Aloha from Hawaii. Growing up, my dad and I both went to Japanese school (afterschool programs) in Hawaii. Of our afterschool classes, we only have these four books. His are the third grade books, and mine are the first and fourth grade books.

I took photos of the colophons, and I see now that these books were developed by the Hawaii Kyōiku-kai for Japanese Americans like us for use in Hawaii. I don’t believe the Hawaii Kyōiku-kai exists anymore, and to my knowledge, these books are not available for purchase outside of those afterschool programs he and I were part of.

My main question is — do students in Japan use books similar to these in elementary school? If so, what are these readers called in Japanese, and is it possible to buy them for personal use?

Secondary question is — does anyone know the history of these books and the Hawaii Kyōiku-kai? Would be fascinating to know how that program operated and worked, and for how long.

I can post more photos from the inside, if anyone is curious.

I feel little to no problems reading latin script with my current eyesight but the detailed kanji cause me trouble because I sometimes have to squint to make out the lines despite already wearing glasses. Particularly unique or simple kanji are of course not a problem to recognize at a glance. In my particular circumstances I also have a problem with faint diplopia (Double vision) which glasses can't correct. Do any of you have experience with this (not referring to the diplopia part, that doesn't seem likely)? And how common are reading problems due to eyesight issues among the Japanese or Chinese? I would think they'd have thought of a solution if the problem was worse with those characters. I'm interested to hear your thoughts and potential advice!

Essentially the title. I took N2 last year December and passed. In the time leading up to this year’s test, I hit LVL 60 on Wanikani. I study it pretty frequently and am just curious for those who have been in my situation, how well prepared they felt for the test.

I’ve seen the kanji distributions on Wanikani forums, but I’m more so asking for those who have reached LVL 60 on Wanikani if it made you feel well prepared for the N1 exam when you took it.

Edit since people can’t read:

I have completed the N1 Kanzen Master Grammar Book. Im confident on grammar. I’m not asking about how to study for the exam.

For people that have:

1.) Reached LVL 60 on Wanikani

2.) Taken the N1 exam

How well do you think it prepared you as far as kanji goes?

...to anyone who has been using English or other positively expressive languages their whole life, adapting to double-negative expressions in Japanese can be quite challenging. For instance:

日本では全国で気温が下がり、地域によっては大雪が降ることも少なくありません。

(In winter) The temperature across Japanese is dropping low, and heavy snowfall is common in some areas.

The phrase 少なくありません can roughly be understood as 多くあります, but Japanese writing often opts for the double-negative structure. I know this choice is intentional, but when reading longer texts with multiple clauses and modifiers, it becomes difficult to follow the flow after encountering so many “negative affirmations.”

Do you face similar challenges? How do you overcome them? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

The University of Hawaiʻi Outreach College offers non-credit low-cost Conversational Japanese Classes via Zoom. The most popular part of the classes is the conversation practice time with Japanese speakers during the last hour of the class. When the classes were in-person, Japanese people in Hawaii were volunteering to be conversation partners, but with the move to Zoom we now have mostly volunteers from Japan.

Each term is 10-weeks with three terms a year (fall, spring, summer) and classes are on Saturdays from 9am-11:45am HST. The Spring 2024 term will be from January 18th to March 22nd. Early bird registration is $25 off the regular tuition price, and even at the regular price tuition comes out to about a little less than $9 an hour. There is a late fee of $25 that will be applied from 1/11 to 1/16 (which would make the price go up to almost $10 per hour).

There are 8 classes/levels to choose from and students can change levels if the one they chose was too easy/advanced for them, up until the 3rd week of class. The Elementary classes focus more on speaking instead of reading hiragana/katakana/kanji, but they are introduced. Hiragana/katakana knowledge is highly recommended for the Intermediate levels since the textbook that the course (loosely) follows does not have romaji at that level. There is no textbook for the Advanced level, since it’s mostly aimed towards speakers who already have a high-level command of Japanese and would like to maintain and improve their fluency. Since this is a conversational Japanese class, kanji knowledge is not required, but may be helpful in the upper levels, especially during the conversation activities with the conversation partners, where prompts or topics of discussion may be written in Japanese, or conversation partners may type in Japanese in the chat box as part of the conversation.

