This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/TheFranFan on 2026-04-25 06:10:47+00:00.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/LilFauxx on 2026-04-25 05:58:35+00:00.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/Antique_Hawk2353 on 2026-04-24 13:02:58+00:00.

I’m in Japan and I can usually handle basic Japanese fine ordering food, quick exchanges, no problem. Or at least I thought so.

Today I went into a food store to grab something simple. I picked my items, went to pay, and the staff asked me a question. I think it was something like “温めますか？” or about bagging. Nothing complicated. But my brain just… stalled. I knew I recognized the words, but I couldn’t process them fast enough in real time. So instead of thinking, I just panicked and said:

“あ、はい…お願いします。”

Even though I wasn’t even sure what I was agreeing to. The staff paused, I smiled awkwardly, and just kind of nodded my way through the rest of it. Walked out still unsure what I actually said yes to. Later it hit me that it was probably just a super normal question. It’s wild how different it feels knowing Japanese in your head vs. actually hearing it in the moment.

Anyone else get that weird brain freeze in simple situations like this?

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/LutyForLiberty on 2026-04-22 09:07:59+00:00.

Japan historically has struggled with extremism, and while the more violent aspects are well known, there are some comical ones, too.

Have you ever called a camera a racial slur? I never have, but many Japanese people in the 1970s did. Compact cameras were popular and easy to use - so easy, in fact, that some people joked that even an idiot or a Korean could use one (馬鹿でもチョンでも). This led to the cameras being called 馬鹿チョンカメラ. Every time one was mentioned, the Korean people were grossly insulted. They obviously didn't take well to this, and as early as 1975, Korean groups complained about Prince Takahito's comment that he should have taken a "stupid Korean camera" to Egypt. By 1992, books were being recalled over the term, and by 2008, it was banned from broadcast.

Out of all archaic terms, I would really recommend avoiding this one.

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%90%E3%82%AB%E3%83%81%E3%83%A7%E3%83%B3

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/TMH01 on 2026-04-21 16:38:33+00:00.

I'm about to wrap up up N4-level grammar, vocab, and kanji content (following Bunpro and Wanikani, mainly).

Lately, I've noticed my ability to understand things like Satori Reader, Tadoku graded readers, NHK Easy News, and some Japanese learning podcasts on Youtube has skyrocketed. But I'm finding most of that content kinda... boring.

The native content I'm most interested in is still out of reach. I'll keep plugging away and learning. But until I reach my goals, I'm looking for more interesting content to bridge the gap.

So, I'm interested in recommendations. What did YOU enjoy consuming at this stage of your learning?

(Sorry if this is a double post. Originally tried posting from my phone, but it seemed to disappear into the ether.)

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/Repulsive_Fortune_25 on 2026-04-20 17:22:23+00:00.

A lot of people talk about putting in 4–6 hours of immersion a day to reach fluency, which is a massive time commitment on its own. For those with really busy schedules, has anyone been able to become fluent with less immersion time like around 1–2 hours a day?

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/semiswee on 2026-04-20 00:01:30+00:00.

i have been taking Japanese classes at my uni for the past two years but i am so looking forward to being able to study at my own pace.

i started my journey by taking classes because i really wanted the structured environment of a classroom. i liked the routine that came with homework, quizzes, and exams. it was especially helpful in laying a solid foundation in my understanding of how Japanese works as a language and cementing the fundamentals. my professors have been excellent and my classmates have been a joy to learn with. i would definitely recommend taking a class to anyone who feels it too overwhelming to begin their Japanese learning journey. i know qualities varies, but if you find yourself unable to breakout of the early beginner stage, i highly recommend taking a class (especially one you can take in-person, or at least that meets in a group online).

but as much as i have loved my classes, i really cannot wait until the end of this semester. i no longer find the same value in homework, quizzes, and exams the same way i did early on. i, more often than not, find myself getting really annoyed at assignments that feel like busy work instead of opportunities to practice the language. the kanji/vocab/grammar i learn in class are immediately forgotten after the exam. practice out of the textbook have begun to feel repetitive and removed from real world application. it has turned me off to learning as i feel i am learning to pass the exam and speaking just to get participation points.

