For years I have been struggling to dedicatedly study kanji as I find flashcards painfully boring. So my vocabulary was very much lacking in that regard. I took a 2-3 year break studying Japanese because I lost motivation and also to focus on my biology degree, and now that I'm back in the game I truly found the way that works for me and isn't boring — kanken training on the NDS.

Forget JLPT lists, wanikani or kanji damage, kanken training is where it's at (in my opinion of course). I've found it's very useful to learn kanji in the same order as schools in Japan, since they begin with the easier to write kanji and group them by reading instead of meaning, and there's more emphasis on stroke order and radical names. I'm still at 9級 so I don't know how well I will fare when I go further, but so far I'm retaining kanji and readings better than before, since I have to do writing and reading exercises where I, for example, read a sentence and fill in the kanji for the marked kana.

I'm doing this all with a DS software (that's probably very outdated by now) called 財団法人日本漢字能力検定協会　公式ソフト　２５０万人の漢検　プレミアム　which I found out about through a Game Gengo video. From the same video I also use a reading training game as supplement to boost my comprehensive reading skills in a fun way. That one is called うっかりをなくそう！文章読みトレーニング（読みトレ）

Only if I don't know something will I look it up in my dictionary app on my phone (Shirabe Jisho for iOS) and write the sentence in a notebook. And all this combined makes for a more fun and interactive learning experience instead of cramming flashcards and wondering why I just can't seem to remember what 提供 means even though I've seen the card so many times (core 2000 vocab sentence deck step 3).

Outside of studying I am reading One Piece in Japanese and I already noticed an improvement in reading speed since my hiatus. I do want to start reading actual books at some point too.

Maybe my experiences are useful to know for any other learners who hate flashcards and get stuck on kanji and vocab.

やっと金曜日ですね！お疲れ様です！ここに週末の予定について書いてみましょう！

（やっと　きんようびですね！　おつかれさまです！　ここに　しゅうまつの　よていについて　かいてみましょう！）

やっと = finally

週末（しゅうまつ）= weekend

予定（よてい）= plan(s)

～について = about

＊ネイティブスピーカーと上級者のみなさん、添削してください！もちろん参加してもいいですよ！＊

When you listening to a video, or anime, without any subtitles, not even in japanese. How often do you pause when you find a word you didn't know, or when you do not understand a sentence?

When listening to japanese I prefer to just feel the flow, pick up something that's for natives but not too hard for me and just listen it without much pausing. In fact, I prefer to rely on context rather than pausing every word I don't know. As much, I might replay some parts if I lost focus or got stuck after some word.

I don't know if that's active or passive listening, as I might pause every 5 minutes or so, and I'm also paying attention, but I'm not looking to every unknown word and thus not being exposed to a lot of vocab. I usually lookup mor things and make flashcards when reading books.

I don't know if I should pause more often even if it is more tedious, I did it in the pass when I mostly watched anime with jp subs, now I mostly watch youtube (not videos for japanese learners) of topics I'm interested in and, only if the video have burned subtitles I might read them.

hey all! has anybody made a good anki deck for the new Tobira Intermediate Japanese textbook?

I’m mostly just looking for a vocab deck with kanji but I would be interested in a grammar deck if anyone has one (I’m not sure how much the grammar has changed from Tobira Gateway to Advanced)

I’m taking a class using the new book and the decks from the Tobira website are kinda…..

I've been thinking that I want to increase my amount of output, and just practice speaking Japanese more often.

I speak Japanese at work, but it is always about the same topics, so I don't get a lot of variety of practice. Then when I find myself hanging out with Japanese people, I can barely participate in conversations.

I thought I'd just go on iTalki and find the cheapest conversation partners possible and just book one person for one hour every weekday.

Thing is, the vast majority of teachers, even the cheapest teachers, on iTalki are charging about 2,000 yen for 60 minutes. That's 1万円 a week. 4万円 a month. A little more than I was hoping to pay.

Thing is I'm not even necessarily looking for teachers here. I'm just looking for conversation partners.

Does anyone have any recommendations for alternative platforms or alternative ideas for how to get speaking practice in?

I've got a full-time job and two kids under five so I can't really just go to a bar every night and chat up the locals or anything like that.

I recently downloaded the さくら荘のペットな彼女 light novels as epub files. I've been trying to look for a web browser epub reader so that I can use Yomitan for mining, however, the websites I've found seem to be having trouble loading the format properly. Does anybody have any alternatives? If not, is there something that I could set up that acts as an alternative to Yomitan which can be used on any PC app for mining/autocards instead of only the browser?

I haven't heard anything do this or talk about this but,

listening to music WHILE listening to a podcast or youtube video AT THE SAME TIME is giving me insane gains,

I started this reccently and I go like literally all day doing this cause I always listened to music 24/7,but now I can get comprehensive input and shadow Japanese in my head at the same time and listen to music for really long hours without getting tired/sick of the podcast.

I set my Japanese YouTube video or podcast to 100%, then my music to 70% ish, using no bg music podcast / yt video and soft / muffled fav music playlist.

why this works:

I get continuous on demand dopamine from music while listening to jp person talking, allowing long hours of listening without getting tired

don't u just focus on the music and ignore the jp podcast playing?:

no cause Jp person speaking is louder than the music so I naturally focus on that, I can't focus on music without hearing the jp person talking, try it out to experience it. the jp person speaking kinda becomes part of the music lol

isn't listening to podcast by it's self better?:

I get bored of it, this method allows me to go all day and not get tired cause it feels like I'm listening to music but I'm making Japanese listening gains. I can adjust music volume lower to focus more on podcast if I want or increase music volume and decrease Jp podcast volume if I'm rlly tired or just wanna listen to music.

details:

the key is to listen to yt videos or podcasts with no background music, like Emma mind, Mr Fuji, ぼっとんの生き様切り抜き , ゆりお言語学習ラジオ ect or whatever u like but thye must have little to no sound effects and no background music.

then for the music, I prefer muffled music but also normal music works best, I listen to soft music anyway so dosent affect me.

I'm n1+ level and it dosent take effort to listen to podcasts and I think this method is best at this level but there's heaps of simple podcasts use those

on andriod u have to enable multi sound in sound assistant plugin in good lock on andriod, idk about iPhone.

I have heaps of other methods like for using dopamine to study Jp, making u want to want to study Jp but this is my fav. I'll prob write a guide one day