The Ultimate Additional Japanese Resources List!

What is the metric for that? Monthly active users? If so, what’s the threshold? I’m asking, because I would like to have my site Yomi.ai added to this list at one point. You can read texts for free, but you really get the best use out of the site with an account, which requires an active subscription.

What’s up with CDJapan recently? They have almost nothing is stock.

I mean, infrastructural stuff is much more difficult these days.

@ptb - maybe find a spot in one of the categories here? It’s a cute little story and easy to watch and listen to :grin:

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thanks for the tip - I added it to the free online listening section but if anyone thinks it’s misplaced feel free to move or delete it…

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As far as books go, for Kanji there’s a relatively new one for etymology called “World of Kanji”. The reprint was released this February I think.

You can check out what it looks like on the official website.
World of Kanji

At least to me it looks more interesting than The Complete Guide to Japanese Kanji although they achieve the same purpose.

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Just found this useful YouTube channel. :slight_smile:

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She’s really cool. I had multiple chat interaction with her while she was live and asked some questions.

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I’ve been doing exercises in the Kanji in Context workbook. It’s good otherwise, but one type of exercise is lacking. There are no exercises that require you to write kanji based on reading.

For example, the workbook has this: 「今日の天気はいいですね」(What is the reading of the bolded word?)
But it doesn’t have: 「今日のてんきはいいですね」(What are the kanji of the bolded word?)

Does somebody know books that practice writing kanji based on reading? It would be much appreciated, thanks! :slight_smile:

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Last couple of changes

Added

  • NINJAL’s Japanese Grammar Point Bank to Online dictionaries > Alternate dictionaries and,
  • Onomatopedia to Online dictionaries > Alternate dictionaries section from Tofugu’s New Japanese Learning Resources: Fall 2020.
  • Use Guides in English for Tatoeba Sentence Dictionary and the Japanese Grammar Point Bank
  • Flash requirement to Drag-n-Drop in Kana section and to Visualising Japanese Grammar in Textbooks and Grammar > Online section
  • Subsection Publishers to Reading section
    • Added tree by Kodansha there plus a Use Guide
  • Subsection Physical workbooks to Kana section
    • Moved Let’s Learn Hiragana and Let’s Learn Katakana there
  • Subsection Physical (for textbooks, etc.) to Kanji section
    • Moved The Kanji Code there
    • Moved Remembering the Kanji there
    • Moved A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters there
    • Added The World of Kanji per @cringe’s suggestion there

Updated

  • Formatting for the Dictionary of Intermediate and Advanced Japanese Grammar in the Textbooks and Grammar > References section
  • Formatting for 絵でわかる日本語 in the same section
  • Formatting of the Reading > News and Reading > Manga section
  • Link for A Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns for Teachers and Learners in the Textbooks and Grammar > References section, I finally found the publishers page
  • Description for NHK Web Easy to be shorter
  • Description for TextFugu
  • Name of the Sentence Dictionary in Online dictionaries > Alternate dictionaries section to Tatoeba Sentence Dictionary
  • Removed the description at the bottom of the Textbooks and Grammar section that I wrote that didn’t really mean anything

Moved

  • Reading > News and Reading > Manga section above the Reading > Learning section
  • LingoDeer to Textbooks and grammar > Paid online section from the (Free) Online section
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minor changes:

  • 絵でわかる日本語 and some others were added beginning of the month
  • 絵でわかる日本語: the important part is that it’s Japanese only, I think. They do have comic stripes for couple of their articles but advertising it as “Japanese with Comics” might be misleading.

Apart from that: added community editions for JDoBG and JDoIG.

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Are these available freely with permission from the authors and/or publisher? The second page of the book indicates an “All rights reserved” copyright notice which would prohibit the book from being copied and distributed freely.

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In general the Internet Archive library respects copyrights and other proprietary rights hold by other people. Therefore, lot’s of their books are for lending only as in any physical library as well.

I’m not in any way associated with the Internet Archive so I have never seen any permission personally. So this may not fully answer your question.

Best next thing I could come up with after reading your response was sending them an email to their department for copyright questions or issues to double check.

Anyway, thanks for addressing the matter as I do not wish to post any links that are not compliant within the community guidelines.

@Mods are there any preferences when it comes to items in the Internet Archive?

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The Internet Archive seems fine to share since it looks like you have to purchase to view it, unless you’re trying to share something that was only for you to see after payment.

