I have studied Japanese for quite some while now, passing through various textbooks and tests. I have reached a comfortable Japanese level for everyday life now where I don’t need to follow a formal study schedule. To get there I have used countless resources that were more or less useful, so here is a list of online resources that I personally used and found helpful:
Dictionaries
After passing the N2 level of the JLPT, I decided to switch to monolingual dictionaries, meaning that any yet unknown word will be defined using Japanese only. This decision, along with a generous helping of reading a wide range of materials allowed me to comfortably pass the last level of the JLPT. Even if you aren’t trying to pass this Japanese comprehension test, I still believe that switching from bilingual to monolingual dictionaries will only be beneficial for you in the long run.
- コトバンク is a free Japanese online multi-dictionary lookup tool that allows you to compare definitions of different dictionaries
- weblio is another free Japanese multi-dictionary tool, this one also containing foreign language dictionaries such as Chinese, Korean or English
- 漢字辞典オンライン is a Kanji dictionary with loads of information
- OJAD is a comprehensive tool to learn about the Japanese pitch accent
- CJKV Dict is a dictionary to look up words in Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese online dictionaries, returning their forms in Chinese characters as well as an English definition
Example Sentence Corpora
Monolingual dictionaries are a good first step in recognising words and expressions, but to effectively remember vocabulary it is important to memorise it in context. A dictionary may have one or two examples, so expanding your search to real-life example sentences will improve your studies!
- 用例.jp is a massive collection of example sentences designed to help Japanese speakers to correctly distinguish and use words, expressions and phrases. The corpus data is quite broad, but a lot of text is gathered from public domain works from Japanese authors and Japanese translations of foreign authors, which means that many example sentences returned may be a couple of decades old.
- Massif is a similar tool that uses freely available web novels as a corpus, meaning that the data is much more current, but also less strictly edited.
- Immersion Kit is yet another lookup tool, this time targeted at Japanese learners wishing to use sentences extracted from anime and drama subtitles. The tool is bilingual Japanese-English and features screenshots for additional context.
- ふりがな文庫 is a tool that uses public domain texts to calculate the distribution of possible readings for a given Kanji expression. This is not a replacement for a conventional dictionary, but rather a way to illustrate how authors creatively use Furigana.
Educational
- DJT Guide to Japanese is a recent version of the crowsourced Guide to Japanese. It is not a bad starting point for a beginning learner familiar with English net culture.
- sci.lang.japan FAQ is an old-school Japanese study FAQ site built by (English-speaking) newsgroup users, with helpful answers and many links to other useful sites.
- TheMoeWay is one of many websites describing an immersion-based approach to self-study with some more in-depth guides for various topics for free. There are arguments to be made for and against immersion learning and I personally do not agree with the entire approach of the website author, I still think that the site provides a good starting point and has useful tips in various areas such as starting to read Japanese, using monolingual dictionaries and making sure your Japanese text is displayed correctly.
While there are many web sites that offer Japanese study materials for beginner and intermediate students, they start to taper off after a certain level. Even traditional textbooks become less and less useful and more and more tedious, so switching to study materials targeted at native speakers can more than compensate these shortcomings.
- 毎日漢字 offers 15 Kanji writing challenges every day along with other preparatory materials for the Kanji Kentei.
- 間違い探し is another way to practice your Kanji skills, this time by finding the odd one out in puzzle challenges.
- NHK高校講座 are video courses by the state broadcaster NHK covering the Japanese high school curriculum.
- 国語の文法 is a starting point to learn about the Japanese language in the way it is taught to native speakers.
Communities
While there are more books and comics to read or films and TV series to watch than it is possible in a lifetime, it can be quite a task to find something worth your while. The following community websites proved useful to get related and new things to read and/or watch:
- MyAnimeList is an English-speaking community listing anime, manga and related novels, allowing you to create lists as well as read and write reviews.
- 読書メーター is a Japanese community that lets you read reviews of books (or anything with an ISBN), track your progress and gives you recommendations on what to read next. The mobile application with a barcode reader makes it easy to add physical books to your lists.
- マンガーレ is similar to MyAnimeList, catering to Japanese manga readers.
- あにこれ is similar to MyAnimeList, catering to Japanese anime viewers.
Buying Japanese books outside of Japan
For me, reading physical books is still the best way of reading, so I do buy a lot of books, even if they have to be shipped around the globe:
- Mandarake is a large (re-)seller of Japanese pop culture items and offers various shipping options nearly worldwide.
- Book-Off is a large reseller of Japanese media, buying from outside of Japan requires the use of a forwarding service.
- honto is a Japanese bookseller that used to ship worldwide, however they stopped their international shipping in 2021, redirecting foreign customers to forwarding services.
Other
- bokete is a harmless time-waster, the mobile site works quite well to kill a couple minutes without feeling too bad about not using your time to further your Japanese.
- ニコニコ is the major Japanese video sharing site. A lot of content on there may not be on YouTube and vice-versa. Even if a video is on both platforms, the NicoNico experience with scrolling subtitles and the sometimes over-specific tags is something on its own. Their dictionary is a detailed source for explanations about Japanese internet phenomena and a source for even more videos to watch.
- Qiita is a Japanese Q&A site similar to StackExchange focused on technology and technology-related with an article section not unlike HackerNews).
- This ebook reader allows you to quickly view Japanese ebook files in vertical writing mode and copy text without having to install any software.
This page was created in December 2020 and has last been updated in November 2021.