LEARNiNG JAPANESE: SOME TiPS & MY EXPERiENCE

Last Updated: 2025/06/21

This is by no means a complete manual on what to do with each tool mentioned, there are websites that explain everything in detail. So here are some resources:
Itazuraneko, THE best place to get started featuring a kana trainer, a massive grammar reference page, and other things. This is a mirror, the original page was deleted by neocities. There is now a new mirror on neocities, but I'm not sure which one is newer so I'll link this instead.
A massive collection of japanese subtitles for anime.
A browser plugin that can overlay subtitles over any video + has other cool features.
The texthooker page. Make a local copy. Use in conjuction with a textractor (extracts lines from VNs as you read and copies them) and a clipboard inserter plugin (pastes them into this page).
Japanese The Moe Way. I think there is a link to a bunch of yomichan dictionaries somewhere there.
In addition you will need Yomitan (formerly Yomichan) with several dictionaries loaded in so you can hover over words in the subtitles/text and look up their meanings, pronunciation, etc. on the go.
And don't forget to add japanese to your languages in your browser and in your system or else your Kanji will look chinese (and sometimes just straight up incorrect).

My Experience

I started learning kana in january 2023 using the DJT Kana page (https://djtguide.neocities.org/kana/) you can find the exact same page on itazuraneko and some other site too.
Anyways, it took less than a week of a few hours of studying a day:
I first did an isolated row, then learnt the next one, then tried doing them both simultaneously, and upon succeeding, did another one in isolation, then all of them together again, and so forth till I had all of hiragana, then same with katakana, then both at the same time just to hammer it all down my brain.
I would test myself each morning by writing down both kanas on paper until eventually I started getting everything right. Overall this is the easiest part and shouldn't take more than 2 weeks tops. As for the similar-looking ツシソン, I permanently memorized the difference using the made up word "shin". Shi and N are slanted so So and Tsu are vertical. Easy peasy.

I also started doing anki (Core6k) but went back to drinking after learning the first ~10ish words, numbers, weekdays, also 友達 and　車.
I continued to lazily do anki every once in a while, reaching about 500 words by june or so. I struggled bad and would sometimes be stuck on a half an hour bus trip doing the same 30 words, over and over. 遠い and 速い looked indistinguishable. I tried reading Tae Kim's grammar guide while learning kana and didn't really pick up on everything in there. I read it again later, shortly before I got into reading in August, and retained for info.
Throughout june and july I did lots of anki just because it was fun, doing about 30 words minimum but going crazy so that by the end of the summer I had 1500 or so done. At the end of july I read a few bits from Hollow Ataraxia using yomichan and started mining cards for my own deck. I also read a short VN called 'Boku To Iu Mono' which seemed very challenging (though someone lists it as a very easy one) but it was very short so why not. Even at a snail's speed I finished it in a short time. I liked the process of reading with yomichan.. and thus the studying resumed full swing.

At this point I tried the N5 test on the JLPT site and managed to pass it (and you can too, it quizzes you on some really barebones stuff) but was completely dumbfounded by N4.

Everything changed in august when I got bored of 'Tsukihime' so much I decided to try reading it in Japanese to maybe discover some kind of excellence that simply didn't translate well into english. I read daily, going from reading for 40 minutes to 1 hour to about 2-3 daily, plus I started watching anime with subs using ASBPlayer, which is an extension that allows you to overlay subtitles onto a video on any streaming site. While reading 'Tsukihime' I also realized that I need to somehow know how much time I'm spending on reading per day, so I started using a timer app on my phone, which I would keep running whenever I was reading. I watched all of 'Karakau Jouzu Sensei Takagi San', starting off by watching about a half then going through the subs to get all the new words into my deck, as well as analyzing everything I didn't understand using yomichan and google. I also went through all the kana-only cards in core6k, replacing some with kanji (even if the kanji version is uncommon - trust me, this can save your ass later) and setting all the foreign ones (and some other stuff) due right away. That's like 300 cards in one sitting, though most of them are really, really obvious.

My new trick was to sort them by kanji and do words with kanji that I knew in bulk. This was a genius move and easily allowed me to memorize even more words in an even smaller window of time. Starting from august and throughout september I did TONS of anki, simply because I enjoyed getting up early to go through my reviews, and oh shit, I had over 300 on some days, not counting all the new ones I would be doing (total peak was August 26 - 662 reviews total. I assume this counts everything including failures and new cards). I also watched all of 'Non Non Byori'.