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It seems that Nihongo no Mori has just (I’m not exactly sure when) started a paid service on their website!

https://nihongonomori.com/

So far there are materials for N1 kanji, vocabulary, and grammar. I’m not sure what will be added next, but there are additional sections for listening, reading, and testing practice, and I assume they will add materials in reverse order (N2, N3, N4, N5). I’ve only just started using it, but the functionality seems to be like their Youtube videos but more concise and professional. There are also interactive practice questions (very similar to the actual JLPT) that you can answer before the element being studied is explained in depth.

All in all, it seems like a very professional service for ¥980 a month, and I’m personally really grateful that they’ve started with N1 since that seems to be the most neglected level by online resources (…also because it’s the test I’ll be taking next July). ^^

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This looks like it will be an amazing thing once they have all their videos from previous levels. I loved watching the N3 videos on Youtube. Does it say anywhere when or if they will add more.

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I’ve added Nihongo no Mori to the Textbooks and Grammar > Paid online section. Since you’ve used it a bit, do you think it compares to the other resources in that section?

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Yes, it does! They’re homepage says 準備中 over the N2 and N3 sections, so I’m not sure what will be added first. Either the rest of N1, or the first sections of N2 and N3. I think the latter is more likely, since it’ll be useful to more people (and there’s already plenty of N1 material to start).

I was wondering this too actually, which is why I didn’t add it to the list initially. Technically it’s equal parts vocabulary and grammar so far (there are also kanji explanations, but I think those are pretty similar to learning vocabulary). If there was a JLPT section, it’d obviously fit right in there, but I think it might make the most sense under General Practice? Or Software? :grimacing::grimacing:

EDIT: Actually the more I think about it, the more it makes sense under Textbooks and Grammar!

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List of changes in the last month

Added

  • 日本語の森 to Textbooks and Grammar section per @andrewkaz’s recommendation
  • @adeli added Japanese Ammo with Misa’s Grammar Lessons for Absolute Beginners to Textbook and Grammar > Online section
  • @distantflower added Second Life with a Use Guide to Speaking > Online resources section
  • Digital and Physical subsections to Writing section and moved kanji.sh the the Physical subsection
  • VRChat to Speaking section per @doutatsu’s suggestion
  • Mochi per @ewoodrp’s recommendation to Software section
  • NHK News Web Easier and TechCrunch Japan to Reading > News section
  • OJAD to Online dictionaries > Alternate dictionaries section
  • Japanese for Everyone, Japanese: the Spoken Language, Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese, and Adventures in Japanese to Textbooks and Grammar > Physical textbooks section
  • Tsuginoji with Use Guide to Online dictionaries > Alternate dictionaries
  • WaniKani Community resources subsection to the Reading section
    • Added the popular threads Resources for Starting to Read Japanese Content,
    • Master List of Book Clubs, and
    • Buying Digital Japanese Books there.
  • Use Guide for NINJAL’s Japanese Grammar Point Bank in the Online dictionaries > Alternate dictionaries section
  • Internet Archive links to borrow or rent the A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series.

Updated

  • Updated description to include information on the Internet Archive borrow and rent system
  • Moved Notes to the bottom of the post
  • Updated the Table of Contents
  • Updated the title of the Reading > Manga and other publishers section to Manga, books, and other publications and moved the Reading > WaniKani Community resources section to be part of this section
  • Updated section descriptions in the Textbooks and Grammar section and the Physical textbooks section
  • Organised the resources in the Kanji > WaniKani Community resources section
  • Moved Learning Kanji YouTube channel to the main Kanji section
  • Removed TangoRisto from the Software > Android and iOS apps section as it is defunct
  • Software > Browser extensions section
    • Removed Kitsune, Rikaigu, and Rikaisama as they are defunct
    • Added Rikaichan and updated the links for Rikaikun and Rikaichamp
  • Removed Reading > Publishers section and moved tree to the Online subsection

Notes

Potential new resources to be added but they’re very new and/or there aren’t many reviews of the service they offer, or they’re incomplete:

Also Flash is being deprecated so Flash resources may no longer work soon. The Internet Archive have a project to try to save some of the resources, but I’m not sure how to go about adding resources to their project. Maybe @rfindley understands this more than I do, but it might just be on the developers to add their own swf files to the project.

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I came up with this list of resources for someone on another thread, but I figured it would be a waste if I didn’t leave some suggestions here. I’m not sure if I can/should edit the list directly, particularly since I might put certain things in the wrong places, and because I’ve seen many suggestion posts, along with a change log by @Kraits. Please tell me if you’d like me to add the resources myself. I’ve done my best to remove stuff that’s already in the wiki post.

Most resources on this list are for intermediate or advanced learners of Japanese. In particular, some of these resources are written >90% in Japanese. This list also highlights an error in the wiki-fied original post concerning Weblio, which actually puts two dictionaries (JP-EN-JP and JP-JP) at our disposal.

