics and find out that I actually know the words they’re singing but didn’t recognize them. Mostly because I’m learning vocabulary solely from WaniKani and it doesn’t teach recognizing words by sound - only the reverse.