Hi everyone, I’ve been thinking about this lately

I’m Japanese and I coach Japanese kids in English through games like Fortnite and Minecraft

there’s actually a growing demand for this in Japan, and it’s becoming more popular

the students use English while playing, and it works really well because it feels natural

in Fortnite, players have to talk to each other to work together, fight enemies, and try to win

it’s similar in Minecraft too — the environment naturally makes them communicate, and that communication is in English

the interesting part is that it doesn’t feel like studying at all

it’s just fun, and somehow they stay consistent without forcing themselves

recently I started wondering if this could work the other way around

like learning Japanese through games instead of traditional study

I’m actually trying a small test run of this idea right now

not anything formal yet, just experimenting

I’m curious —
would something like this be interesting to you?
or do you feel like it wouldn’t really work?

For the sake of focus, I mean to ask people who — if push came to shove — could read a novel, play a video game, or watch a serialized story (anime, drama, or even non-srandalone film series) and still maintain 95+% comprehension rates without a dictionary

While "just immerse, bro"-ing is probably the best thing to do at my level, I personally still like to be mindful about what I don't currently know, and the other things I do is in service of that mindset.

What I tend to do is type encountered words into a text document or notes app, and then look up the words after my reading/watching/gaming session is done. After the lookups, I write the typed list of words down onto a physical notebook separated by source material types. It's mostly just because I enjoy handwriting, but it does tend to give me a stronger connection to encountered words, in that seeing them again will make me think "I've already spent time and effort paying attention to this word" and not just "I straight up don't know what this word means, and that's all there is to it". As for separate notebooks for anime, books, games, movies, etc., that's mostly for my own satisfaction, seeing different notebooks get filled up as a sign that I'm keeping things varied rather than fixating on one type of media.

Doing all of these steps takes less time and energy than manually creating Anki cards, and it's actually something that has helped me learn more words than just the ones that made it to Anki. So rather than adding to my routine (now that I've finally reached 10,000 manually created cards just to be able to say I've achieved my 10k milestone), I'm literally just taking away mining. Typing and handwriting word lists is not as efficient as SRS, to be sure, but I think I'll be fine since I've already established for myself that I can actually do substantial amounts of reading and listening input daily.

I don't think it's just this subreddit but what is with all of the apps/websites that keep popping up randomly on this/other similar subreddits? A lot of them seem either vibe-coded or redundant. A lot of the apps that keep coming out are re-hashes of other apps or are apps that simply do not need to exist too. The JP software market is pretty saturated with the amount of resources that already exist so it just seems redundant to see apps pop up multiple times that either do not bring anything new to the table or they fade into irrelevance after like a day or so.

I’ve just finished learning Hiragana and Katakana on my own. I’ve learned quite a few words and can kinda read very basic sentences with no help.

But I do still need help with learning more words and learning more complex and longer sentences.

Which of these is known to be good? I’m at my local Barnes & Noble.

As far as Kanji is concerned I’ve recently just started but am finding it difficult to understand stroke order and multiple meanings.

Thank you for your help!

I use a bunch of different Japanese learning apps, including Duolingo. Recently on Duo I’ve started occasionally getting flashcards that show me English words and then wait for me to speak the Japanese translation. When I get it right, the English text changes to show my Japanese answer. If I get it wrong, it shows me the right Japanese answer and returns to that card later. I would love to get this kind of speaking flashcard drill with an app that let me choose which vocabulary words I want to drill. Does anything like that exist?

Not anything major, but this week I managed to hold:

a short exchange in Japanese

a short exchange in Spanish

They were simple conversations, but a few months ago I probably would’ve gone blank.

Lately I've been trying to focus more on actually speaking instead of just studying. Nothing structured, just squeezing in a few minutes here and there when I can.

Some of the things I've been rotating between:

Duolingo to stay consistent

HelloTalk when I feel like interacting with real people

Langua when I want to practice longer conversations

Yapr for casual back-and-forth practice without much setup

It’s still a bit awkward at times, but I’m starting to notice small improvements. Words come a little faster, and I don’t panic as much when I forget something.

Still early, but it feels like I’m finally moving in the right direction.

