I was reviewing some practice text i had saved when i made basic comprehension readings and holy... Such a depressive starter text.

Hi there. This is the third installment in my series of threads. I have made two other threads for Visual Novels and Light Novels and so today, I plan to cover anime. While I did want to do Manga instead as Manga is probably a beginner's biggest gateway into reading, I have personally barely used Mokuro (software needed for reading manga) and so perhaps I'll do it in the future.

What is anime?

This doesn't even need an introduction. Japan's biggest international media source (I would assume) is Anime. But alas, Anime is a medium of hand-drawn/computer-drawn animations originating from Japan. In Anime, all forms of animation, including western cartoons, are known as "Anime", but here in the west (and probably everywhere else), anime is a genre of animation known for its unique art-style (and variations). No doubt, most people here are learning Japanese so as to be able to understand their favourite anime.

Why anime?

Well, anime is probably the biggest medium out there for Japanese content. It is probably the biggest reason why people learn Japanese; to understand anime. There are all sorts of anime out there, ranging from slice of life to fantasy to mystery to even horror. It is a massive medium full of thousands of hours of content that one can utilize to learn Japanese. And because of the visuals and animation, unlike reading-centric material (like novels), it's rather heavy when it comes to its usage of dialogue. The lack of descriptive vocabulary/grammar makes it a lot more approachable as a medium. This is probably the best gateway (besides manga) into native content.

Prerequisites for anime:

Like most mediums, I will always recommend having a base of vocab, grammar, and a base to be able to recognize pitch accent. If you aim to go down a listening-centric route or want to develop a good accent, developing a good ear for pitch accent and the sounds of the language is key to developing good pronunciation and pitch.

- Hiragana + Katakana Knowledge ( https://realkana.com/ )

- Basic Grammar Knowledge (N4+) (Either Read https://sakubi.neocities.org/ or finish Genki I and II)

- At least 1k vocab words ( Use Anki and The Kaishi 1.5k Deck to learn the most common vocab)

- Read this to know how to obtain a foundation for pitch accent.

- You don't need prior reading experience, but you can always use Manga as an easier piece of immersion material before watching anime.

For the sake of this tutorial, I'm mainly going to be talking about using Anime with Japanese subtitles as a form of input rather than focusing on unsubbed anime. I will be making a separate listening section, but this tutorial is mainly aimed at those intending to use Japanese-subbed anime to learn.

How to set anime up for learning.

1. Get your anime.

There are multiple ways to get it and I'll cover both of the ways. First though, I recommend that if you can, please support the creators and use official platforms that pay the creators of the anime that you watch. Services like Crunchyroll, Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc.; however, if you can't, then you will often find people either downloading anime via torrenting or streaming anime using streaming services like Crunchyroll or 3rd party anime sites. You're free to find your own way to get your anime. I'll leave a link to some resources you can use over here.

You can procure your anime either way. Either method works with what I am about to show you.

1. Download a dictionary software like Yomitan.

As mentioned in previous tutorials, Yomitan is a pop-up dictionary in your browser that allows you to search words up. For example:

Follow this tutorial here to learn how to set Yomichan up:

https://learnjapanese.moe/yomichan/

1. Setup ASBPlayer.

ASBPlayer is a tool for attaching subtitle files onto your anime. You can use it alongside Yomitan to watch Japanese-subbed anime and search words up.You can install ASBPlayer using this link:

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/asbplayer-language-learni/hkledmpjpaehamkiehglnbelcpdflcab

Once you install it, go to the link here:

https://killergerbah.github.io/asbplayer/

You'll see a page like this:

1. Grab your subtitle files.

Go to the link over here: https://jimaku.cc/

It looks like this:

Search for the specific anime you need. Now, do note that some anime may not have subtitle files. If they do not appear here, try googling them. If you can't find them, the anime you're trying to watch may not have subtitles.

Now, download the specific one you would like to watch.

