Thank You For Visiting

Since 2007, I have been a member of the online Japanese language learning community. During this time with collaboration of others, I gathered some of the best materials, methods and concepts the learn Japanese or any language in the most efficient and effective means possible. I have also formatted and organized this material to share with thousands of others. Their thanks and appreciation over the years has encouraged me to continue in this effort to help bring thousands more to literacy and fluency in Japanese.

Let's Learn Japanese (LLJ)

This is the thread I can link to whenever anyone asks "how to begin or what's next?". This roadmap is aimed at people involved in a career where one can only spare 1 to 2 hours a day for to study. In addition, it's for those that like a bit more systematic structure in their study.

I've broken LLJ down into Beginner (N5), Basic (N4), Intermediate Lower (N3), Intermediate Upper (N2), Advanced Lower (N1.5) and Advanced Upper (N1) sections. The JLPT levels are used only as a shortcut and given it's a common reference for other ways to study Japanese. In each of these areas, I break it down further subsections of Kanji, Grammar, Vocabulary, Listening/Reading via subs2srs. You build up each area slowly over time.

Articles to Explain the Path

• The Path to Literacy and Fluency - Read this first to understand the investment of time the LLJ requires.
• Make an Employment Contract with Japanese Literacy - Read this to understand how to make your weekly schedule align with milestones and goals.
• If You Can't Go To Japan, Bring Japan to You - Read this to learn about setting up your Japanese immersive listening environment.
• The Most Important 30 Hours for Japanese Fluency - Read this to understand your custom made Audio Immersion Loop that will supercharge your listening ability.
• Is This The Blind Leading the Blind - Justification on why I can present this material and path in an authoritative manner.

Common Tools and Websites

• Let's Learn Japanese - Patreon Support Page
• LLJ Official Discord Channel - Patreon membership required to chat
• Kanji Koohii - Page with shared Kanji stories
• Anki - Essential spaced repetition review tool
• Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar - Covers all basic grammar needs
• D-Addicts - Large selection of Japanese subtitles (need account)
• JP Subbers - Most j-drama subtitles of last 10 years
• Kitsunekko - Most anime subtitles
• Dramanote - Large selection of scripts for Japanese Dramas

Videos

• Remembering the Hiragana: Hiragana in 3 hours
• Remembering the Katakana: Katakana in 3 hours
• Remembering the Kanji Optimized - Teaching 1110 Kanji from RTK Opt. parts 1 and 2
• Tae Kim's "Guide to Japanese Grammar" - Forty Hour Video Series
• Nukemarine's "Using Dramas to Learn Japanese" - Out of date for some items, but useful ideas

Overall Material

• Remembering the Hiragana - Spreadsheet (uses Core 2k/6k audio files)
• Remembering the Katakana - Spreadsheet (uses Core 2k/6k audio files)
• Remembering the Kanji - Spreadsheet

• Tae Kim Grammar - Spreadsheet

• Core 2k/6k/10k - Spreadsheet
• Core 2k/6k - Vocabulary Audio
• Core 2k/6k - Sentence Audio
• Core 10k - Vocabulary Audio
• Core 10k - Sentence Audio

Let's Learn Japanese - The Path

Definitions

• LLJ - Let's Learn Japanese
• SGJL - Suggested Guide for Japanese Literacy (previous name of this method)
• JDI - Japanese Drama Immersion
• Anki Deck - Due to "purges" that occasionally occur on Anki's official site, I host Anki decks I create on the official LLJ patreon page. Posts contain Anki deck and other materials (spreadsheet, audio files, PDFs, etc). While limited to patrons for curation, over time these will be open to all.
• Memrise Course - Any course I created for LLJ. No longer actively curated
• Video Series - Any YouTube video I created for the course. Most were made during my live streams
• Audio Course - New idea for people to learn Japanese during the RTK phase. Audio only using spaced repetitions vocabulary/sentences of the lessons. Includes audio file of Japanese w/ English translations, audio file of just Japanese, and PDF transcript of the files. While most are limited to active patrons for curation, over time these will be placed on YouTube for all.

The Path Milestones

• Beginner/Basic
• Intermediate Lower
• Intermediate Upper
• Advanced Lower
• Advanced Upper.

Each milestone roughly equates to actively learning ~500 kanji and ~2000 words. In the Anki decks, each Tango book is split into parts of ~500 words each. This helps each of those parts to be the same amount of time to learn and make useful smaller milestones.

As you go down the path, you should do a type of studying called Active Reading/Watching which increases in daily requirements and is vital to obtaining native level comprehension in Japanese. This means that while the study time to finish Tango N4 pt 1 is the same as Tango N2 pt 1, you'll take more days as you're reading/watching more when going through Tango N2 pt 1. There's not a set number of hours to actively consume Japanese, but it boils down to "the more, the better".

Beginner - The Japanese Phonetic Writing System (N5 equivalent or ~1000 Words)

• Beginner Patron resources (Anki decks, audio, etc)
• Remembering the Hiragana/Katakana - Video series - Memrise Course
• JLPT Tango N5: 1000 vocabulary words, 730 i 1 sentences - Video Series

The Beginner active study stage takes ~10 study hours to learn all the kana and ~60 study hours to learn 1000 of the most common vocabulary. I recommend to watch individual video lessons one at a time, followed by the Anki cards for those lessons. The writing systems are production based so it should be "Hear sound, write kana" and "See keyword/meaning, write kanji" from memory.