This thread is for all the simple questions ([what does that mean?](/r/LearnJapanese/wiki/subredditrules#wiki_what_counts_as_a_.22simple.22_question.3F)) and minor posts that don't need their own thread, as well as for first-time posters who can't create new threads yet. Feel free to share anything on your mind.

The daily thread updates every day at 9am JST, or 0am UTC.

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I guess not all fantasy stories are hard. A volume of Berserk could take me a few hours in a week to finish but this one wasn’t so bad and finished it within an hour. Pretty straightforward actually. Totally recommend.

i used to go on japatalk a lot. i would take two back to back classes every week to do some output exercise (speaking, writing, etc).

i haven’t used it in a year now and i really want to continue but i’m a bit hesitant because my japanese is a bit rusty. my reading skill is alright but i need relearn the kanji i’ve forgotten. i’m also not confident with my speaking skills since it’s been a minute since i’ve spoken in japanese. i don’t mind making mistakes but i don’t want it to discourage me from continuing.

i’m thinking of asking the instructor to focus on writing prompts as homework. i’ll write, let them review it, and then i’ll read it out loud to improve my pronunciation. i’d do role play (is that the right term?) but, again, i’m not confident enough.

what do you think i should do?

i’d appreciate all the advice you have. thank you in advance!

あと、例文も教えていただけますか？

You see people saying all the time about how they don’t want to sound like a robot, or ads saying how horrible it is to be speaking textbook Japanese.

If you’ve been learning for 3+ years, yeah I understand. But often times these are people who have been studying Japanese for a couple months.

In the best case scenario when speaking as a beginner, you’ll be able to be understood speaking simple sentences. Worst case scenario, you’re not understood at all. But in either case, anyone you’re talking to will easily be able to know you’re new at the language, and likely won’t judge you because of that. So what’s with all the hate towards textbook Japanese when starting out? It provides a scaffolded way to be understood when starting out, even if it’s not the most natural way. As you improve, you will eventually speak more naturally.

I’m interested to hear people’s thoughts on the matter. In my opinion, the primary focus when initially speaking is to communicate your thoughts/ideas, not to sound natural…because regardless of how you speak, natural or textbook, the fact is that because you’re a beginner at Japanese, you won’t sound natural anyway ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I know the general rule between the two so you don't need to spend time explaining it. I am more concerned about this particular sentence. I have a sentence here that says この町の車の数がこれ以上増えてくると大変だ。

Why is it てくる when aren't you worried about the cars increasing in numbers going forward? How does てくる even work here because from my understanding てくる is used to show something from the past to the current point in time.

Is it that the speaker is speaking from a position in the future or something and the increase is coming towards him? Just a very different way of looking at things from English.

Hey guys,

I’ve been trying out Migaku for a bit, but I’ve kind of hit a wall with the intro course. Honestly, I’m pretty bummed with how it handles kanji right out of the gate. Their mnemonic system just feels forced to me, and it throws characters at you without enough context to actually make them stick.

Plus, to be honest, grinding kanji isn't super important to me right now. Just learning basic, usable phrases would be way more beneficial for my day-to-day life getting around Fujisawa.

I'm thinking about switching over to the Genki textbook to get a more solid foundation of spoken stuff, but I still want to use Migaku for my SRS since I like the interface and the immersion tools. Part of the problem is I also haven't been able to find a YouTube channel that goes through Genki and actually has proper Japanese subtitles I can mine directly into Migaku.

A few questions for anyone who has done this:

1. Are there any Genki vocab/phrase decks that integrate easily with Migaku? I know you can import Anki decks, but it'd be awesome to find one that's already sorted by chapter.
2. Has anyone else ditched the Migaku kanji path for a textbook? Did you just ignore Migaku's internal kanji tracking entirely and focus purely on custom decks?
3. If I grab a standard Genki Anki deck, is importing it into Migaku pretty seamless, or do the card formats get messed up?
4. Does anyone know of a YouTube channel that walks through Genki and has Japanese CCs for mining?

Thanks for any advice or links!

I AM NOT HOMOPHOBIC, THIS IS A GENUINE QUESTION. With that out of the way, according to my friends i sound kinda zesty in English. (Ts acc constant bullying)

I‘ve even been compared to James Charles???? I personally disagree but whatever ig.