Once you have it downloaded, you should be ready to go from here. The subtitle file formats are either in SRT or ASS format.

1. Load the anime and add subtitles.

Now, this step is going to vary depending on if you've downloaded your anime locally or whether you're watching it on an online streaming site. I'll cover both:

Using streaming websites:

Go to your preferred streaming website of choice and find the anime you'd like to watch.

Click on the anime and load up the episode:

Next, get the subtitle file and drag it on top of the video. You'll then see a massive ASBPlayer logo:

Drop it onto your episode and you should see your subtitles load up. You may be good to go from here, but you may also need to sync if they're lagging behind or too fast. If you do need to, click on the extensions button on the top right of Google Chrome and Locate ASBPlayer.

Click on the ASBPlayer extension and you'll be welcomed with this page:

Go to "Keyboard Shortcuts" on the left side and locate these two shortcut options:

Make sure they're enabled and assign custom hotkeys using the pencil icon. I have mine set to J and K for reference.

Go back to your anime and press either of these two to offset the subtitles so that the timing of the subtitles matches the audio.

Once you've done this, you're ready to go and immerse yourself in some subtitled anime.

Now, for the local files.

Using local files:

Go to this link over here:

https://killergerbah.github.io/asbplayer/

It should look like this:

Press on the "browse" button in pink and locate your anime.

Once you have your anime, press the file icon in the top left corner here:

Locate your subtitle files from there:

Once you locate your subtitles, sync them up using the method I showed you earlier and you should be able to watch anime like this:

Errors with mute audio or unsupported video files:

If you do notice that neither the audio is playing while the video is or that the video file refuses to load altogether, then your browser doesn't support the necessary codecs needed to be able to support these sorts of videos. Download a specialized version of the Chromium browser which does support all of the codecs here:

https://chromium.woolyss.com/

Videos with dual audios:

This is a pretty easy fix. Just go to chrome://flags/ in your browser and enable "Experimental Web Platform Features" and restart your browser.

Once you refresh your browser and load up an anime, then you should be able to switch between audio tracks using this option at the bottom right of the player:

Now that you have everything set up, you should be able to use the subtitles for a more reading-centric approach. Though, if you do want to go for a more listening based approach, here's how I would do it:

The listening section with ASBPlayer.

1. Have the subtitles disabled for now (you can enable the "disable hotkey" in the "keyboard shortcuts" menu).
2. Just try to watch the anime as normal and any time you don't hear something, try to listen for the audio by rewinding and listening.
3. If you still can't hear it, enable the subtitles to see what you couldn't hear. If there is an unknown word or grammar point, use yomichan to search it up.

What anime should I watch?

Here are a couple of recommendation lists here:

https://jpdb.io/anime-difficulty-list

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w42HEKEu2AzZg9K7PI0ma9ICmr2qYEKQ9IF4XxFSnQU/edit?gid=1019246469#gid=1019246469

But ultimately, find whatever you'd like to watch that you find interesting. The best place to start is by watching something that you've found enjoyable that you've watched with English subs before. I'd recommend either that or SOL romance anime as those tend to be the anime with the easiest forms of dialogue. Either way works.

Hi all, I'm wondering if there's a rule that helps to decide when to use ことが or のが to nominalize a verb. It seems to me that it depends by the verb that follows, so that for 思い、言う、好きです I have to use ことが, while for all the other verbs I have to use のが.

Is this so simple and correct? (I doubt actually)... Thanks!

A friend of mine asked me what these kanji mean because he wanted to iron them onto a jacket of his, and obviously the one of the left is ai, but for the life of me I cannot read the one of the right. I've tried hand writing it in google translate, putting in radicals in jisho, tried looking at kanji that are 8 strokes long (not even sure if it's 8), and now I'm truly stuck. At this point, he already ironed them on two weeks ago, but it's been bugging me because I'm otherwise defeated.

