Resources like Dreaming Spanish?

Just as the title says, I was looking for a resource like Dreaming Spanish but for Japanese obviously (lol). I’ve been using podcast material for learners on youtube on my own for a little while, Nihongo con Teppei and AkaneSensei, but I was wondering if there is some all in one resource out there I’m unaware of. I’ve heard positive things about Dreaming Spanish and I was looking for something similar.
Thank you for any recommendations

3 Likes

Well,

Is a resource for reading and listening.
It also has grammar notes
And SRS.

So, in a way, it is somewhat close to this “all in one resource” you are talking about.

teaches both kanji and grammar, so, again, might be close to what you are looking for…

Both are not free though, but well worth checking.

I must say though, I don’t think there is a single resource that would be enough… But if it exists – I hope you would find it.

In any case, best of luck with your studies! wricat

5 Likes

The problem with comprehensible input in Japanese for English speakers is that the starting gap is much, much larger than for Spanish. If you take some random newspaper headline in Spanish:

Cáncer de pulmón de célula pequeña en mujeres: un problema en aumento que se diagnostica tarde

I’m sure that most people here with no Spanish knowledge can extract a whole lot of information from this. Meanwhile, from NHK:

長野 飯田 車が道路脇の水門に衝突 男性4人全員死亡

Transliterated:

Nagano Iida kuruma ga dourowaki no suimon ni shyoutotsu dansei 4 nin zenin shibou

Arguably in terms of vocabulary the Japanese headline is more trivial than the Spanish (doesn’t talk about medical stuff but about a traffic incident) but it’s basically 100% noise for a beginner.

So you have to recalibrate your expectations based on this. There are good resources to provide graded content for beginners (@trunklayer’s recommendations above are a good place to start) but the idea of learning Japanese from scratch using mostly “comprehensible input” seems very unrealistic to me. There’s too much ground to cover.

But then again I see that you’re level 34 so you probably already know quite a bit, in which case Satori could probably be a good fit indeed.

7 Likes

I agree about learning Japanese through comprehensible input from scratch being very difficult, but I’m not a total beginner. I’m probably upper a2 or low B1 if I had to guess. At least with reading. I passed my N4 mock exams consistently with the exception of the listening portion. That was hit or miss. I really need to develop more of an ear for things. I have a Japanese teacher I meet with once a week for an hour. The lesson/conversation is entirely in Japanese which I find helpful. Conversation is still really difficult. It’s funny though, I understand my teacher more in the recordings later rather in the moment. Less pressure I guess.

I have Satori Reader and I’ve read a few of the stories on there. Maybe I should focus more on that instead of physical print so I can take advantage of the built in audio too. I’m making a commitment to do at least 1hr of listening practice everyday at least to start. We’ll see if I scale it up later. Nihongo con Teppei and Akane are cool, I was just wondering if anyone knew about a dedicated app for this sort of thing

3 Likes

I haven’t used Dreaming Spanish (since I’m not learning Spanish) but I’ve heard of it and I think Comprehensible Japanese is similar. I’ve followed their youtube channel for a few years and have now switched over to using their site. They have a lot available for free on youtube and on their site if you want to try it out.

4 Likes

I think that might be exactly what I need. Thank you so much

2 Likes