uh… the title is pretty self explanatory but for some insight, i’m a pretty young learner, namely 13 years old. i am very dedicated to the languages i learn and people do tell me i’ve got pretty developed linguistic abilities but japanese is a real “foe” to tackle. japanese truly is a beautiful language and i find its grammar and well… writing systems really interesting (same goes with words and how they get formed). nonetheless, its is quite the hard language and most of my peers aren’t the most supportive of me learning it because of eastern european ignorance and harmful stereotypes, but i am very passionate and my dopamine levels rise at the sight of a word i actually recognise :3
oh kay, cutting to the chase since most of this post is just me pointlessly talking about pointlessly unrelated topics (i love going on rants), please give me some learning resources!11 i watch youtube videos on it, social media posts and listen to music, not just because i love them and since i do i associate japanese with pleasantness, also for immersion purposes. now, does anyone have any so-to-speak more “niche” tools?22? i already use most of the popular ones (don’t worry, i also analize my tools before mindlessly using them (and i don’t use the unnatural textbook)) and i am moreover in search for some other less popular but effective tools! (by the way i DO take classes and i do have a teacher to ask about unclarities so take everything with a grain of salt!!11 >_<)
P.S.!!11 i’m not only looking for free resources! i have an almost blank christmas list and a lot of scholarship money sooooooooooooo
Are you looking for free resources only? Asking because this might help people understand what you’re looking for
Besides that, there’s a huge list of resources for different purposes:
Also, don’t worry too much about what people say, even if sometimes it’s hard! You’re investing in yourself, and that’s great! You’re young, so that also puts you ahead of others! You’ll find plenty of understanding people here so feel free to ask for any help you need \o/
tysm for the advice and linking me to the list! i had a massive burnout from japanese and so thanks for attaching the list since i completely forgot how to use wanikani!!1
ALSO I CHANGED MY POST to include what you said i kind of very forgot about pointing that out!!1
Also, please don’t try doing 89236812636127386123126872 resources at the same time. I feel like a lot of people, when starting, try to make sure they’re learning the Perfect way and covering everything at the same time. That can lead to burnout (attention everywhereeeeeee but actually nowhereee). Focus on one resource that works for you and stick to it. Consistency is
There is already lots of good content listed in here, for immersion I can just give the advice “use lots and lots of different content that’s fun to you”. No need to stick with a single source all to the end, getting to know lots of things also means you see the language in many different settings.
There is so much content on Youtube and other platforms even for beginners:
Yuyu no Podcast (rather easy, natural japanese used)
Japanese with Noriko (learning videos but with lots of very beginner friendly vocabulary)
Netflix series with japanese subtitles
All kinds of VTubers
Random idol blogs for music or whatever setting (usually very easy and stripped down language, so perfect for learning and basically unlimited content)
Light novels on a newer kindle from amazon.co.jp (newer kindle versions have a rather fast to load dictionary japanese-english)
Visual Novels with Textractor (Hook to get out the written lines) and Nazeka (Browser extension with a dictionary and a nice little “Reading Page” where the text can be placed right next to the novel)
Manga processed with Mokuro (Application to scan the pages to make the text clickable and inspectable with a browser dictionary)
Other than that, I can always recommend LingQ for reading, its subscription based but there is lots and lots of content from all settings to read from and you can load in your own content from youtube, netflix, books and all other sources with a transcript.
In the end it is always wise to immerse especially with sources that interest you and if you happen to have interests in gaming or culture, you will never run out of new things to find.
I got pretty burned out with “studying” so recently I’ve been doing only fun language things, mostly watching YouTube videos that interest me and reading books. This is making me much happier and also improving my level, so I highly recommend it.
Depending in your level, this may not be that appealing to you, but I find that children’s tv is great, in particular I highly recommend the pokemon YouTube channel and the sesame street YouTube channel in Japanese. I’m kind of a weirdo who likes children’s tv anyway, because it’s cute and I don’t have to confront real problems when I watch it, but in particular for language learning, it’s often relatively easy to understand even if your level is low. I never look up words, but I find I learn a lot of words through context alone in children’s tv.
But of course, if you’re not interested in what you are consuming, it won’t work for you, so only take this advice if you think you could be interested.
Game Gengo on youtube (He teaches Japanese through video games)
Crystal Hunters a manga that teaches Japanese
MaruMori.io has really good grammar blogs the best I have ever seen
Shujinkou, Nihongo Quest N5, and Koe are Japanese language learning video games that are currently in development. I highly recommend you wishlist these games on Steam.
You can try HayaiLearn, it’s a web app I built for learning Japanese using YouTube video immersion. Two of it’s main distinguishable feature is being able to lookup YouTube example sentences from a given word, and being able to take notes on subtitles.
I wouldn’t try immersion so early level. I would prefer to create more vocabulary and them to reinforce them I would start immersion (as I did on lvl 30ish here).
Otherwise you look up meanings all the time and I dont know about your short term memory, but for me it doesnt work because 5-10min later I already forgot what I saw
But, I mean, that is the point of immersion, isn’t it? It’s not being done to immediately understand everything the first time you see it, but familiarize yourself with the sounds and the flow while looking up things until you at some point understand them naturally.
I can absolutely understand when someone follows a textbook or basic vocab at the very beginning to at least understand some basic things, that normally shouldn’t take too long though.
Don’t get me wrong, I find it admirable if someone can invest half a year just into SRS without actually playing with the language and has the motivation to keep at it, from my perspective it just seems like such a waste. All the time to get used to how spoken japanese sounds needs to be done at some point anyway.
Didn’t know it actually works for people like that, but it’s very interesting for sure!
way and covering everything at the same time. That can lead to burnout (attention everywhereeeeeee but actually nowhereee). Focus on one resource that works for you and stick to it. Consistency is 