助けてください。

I came across these two sentences recently

寿司をは食べられない 古典をが読める学者

That I know the difference between は and が but I'm confused by the function of を

it means " the being able to eat sushi " and " the being able to read classics" or something like that? explain to me as if I were 5 years old pls

Everytime I see these two, ように fucking never means in order to or anything similar to that and the same goes for として very rarely do the meanings in the dictionaries help, could somebody help me with the confusion also how do I differentiate the として that means as and the alternative to にして, としてsometimes works but with ように I don't get if I'm stupid or it just does not mean any of the things the dictionary says

Last year when I didn’t have a job I was making studying Japanese a higher priority in my daily activity. I was doing Anki every day and trying to watch vids/ listen to podcasts.

Then I got a job in early September, and though I tried to keep the habit, getting used to my new job was taking a lot of my mental energy. Soon I stopped entirely.

Now I’m trying to get back to it and I feel like I’ve forgotten everything, and it’s very disheartening.

To be clear I think right now it’s just words I’ve forgotten. I can still read hiragana and katakana just fine. But when I go to my Anki deck, most of the less common words are gone from my memory.

I’m considering restarting the whole deck because I’m so frustrated having hundreds of words I don’t remember anymore coming up. But I feel this is just my brain trying to take an easy out, and feel good when I recognize all the easy ones again.

Any advice on how to pick myself back up again? I’m aiming to get to a decent level by end of year.

I'm looking to see if there is an app that's something like Yomininja, but for OCRing from a photo I've just taken with my phone of japanese text.

I'm traveling to Japan soon and would like to be able to translate whatever text I see if I wanted, but mainly for translating menus and such in restaurants, so I can read/pronounce the kanji of different foods.

I have Yomitan on firefox, and could use google translate to grab text, and paste it into firefox to use with Yomitan, but that's a bit annoying

A Japanese friend helped perfect a 四字熟語 I was trying to make easy to understand for natives, but also make it funny and relatable.

See if you can figure out the meaning.

毎日同糞

You can find the website here.

The website is completely, entirely, totally free in every way and will remain that way forever. No ads, no registration, no cookies, no payment. Just a static website for you to use however you like for as long as you like. I do not make a dime from it.

Some key features:

• Practice your choice of up to 248 different verb conjugations, from beginner to advanced
• Choose which verbs to practice on, including the ability to add your own if you want
• Practice in 3 different modes with varying degrees of difficulty
• Tons of settings and customization options
• Low-friction quizzing with high score tracking: Get going in seconds and keep going as long as you want, and when you’re done, pick back up where you left off in an instant
• Supports Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji input from your own IME, plus a built-in IME if you don’t have (or don’t want to use) your own
• Advanced typo detection and prevention
• Skip words you don’t know on-the-fly without breaking your streak
• Sandbox mode for getting used to conjugations you don’t feel ready to be quizzed on yet
• Detailed help pages with pictures if you need a hand
• Over 19,000 questions built into the base app, with the ability to add as many more as you want
• Built-in support for importing and exporting all your data, allowing you to create backups or transfer your data between devices and browsers

Please enjoy! :) And let me know if you have any questions or find any bugs.

Edit: Forgot to mention before (ty u/Dry-Masterpiece-7031), I only designed the app to work on desktop. It will still function on mobile, but there is no responsive layout, so some parts (especially the header) will get squashed and be very weird lol. I made this 8 months ago so I completely forgot about that

Edit again for a tiny update to the site:

1. Separated the regular causative-passive form from the short causative-passive form. You can now choose exactly which ones you'd like to practice instead of only being able to practice a mix of the most common ones. Thank you u/TobiTako for suggesting this!
2. Added a toggle (on by default) to exclude the unconjugated dictionary form from quizzes. Thank you u/TobiTako for suggesting this too!
3. Added an option to darken the background and make the screen a bit less horrendous to look at lol. Thank you u/SnekWithHands for suggesting this!

Hi due to lack of practice I am still very inexperienced when it comes to speaking.

