You did all the 30 lessons on pimsleur?
Can you tell us what did you learned from it? Is it only N5 stuff?
I’m not through it all yet - I’ve done the first level of 30 lessons and am on lesson 20 of level 2. I think the content is mainly falling into N5, although I just looked up the use of NounA+は,NounB +より + adjective to mean A is (more) Adj. than B - this was just introduced in the lesson I did today and seems to be listed as an N4 grammar point on Bunpro. here’s also quite a lot of focus on more formal language in pimsleur level 2 which also seems to be listed under N4 on Bunpro.
Pimsleur does in general move fairly slowly and repeats stuff a lot which I like because I mainly just use it to get experience speaking and giving more nuance to/cementing things I’ve come across elsewhere in my grammar studies. But same as @trombonekun91 said for JapanesePod101, I definitely don’t think you’d want it as your primary resource.
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より on it’s own is often taught after より+の方が , which is basically the lengthy version of the same grammar point. But because より and 方 aren’t strictly grammar, but more like words that also make sense on their own, you can drop either.
より+の方が is listed as N5 on Bunpro, makes me wonder if より on it’s own should really be N4 
Might be worth pointing out that this particular lesson is in “Level 5 Upper Beginner, Volume 1, Lessons 1-25”. These and many others are also available as Audiobook + PDF on either Audible or the Jpod website, for people like me that would rather buy these than get the subscription.
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This was also something that had me curious at first. But maybe that’s just because when I first started studying Japanese, Kanji seemed so intimidating that I didn’t do anything but learn the ones my textbooks wanted me too. So I didn’t pick up WaniKani until I got to Tobira because I felt my kanji knowledge to be a bit lacking and I wasn’t retaining them as well as I’d like.
While I do wish I’d learned of WaniKani earlier I also personally find the recommendation to get to level 10 of WaniKani before even starting grammar to be completely ridiculous.
interesting yeah doesn’t really seem to make sense that they both aren’t the same level. To be honest I’m not that bothered about whether I’m learning things in JLPT order at the moment as I have no immediate goals to take the tests (as I’m not even sure if it will run this year). In this article:"What I Use To Study Japanese" - Matthew Chozick it’s mentioned that after finishing the existing levels of Pimsleur at the time (which I think was perhaps only to level 3 as 4 and 5 weren’t out at that point) he was able to race through intro textbooks but who knows what that means really - maybe it was just the first volumes so N5.
I think it’s really something that just sits on it’s own to get you listening and practicing speaking - you use grammar points but it makes no real effort to ‘teach’ them to you in any depth and for that reason I think unless you just wanted it to get some speaking and listening comprehension alone it needs paired with other materials that will more nicely fit in to the JLPT framework. Which works for me because it does the one thing that it does (getting you speaking and listening gradually more complex things/ideas) very well but may not work for others with a more concrete study goal of passing a certain JLPT level or something like that.
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Hope it’s alright to jump in. How are the SRS Vocab cards that JapanesePod101 has? Any good? Vocab is really being a pain for me right now and not sure which srs i should use for it
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Hey Meeks33! Always okay to jump in! I love discussing this stuff haha
Short answer, not good lol. I rarely use it. It works like Anki because you can decide if you got it right or not, and I would rather just be wrong if I thought I was close. The SRS system also isn’t very intuitive and doesn’t remind you when to review next. It just says, “yea you should review this deck again sometime on January 6th…y’know, if you want” and I think that’s kind of lazy on their part. I just use it when I want to reinforce the vocabulary in the lessons so it’s easier to read the dialogues.
For the Core10k vocabulary, I use ToriiSRS cause it looks and works a lot like WaniKani. I think the SRS system is actually a clone of WaniKani because the dev is a WaniKani user. There is also a context sentence for each vocabulary word with audio, and as far as my ears can tell, it’s an actual human speaking. Each word also has many context sentences with English translation alongside in the ‘details’ tab.
It’s only $22 for a lifetime subscription. It doesn’t give you too many extras and a paid subscription isn’t necessary to use the app to it’s full potential, but I liked it so much that I wanted to buy him a couple coffees haha.
There aren’t any mnemonics, but there is space to create your own, which is a lot of fun for me. I usually make them using the radicals I know in the kanji, but ToriiSRS includes a ton of Katakana loan words and Hiragana only words too.
The thread is linked here: Torii - SRS learning application for vocabulary
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Hey, question for the floor! Where do you get your manga, physical books, e-books, or otherwise? I want to start buying some stuff and I have found some cool looking graded readers of folk tales on Amazon, but not much in the way of manga. My parents got me a tablet for Christmas but I like the idea of a physical book to flip through as well.
I got manga from here: https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/ - the postage was quite a lot (which I used as an excuse to get quite a few volumes of manga haha) I am in the UK though so costs may differ to elsewhere.