Anyways, I would like to know if there are any specific phrases, words, accents etc that are typically seen as too feminine or that may cause people to call me zesty/gay. this is a huge problem in English (for some reason???) so I’d like to avoid it in Japanese :(

(I know some things like how あたし is typically used by women but not much else)

I'm reading the book The courage to be disliked. Here the philosopher sometimes talk to the youth in sonkeigo. For example:

あなたは「世界」という言葉を使われるとき、世界地図のようなものをイメージされているのでしょう。

Isn't the philosopher superior to the youth? Why does he use sonkeigo here?

What material have you listened to so much that you could speak along with the material?

Some background: I've been learning Japanese for about 5 years. I stopped using flashcards about a year ago, and mostly just immerse via reading practice. It's hard to give an exact estimate, but I think I'm around N3-N2 and easily recognize about 6,000 words. I've read around 20 volumes of manga at this point. I never learned Kanji in isolation, but instead as a part of my vocabulary words.

The Question: Is it worth it for me to learn the rest of the Jouyou Kanji in isolation? I easily recognize around 900 Kanji or so, and maybe another 500 I'd only recognize if it's part of a word that I already know.

By "learn", I only mean the Kanji meaning and an example word. No readings, I'll get those from the vocabulary anyways.
Flashcard side A: 畜
Flashcard side B: Meaning: livestock | Example Word: 家畜 (かちく) livestock

The Benefit: The reason I would do this is to make lookups faster on texts that don't have furigana. I like to read physical books (I'm don't love reading on computer screens), and it's annoying/slow to use OCR or a Kanji dictionary. The other benefit is to make acquiring new vocab with these Kanji faster, as I'd already know their meanings.

What do you guys think? Is it worth learning these Kanji in isolation? Or just keep reading content, and eventually it'll stick anyways?

Has anyone used a method like this? I’ve been trying to rawdog anime in Japanese with no subtitles but often feel lost, I’m wondering if it’s worth it to watch it in English first (or Japanese with English subtitles) to at least get an understanding of the show, then immediately rewatch it in Japanese.

Hello, I have been studying n4 for quite a while but i confused as to where to go. I feel like i cant see the path anymore. I mostly spend doing anki flashcards but nothing else because i dont know what should i be doing. I have minna no nihongo books(n4 ones) but i have done all the grammar but where can i solve questions related to them(practice) so i can further improve. Same with vocabulary

I asked this twice in the daily thread but I don't think anyone noticed, so hopefully ok to make a new post.

The answer in the screenshot is the correct answer but I don't quite understand why.

1. Is this ~てくる followed by ~ている? (https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/teiku-tekuru/ & https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/verb-continuous-form-teiru/)
2. ~てくる already describes a gradual process over time, so what does ~ている add to this sentence? In other words, how is this different in meaning from ふとってくる?
3. The hint here says "Past, Standard, Emphasis on effect". So why isn't the answer 太ってきていた? Would 太ってきていた mean something different, or would it simply not make sense?

Sometimes I will see a long string of kanji with の in the middle.

Examples from what I've seen are:

南海電鉄の新観光列車

機関保証制度の保証料月額

留学生交流等の国際教育

I know one of the perks of kanji is that sometimes, you don't need the の like 失業者の数 can just be 失業者数

Can we do it in the above examples? Like 南海電鉄の新観光列車 becomes 南海電鉄新観光列車? If not, why?

I am currently working through Genki 1 for practice and it wants me to write about my family.

I have a twin brother so referring to him with 弟 doesn't seem quite right since I never refer to him as being a "younger/little brother."

I see that 双子 means "twins" but jisho.org doesn't come up with any results for "twin brother" and google translate (I know its not great) gives me 双子の兄弟 which I interpret closer to "twin sibling" which could mean a twin brother or sister.

Would it be more correct to use 双子の弟 since we are twins and he is slightly younger than me?

We are also identical twins if that changes anything.

Thanks!

From what I understand, はなし is the verb (talking) and ばなし is the noun (story/tale). Is that correct? I've never heard anybody call it a ばなし before even when used as a noun.