for a moment, this worried me because i thought i had lost my motivation for learning japanese entirely. but when im able to watch youtube videos, play videogames, read novels and magazines in japanese, i am much more motivated and excited to continue my learning. i am looking forward to graduating to self-study once my class is over so i can learn at my own pace and decide for myself what i want to focus on. i do a lot of self-study on my own time with a good mix of textbooks and websites so i feel much more prepared to study on my own than i did at the start of my journey two years ago.

maybe in the future, i'll come back to the classroom environment. like when im ready to prepare to take N2/N1 JLPT. but for now, as grateful as i am to my beginner/intermediate classes, im soooooo ready to be able to run on my own.

i guess as a question to y'all: if you've taken classes before, how did you know when you were ready to fly solo? what steps did you take to keep your study consistent after moving on from the class structure? any advice?

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/Substantial-Put8283 on 2026-04-18 18:09:43+00:00.

So I'm at the stage with my Japanese where I've realized that the number one thing I need to do more of to get better is to immerse, however...I'm super inconsistent with it. With my SRS through Bunpro I'll do my grammar & vocab reviews no problem every day without fail, its become ingrained into my routine now. With Immersion on the other hand I'll read 3 volumes of manga one day then nothing for 3 days, then maybe a chapter and then nothing for a day or 2 etc. I wanna get to a stage where its natural for me to pick up a show or manga in japanese and just start immersing like its nothing.

I'd thought about doing quotas to reach every day but that was difficult because chapter length & density vary a lot between manga for example and I also don't have the same amount of free time everyday. And also with something like Bunpro, if I don't complete my SRS for the day, I have to do even more the next day, so there is that incentive to do it everyday, where as with immersion I'm the only one who can make myself do more the next day to compensate for not doing enough so that kinda just falls through and I get lazy.

So please lemme know if you have any tips for building a habit of immersing. Thanks :)

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/MaximumTime7239 on 2026-04-19 08:50:40+00:00.

Recently I started "mining" words, as everyone so strongly recommends it and hates premade decks.

Well so far the experience has been miserable. Just looked at the stats today, my mined deck retention is 50% and "again" count for young cards is 41%.

Compared to my kaishi1.5k stats, which are retention 85-90%, and 11% again count on young cards.

I hope it will get better, but so far it hasn't been good. 😔

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/mreichhoff on 2026-04-18 20:24:43+00:00.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/TimeSwirl on 2026-04-18 03:45:54+00:00.

To any advanced learners (and especially those who went to university in Japan): do you have any tips for getting through textbooks aimed towards natives? I am in University in Japan and have passed N1 and generally don't have very big issues with understanding lectures, talking to classmates, and writing essays/doing assignments... but the assigned textbook readings are starting to wear me down a lot. The last few semesters I only had one or two classes that really required textbook reading and it was mostly for group projects on chapters, so the workload was heavily split up with my native Japanese classmates and mostly relegated to summarizing and regurgitation rather than internalizing the content and being fully quizzed/tested on it.

However, this semester, I have 6 classes with mandatory textbooks, and all of them require individual work and actually reading through the full chapters, answering questions on them, doing writings, quizzes, solo presentations etc etc etc and it's getting very hard to keep up with. Before, I really only had to take textbooks in bite sized chunks and frankly didn't even bother trying to read the whole thing.

My current process is:

skim pages and highlight unknown words → look up those words and make flashcards → SRS them until I felt mostly confident → read through the chapter and take notes (sometimes takes a few goes until I feel like I have a solid comprehension)

When I only had one textbook, this would take up time but it wasn't THAT bad, but now that I have 5x the work, it's getting hard to scale it. The content is different enough in a lot of the books that I'm not seeing a very big crossover in the specific type of unknown vocab/language used either, unfortunately, so it doesn't even feel like getting better at one book passively improves the other ones very much either lol

Is this a "trial-by-fire" that I just need to push through until I improve enough that the imposter syndrome goes away, or is my approach just too inefficient? Should I have read more novels in my free time instead of scrolling reddit all day??

