Japanese learning blog
Practical guides on speaking, grammar, pronunciation, listening, and study planning, written for learners who want to use Japanese in real life.
All articles · Page 149
Using Camera Translation for Japanese, and Its Limits
Camera translation is very good at menus and unreliable at exactly the documents where being wrong matters.
5 min readTyping Japanese on a Phone: Flick Input Explained
The twelve-key Japanese keyboard looks primitive and is faster than a full keyboard once your thumb knows where the vowels live.
5 min readBrowser Tools That Make Reading Japanese Easier
A pop-up dictionary turns an impossible article into a slow one, which is the difference between reading and not reading.
5 min readGetting Useful AI Feedback on Your Japanese Writing
Asking whether your Japanese is correct produces a yes far more often than it should, which is a problem with the question rather than the tool.
5 min readTracking Japanese Study Without It Becoming the Study
Hours studied is the number everyone tracks and one of the weakest predictors of whether you are improving.
5 min readLearning Japanese Well Without Spending Much
Almost everything that determines whether you learn Japanese is free, and almost everything that is expensive is optional.
5 min readFinding Japanese Learning Material Aimed at Adults
Most beginner Japanese material assumes you are a student with unlimited time and an interest in school vocabulary.
5 min readReading Japanese With a Dictionary, or Without
Looking up every word and looking up nothing are both legitimate ways to read, and doing something in between is usually worse than either.
5 min readDeciding What Not to Study in Japanese
Every learner leaves things out; the difference is whether the omissions were chosen or happened by accident.
5 min readFluency or Accuracy First in Japanese Speaking?
Every learner eventually picks a side without noticing: some speak quickly and let the particles fall where they may, others build each sentence correctly and never finish it.
7 min readHow to Record and Review Your Own Japanese Speaking
You cannot hear yourself accurately while you are speaking, because the part of your attention that would notice is busy producing the next sentence.
7 min readThe First Five Minutes of a Japanese Conversation
Most conversations that die in Japanese die in the first two minutes, not because of grammar but because nobody handed anybody a thread to pull.
7 min readPractical guides
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