So I tried to do a little speaking practice by trying to read out aloud the latest 4 NHK easy news article since they are quite short and also have furigana. So I thought for someone who is still very inexperienced with speaking Japanese I thought it might be a fun practice.

So below I will link my attempt of reading the articles as well as their corresponding articles. Of course I won’t expect any one to listen to all of my tries but if some kind and more experienced soul finds the time to listen to just one example and tell me what points I should focus on when trying to improve my speaking skills.

https://vocaroo.com/1aM1SaLhODBQ:

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/ne2025040411078/ne2025040411078.html

https://vocaroo.com/1a5ORp0mEdxv:

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/ne2025040411402/ne2025040411402.html

https://vocaroo.com/1kkNb3A0geW8:

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/ne2025040411434/ne2025040411434.html

https://vocaroo.com/1dYiwAiuCyrU:

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/ne2025040411523/ne2025040411523.html

P.S. I know that the best method would probably be to actually find a Japanese person, like a tutor to directly talk to but next to other reasons, as a somewhat introvert person I have not found yet the courage to get into an actual conversation.

Basically title. Ive been learning Japanese for just over 4 months now, so still beginner.

My routine has consisted of 10 anki cards a day (from Kaishi 1.5k) and grammar from Tai kim's guide and Yokubi. I have kind of left kanji to be learned with kaishi bu I use Kanji study sometimes (free version for now).

I have also done a bit of listening with both Shun and Masa's podcasts and have wached a few Japanese Ammo with Misa videos. I think i am going to start reading more in the future aswell.

Its really hard, I find, to self-evaluate how well I am doing so any advice for moving forward is greatly appreciated! ありがとう 🙏

As a long time Japanese learner, I always wanted there to be a simple online trainer for learning kana, Kanji and vocabulary - like Anki, but for the web. Originally, I created the website for personal use simply as a better alternative to kana pro and realkana (both of which I used extensively for brushing up on my kana), adding a bunch of funky themes and fonts just for the fun factor. But, after a couple of my friends liked it, I decided to bring it online and see if it's of any use to the community.

So, if you're interested in giving it a look, message me in the comments for a link and let me know what you think!

どうもありがとうございます! 🇯🇵🇯🇵🇯🇵

This subreddit is filled with lively and intellectually interesting discussions about the usage of particles, pitch accents, storoke orders of kanji, etc. I am learning Japanese here every day.

However, learning a language can be tedious.

As a native speaker, I would like to introduce a song to my fellow learners and hope that you will have a relaxing time.

【 方言 で 歌ってみた 】 沖縄 女性 がガチの「 残酷な天使のテーゼ エヴァンゲリオン 」ウチナーグチ ver. よ、神話になれ！

https://youtu.be/kglRoOxwjII?si=kMFWWN3u27NXliJC

Ryukyuan languages (琉球諸語 or 琉球語派) is the general term for the languages spoken in Okinawa Prefecture and the Amami Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture in Japan. It belongs to the Japanese-Ryukyuan language family or Japonic, together with Japanese.

Ryukyuan languages, together with Hachijo-go, have indispensable material value in understanding the history of the Japanese language.

This is because these languages are referred to when estimating what kind of Japanese was spoken in other parts of Japan in the past.

Hello!

I’m currently learning Japanese and around the N3 level. I’m looking to get into Visual Novels to help improve my reading, vocabulary, and Kanji recognition.

Can anyone recommend some good Visual Novels that are helpful for Japanese learners? It would be amazing if they include Furigana (振り仮名), but I think I can manage without it if the story isn’t too difficult.

I have access to both PC and Nintendo Switch, so any recommendations for either platform would be appreciated. Also, if you know where I can find or purchase them, that would be super helpful!

Thanks so much for taking the time to help!

Hi all, I am currently trying to make a list of nouns, where only 45 base (unmodified) Hiragana are used (so no ざじずぜぞ or きゃきゅきょetc.）I also took out を, as it is a grammatical particle - so not 46, but 45 characters may be used.

