The Ultimate Additional Japanese Resources List!

Japanese Language Resources
61

So, do you mean like an IME-teaching game? If so, that’s pretty cool for people totally new to the experience! ^^

1 Like
62

So I thought this was interesting. I had heard about Mondly being a pay for… website?

Anyway I had searched “Japanese grammar” into Google Play apps and was basically opening everything free with at least 4 stars, anyway, Mondly’s reply to someone’s review on their app:

“Hello, Thanks for your review. You have one category for FREE which contains 6 lessons, one dialogue and one vocabulary. You get a FREE lesson every day that means 365 lessons per year and a FREE Quiz per week , 52 quizzes per year. To access all 600 lessons and conversations, please purchase Premium. Best regards, Ioanna from Mondly Languages”

So it looks like you can get a lot of daily content. And the fact that you have to be patient pretty much forces you to pace yourself and makes it easier for people who are like “I’ll do one X a day” I imagine. I’ve added it to my wishlist for now 'cause I don’t want to overload on apps, but I might check it out later.

63

Apparently, there’s a new series of kanji drills that went out a few days ago:

64

So, I’ve been slowly working on a reorganisation of the second half of the list. As I thought and @Kumirei knew, things don’t seem to be fitting so nicely into the categories. So far I have the 目次 [Table of Contents] arranged as these core catagories:

  • Kana
  • Textbooks
    • Online textbooks
    • Paid online textbooks
    • Physical textbooks
  • Kanji
  • Online dictionaries
  • Software
  • Reading
    • Children’s stories/books
    • News
    • Manga
  • Listening
    • News
    • Anime
    • Podcasts
    • YouTube
  • Writing
    • Handwriting
  • Speaking
    • Shadowing
    • Native practise

I placed Listening and Reading before Writing and Listening. I thought they would be easier to begin with. People who are just starting can immerse themselves in Japanese without needing to know too much and can still enjoy the content without putting in too much thought and time. I also believe it is important to have these resources from the start, as listening comprehension of a foreign language can be hard, especially if it sounds unfamiliar to the ear.

I have found a few resources for listening practise and that also compliment these thoughts. I tried to shy away from linking forums and include suggestions as direct links.

MyKikitori - http://mykikitori.com/
FluentU - Improve Your Japanese Listening Skills with 10 Popping Practice Tips | FluentU Japanese
UVIC - Japanese Listening Comprehension Exercises
Nihon no Uta - http://nihon-no-uta.jp/
AI Talk - http://www.ai-j.jp/
RhinoSpike - https://rhinospike.com/
Japanese Songs Hamada - Japanese Songs
JapanesePod101 - Learn Japanese - Japanese Listening Comprehension for Beginners p1

Currently, speaking is the smallest section. I understand the best practise, second to full immersion, is language shadowing. Hopefully, in the future, EtoEto will be the first recommendation, but for now if anyone has more resources for this, I think this category is in need of expanding. I’ve only found a few promising resources. Obviously, there is Skype and other such services that allow you to speak with native Japanese people, but I still think this section could come with less of a barrier for beginners.

WeSpeke - https://www.wespeke.com/learn-languages-online/learn-japanese.html
An article with silly pictures of Koichi - https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/practicing-japanese-to-insanity/

Also, thanks for the suggestion, @AmethystPersona0. : )

[Edit] These categories are supposed to encompass all the content in this list, so if you have any objections, say so!

[Edit 2] Some updates to the 目次 as per @audball’s suggestions.

  • Added Online dictionaries section
  • Added Software section
  • Speaking is now broken into a Shadowing category and a Native practise category
  • Handwriting category was added to the Writing section
    I think you are right that there should be a Japanese culture section or something similar. Many of the YouTube channels are in English. When I was thinking of categorising them I had in mind other threads, such as this.
2 Likes
65

Any advice on getting started with listening, or do I have to get started with reading first?

66

@ryan2 - not bad, but I am having a hard time imagining some of the content categorized like that.

Here are the things:

“Japanese Culture” is more of just leisure links, I feel like this may need to remain separate

“Online dictionaries” - would that go under reading? Same with Resource portals?

“Software” I guess technically rikaikun, etc. would be under reading and the IME stuff under writing, but that seems confusing to me, like I might not expect to look there. I almost like them on their own. Although android apps and learning games I can see fitting into reading / writing / etc.

“Japanese practice and online services” and “Native Japanese Exposure” I definitely see redundancies that can be cleaned up. A lot of the links can easily fit into their respective category such as reading and listening. Would anki and memrise go under reading? Kanji? They stick out to me a little.

