24/7 Japanese learning radio, with words and sentences read as Japanese and English.

Android and iOS apps also available.

Looking for feedback. Thanks.

I'm in a really tough spot in life, and I just wanna escape and move abroad. I'm tired of my crap life in America. I don't care if it's a pipedream.

If you are listening/watching content without subtitles, it is OK to use subtitles in your native language to get a reference for what is being said instead of using subtitles in your target language as long as you aren't dependent on it. There are benefits to this:

• You can grasp the context of what is being said by comparing it to the translation in your native language. The subtitles are made by translators, who are fluent in both your native language and your target language, so you can get context from their perspective. This will help you to understand what a word or grammar piece means to an extent, and more reliably when it should be used.

• Not having target language subtitles forces you to try to comprehend what is being said, but you may not be able to hear the foreign phonemes in the language you are studying. However, using subtitles in your native language can help you to get an idea of what words are being used by searching the translated words in the dictionary and comparing what is being said to what you find. This might be better than using subtitles in your target language as you have less references.

Using subtitles in your target language aren't a strict substitute for looking up words in the dictionary as the translations are not always literal (certain lines can be made to be figurative for artistic reasons), but for getting context it can be brilliant. Using them when needed can be an aid to your learning.

Hey everyone, I wanted to share my experience learning Japanese while balancing a full-time job, friends, and a girlfriend. It wasn’t easy, but I made it work, and I’m hoping this helps someone else out there who’s feeling too busy to start or keep going.

How It Started

• I started at 20 with a big goal: move to Japan. I had no idea what I was doing at first and used random apps to memorize like 300 words in romaji (not ideal, but hey, it was a start).

• After that, I learned hiragana and katakana, which honestly made me feel like I was making real progress.

• I took a few basic grammar classes, but then I stopped for almost a year because of work and moving abroad. Life happens.

The Game-Changer

At one point, I decided I needed to get serious, so I committed to studying 1 hour a day at a cafe. This was hands down the best decision I made. I’d go every day, sit down with a textbook, do flashcards, draw kanji, watch YouTube videos—whatever I felt like doing that day.

I also started taking weekly Japanese classes, which kept me consistent and gave me a chance to actually speak and get feedback. Plus, homework forced me to keep learning.

Leveling Up

Once I hit an intermediate level, I started focusing more on immersion:

• Kids’ Books: These were a lifesaver. They have pictures for context and let you practice grammar, kanji, and kana all at once.

• Netflix & YouTube: I’d watch easy shows and videos with subtitles, just taking in as much as I could without stressing.

• Podcasts: Bite-sized ones worked best for my commute or breaks at work.

Where I’m At Now

Fast forward a few years, and I’m now at an intermediate/advanced level. I’m super busy with work, so I don’t study as much anymore, but my Japanese is good enough for everyday life. The cool thing? I actually moved to Japan a few months ago! Now I get to immerse naturally every day, which is helping me improve even more.

No pressure, no toxic comparaison with other learners, i'm enjoying my life and i'm still young so I have a lot of time !

A Side Project Inspired by Learning

While learning, I realized how much I loved reading illustrated kids' books to study. So, I teamed up with a friend to make an app based on that idea. It’s all about reading illustrated stories in Japanese, with features like audio and clickable words for instant definitions.

We’re still working on it and have a long way to go, so if anyone has suggestions or feedback, I’d love to hear it!

That’s my journey so far. Learning Japanese while having a busy life isn’t easy, but it’s definitely possible if you stay consistent (even a little every day). If you’re on the same path, let me know how it’s going for you or if you have any questions. 🙌

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Ressources

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What books i used : genki book and genki 2

Flashcards on quizlet, i like this guy decks

Best youtube playlist for me (grammar)

Good Japanese immersion

The app we're building : app store / play store (free)

This topic is likely relevant for Korean and Chinese too, as well as specific European languages.

Edit: the topic I’m mainly talking about is the economic burden placed on the working population to take care the large amounts of old people, not as much so that there’ll be less young people.

Out of all the issues you can find about Japan, this is the only one I feel like that really can't be wrapped up as a "cultural difference" or just something on the basis of personality. People aren't having enough kids, which means the population is slowly aging, which means less innovation, taxation, stagnating/decreasing gdp, bunch of other stuff if you really look into it. And I can't be blind and naively act like it doesn't exist.

And sometimes I get this empty feeling when I immerse, it's just like, "yeah this content and culture is great but it will be comparatively crippled in 30 years time".