Obviously, I would prefer to avoid just taking pictures of the chapters and running them through google translate, but that gets more and more tempting the closer I find myself to deadlines.

I'd appreciate thoughts and advice from people who have been in a similar situation before!

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/AdUnfair558 on 2026-04-17 22:44:21+00:00.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/LMGDiVa on 2026-04-17 17:02:08+00:00.

I am not sure how to share the archive, but I have it uploaded to MEGA which you can browse after decoding it with Base64

 aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWdhLm56L2ZvbGRlci9yMlkxUkxhUSMyOXlXR21YVS1pY1dmamVLNjFGcUVnU28=

If you were ever looking for a Japanese version of Muzzy or a structured video learning system, JapanFoundation's free program Erin's Challenge! I can speak Japanese. is publicly available, and is used by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Board of Education for students who need Japanese-language instruction to enter metropolitan high schools.

https://www.erin.jpf.go.jp/en/

This system is designed essentially to teach you Japanese the same way Muzzy and many other video language learning systems do via repetition and quick lessons.

This system is for the most part fine, except for their subtitle system.

Which has different versions of the same text, but none of it displays simultaneously the way that people like to use dual subtitles to learn.

Many teaching video systems use various methods of combined subtitles and text to teach new learners Japanese which helps them learn to read much more easily.

So I went and combined all of the subtitles per module into 3 selectable tracks with color coding. Each "Level" of the tracks beyond easy takes away an assisting line.

All of this information is explained better and in more detail in the Read Me.

This is a free and publicly available system, all materials were all that of which was avalible on the website itself.

I did not invent this subtitle system myself, I saw a subtitle track like it available for Spirited Away for those who want to learn Japanese from anime.

I simply took that idea and improved it so it could be applied to an actual intended learning tool that has additional materials and education resources around it.

https://preview.redd.it/fgypr99t5svg1.png?width=2284&format=png&auto=webp&s=70415317c22ead0b76e033464787144fc71a1c97

https://preview.redd.it/f3hh6c2v5svg1.png?width=2207&format=png&auto=webp&s=78d19c1c655b847fba16ad00020f151b9ecc9bab

https://preview.redd.it/gntgajnw5svg1.png?width=1132&format=png&auto=webp&s=0af845d35053b45599075bca4784cbed926049d4

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/Enough_Tumbleweed739 on 2026-04-18 03:12:07+00:00.

After reading pretty much every post on というの I can find, I'm finally giving in and making a new one. Hopefully making this will help others who are searching for it.

I am aware of using というの to deifne things　 (犬というのは何？もじゃもじゃしたトカゲ？）

I am aware of using というの to give a reason / comment on a situation（宇宙人が来てるというのは、電波機が働いてるってこと？）

I understand that at it's core it's just a quotation device plus a normalizer.

What I want to understand is the reactive というの that's used often at the end of sentences. The most simple example I can think of is "何と言うの！？"

The part that's confusing me is how much of this という is quotative, and how much is summarzing or commenting on facts.

Here's my example sentence. This occurs as two characters are fighting (character B), and a third character (character A) watches on.

A：「妾はどちらを応援すれば良いというのか。」

B：「こいつっ、私と互角に渡り合うと言うの…！」

My confusion is the ambiguity between という as summarzing a fact/idea and という as a quotation device. I feel like I could read this as "You're saying to fight evenly-matched?! (yeah that's a bit awkward in English but w/e)... or as "It is the case that we'll fight evenly-matched!?) and I don't know how to parse the difference.

Is it simply that there actually is ambiguity there and that 言う instead of いう is just a hint that it's quotative? If it is a quotation / character B is questioning what character A said directly, why is it then not と言ってるの！ instead?

(And as if the author is trying to confuse specifically me, there's another というの in literally the line before, though that seems more clearly rhetorical.. maybe)

I realize I'm splitting hairs a bit, but given how fundemental this grammar is, I'd really like to understand it more deeply.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/elwendys on 2026-04-17 10:31:03+00:00.