I’ve heard other folks say ordering from Amazon Japan is good but it seemed complicated to set up an account and I try to avoid Amazon where I can (not super successfully)
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Awesome! Thanks @sycamore. I will check that site out. Not too too worried about fees, cause I’ll probably make the same excuse that you did about buying a lot of volumes. 
I was reading about people who buy manga on Amazon JP and they lost me when they said you’ll have to produce a proper Japanese address to buy from the site, and here’s where you can do that. I was like…sounds illegal, but okay, and then I gave up on that lol.
Hey! I’m level 6 but I would love to join this, hope I’m not too late.
Also Happy New Year everyone!
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Thank you @trombonekun91! It’s a grind trying to balance so many things out and figure out something that works well. I just started Genki 2 but the vocab isnt sticking and it only gets tougher from here with the grammar and vocab used 
I’ve ordered from Amazon Japan before. Got Yotsuba, Pokemon and Dragonball manga from the site. Shipping wasn’t too bad to North America.
Hmm It seems my experience was a little different. I was able to use Amazon JP with the current Amazon account that I already have. I cant seem to remember if I had to go through many steps to set it up or not. Now i just switch the region, log in again and use my international address. They’re doing Global shipping now so there doesn’t need to be any illegal address problems. You could put in your international address and the site will let you know if the product can get delivered to the address or not. Definitely worth a try if the prices to your region aren’t too bad. I got those manga in the summer and also got the Genki 2 books delivered about a month and a half back!
Thank you for the suggestion @sycamore! I think I’ll check the website out as well.
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Getting the address isn’t a problem, reshipping services are pretty convenient to set up. Considering that you need a VPN for sites like Amazon JP and Netflix JP, there’s probably some licensing/tax issues there though 
Personally I prefer ebooks for light novels because looking up words and creating sentence cards is pretty convenient, but that usually doesn’t work for mangas.
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Do you use the Genki website at all to work through the book? It has digital versions of the vocabulary and exercises from the main textbook and the workbook, listening comprehension, and spelling/writing practice too. The vocabulary practice is word matching from a list, but it’s the vocabulary you find in the book, and you can toggle the furigana on and off. Only setback is the font is kind of tiny so you have to sit closer to the computer, or maybe I just have really bad eyesight haha.
Link: Genki Exercises - 2nd Edition | Genki Study Resources
Oh! And you didn’t make a new Amazon JP account either? Hmmm, may have to give it another shot in the future.
Yea, I want to get e-books too for that reason, good tip on not being too convenient for manga. Maybe I’ll do e-book for light novels and paperback for manga. Love that new book feel!
This was another barrier for me. I feel like I’m hacking when I do this kind of stuff lol.
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It might have been different in the past but nowadays, for Japan and China, you cannot combine your Amazon accounts anymore. You have to create a separate one. You cannot even, supposedly, transfer your Amazon account if you move to/from these countries. At least, that’s what I’ve read but feel free to chime in, if you actually have personal experience with it. I’d be curious…
If you don’t want to set up another account, or you plan to buy from Amazon.co.jp rarely, reshipping services as already mentioned above are a great choice. Also, if you are living in the U.S., or any other country that has Kinokuniya bookstores presence, you can order through them. Their online store has a pretty decent selection. Price wise, it is definitely cheaper than buying Japanese books from the U.S. Amazon website, if they actually are even available, that is… When compared to the Japan Amazon prices, it is usually only a dollar, or two, more, sometimes more though as the USD/JPY exchange rate has been in the gutter for the past year:(
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Welcome @lexie920!!
@sakaijin I just clicked through Kinokuniya’s website and the store is in NYC, which is about an hour or so away from me. I know where I am going when the world returns to normal! 
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Glad to be of help. I live in NYC and only realized that we have Kinokuniya in the city after I came back from Japan. So for now, I’m good with Japanese reading materials but I will make my trip there soon, too;) Enjoy it.
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Thank you so much! I use the physical books and the app for Genki to do flashcards but theyre not SRS so its slightly tough and not the best experience. I just found one of the wanikani users’ own genki website they made for practice. I think I’ll use both of these to reinforce vocab.
Its very possible that I had to go through a few steps to create one but I can’t remember so for that I apologise to both you and @sycamore! at the moment though, I’ve been ordering from Amazon JP for over a year. No need to connect to vpns or anything extra. Just switch my current Amazon region to japan, input login details and scroll through like normal (but thats after creating an account for it I think).
You definitely may be right. It may have slipped my mind on how I started using Amazon Japan. I’ll try and see if I can find what I may have done to set up the account. However, now I just switch my region and login again but that might be my Amazon japan account like you said (so 2 different accounts). Its all a bit confusing and I think I’ve forgotten the intial setup process I went through
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Not sure if it’s too late but I added myself to the list and installed the userscript!
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