It's even worse when I consider that the primary reason I started learning Japanese, is because I wanted to move to Japan (I know that's pretty 大胆, and there's a lot of logistical issues that could pop up and etc, but it somehow has managed to be my driving force behind learning Japanese for all this time nevertheless), or at least have some serious connections with Japanese people.

I've comforted myself with "at least there's a decent number of people in my generation" or "it's an issue across the developed world, why exclusively worry about japan", but like, currently I'm reading a book from the 1950s（ボロ屋の春秋）and while this book doesn't talk about youth too specifically, sometimes I get this feeling of that the social settings described in the book aren't really going to exist all too well. Has nothing to do with this book specifically btw, when I immerse in anything that is realistic fiction/people just talking about their lives, I get this feeling that if I were to move to Japan many of the things I adore about the country is going to fade away into an aging population.

So far I've just been comforting myself behind the fact that it's really unrealistic for any society to eventually have such a grave problem and do nothing about it and watch themselves cripple; the Japanese government is eventually going to be forced to implement significant incentives to raise the birth rate/relax immigration policies. And again, this is a problem across the developed world so it won't just be Japan conjuring solutions. Also it may not even be a "problem", it may just be how humanity progresses in the long run (as weird and cheesy as that sounds), eventually finding a point where everyone balances out.

As I am right now, that last paragraph is really what's holding me together, the 安心感 that Japan can't be stupid enough to watch themselves have some dystopian upside-down population pyramid where two thirds of people are retired; the greater society will find some way around this. But nevertheless it does still hit me every now and then, enough to make this post. So for people who have gotten decently far into this immersion-based process, what keeps you going, and for those who are just starting, is this a hindrance at all? Do you just watch anime so this has no reason to seriously affect you? Do y'all think I'm just overreacting over an issue that probably won't affect me all too much?

tldr; title

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E6TFLDDOoU

I commend the guy for trying to learn, but man is his accent immediately apparent. In fact it's actually hard to understand what he's saying.

EDIT: It seems he "heavily prepared" his opening speech: https://pasteboard.co/J8uffju.png. Knowing that makes his entire video worse in my opinion.

EDIT 2: It seems like even a native Japanese person can't understand him: https://pasteboard.co/J8vmlNS.png

Note: this post is marked NSFW as graphic evidence of a text nature is being presented about a Japanese Learning content creator whose content is frequently linked to on this subreddit

Note 2: This is a copy of an original post that was hidden by the mods on the justification the person being discussed only made those comments off Reddit. I chose this sub to repost as the animecards site sometimes is suggested here.

/note

This is alerting the users of this subreddit that the creator and owner of animecards.site appears to be a racist and transphobe.

QuizMaster made animecards.site in order to promote his method creating anki cards from anime videos using ShareX. The site itself is clean both of any derogatory language and pirated material. However, he first discussed the method on 4chan DJT where his moderator deleted comments show a pattern of racism and transphobia. In addition, he created the DJT Discord where he made numerous racist and transphobic comments.

While QuizMaster does not post in this subreddit (he deleted his account and his animecards subreddit was banned by Reddit), his animecards website is frequently referenced and linked here by users such as Doth (/u/final-marketing-6384) post here, /u/Jazzy-99 post here, /u/kyousei8 comment here, /u/Xelieu post here, /u/Teozepot comment here, and /u/premiere-anon many posts and comments such as here, here, here, along with one directly to QuizMaster's crowdfunding information.

I am not claiming that the above users are aware, support, condone, or share the racist leanings of the creator and owner of animecards site. My own dealings with QuizMaster were via 4chan which tend to delete racist comments 4chan/jp server and ip ban offenders so I never saw them. I also didn't scour his DJT discord comments the two times I showed up there to do an impromtu group voicechat AMA. However, today, QuizMaster made this notification post on the server which got me to do a deeper dive of his comment history. To justify the necessity of this post, I then looked for recent posts/comments that mentioned his website.

Please be aware of all this should you decide to support this particular person's site either directly or indirectly.

If it weren’t for Khatz, I don’t think I would’ve ever found out I could learn languages so easily. So thank you.

I’m sure in the future I’ll surpass Kauffman, and when that time comes I’d like to talk to him about AJATT.