By the end of August I got sick of tsukihime and moved on to 'Clannad', which I read till the end of September or so. At the start of September I returned to that N4 test and aced it, so I thought I'd continue coming back to these every month or so to check my progress. Clannad was very important in my learning process as it taught me lots of informal speech. I remember starring at my screen early into it, thinking "Why am I doing this? There's no way this will work...", but I kept on reading and that was the best choice I could have made. I continued to watch anime, mostly at the rate of a couple of episodes a day. Once I started reading 'Clannad' I suddenly started clocking in more hours and so I set a baseline, 5 hours per day, which I consistently met and even surpassed on many occasions.

I couldn't finish Clannad (it got boring too) and moved on to 'Little Busters', which was a bit more difficult but mostly the same (the font was smaller too). I tried N3 somewhere in october (or early november? I think it was october) and did well, which was surprising considering it looked difficult when I took a peek at it back in august. Around this time I also tried reading some manga using Manga-OCR to fetch lines I couldn't read for a yomichan-fueled dismantelement. I was slooow, I had just blasted through some manga earlier that year (Prison School...) in a short time, so going through it slowly was kind of odd. I think I read 'Oomuroke' and something else. Also my 4gb RAM 2011 PC could barely handle Manga-OCR and Ungoogled Chromium running together.

In november I moved to 'Gyakuten Saiban', it was actually pretty challenging because a lot of the words in it are written in kana, despite it being less convenient, AND I was somehow really dogshit at the interactive parts (I suck at adventure games and my problem solving skills are dogshit). I was retaining more and more words, so reading manga was getting easier. I really enjoyed 'The Voynich Hotel' and 'Gleipnir'. I also made a friend on HelloTalk (well, not much of a friend, we'd just chat occasionally) who would sometimes explain stuff for me, and I would teach him bits and pieces of English. I finished all 3 games and moved on to 'Umineko' in December, clocking in NINE HOURS AND FIFTEEN MINUTES the first time I sat down to read it. I also tried N2 and did very well once more. I also finished core6k that month + had an extra thousand learnt cards in my own deck. By that point I started getting cocky. Why clock in bajillions of hours into reading if I can.. say, play a game instead? I played 'Shin Megami Tensei' for the PSX but the JRPG nature of it made me quit eventually. I also read some 'Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei', 'Virgin Extiction Island' and 'Suicide Island', (I only finished the Virgin one - the rest bore me to death). I would close off my 'Umineko' reading sessions with a couple of runs in 'Azure Dreams' - the japanese version even has voice overs. In about a month, 'Umineko' was finished.

If earlier I needed 100% of my focus and more to actually keep up with the whole thing (which is why I listened to Celer's Xie Xie on repeat during my 'Tsukihime' sessions), then by now I could easily multitask. 'The House In Fata Morgana' was muted throughout the whole read - Wolfsheim and other bands on my to-listen list came first. In February I finally did the abridged JLPT N1 and only messed up 1 answer (but I did re-listen to the audio some of the final questions, if I hadn't, I could have probably failed 2 or 3 in total).

With Fata Morgana out of my way, I came back to 'Clannad' and finished it in 2 weeks or so. I could read so fast it was unbelieveable. I was literally starring at the screen in disbelief just 5 months earlier! This was very motivating, but unfortunately, trouble was on the horizon - visual novels were getting really old. I'm bad at anything that requies emotions, so all these tear jerkers did nothing for me, and so the reading process was just me brute forcing my way through without any feeling. This was especially the case with 'Little Busters', but it had become my modus operandi after 'Umineko'.

With that, I moved on to anime and manga full swing. I did read one more VN, 'Axanael', a bit later though. Anyways, I think I read through all of 'Tengoku No Daimakyou' shortly after watching the anime, 'Sora No Otoshimono' which I FUCKING HATED!!! FUCK!! What a waste of a good concept and of my time!! Some 'Love Hina' (sucks) and 'Blame' (same). The one I reaaally liked was 'Murcielago'. Back when I was just getting into 'Gyakuten Saiban' I took a peek at chapter 1 and shat myself in horror after a page or two. But now.. not only could I keep my pants clean, I could also speed read the thing. That was nuts, but I did it anyways. I read through all of the available chapters in a short time. Moving on, 'Dead Tube' which was kind of interesting at first, but kept getting progressively more retarded as it went on. I was getting tired. 'Watamote' and 'Asobi Asobase' were the ones where I left off. I could barely keep myself entertained with this stuff anymore. I was doing Kanken now. Well, using a kanken deck in Anki and emulating a DS game. It was great. Learning how to write is super fun. I loved how many of the characters were actually embedded into my memory from all the reading, so it felt more like I was uncovering the knowledge from my brain rather than painstakingly memorizing something for the first time. I got up to level 6 or 5.

As for anime, things were also looking pretty grim. I was bored with it rigth as 2024 began. I liked some... but most was boring. I managed to watch & understand some without subs.. But for most part I didn't want to watch any at all, and was once again just brute-forcing my way through it for gains, which only made me less excited.