“Youtube” - I can see a lot of youtube going under Japanese Culture if that remains.

Just a couple that stood out to me if you decide to rearrange

67

@polv - I don’t think it matters which you start with, I think whichever you choose, you’ll end up doing the other soon after anyway.

Before I read much I had tried listening with nihongonomori. The beginner stuff is easy, but I had a hard time with anything more advanced. I ended up doing the rocket japanese course which is SUPER beginner, like they teach you how to say konnichiwa in the beginning haha. But I needed the help and improved a lot throughout it. I started reading things like nhk easy and manga just a few months after practicing that listening.

Now I read a lot more and find that keeping up with listening actually helps a lot with my reading pace since I have smoother pronunciation and reading flow. I just started doing some drama cds with the manga I’ve read.

1 Like
68

Ah yes, good points. I did actually mean to include Online dictionaries and Software as separate categories. I’ll edit my post later. Thanks for pointing that out.

At the moment, I like the way that there are Anki decks and Memrise courses listed under links to the website in the Japanese practise and online services section, but maybe they’ll have to go under another category. I’ll definitely include an Other resources section though, which can probably house the Resource portals section.

69

@ryan2
Nice, ok. I’m thinking it would be a good idea to utilize the “hide details” feature in discouse to handle these youtube links / some of these resources that aren’t as self-explanatory. The only downside is that a link would have to be on the inside for these.

Example - I see a culture section looking like this and perhaps handling youtube links like this? That way the list is manageable

:shinto_shrine: JAPANESE CULTURE

Blogs:

[details=Tofugu]
Link to site
General culture and language blog[/details]

[details=Chokochoko]
Link to site
Broken and closing? Is this still used by people?[/details]

What Japan Thinks

General culture blog

Metropolis

Magazine; “focus on upcoming events and exhibitions” a lot of art, food, music, festival

Wow Japan

Currently broken

Youtube (English):

Japanese Reaction Channels
Life in Japan Channels

  • Micaela - Life in Southern Japan. Narrated in English. The experience of a Canadian girl who moved to Fukuoka Prefecture.

  • Rachel and Jun - Description

:ear:LISTENING

Online:

  • MyKikitori Link
  • Another listening Link

Youtube (Japanese):

Learning Channels

  • Nihongonomori - Learn japanese grammar with native speakers. Starts at very beginner level.

  • Lets learn Japanese - Narrated in English, but does skits of native Japanese. There are transcripts and vocab provided in PDF’s in the video info.
    Listening is good, however, scripts are in romaji.

[details=News Channels][/details]

This way just supposed to be an example but I kind of went overboard haha. I also started to QA some of the sources, just briefly.

2 Likes
70

That looks amazing

71

Glad you think so :3 It seems ryan2 and I are planning the next phase of reorganization :thinking:

72

I’m glad I got out early, reorganising everything takes a lot of time :eyes:

73

How about adding J-CAT to the resource list? Poor score on J-CAT would tell people to study more, and which specific area needs studying more.

1 Like
74

Great list. Maybe add https://www.learnwitholiver.com/ as well?

75

@polv - I’m actually surprised that is not there already, it will be good to add!

@delpino - definitely, thanks for the suggestion.

For my own reference to add later - https://matcha-jp.com/easy/

1 Like
76

Just did some house cleaning. I added a lot of descriptions to really random stuff that will hopefully help people. I plan to do more of that when I can.

Wanted to note the removed stuff here in case someone finds a mistake or wants to keep for whatever reason:

REMOVED

MOVED

  • Japanese graded readers under manga and easy reading section
  • kotobank under dictonaries
2 Likes
77

Sorry if this has been asked already, but do you think completing this in one year is too ambitious?

I’m going to be finishing Wanikani in about a year so I was hoping to finish this around the same time, but that would mean 30 new cards a day. Is that too much in anyone’s experience? If I do 30 cards a day how much time will that take daily?

78

Finishing in 1 year and 2 months means

  1. Doing all radicals as soon as it comes up
  2. Finishing all Kanji as soon as last batch of Kanji comes up (about 3 days after radicals.)
  3. Use ultimate timeline to do level-sensitive Kanji as soon as it comes up (that is, ASAP)

Too much? Yes. Unless you know a lot of vocab already or have a good approach to memorization.

Generally, I think you should finish in 1.5-2 years, not in around 1 year.

79

Are you talking about the Core 10k deck? I have a feeling you posted to the wrong thread.

80

@SwiftElk
But, “So much vocab” is locked. There is no special place to ask for now.

Unless, you create a new topic.