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 40
Does Installed Unihongo Work Offline? What to Check
Do not rely on installed Unihongo for offline AI chat, live grading, or other connected learning activities. A Home Screen icon or a page that opens from cached resources does not establish that the current task can reach the service and return a response.
4 min readUse Installed Unihongo in Your Preferred Learning Language
Choose a comfortable Unihongo language and tell Mocchi how you want Japanese explained. Keep that preference separate from your Japanese level and from the browser or device language used in installation menus. Adding a Home Screen entry does not require you to study through English.
4 min readitalki Alternatives for Japanese Speaking Practice Between Lessons
A tutor marketplace such as italki gives you a real person who adapts to you, which nothing else fully replaces. The usual gap is the six days between lessons, the late hours when nobody is awake, and the price of talking more often. The fix is not to replace the tutor but to add a daily partner: an AI conversation partner, an exchange partner, or a simple self-talk routine.
12 min readPreply vs AI Tutor for Japanese Conversation: Which Fits Your Goal?
Choose by goal, not by app. A Preply-style human tutor fits when you need judgement, a plan and accountability: exams, job interviews, moving to Japan. An AI tutor fits when you need many low-stakes repetitions at any hour: travel phrases, daily conversation, confidence. Most serious learners end up using one of each, in different proportions.
10 min readPimsleur Japanese Review: What to Add for Real Conversation
Pimsleur is an audio course: you listen, a narrator prompts you, you answer aloud, and sentences come back at spaced intervals so they stick. It trains pronunciation by ear and gives you a solid set of polite sentences. What it cannot do, by its nature, is listen back: nobody corrects you, nobody replies unexpectedly, and the register stays polite. Add a partner who answers, and the sentences become conversation.
10 min readRosetta Stone Japanese Alternatives: From Matching Pictures to Speaking
Immersion-style apps such as Rosetta Stone teach by matching pictures to spoken Japanese, which builds fast recognition and a good ear. The step they leave to you is production: building your own sentence while someone waits for it. The alternatives worth adding are the ones that make you produce, correct you, and reply.
10 min readBusuu Japanese Alternatives for Real-Time Conversation Practice
Busuu is a structured course app: short lessons in a fixed order, with exercises you can submit to native speakers in the community for correction. That gives you a steady grammar base and real human feedback on what you write. What it does not give by design is a conversation happening in real time, where you must answer within a second or two. That is the piece to add.
10 min readLingoDeer Japanese Next Step: How to Start Speaking With Your Grammar
Grammar-structured courses such as LingoDeer give you something many speaking-first learners never get: a clear map of how Japanese sentences work. The next step is to convert that map into speech, which means retrieving a form under time pressure rather than recognising it in a tap-the-tiles exercise. The plan is simple: take each grammar point you know, give it a spoken job, and practise it with someone who answers.
10 min readHelloTalk vs Tandem for Japanese, and When an AI Partner Helps
HelloTalk and Tandem are both language exchange apps: you help a Japanese speaker with your language and they help you with theirs, by chat, voice messages or calls. They differ in feel more than in idea, so try both and keep the one where you find partners you like. The limits are shared: time zones, the trade of your time for theirs, and partners who come and go. An AI partner fills the hours in between.
10 min readJapanesePod101 Listeners: How to Start Speaking Japanese
Podcast-style lessons such as JapanesePod101 are built for listening: a short dialogue, a breakdown of the vocabulary and grammar, cultural notes, all delivered in audio you can take anywhere. They train your ear and feed you natural sentences. To speak, you need to turn that input into output, and there are three reliable ways to do it: shadow the dialogue, retell it in your own words, and roleplay it with one detail changed.
10 min readWaniKani Speaking Gap: How Kanji and Bunpro Users Start Speaking Japanese
If you use WaniKani and Bunpro, you have a large, well-organised store of kanji, vocabulary and grammar, far more than most people who can chat comfortably in Japanese. The freeze happens because that store was built for recognition: you see a card and recall a reading. Speaking needs the opposite direction, meaning to word in under a second, out loud. A retrieval-first plan builds that direction on top of what you already know.
11 min readMemrise Japanese Alternatives for Speaking Practice: Make Your Own Sentences
Memrise is a vocabulary app with a twist: alongside word reviews it shows short clips of native speakers saying the words and phrases, so you hear real voices and real speed. That builds a strong word store and a good ear. Conversation needs one more thing: sentences you build yourself, about your own life, said to someone who answers. The alternatives worth adding are the ones that make you produce.
11 min readPractical guides
Turn Japanese knowledge into speaking confidence
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