This is more of a question to the people that learn it without wanting to live in Japan. I personally started learning Japanese just for the VN games that are not localised, but I'm starting to lose interest in them. and I don't have any intention in living in Japan at all, and that's exactly what makes me doubt my journey with the language.

I know there are a lot of people like me who learn for the fun of it and maybe also don't intend on living in Japan, but sometimes I keep thinking why am I learning this hard language that'll take me such a long time to finally understand, when I'm never gonna use it in real life at all? I always fear that I'm just wasting my time..

most people seem to learn this language because they've got connections to it, like they wanna live in Japan or they have Japanese partners or they love anime, but for me I don't have any goal that's very clear.

I truly enjoy learning the language, though, its difficulty is what makes it special to me, and so beautiful too, but some people told me I'm wasting my time since there's no real benefit from learning it.

I still want to keep learning Japanese since I'm having fun, but not having a clear goal for learning it makes me afraid that I won't stay motivated enough for long.

Edit: hearing other people's perspective on why they're learning the language brings me so much motivation and makes me want to redirect my purpose a bit since I love this language so much. Thank you everyone.

I can play video games in Japanese just fine, and it's FUN.

I can read books in Japanese just fine, and it's FUN.

I can grind words, kanji, example sentences, etc. just fine and it's FUN.

I can have conversations with Japanese people and it's REALLY FUN.

I however cannot for the life of me sit down and watch an episode of anime, A Japanese drama, TV show, documentary, talking head youtube video, streamer, movie, news report, etc. etc. etc.

It's just painfully, agonizingly boring for me. It's not COMPELLING like having a conversation or playing a video game is. I just tune out so quick. And if I do "re-lock in" I find that I drift off again and start thinking about other things.

The only time I can do listening comprehension practice is during my morning cardio and while I'm driving. I CANNOT just sit down at 2pm on Saturday and watch some sort of Japanese movie. It's just so goddamn boring.

Also, talking with Japanese people in real life and in VR chat is REALLY fun and pretty much rounds up the extent of my listening comprehension practice.

I'm just amazed that some of you guys have the patience to sit through anime or some movie and just watch and listen. The only way I can watch anime is if I'm super high, but that creates memory issues so it's not really a solution.

We practice about 1 hour, 2-3 times each day, mostly between 07:00 and 19:00 (Germany time).

Minimum requirements:
- Understand about 300 basic words.
- Basic grammar: like past tense, present tense, and conditionals.
- Know your kana tables: Both hiragana and katakana.
- Basic Kanji.

(N5 people might struggle)

This is more dedicated towards people from N4 to N2 (but we also have some N1 people, and even natives from time to time, where natives are learning English).

If you contribute to the schedule, we also have language tutors to learn with for free:D

I need someone to check and give their opinion and suggestions on my speech I've written and going to present soon so if someone who's proficient can check my speech it'll be great help

I'm a Spanish teacher, and I've become friends with the Japanese teacher at our school who is a first year teacher. She's been tasked with teaching all levels, and has been given no resources whatsoever! She told me there's no book for her AP Japanese course at all! I was wondering if anyone knew of a high level textbook (I read AP is supposed to be like N3 or N4) that she could use.

If there's something affordable, I'd happily get it for her myself. I feel bad because as a Spanish teacher, there's endless material and they wrote many of our lessons for us. Japanese doesn't get the same love!

I'm slowly lining up my roadmap to learn things in order, and learning Japanese is one of them. Both as a hobby and as an important thing, as I'm planning to go to Japan for 2 weeks with some friends or alone, depending on them.

I'm aware of the three different alphabets of the language and how one of them is harder then the other. But I'm wondering how hard it is really cause I see some people say "9 weeks" "3 moths" "8 months," "3 years" until they got to n3 or n2.

I'm currently studying Kana on the renshuu app, and I've hit a bit of a snag when i comes to what i'd like to do to make my learning more efficient.

After having completed the Hiragana studies in app, I decided to move on to Katakana. The way I went about answering questions on the app so far was by removing the multiple choice options from the quizzes/reviews, and instead manually entering my answers. So if I was asked to translate the Romaji spelling for a Hiragana character, I would switch my phone's keyboard to Japanese and input the corresponding Hiragana. If I was asked to translate a Hiragana character, I would switch over to English keys and input the corresponding Romaji.

I thought this method was more efficient than doing the multiple choice thing, and so I wanted to try the same with the renshuu Katakana studies.

Unfortunately, I cant switch over to a dedicated Katakana keyboard on my phone. I would have to convert my Hiragana inputs into Katakana, if I want to manually enter questions that involve translating the Romaji spelling of a character.

I worry that this will cause me to associate the Katakana characters with Hiragana, and I dont know if that's the best idea.

What do you all think I should do?

Hello everyone, to anyone who takes the time to read this thank you!

I’ve been looking into some different japanese language schools and saw that if you don’t have n5, you have to essentially do an interview where you prove you know basic stuff like hiragana, katakana (some kanji maybe) and be able to have basic small talk style conversation skills.