Original Title: DokiDokiDict v0.9.4: free OCR popup dictionary with furiganization for games/VN/manga, now with built-in SRS with SRS reviews over your game and auto-mining for words seen often, pitch accent, Anki import/export, reading streaks, and advanced stats dashboard

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/AutoModerator on 2026-04-17 00:00:23+00:00.

やっと金曜日ですね！お疲れ様です！ここに週末の予定について書いてみましょう！

（やっと　きんようびですね！　おつかれさまです！　ここに　しゅうまつの　よていについて　かいてみましょう！）

やっと = finally

週末（しゅうまつ）= weekend

予定（よてい）= plan(s)

～について = about

＊ネイティブスピーカーと上級者のみなさん、添削してください！もちろん参加してもいいですよ！＊

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/DonGar0 on 2026-04-14 14:40:19+00:00.

My hiragana reading spead and Kanji reading speed have gradually improved by reading light novels, manga ect. But as soon as I hit a katakana word (other than very repeated names) I immediately crash and have to sound it out. and soemtiems even sounding out is a failure depending on how different the japanese version is from the loan word (if its a loan word).

I wanted to ask what other people's strategies are for focussing on improving Katagana reading speed and comprehension. And if there are any good reading practice (specific manga, online stories) that have a lot of Katakana in them that are N3-N2 level.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/ClemFandango6000 on 2026-04-17 05:55:30+00:00.

Hit me with anything at all that you found interesting, fun or motivational from your recent studies.

I'll start:

I recently learned the word 在来線 - conventional line - to conveniently refer to pretty much any passenger train that isn't a bullet train. Very handy. I like trains and I feel like now even saying 'conventional line' in English instead of 'local line' is going stop any confusion.

Also upon the discovery of カフェインハーフ coffee in the office, I learned that カフェインレス does not mean "coffee with less caffeine in it" but literally "caffeineless coffee" aka decaffeinated coffee... It should have made sense when started feeling like I was immune to the effects of three cups a day.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/ToaKarn on 2026-04-15 05:34:50+00:00.

I was reading through this article (https://8020japanese.com/wa-vs-ga/) when doing some research on another topic, but when reading through it, it had me questioning some things that I thought I knew. Two examples stood out to me, the first being:

彼は足が伸びました。/ 彼は足が長いです。

The article states that using の would sound unnatural, but I feel like I've definitely heard sentences like 彼の足が長いですね before, and honestly the の sounds more natural to me, with the は seeming to put more emphasis on 彼 and the の putting more emphasis on 足 (despite being the opposite of what the article says). So in this case, what is the functional difference between は and の? (I understand that they are different grammatically.)

In a similar vein, I saw the example:

私はすしが食べたいです。

I get that the たい makes it technically function as an adjective, but again I feel like I've definitely heard people make constructions like すしを食べたいなー。So what is the functional difference between が and を?

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/Ninja_Doc2000 on 2026-04-13 13:06:30+00:00.

Greetings, first time posting here.

I’ve been studying Japanese on and off for years. After starting sentence mining last year, I got to 1300ish cards and my Japanese improved considerably.

Thing is, I’m not good enough yet. I can’t understand the shows I’d like to even try to understand. I can’t find good novels to read for my level and when I find something interesting, it’s usually too hard for me to comprehend.

I feel stuck. This feels even worse when I consider this is not my first time learning a foreign language.

I’ve never faced the fact that my hobbies changed during these years and i think of Japan less and less in my day to day life.

I don’t want to quit, have you ever felt like this before towards learning Japanese?

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/LutyForLiberty on 2026-04-16 08:17:13+00:00.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/ignoremesenpie on 2026-04-12 18:37:27+00:00.

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 are 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.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/djhashimoto on 2026-04-15 16:10:41+00:00.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/ghosttown77 on 2026-04-14 21:05:08+00:00.

I hear so many women say わたしてきには… when I watch Japanese videos, what exactly does it mean and can men use it in Japan?

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/learnjapanese by /u/AdUnfair558 on 2026-04-14 23:35:07+00:00.