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 158
Learning Japanese as a Russian Speaker
Russian gives you the idea of case marking, which helps enormously, and a habit of reducing unstressed vowels, which hurts almost as much.
6 min readOndoku: How Reading Aloud Builds Japanese Speaking
Reading a Japanese page silently teaches your eyes. Reading the same page out loud teaches your mouth, your breath and your ear, and it is the cheapest speaking practice available to someone with no partner.
9 min readHow to Sound Natural in Japanese, Not Like a Textbook
Most learners are not held back by grammar mistakes. They are held back by producing grammatically perfect sentences that no Japanese speaker would ever say out loud.
10 min readNihongo Jouzu: What It Means and How to Reply
You say four words of Japanese and someone answers nihongo jōzu desu ne. Whether that feels good or slightly deflating depends entirely on knowing what the phrase is actually doing.
9 min readHow to End a Conversation in Japanese Politely
Learners spend months practising how to start a conversation in Japanese and almost no time on how to leave one, which is why so many end with an abrupt sayōnara and a slightly puzzled listener.
9 min readHitorigoto: Japanese Self-Talk Practice That Works
You cannot always find a conversation partner, but you are available every minute of the day, and the learner who narrates their own life in Japanese speaks several hundred sentences a week that nobody had to schedule.
9 min readHow to Explain a Japanese Word You Cannot Remember
Fluency is not knowing every word. It is what you do in the two seconds after you discover you do not know one, and that is a skill you can drill directly.
9 min readJapanese Follow-Up Questions That Keep People Talking
You ask what someone did at the weekend, they answer, and then nothing. The problem is almost never your grammar. It is that you prepared one question and no second one.
8 min readJapanese Voice Messages, Voicemail and Phone Greetings
A conversation gives you feedback every few seconds. A voicemail gives you none, which is why a learner who chats comfortably can still freeze at the beep.
9 min readTaking Your Turn: Interrupting Politely in Japanese
Plenty of learners can build any sentence they need and still say almost nothing in a group, because the conversation never seems to leave a space big enough to step into.
10 min readActive vs Passive Japanese Vocabulary: How to Convert
Most intermediate learners do not have a vocabulary problem. They have a retrieval problem: the words are in there, and none of them arrive in time.
9 min readA 30-Day Japanese Speaking Plan That Actually Fits
Thirty days is not enough to become fluent, and it is more than enough to go from freezing to holding a five-minute conversation, provided the plan is built around speaking rather than around studying.
9 min readPractical guides
Turn Japanese knowledge into speaking confidence
Practice with Unihongo's AI Sensei in an immersive 3D classroom, with roleplay missions, pronunciation coaching, useful feedback, and learning games that build your vocabulary while you play.