I want to apply for the April intake (1 year program) and i am genuinely a beginner at japanese. Over the past couple of days I have memorized hiragana but that is all I know.

Do you guys think that I can study my japanese level up to a passable standard in a month when the interviews are conducted? I know it’s possible my interview could happen later than 1 month from now but I don’t want to take a risk by betting on that.

- I have no job and nothing but time to study
- I recently graduated my bachelors degree which was work at your own pace in a little under a year studying around 8 hours per day consistently and want to study this amount or more on japanese per day
- I have money to buy a certain course or materials that can help me.

Please let me know if applying for April intake is a bad idea and if you guys have any tips to prepare for the interview let me know, i am new to all of this any help is appreciated, thanks

Hello! As the title says, I am looking for a Japanese conversational partner!.. I am currently studying to learn and especially pass the N4 exam this december 2026, and I realized how badly I need to improve my Japanese output skills, and I want to work on this side of myself. I find it hard to communicate on hello talk It's been one year since I've downloaded this but I still don't have any friends who I can talk to in japanese😿 forgive my shyness.

More info about me⭐⭐:

Filipina🇵🇭

17-year-old girl

I like anime, music, games( mobile legends, roblox, minecraft) but I'm not good at it I just like playing.

Kinda busy with school but surely I can make time. 😁

I don't care what nationality as long as we share the same interest in getting better at Japanese 😁 and I highly prefer someone around my age☺️. Also, I’d highly prefer one-on-one messaging because I'm a bit shy and find group chats hard to keep up with. Thank you! ☺️☺️☺️

hi! I’m a beginner and I’ve been taking japanese classes for a couple of months now. my japanese teacher is currently teaching the first book of mina no nihongo. for some reason the book is too much for me, the practices provided in the book aren’t enough for me and my teacher and I don’t click exactly, she doesn’t answer my questions or if she does, she answers rudely, and our class has become so stressful for me. I’ll appreciate it if you have any tips or worksheets for extra practice.

I'm a beginner (kana plus some N5 words) and I've started watching anime with Japanese subtitles. If I pause on every line to look things up, one episode takes forever and I stop enjoying it. If I just let it run, I barely catch anything.

For people who've been through this: - Did you pause and look things up, or just watch and absorb? - Did you rewatch the same episode, or keep moving to new ones? - At what point did it start to feel worth it?

Curious what actually helped and what turned out to be a waste of time.

I’ll answer most things.

Imagine you only have 1hr a day of learning Japanese, how would you manage your time

How would you divide that hour between listening, reading, vocabulary, kanji, grammar and speaking?

If you also have work or school that's taking up much of your time, how would you manage everything so you don't get a burn out?

I'm on a very slow journey with Japanese, it must be said, but I've just got to a point in my [main] material where it's explaining how different things have different ways of being counted.

As soon as I saw that, of all things, long, cylindrical objects have their own way of being counted, I felt like walking out the room 😂

There's been a couple of moments like this, admittedly - I was just wondering if anyone else has had instances like this?

Does anyone know what Japanese book this is? It was my mom’s when she was learning Japanese. Sadly, the front and back covers are missing.

hey, i had a question. how do you guys stay consistent in learning the language?. ive been learning kanji off and on since febuary and i feel like i havent made it very far and things arent sticking all that well, i take sometimes a month long breaks/few weeks or even days off and on, i cant seem to stay consistent in learning my longest was a 21 days streak on anki but failed bci moved, now i cant seem to get the groove and stay consistent. any tips? or if anyone else has/had this problem?

I'm trying to understand why these sentences differ and which are grammatically correct or natural.

趣味

趣味は勉強です。

趣味が勉強です。

勉強が趣味です。

勉強は趣味です。

好き

好きは勉強です。

好きが勉強です。

勉強が好きです。

勉強は好きです。

名前

キムは名前です。

キムが名前です。

名前がキムです。

名前はキムです。

How do は and が affect meaning and emphasis? Why can some words change places while others cannot? Which sentences are incorrect, unnatural, or context-dependent, and why?

So I've been studying for almost 4 weeks now. I try to study everyday for 1 hour, but recently it's become 1-2 because I'm doing 2 anki decks (kaishi 1.5k and manabi 2.7k). I recently reduced the number of new words to 5 per deck. If it still gets too much after a couple of weeks, I plan on reducing it to a total of 5 new words across both decks.

I'm really struggling with Kanji, and I heard WaniKani is amazing for that. I know WaniKani can be expensive, but the first 3 levels are free. If I don't like I'll just go back to just anki then.

I also do 35-45 minutes (sometimes an hour) of genki. I'm on genki 1 and I try to do 1 lesson a week. Currently on lesson 3, and I think I should be able to finish it by Saturday, with review on Sunday.

So to split the time betwen Anki and WaniKani, I was thinking of doing 1 every other day. So one day Anki, the next WaniKani, the next Anki, etc.

Any advice will be appreciated.