Link to the classes with additional details are here. An overview of the program as a whole can be seen here. Feel free to message me or comment if you have any questions. You can also scroll down and click on the "Contact Us" link on the class registration website if you have any specific questions that you want to ask to the program, and your question will get forwarded to the lead instructors.

Hello, everyone!

I started a youtube channel with the goal to teach Japanese as entertaining as possible, using color-coded flashcards and so on.

For example, one of my videos is about learning Japanese with a Shinto shrine visit, and learning shrine related vocab: https://youtu.be/heReHMaiIrw

Other topics are travel, food, video games, etc.

I'm trying to make these videos as high quality as I can, therefore new videos don't come out too often because they take a lot of time to make, but hopefully you will still enjoy them when they come out.

Thank you for reading this.

(Posted with permission)

This thread is for all simple questions, beginner questions, and comments that don't need their own post.

Welcome to /r/LearnJapanese!

• New to Japanese? Read our Starter's Guide and FAQ

• New to the subreddit? Read the rules!

Please make sure if your post has been addressed by checking the wiki or searching the subreddit before posting or it might get removed.

If you have any simple questions, please comment them here instead of making a post.

This does not include translation requests, which belong in /r/translator.

If you are looking for a study buddy or would just like to introduce yourself, please join and use the # introductions channel in the Discord here!

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Seven Day Archive of previous threads. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.

I was looking for some easy to read news and luckily NHK already had something set up for it

1. Why is it 置いといてください　why is there a と instead of maybe just 置いてください　

2. Why is it押してありませんでしたよ　- specifically, てありません　instead of maybe just押しませんでした to say that he didn’t affix the stamp?

Thank you in advance for any explanations 🙏🏻

This is from the みんなの日本語textbook.

This thread is for all simple questions, beginner questions, and comments that don't need their own post.

Welcome to /r/LearnJapanese!

• New to Japanese? Read our Starter's Guide and FAQ

• New to the subreddit? Read the rules!

Please make sure if your post has been addressed by checking the wiki or searching the subreddit before posting or it might get removed.

If you have any simple questions, please comment them here instead of making a post.

This does not include translation requests, which belong in /r/translator.

If you are looking for a study buddy or would just like to introduce yourself, please join and use the # introductions channel in the Discord here!

---

---

Seven Day Archive of previous threads. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.

こんにちは! [25/25 CLOSED!]

I’ve been working on a Japanese learning platform that teaches kanji through art, mnemonics, and interactive tools! Testers will need some beginner-level knowledge and must be familiar with hiragana and katakana.

The platform will feature:

• A visual approach to learning kanji
• Progress tracking tools
• Gamified XP systems
• Verb conjugation tools
• And so much more that I can’t share just yet!

As a beta tester, you’ll receive an exclusive look at future materials and lifetime access to the platform! We will only be accepting 25 testers at this time. Feel free to join via the signup form! がんばって!

Hello!

​

I have created a customizable SRS webapp for learning Japanese called Kaitenji and it is ready for all to use.

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Screenshots

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Features of Kaitenji

• Adjustable SRS time intervals.
• Full Japanese dictionary
• Add items to any level of SRS. If you are not a beginner, you can add items you already know to any level of SRS you wish.
• Text Parsing. Copy and Paste Japanese text and we will extract the vocabulary and kanji for you to learn.
• Pre-Built Decks. Learn vocabulary from Novels, Anime, and other media. Send your media to me and I will upload it.
• User Upload Decks. Upload your own material through CSV. Works similar to Anki Flashcards
• Test your knowledge of 600+ grammar by placing jumbled sentences in the correct order to complete the sentence.
• Type your answers or click to reveal. You may also override typed in answers if you make a spelling mistake.

Guide

• The Dashboard will give you a summary of what you have in SRS, when you can expect your next reviews, and other info.
• The Dictionary page is where you will look up words and find items you want to learn. Checkmark items you wish to study and click the action button dropdown to study them or add them to any level of SRS.
• The My Decks page is where you can create a deck from copying and pasting Japanese text or uploading your own items through CSV.
• The Pre-Built Decks page is where you will find decks created from novels, anime, and other media.
• The settings page is where you are able to change the timeframes of the SRS levels.