Active immersion should be in the form of watching shows with Japanese audio. This includes non-Japanese shows dubbed in Japanese such as NetFlix offers (may need VPN). Also, have Japanese subtitles turned on to start putting the writing system you're learning to work. If you feel the need to follow a story in detail, watch a segment of the show in Japanese, then rewatch that segment with just the subtitles turned to your native language.

Background immersion is simply a matter of ripping audio of shows you watch and putting on your music player. A good idea is record/rip about 30 minutes of a show per day. As it's background, this is the audio you play most of the time but will likely ignore as well since you will be active in other activities

If you plan to use the JLPT Tango vocabulary decks, then during the days you complete these lessons, take time to read through Tae Kim's "Guide to Japanese Grammar" through half of Essential Grammar (Two chapters of Tae Kim per chapter of Tango). While there are anki decks, don't worry about them yet.

Basic - Bring in vocabulary/grammar (N4 equivalent or ~2000 words)

• Basic Patron resources (Anki decks, audio files, etc)
• Remembering the Kanji Optimized pt 01 - Video Series - Memrise Course
• JLPT Tango N4: 1500 vocabulary words, 915 i 1 sentences - Video Series

-- or --

• Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar (Basic, Essential, Special)
• Core 2k Optimized (skip words learned in Tae Kim)

Active study should average about 1 hour per 20 new words learned. The Tango N4 book should take ~75 hours. The JLPT Tango series of books are recommended as they not only teach vocabulary, but provide hundreds of sentences that progressively use not just new words but also introduced grammatical functions that can be learned through the context of the sentences. These, mixed with your prior reading of Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar should be more than enough to grow your comprehension of the language. The Anki decks are set up to test both your listening and reading comprehension, so should be much faster to learn and review than the production based kana and kanji decks.

Active immersion should be slightly more effective than the Beginner stage. There's nothing magical here other than the more Japanese you learn, the more comprehensible Japanese shows become. Also, the more Japanese you watch, the better you get. On top of that, add in 30 minutes a day of active reading to audio with pop-up dictionary look-ups. Consider Voracious, Subadub, or Yomichan as methods but the idea is to hear the text you're reading, and to pause when you don't know a word long enough to quickly look up it's meaning, then continue back. Consider using subtitles for dramas and digital texts for audio books. NOTE: the 30 minutes is the time it takes you to get through the text, not the length of the audio file. At this point, it could take 30 minutes to get through text that has 10 to 15 minutes of audio due to frequent pauses and look-ups. Background immersion will now use audio ripped from shows or audio books to put in your audio loop. In addition, you will add the chapter audio of chapters you complete in the Tango books. Build up to 24 audio clips from dramas/books and 12 from the Tango chapters, rotate out the oldest ones when you reach that number.

Intermediate Lower - Starting to read for fun (N3 equivalent or ~4000 words)

• Intermediate Patron resources (Anki decks, audio files, etc)
• Remembering the Kanji Optimized pt 02
• JLPT Tango N3 - 2000 vocabulary words, 1440 i 1 sentences

-- or --

• Core 4k Optimized
  

Intermediate Upper - Reading much more (N2 equivalent or ~6000 words)

• Intermediate Patron resources (Anki decks, audio files, etc).
• Remembering the Kanji Optimized pt 03
• JLPT Tango N2 - 2500 vocabulary words, 1620 i 1 sentences

-- or --

• Core 6k Optimized

Active study of The Intermediate stages (both upper and lower) should feel similar to the Tango N4 decks however casual language is used in the i 1 sentences. Also, both lower and upper formally introduce more kanji which is good given you learned 1665 kanji by this point. Advancing is still a matter of consistently studying new material while maintaining reviews to keep ensure retention of learned knowledge. With Tango decks, you will notice addition of Japanese definitions and using example sentences for stand alone words. I do recommend the use of dic.yahoo.co.jp to find these definitions prior and test if you comprehend the meaning prior to looking at the English translation.

Active immersion becomes more fun due to much higher comprehension. For dramas and movies, you should now turn off Japanese subtitles for casual viewing. You also read casually for fun as well at this stage. It's in these stages people like to transition to the "All Japanese All The Time" mindset visiting native Japanese websites and using native Japanese resources. Active reading with native audio should be increased to 1 hour a day on the lower level and 90 minutes a day on the upper level. Balance this with your active study time.

Background immersion continues as before with rotating out shows/books you've watched/read over the last 24 days mixed in with the last 12 chapters of Tango books you've studied. Active output is great at this stage. The recommended method in absence of a native tutor is to mimic/shadow native resources like the audio books or shows you actively read. Prior to this, look at Dogen's patreon videos on pronunciation to avoid common bad habits.

Advanced - Reading much more (N1 equivalent or ~10,000 words)

• Remembering the Kanji Optimized pt 04
• JLPT Tango N1 - 3000 vocabulary words, 1940 i 1 sentences

-- or --

• Core 8k Optimized
• Core 10k Optimized

Note that this could be split into Advanced Lower and Upper if you want the milestones. The active study continues as before, but with more rare words and kanji. At this point, you should be actively reading to audio almost 2 hours/day. That's on top of watching and reading things in Japanese for pleasure. The background immersion remains a valuable tool for surrounding yourself in Japanese and catching the subtleties that may have been missed