Resource names are highlighted in green. Collapsible descriptions are provided to allow everyone to judge how useful they might be. Here is the list:

Intermediate

Physical textbook : An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese (from Genki’s publisher, the Japan Times) EDIT: Less advanced – it apparently covers less than Tobira overall, even if one can start either textbook at about the same level

Comparison with Tobira

Tobira’s lexicon is probably slightly more advanced in the initial chapters, but AIAtIJ seems to catch up afterwards. Its lessons seem generally more practical, and what’s covered seems useful in everyday life, even as someone studying Japanese outside Japan with limited contact with Japanese people and culture. (For example, what you learn might be useful while reading the news or when expressing certain ideas for writing practice.) It even covers certain aspects of social interaction. Tobira, on the other hand, has a heavy ‘tangible culture and traditions’ focus. AIAtJ seems to have very detailed explanations in English, covering both grammar and facts about culture. It therefore seems much more helpful for self-learners (those who want to study in Japanese only aside), especially since it teaches students elements of how to behave in Japanese society, which is something Tobira doesn’t cover. EDIT: It also indicates the correct pitch accent for new vocabulary words! Few textbooks do this.

EDIT:

About Tobira and AIAtIJ's likely target audiences, and some personal experience

Though both are university textbooks, Tobira is probably more interesting for a general audience looking to learn about Japan in general, particularly about Japanese culture and traditions. AIAtIJ is probably more interesting for university students who might experience a homestay and who thus need more knowledge about everyday interaction and university/academic culture.

As a student desiring knowledge about social interaction conventions in Japanese, pitch accent knowledge and deep grammar knowledge, AIAtIJ appeals to me more, based on the sample pages I’ve seen. At the time of writing, I’m at Chapter 12/13 of 15 chapters in Tobira, and I’m rather sick of it even though I usually can push through one chapter a day without much difficulty. (I skip the exercises in favour of more dictionary searching.) I feel Tobira doesn’t teach me enough for the time I invest, and I’ve picked up too many words I can’t use outside of Japan while interacting with the Japanese internet, because they’re just too culturally specific. The only things holding me back from jumping to a more advanced textbook are

  1. The sunken cost fallacy – I feel like I should finish what I paid for
  2. The fact that my advanced textbook is 10000km away from me right now. I’m overseas.

Advanced

Physical textbooks : 中・上級日本語教科書 日本への招待 テキスト
上級日本語教科書 文化へのまなざし―テキスト

Brief comparison and remarks

I believe these two textbooks are at almost the same level, with the second one (上級日本語 etc) being slightly more difficult, probably with a bit of technical vocabulary in it since it has a chapter on ‘Clones and Life’. The first contains translations in English, Chinese and Korean for vocabulary words, and I feel it is very vocabulary-rich. The above is probably true of the second textbook as well, because the authors are the same people, and both books are published by the University of Tokyo.

Miscellaneous Resources (Various Levels)

YouTube

  • Attain Online Japanese Course
Description of YouTube channel and full course pricing

Here’s their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/TalkInJapan. Everything except I think the N1 and N2 courses are subtitled in English. Only sample videos are available on YouTube, but you can use them for immersion and revision. It costs $14/month to have unlimited access to the full versions of their courses on their website.

YouTube channel – Free; Full course on their site – $$Paid$$

Websites

  • Maggie Sensei
Description and reasons for recommendation

Some people find her website’s colour scheme jarring and don’t like the fact that she uses romaji for transcriptions, but I wholeheartedly recommend her site for its excellent examples and explanations. She also has a Twitter account on which she posts various things like vocabulary lists and examples of kanji usage.

Description

Everything’s in Japanese except for a few explanations in Chinese. (This teacher teaches in China.) Grammar points are covered for all JLPT levels, but since everything is in Japanese, most beginners won’t be able to use the site unless they’re Chinese speakers. There’s also an entire section called the ‘N0’ section, which covers words and structures whose JLPT levels are not known, or which are more difficult than the N1 level.

DictionariesWIKI POST ERROR HIGHLIGHTED BELOW

  • https://ejje.weblio.jp – this is Weblio’s Japanese-English-Japanese dictionary. It has data from at least three different dictionaries, including the one that Jisho runs on, and lots more example sentences than Jisho. You can search entire phrases in the searchbox, and example sentences containing them will come up.
  • https://www.weblio.jpthis is Weblio’s monolingual dictionary site (not the one listed above). The link in the wiki post above sends people to the EJJE version. The two probably got mixed up because both sites have interfaces entirely in Japanese.

That’s all.

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