I tried watching japanese stuff on youtube, yada yada... But it was the beginning of the end. From march onwards I spent more time listnening to podcasts than watching anime or reading (I listened to Yuyu no nihongo podcast).
In late April I got a new PC for the first time in 13 years and decided to play games instead. I watched some anime here and there, but read no manga or VNs. By May, I was only doing anki, until about the middle of may, when I quit watching 'Majou No Takkyubin' after half an hour and never returned.


The candle that burns twice as bright burns twice as fast, ey?


Whether it was a genuine choice or just anhedonia winning another fight, it's hard to say. In September or October I thought about it all and felt bad. But like I said earlier, VNs are not really for me. I'm a recluse who doesn't enjoy watching people interact, especially if the whole thing is filled with the same cliches and tropes as most other VNs. So despite an effort to get back into Japanese around that time... The best I could muster was revising my entire anki backlog and re-learning a few levels of kanken - 'Mahoutsukai No Yoru' reminded me of my I stopped, and so I stopped again. And with that.. My japanese learning journey ended. For better or for worse (eh, for worse. That was a hobby of epic proportions).

Something I didn't mention is that I nearly stopped drinking altogether thanks to this whole affair, as I was obsessed with min-maxxing my progress. But as the hobby beneath my feet, I fell back into my usual rut, spending the summer mostly miserable, drinking. I've had little success with abstaining for longer than a month since then. Taking this article out of the trash and finishing it was a bit soul crushing.. I rememeber it like yesterday, fuck! I was good and I felt good over it. I had a clear goal and it was the only thing that mattered. Now I feel like another piece of me is lost.
Anyways, I used to think I was congitively impaired from being a loner, I always felt like shit and I wouldn't have believed it if you told me that I can make so much progress in such a short amount of time. My memory is also very, very bad. And yet, when it came to memorizing words and grammar patterns I was perfect. It was a great hobby, the most memorable thing I did in years. I felt dumb about not starting earlier since I could have been having all that fun the whole time. So if you feel any doubts... give them up and just go do it.

Also I didn't mention it, but I was actually studying during my final year in college throughout this whole rigamarole. But college is retarded and useless, I'd do anki in class instead. I would routinely come late to certain classes and occasionally skip others to read more at home. Needless to say, it didn't take me 200 days. Despite only starting to read in August, I had a little over 1000 hours clocked in by the end of January, not to mention 200+ episodes of anime watched, and over 10 thousand flash cards learned.


ADDENDUM

The article is poorly formatted so I'll just paste this in here:
I completely forgot to mention that I eventually began to hallucinate during my short breaks during the reading sessions. A 5-7 hour long reading session wouldn't just go uninterrupted, I'd take a break here and there, 10, 15, sometimes 30 minutes. During these breaks I'd lay down in bed and begin falling asleep and hallucinating. I'd still be reading through a VN, but everything was unintelligible, and yet, I seemed to have no issue reading all that nonsense. Then I'd knock myself back into consciousness and get back to actually reading.

Another thing I omitted is the calculation that determined the 5 hour mark as the necessary minimum; you see, it is said that at least 1000 hours of immersion is required to get good at a language. Well, if you read for 2 hours a day - you get 500 days. Too much! 5 hour is 200 days - now THAT's better! Similar calculation were done on the core6k deck (5999 cards in total). At the rate of 30 words a day the whole deck would take 200 days to finish. No good. 60 words a day? That's only a hundred! Needless to say, it didn't take me 200 days. Despite only starting to read in August, I had a little over 1000 hours clocked in by the end of January, not to mention 200+ episodes of anime watched, and over 10 thousand flash cards learned. I was a powerhouse, a man on a mission. Which makes it all seem even sadder now, I can only imagine how much more I have forgotten ever since I stopped.

Also I don't believe I mentioned this, but I turned off all my JP->EN dictionaries and began to only use japanese monolingual ones in early 2025. It was tough at first because some of them aren't well structured (i.e older definitions are put above newer ones, etc) but it was not nearly as hard as I expected it to be. Anyways, I used JMdict and 新和英 a lot, KANJIDIC and Kanjium Pitch Accents for additional info. I can't remember what monolingual ones I preferred so pay attention to the recommended ones on learnjapanese moe. I have these installed: デジタル大辞泉, 三省堂国語辞典　第八版, 絵でわかる日本語 (includes grammar, VERY important!), どんなときどう使う 日本語表現文型辞典, 日本語文法辞典(全集), 旺文社国語辞典 第十一版 画像無し, 明鏡国語辞典　第二版, 故事ことわざの辞典, 実用日本語表現辞典, 学研 四字熟語辞典, surasura 擬声語. The grammar ones will highlight not just a word but a whole part of a sentence and explain it. So fucking goooood. Go get em tiger!!

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