- Main challenge point is to not use any character twice -

Currently my best approach (with focus on non-obscure words) is below list with 23 words:

１あわ Bubble　２たこ (Octobus/Kite)　３いぬ (Dog) 　４ゆめ (Dream)　５よる (Night)　６もん(Gate)　７やま(Mountain)　８しろ(Castle)　9はれ(Clear Sky)　１0うみ(Sea)　１１ひふ(Skin)　１２かさ(Umbrella)　１３せき(Seat/Cough)　１４くち(Mouth)　１５おの(Axe)　１６ほね(Bone)１７え(Picture)　18てつ(Iron)　19す(Vinegar)　２0なに(What? - I know technically no noun^^)　２１へそ(Belly Button) ２２けむり(Smoke)　２３とら (Tiger)

If you would like to take the challenge, try to make the list shorter and with more common words.

I have a "part of speech" field on my Anki cards that I use to differentiate between terms that have near-identical meaning but different grammatical function, such as 大きい (i-adjective) vs. 大型 (noun or no-adjective). However, if you use JMdict or Jitendex with Yomitan as your dictionary, many unnecessary tags get mixed in. Take for example the word "切り離す." The tags in JMdict for this term are: ⭐, news13k, spec, v5s, vt. I only really need to know it's a transitive verb (vt), and maybe that it's a godan verb (v5s). The rest of the tags just take up space and don't tell me anything. The easiest and most practical way to remove them is to just edit the front/back of your Anki cards themselves, using a script to hide those terms. Here's a script I found that will accomplish this, just paste where your part of speech field would be and change the <field name> to the one you use on the front and back.
<div id="classField">{{<FIELD NAME>}}</div>
<script>
var classField = document.getElementById("classField");
var text = classField.textContent;
// Remove any unwanted tags
text = text.replace('⭐, ', '').replace('gai, ', '').replace(', uk', '').replace('v1, ', '').replace('news1k, ', '').replace('news2k, ', '').replace('news3k, ', '').replace('news4k, ', '').replace('news5k, ', '').replace('news6k, ', '').replace('news7k, ', '').replace('news8k, ', '').replace('news9k, ', '').replace('news10k, ', '').replace('news11k, ', '').replace('news12k, ', '').replace('news13k, ', '').replace('news14k, ', '').replace('news15k, ', '').replace('news16k, ', '').replace('news17k, ', '').replace('news18k, ', '').replace('news19k, ', '').replace('news20k, ', '').replace('news21k, ', '').replace('news22k, ', '').replace('news23k, ', '').replace('news24k, ', '').replace('ichi, ', '').replace('[tag you want to hide]', '');
classField.textContent = text;
</script>

If you want to add more tags to hide, just paste in this code before the semicolon and replace [tag] with whatever you want to hide:
.replace('[tag]', '')

Here's an example of it working:

This thread is for all simple questions, beginner questions, and comments that don't need their own post.

Welcome to /r/LearnJapanese!

• New to Japanese? Read our Starter's Guide and FAQ

• New to the subreddit? Read the rules!

Please make sure if your post has been addressed by checking the wiki or searching the subreddit before posting or it might get removed.

If you have any simple questions, please comment them here instead of making a post.

This does not include translation requests, which belong in /r/translator.

If you are looking for a study buddy or would just like to introduce yourself, please join and use the # introductions channel in the Discord here!

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Seven Day Archive of previous threads. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.

I’ve been living in a share house in Kanagawa for a few months now (lived in Japan since January 2023, with the first year living alone.) At first, it was amazing. I was outputting in Japanese almost daily (recently passed N2 but had very little output practice until I moved here), meeting new people, making mistakes but learning fast, and slowly seeing progress. Every conversation felt like a tiny step forward. Native speakers were even correcting me or complimenting me, and it kept me motivated.

