How to Learn Japanese
Learning Japanese takes a lot of time and commitment, but now has never been a better time to learn the language thanks to the many tools and resources that are available to us today. It's a fun language to learn, and has its benefits as well if you're interested in visiting Japan, learning about the country's culture or history, or are simply obssessed with its anime, manga or video games and want to experience those things in their native tongue! This guide will aim to give you a clear path to follow for learning the language as well as tools to aid your studies. Please see the next section to get started.
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Learning Hiragana and Katakana
The very first step to learning Japanese, is learning its writing system! It consists primarily of Hiragana (for native words), Katakana (for loan words), and Kanji which are characters that hold various meanings such as 一 for one, 日 for sun or day, 木 for tree, etc. Kanji is a whole other beast, so for now, you should focus on learning Hiragana and Katakana as you will be using them daily when studying Japanese.
For learning the kana, I highly recommend Tofugu's guides for Hiragana and Katakana as their mnemonics and method for memorizing them is quite effective. Memorizing the kana should take anywhere from 1-2 weeks or longer depending on the person, so just take your time and don't rush it. After all, learning Japanese is a marathon, not a sprint.
Once you have the Hiragana and Katakana memorized, you'll finally be ready to move onto the next step of learning Japanese: studying Grammar, Vocab, and Kanji. To do this, I recommend using a textbook as it'll help foster the development of all these, among other skills. Please see the next section for textbook recommendations as well as your learning path from here.
Japanese Learning Path
The textbook suggestions below are based on the path that I took to learn Japanese, but I'll provide some free alternatives that I used to supplement my studies as well. I'll also go over some things that you can do in between your studies and after.
Beginner to Intermediate Japanese
For setting a foundation for learning Japanese, I highly recommend the Genki textbooks (click here for additional stores), which is a fantastic series for beginners that teaches you grammar, vocab, kanji, as well as Japanese culture. Volumes 1 and 2 should take you from beginner to intermediate level. The perks to using Genki, is that you can use it alongside Genki Study Resources which provides hundreds of exercises to help you practice everything that you learn in these textbooks. Please see our Study Guide for more info on how to self-study with Genki, as well as the Useful Tools section for various tools that can help you with your studies.
Lastly, a great free alternative to Genki is Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese. If you can't afford Genki, this is the next best resource for getting started!
Practice Period
After finishing Genki I & II I took a brief break to practice everything that I learned in these textbooks. This consisted of various things, such as playing games in Japanese, reading manga in Japanese, and conversing with people in Japanese on Twitter.
For now, I'd recommend reading something, and a great beginner manga that I can't recommend enough is よつばと！ It's a cute and funny manga that follows the daily life of Yotsuba, and it's honestly such a relaxing and enjoyable read! The contents are also fairly simple and offer furigana which makes looking up words you don't know much easier. I recommend finding something like this that you can read a little each day, since it'll help a lot with improving your reading comprehension.
Once you feel like you've practiced enough (e.g. a month or two), you can move onto your next phase of study which will be Intermediate to Advanced Japanese! Or if you're looking for more to read after よつばと！ another favorite of mine would be のんのんびより which is a step up from よつばと！ but offers a similar reading experience.
Intermediate to Advanced Japanese
For learning Intermediate to Advanced Japanese Tobira: Gateway to Advanced Japanese (Amazon link) is an excellent textbook! Grammar is taught in a concise format that's easy to comprehend with plenty of examples, and the reading contents cover various topics about Japan which was very interesting. It can take a little adjusting at first after coming from Genki, but after going through this textbook myself, I'd say it's worth the rough start as I felt a big improvement in my Japanese by the end of it. Much like with Genki, if you decide to study with Tobira, you can use Tobira Study Resources to practice everything that you learn in it. For more info on how to self-study with Tobira, please see our Study Guide.
Last but not least, another great free resource for learning Japanese is IMABI! It covers nearly everything from Beginner to Advanced Japanese and is very in-depth.
From Here On
After finishing both Genki and Tobira your Japanese should be at a good enough level to where you can continue learning on your own through native material, such as the things you like (anime, manga, games, etc.). For example, I've been playing games in Japanese and writing down words/kanji I don't know to study later, alongside practicing reading and listening. As for understanding unknown grammar that you may encounter, Itazura Neko's master list or DoJG are great resources to supplement your studies. You can also find additional tools in the section below to help you out!
All in all, your studies from here on should be a lot more fun compared to studying with textbooks. 頑張って！٩( 'ω' )و
Useful Tools
Below is a list of tools that may be helpful to you when studying Japanese. Feel free to try some of them out!
Anki - https://apps.ankiweb.net/
Anki is a SRS flashcard application which is extremely helpful in the beginning for expanding your vocabulary or kanji knowledge. Itazura Neko has a nice guide on getting started with it.
Jisho - https://jisho.org/
Jisho is a free online Japanese-English dictionary which is useful for looking up words you don't know.
Capture2Text - https://capture2text.sourceforge.net/
Capture2Text is an OCR program and is VERY useful for copying unknown kanji from games, manga, etc. I often use this in tandem with Yomichan's search page to quickly look up the meanings of words without having to paste things into Jisho.
Yomichan - https://foosoft.net/projects/yomichan/
Yomichan is an incredible extension for studying Japanese. You can quickly look up words you don't know with it while reading or generate Anki flashcards with it. As I mentioned above, I often use this in tandem with Capture2Text while playing games, as the search page, which can automatically search your copied texts, is very handy for quickly looking up words or kanji (example).
KanjiTomo - https://www.kanjitomo.net/
KanjiTomo is a nice OCR application for reading manga, if you have the images on hand. It has a built in dictionary which makes looking up words or kanji you don't know a breeze.
Animebook - https://github.com/animebook/animebook.github.io
Animebook is a video player with navigable subtitles, and since it's in the browser, you can quickly look up words in the subs with Yomichan. It makes practicing both listening and reading with Anime a ton of fun!
Other Resources - https://github.com/stars/SethClydesdale/lists/japanese-resources
This list contains various projects on GitHub that I found useful for studying Japanese, some of which have already been mentioned above. I occasionally add new things to it, so feel free to check it out.