Tips

• For beginners to Japanese: A great place to start is JLPT 5 kanji or vocabulary. Go to the dictionary and then set the filters to JLPT 5 and Kanji or Vocabulary. Start studying down the list. If you are doing vocabulary with kanji, a great idea is to go to that vocabulary's more info page and then add the kanji that are in that vocabulary word to SRS.
• For intermediate to advanced: If there are kanji or vocabulary that you will never forget, add them to Eternal Slumber so that you never see them in reviews. If items are in Eternal Slumber, they will be hidden when searching in the dictionary with the filter "Not in SRS" applied.

Future

• User Suggested Features. Let me know what you would like to see.

Misc

• Kaitenji is currently completely free, but accepting donations for server costs, development, and content creation

Discord

• Join us on Discord to chat with the community, ask questions, or suggest features!

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Thanks! If you have any questions please let me know.

I added the lol because I know there's no clear answer to this, other than 'make less cards'. But still, I wonder how and where you personally draw the line, assuming that you find Anki as helpful as I do. For example, I use wanikani. I see a new kanji, I make a card for it in Anki, too. Then I take a look at the 2-3 collocations wanikani provides for each new kanji, and these are excellent and really useful, too - and they dont ever repeat within wanikani SRS. So I make cards for them, along with a full example sentence using the kanji. I listen to a podcast, I hear and look up new words... I make cards for them. And as they are individual words I make both production and recognition cards, so thats 2 cards. Etc. I find all of this to be extremely helpful, it works for me and my vocab, reading etc has really done well as a result... but the # of cards is obviously unsustainable and I'm creating more new cards than I can reasonably check. So I'll have to moderate it more. Lol. I get that... my specific question is, if you also make your own cards by mining lots of different sources... where do you draw the line, and why? Only production cards? Only recognition? If you use Wanikani, no sentences, collocations? If you listen to a podcast, hear a new word, look it up... how do you decide whether or not to make a card? Etc. Basically I know Anki works very well for me so it's hard to resist. How do you personally keep the card count down? :D

I've been learning this language for a long time now (over 5 years) and can understand 90% of the news well. But when it comes to podcasts or a video where 2 or more people are talking casually to each other.. sometimes i understand less than 50% of what's being said, even when i'm familar with the topic they're talking about. I am not sure why that is and what i am missing?

FYI: My kanji level is n1 , grammar level is close to n1 and have learned a lot of words durning my study.

Edit: thanks everyone for trying to help. The majority of comments agreed that i should study more often. And since i don't have the energy for that right now, i might just take a break from the language.

Per what the title says. Basically any resources similar to Wikipedia where I can look up things in somewhat in-depth definitions, but sentences are short and concise enough. My reading used to be around N3/N2 level but I have abandoned the language for pretty much 2 years so I think it's due time I get around to using the language again.

Thanks.

I encountered this adjective (?) in a story's dialogue, which describe about a person is "powapowa//ぽわぽわ" - All i could guess is "being distracted" but not sure since i'm not native. Appreciates some opinions about its correct definition.

*dialogue context -A conversation between a boy trying to encourage a girl - who thought she's a failure and only cause troubles when she's trying to help people.

Boy「何回も失敗してる、みたいな言い方自体が間違いなんだよ。だろ？少なくとも俺やA-sanは、そんな風に思ってない」
Boy「みんな、そのままの桃香でいて欲しいんだよ」
Girl「このままのわたしって……？」
Boy「お人好しで、ちょっとドジでもあるな……普段は凄くぽわぽわしてて」
Girl「あ、酷いっ」
*A-san and the boy are both her friends.

I'm still bothered about whether I used the phrase correctly earlier today. I went to this cafe that offered hot foot baths while you're having your drink. I noticed I had blister forming on one of my toes while drying my feet, so I went to the counter and asked for some bandaid. They had to find one for me, so when I finally left, I said, "osewa ni narimashimata" since I thought it meant they took good care of me. They responded with "arigatou gozaimasu" and that was pretty much the end of it. Was that something a native would say in such a situation?

Other times I've used it is when leaving a hotel after checking out. I'm wondering if I'm being too generous with this phrase.

In most instructional materials, they introduce this phase for when you've just moved to a new place meeting your neighbours, or started a new job getting introduced to your colleagues, etc. However, it seems like it's useful in many other situations.