My colleague asked me to give him some advice on learning Japanese as he is planning to visit Japan sometime next year. While I was writing all I knew from my experience, I’ve realised it was a pretty big post. So I’ve decided to make a separate blog post for it.

Big 3 of Japanese learning (and other languages)

As with any other language, there are 3 main areas you have to improve: Reading, Writing and Talking.

Basics

The first thing you have to do to learn Japanese is to learn its alphabet. If it’s your first time learning any Asian language, it might seem quite hard as most European languages have similar alphabets (thanks Latin). Japanese has two alphabets: Hiragana and Katakana each containing 46 basic characters, or 71 including diacritics. While that might seem like a lot, it’s not as hard as it seems.

My favourite app to learning them was Hiragana Pixel Party, which is a pixel stylised game for learning both alphabets. If you go through all the levels, you’ll remember them for life. I’ve completed about a half and that was enough. It’s much more fun and engaging to learn this way + can be done anywhere.

After that, you can get into more specific areas in learning Japanese.

Reading

To learn how to read Japanese, most importantly you have to know Kanji. After that comes basic grammar that can be learned fairly quickly.

I’ve tried multiple books and approaches in learning Kanji, but the best and fastest one (arguably) is with the use of Mnemonics, best known from the book Remembering the Kanji by Heisig.

This approach is about giving context to every Kanji, so that instead of just writing it over and over, you come up with a story for it based on its radicals (basic strokes) or Kanji its build from. For example, 圧 means pressure and built from 厂 (cliff) and 土 (ground). So we can give it a story: “The ground at the base of a cliff must suffer from enormous pressure”.

Heisig does a better job explaining it, so pick up the book and get studying. This is one of the best methods to remember kanji for years, even if you don’t review them and one of the fastest methods as well (I’ve learnt around 200 in a month of studying).

To make it even easier, I’d recommend using Kanji Kohii website. It follows the book but allows everyone to submit their own stories. While you’ll get the best effect if you come up with your own story for every Kanji, sometimes it can be hard and this website is perfect for finding some great stories. Moreover, you can use just this website to follow Heisig method, but I’d still recommend getting the book as he explains quite a bit in there and also provides radicals that you won’t find on the website itself.

Writing

To write in Japanese, as long as you know grammar, alphabets and vocabulary, you can write anything without knowing Kanji. Obviously, it’s better to use them, but it’s not necessary at the start. There are myriads of resources for learning grammar, but I’d recommend getting at least one book on grammar, although they are usually very expensive and then use apps and websites for continuous learning.

Books

Genki — for beginners, well written and comes with listening exercises.

Japanese the Manga Way — if you are a fan of manga, this is an awesome way to learn basic grammar. Highly recommended.

Web

Nihongo Master — complete package for learning Japanese for free. It’s the best one I know for learning Japanese online and is frequently updated

Talking

This one is the toughest to practice if you are doing it all by yourself. But it’s very important to practice conversations as often as possible. While I’ve learned plenty of Kanji and vocabulary, I couldn’t talk well while I was in Japan, apart from my 2-month Japanese courses, where I had plenty of conversation practice.

Thanks to technology, there are quite a few ways to learn conversational Japanese without signing up for a pricey course. Here are some examples:

Meetup.com — Is a great website for finding any kind of group, both for learning and recreation. I’ve linked my favourite London conversation group, but I am sure you can find at least one such group in your city, especially if its big

Italki — Another great way is to do video calls with a native speaker. It’s much cheaper than getting an actual tutor and will help you tremendously. This is just one example, but if you look around you can find plenty of others.

HelloTalk — This app is similar to getting a pen friend. You can find and message anyone with nationality you want, it has a built-in translator and you help each other learn by fixing each other’s sentences. It also has voice and video calls.

Closing words

There is obviously much more that can be said about learning Japanese as it is with any other language. My main advice is to keep practising every day, combining all of the sections above if possible. Doing 20 min everyday learning some words will take you years to get to elementary level.

My personal system is:

Learn 10 new words during morning commute. Review words during commute back home — using Memrise.

Review outdated Kanji and learn 10 new ones every evening using Kanji Kohii

Every Saturday go for conversation classes I find on Meetup

As you can see I don’t follow my own example well myself as it is hard to find time. I also try to:

Write down unknown words from Anime and Manga and add to review sessions

Try out new Japanese learning apps and finish them if applicable

Go over new lessons in various books I get, like Genki, when I feel comfortable I can use previously learned one on day to day basis

It’s a tough journey, but if you don’t give up and allocate plenty of time every day to learning Japanese, you’ll get there eventually.

On a side note, I would also recommend looking into Spaced Repetition System to learn pretty much anything.

Good Luck

Further Reading

Resources

Apps

Memrise — My main app for day to day vocabulary learning.

Japanese by Mind Snacks — Fun ios app which makes learning vocabulary through various games.

Hiragana Pixel Party —Learn Hiragana and Katana through playing this pixel stylised learning game.

Japanese — Probably the best Japanese dictionary for iOS

Nihongo — New Japanese dictionary, I mainly use it due to Space Repetition

Cerego — Probably the most advanced Space Repetition software

HelloTalk — Great for exchanging messages with Japanese.

Tinycards — New kid on the block, flashcard app by Duolingo. In case you want to make your own flashcard

Books

Websites