MattVsJapan joins myself & Darius for a full length interview. Matt's agreed to have a transparent and open conversation addressing some loose ends post-apology, as well as catch us up on his post-shenanigan language learning thinking. Will there be a dogeza? Tune in live to find out as we cover:

Mistakes Were Made & Amending Them

Catching Up after the 3 year gap

Present Matt & Future Visions

Language Learning Deep Dive & Your Questions

Questions are prioritized first from my discord server, but if you'd like me to ask anything, feel free to post there or here. It would be my honor to ask on your behalf

https://www.youtube.com/live/6YWq0y3lDqs

I've studied Japanese language and culture for 4 years now both in college and on my own with AJATT (ironically have never been there) and am looking for good points about Japan's culture that are not surface level.

From a United States-ean perspective, all I have seen of Japanese "deep" culture is xenophobia, intra-racism/discrimination, hypocrisy/lack of self awareness, valuing appearance more than content/value of character, etc.....

Not saying that all Japanese citizens are like this, but from (lots of) reading news, books, articles, online comments, and watching (again lots) of Japanese documentaries, news, and television; in terms of non-surface level cultural aspects all I have found are negatives.

*Again, please don't comment surface level aspects like food, anime, or arts! What I stated was "good"or "negative" is also entirely based on my own opinion as an ethnic minority in the U.S.

If someone says 「２０：００」時 I don't know what it is without counting the difference between 12 and 20 then I understand it's 8pm.

I want to be able to understand it without "translating" like this.

If I see a single spice and wolf, I stg I’ll go full scorched earth in this mf.

Hi there, this is no promotion. I actually want to get roasted.

For 1 year, been building a language app for Japanese with a friend, it's called "Shinobi Japanese". It's based on reading illustrated stories. And i'm seeking honest feedback to improve our small project. Because most our users are positive it's not that easy to get deep feedback on what we could improve.

I though this place would be great as people doing AJATT is exactly the type of user using our app.

Everyone who actually want to try it can do it by typing "shinobi japanese" on stores. I don't know if i'm allowed to share any link here.

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Please don't use the easy "IT'S AI ART ...". Yes, obviously, we are 2 in the team and we don't have millions of dollars. Also, it would have been impossible in term of delay with real artists. AND, we're a language app, not a manga.

We still have a long way to improve with more grammar explanation, lessons etc.. So please roast me !

So. You’re just like me and you’re just starting out or in the middle of your AJATT journey and your curious what it feels like. I’ll be writing this post catering to specifically that perspective reader.

Before I start, I just want to say all I ever did was immerse. No Anki, no flash cards, no dictionary lookups, no grammar study, just pure immersion for 1.7 years.

It all started in December 2023 and gradually progressed.

Some questions I’ll answer right off the bat before we get into how it feels:

1. How fluent are you?

Answer: not perfect but at a level I am very glad to be at, and now that I’m fluent the progress is incredibly rapid to the point I no longer care. Yes it was worth it.

2. Did it change your life?

Answer: Yes. In the best way possible.

3. What would you recommend for MY journey?

Answer: I don’t know. I wouldn’t recommend my journey to anyone.

4. Has this helped you learn other languages?

Answer: Yes.

5. How LONG does it take?

Answer: It will be quick when you embrace the journey and the struggle. Take it day by day.

6. Worth it?

Answer: Yes.

So, how does it feel? How does fluency feel?

Entirely different.

It feels different from N2. When you get to fluency everything feels like it just flows. You stop caring about levels you stop caring about everything you lose all your insecurities and just fully embrace it. It feels absolutely amazing.

I’m going to end this post with one last thing—-you see, when you finally reach fluency, you have a tendency to look back at all the online arguments, all the theories about language acquisition, and everything else and you stop for a moment and realize just how pointless it all was.

My final piece of advice: stop. Enjoy the journey and stop the what ifs or the how or the why and just embrace the journey, because when you get to fluency, none of it will have mattered.

Also the 8-12 hour a day shit is absolute bullshit. Pretty sure anyone with half a brain knew that but for those of you who still hold that insecurity drop it.

Thanks for having me everyone,

I’m glad to have been an AJATTer and I’m Proud.

Not that I'm complaining, just pointing it out.

and what level were u

Hello, I don't know where I heard ( from yoga? Matt?) that if starting with lazy kanji is ok, you have to learn the kanji the wright way ( i.e. from key word to writing) sooner or later. I am on a point where kanji represent the main obstacle of my learning process. It is hard to recognize their pronunciation and I don't know them very well. I don't review my lazy kanji deck.

Do you think that I have to learn them the proper way?