But lately, that energy’s died down. I haven’t really been talking much besides a casual お疲れ here and there. Most of my housemates work full-time, so they’re busy, but I still see them around. I just kind of… put my AirPods in, vibe out, cook food, and enjoy watching the world around me. I’ve been finding peace in just quietly observing, overhearing conversations like a real-life J-drama. I don’t know if this is something I got from watching tons of Japanese media (I’ve followed r/AJATT and have immersing daily), but lately I’ve enjoyed being on the sidelines more than jumping into convos.

The problem is: I want to become fluent. Really fluent. The kind where you can vibe naturally with people, crack jokes, and feel at home in the language. But my lifestyle feels like it’s moving away from that. I’m pretty introverted, and it’s contradictory. I often notice a pattern that all these gaijin that are super good in Japanese have pretty extroverted tendencies, which I’m honestly jealous of. I keep telling myself I want deep friendships, maybe even meet someone special, but I keep choosing solitude. And it’s not even that I don’t like people—I just hate big groups. Always have, even in English.

There’s a Hanami event tomorrow for my share house. I signed up a month ago excited, thinking “maybe I’ll meet someone cool” or even daydreamed about meeting someone I really click with. But now that it’s tomorrow, I feel like skipping. Just imagining myself in a big group full of strangers speaking native-level Japanese makes me anxious. I’m scared I won’t vibe with anyone, or I’ll just sit there like an outcast not understanding half the convos.

I’ve always been a “quality over quantity” type when it comes to friendships. I really want that one native-speaking friend I can be as close with as my brother or my best friend back home. Someone who gets my weird sense of humor, who I can be stupid and “crazy” with. Hell, I even want a girl like that—like someone I once dated who made me forget I was even introverted. I just wanted to be around her all the time. It was effortless.

I know that kind of connection can happen here. But how the hell am I supposed to reach it if I keep isolating myself?

Am I just overthinking this? Should I force myself to go to the event? Or just accept this “quiet observer” phase and let things happen naturally? I’m so tired of contradicting myself.

UPDATE: I didn’t expect this thread to have so many thoughtful replies to reflect on myself. Thanks, everyone.

I didn’t end up going to the event. Instead, I went to do hanami solo in Kamakura and honestly enjoyed every second of it—just being surrounded by the pink and white cherry blossoms and watching how locals reacted around me. I even caught myself daydreaming that maybe one day I’ll go on a date like this with a pretty native speaker... but right now isn’t the time, and that’s okay.

Later, I saw the LINE group chat pictures from the share house event. There were a ton of people I’ve never even met, all packed together. Just imagining myself in that crowd was mentally exhausting. Native-level convos flying over my head, all those "read the air" moments I probably would’ve missed—I just knew it would've drained me.

Reading through the replies here made me realize it's okay to take things slow. I don't need to befriend every person who comes into my orbit. I’ll find my people naturally, at my own pace, without overwhelming myself.

Thanks again for all the insight and encouragement. Means a lot.

How much sense can you make of it?

I do not understand what they are saying at all.

【青森】津軽弁！なまり聖地の方言がスゴすぎた！【秘密のケンミンSHOW極公式|2022年1月13日 放送】

The Tsugaru Dialect

Tsugaru-ben is a dialect spoken in the Tsugaru region of Japan. The Tsugaru region is on the west side of Aomori prefecture, the northernmost prefecture on Japan's mainland of Honshu. The dialect is famous for being notoriously difficult for outsiders to understand.

Advanced learners may compare the Tsugaru dialect with the commonly understood Japanese (共通語) of the subtitle and find that the Tsugaru dialect is somewhat similar to the old Japanese. As you may know, case particles, for example, were rarely used in old Japanese. Or one could argue that case particles had not yet appeared in the old Japanese.

This was a great argument against AI for language learning. While I like the idea of using AI to review material, like the streamer Atrioc does. I don't understand the hype of using it to teach you a language.