Japanese Compendium
Hello everyone!
I decided to create a simple compendium of all the Japanese resources I have used during my Japanese learning adventure.
Warning: Please keep in mind that I'm not fluent in Japanese, nor am I a professional at language learning or teaching. This is a collection of resources that I've found useful throughout my learning process, and that could be useful for others.
Hiragana & Katakana
When it came to learning Kana, I had a wonderful time reading James Heisig's Remembering the Kana. It teaches ways to remember Kana, as well as the stroke order.
If you find yourself struggling to remember some Kana even after reading Heisig's book, that's normal, but I recommend going over Tofugu's articles on Mnemonics for Hiragana & Katakana. Read these articles a couple of times a day, focusing only on those Kana that you're still struggling with. I went over these articles during breakfast, lunch and dinner, and in about 4 days I managed to fully learn and properly remember all Kana.
For Kana variations and combinations, I read Learn Japanese Adventure's post on it, just read it normally at first, go over everything like it's a regular post you're reading, and then go over it again, focusing only on the charts, and you'll see that it's gonna be really easy to understand everything.
That's not all, we're prone to forgetting things that we don't use daily, so I recommend using Gohoneko's Kana training tool for some days, daily sessions of 10 minutes. Make sure you turn on all Kana, variations and combinations, don't worry about the fonts.
I used it for around 2 weeks. In my opinion, the best strategy for this tool is, and pay attention to this one, in the first days, focus on remembering the Kana without checking guides, if you get it wrong, you get it wrong, score doesn't matter, just train. I recommend saying the Kana sound out loud, or the mnemonic and the sound, before typing it. After that, try to drop the mnemonics and only say the sound out loud, try to go a bit faster, but still focus on remembering the kana, and getting them right. You're still in the quality over quantity phase. And finally, the last phase is to try and "empty your mind", don't say the sound out loud, and just focus on doing as many as you can, try to fit as many Kanas in those 10 minute sessions, you've already practiced enough, and you should enter into a sort of robot mode. You will be surprised how many you get right.
Summary of resources:
Guidance
There are multiple types of guidance.
First I wanna recommend 30 Day Japanese Routine by UsagiSpoon. This is the routine that got me going, they use multiple resources that I have listed here. This routine was made in response to decision paralysis, so if you are overwhelmed and confused, just follow this routine. You will know what to do afterward.
If you want start a bit slower, and follow a relaxed style of learning that will remind you of school, I recommend using Minato, just to get a grasp of what you will be facing while learning Japanese.
Finally, the best resource for guidance out there is Cure Dolly's Japanese from scratch, a full Japanese course, that is way easier to understand than if you follow a book, you learn Japanese with Japanese concepts, not comparing it to other languages, the only time you hear about other languages is when Cure Dolly is trying to explain some difference that you have to be aware of to not struggle on your Japanese learning journey. Beware, you have to learn the basics like Kana and a couple of Kanji by yourself. There's also a Cure Dolly - Unofficial textbook version (fan-made), in case you prefer text over video format. I found that if you forget something about a lesson you previously watched, it's best to check the textbook, rather than the video.
Summary of resources:
Kanji
Everyone's favorite frenemy: Kanji.
When it comes to Kanji learning you basically have 2 resources, and one of them ends up being obligatory... at least it sure feels that way!
The obligatory resource is Anki, of course. I recommend using the settings and add-ons shown in 30 Day Japanese's Day 4.
The 2 decks I've been using are Kaishi 1.5k & Recognition Remembering the Kanji 450 (or RTK450 for short), both recommended by UsagiSpoon.
I recommend starting with RTK450, just to learn some "primitives" and basic kanji, but then you should also start using Kaishi 1.5k, which goes into a more in-depth learning, teaching how to read the Kanji you're learning, as well as giving you an example sentence. In my experience, I find that 20 Kanji a day is a good goal, that's in total, it's up to you how many Kaishi 1.5k and RTK450 you want to do every day.
If you want to take a more relaxed approach, buy a physical book and focus on stroke order, you can't go wrong with James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji I. Sounds familiar? That's because the RTK450 Anki deck is based on this book, as well as the other Heisig book mentioned in the Kana resources.
Summary of resources:
Immersion
Another frenemy of some people is immersion, but trust me when I say that this is not only important, but it works great! You just have to get used to it.
If you learned a language in school, you might remember your teacher using one of those cheap CD's for listening practice. Well, it's like that, but we're aiming for real-life-style audios. I've found 2 main styles of resources.
First, I want to recommend Speak Japanese Naturally, especially her "Walk and Talk" videos. These videos are great, they feature normal day-to-day-style talking, slow pronunciation, subtitles in both Japanese and English, and Furigana for Kanji. Videos range from 10 to 30 minutes, so I would just recommend watching the whole playlist, one video per day. At the time of writing this compendium, she has 70 Walk and Talk videos, so that's enough to get you started with immersion, and by the time you're done, you should be able to look up your own immersion content, about the things you're interested in.
The other resource is Comprehensible Japanese's videos. This is a more simple style of listening practice, they talk to us in a more relaxed way, almost like they're talking to kids just learning how to talk, and that is great for starters. I recommend going over all their videos, in the "watch" section. Set the levels to "All", with no difficulty score filter. At the time of making this compendium they have 138 free videos with around 34 hours of content, so you don't really need to pay for premium. It may sound silly, but I recommend repeating whatever you learned that day in CIJ's videos throughout the day. For example: If you learned shapes, then go around your house saying shapes from time to time; "My clock is a circle", "My microwave is a rectangle", "This ice is a square", etc. It just really works to absorb some extra knowledge, that is so simple, you might accidentally skip over it during your studies.
I also wanna recommend Yu, a new content creator, at the time of writing this compendium he only has 5 videos, as he started just a month ago, but he has nice, short, comprehensible input videos, a bit shorter than Speak Japanese Naturally's Walk and Talk, only being 7-15 minutes, but he has been doing a great job!
Summary of resources:
Reading
I thought it would be a good idea to go over how you can read some manga in Japanese. Reading is as important as listening when it comes to immersion. I just made it its own section because it feels different, and I recommend learning a couple of Kanji before going over reading, you don't want to be translating every single Kanji you see. I recommend always reading manga with Furigana, sometimes learning how to read a Kanji can take some time, so it's better to learn through practice.
For example: Let's say you have the sentence "私は魚です" or "Watashi wa sakana desu" and you know that 魚 means fish, but you don't know how to read it. With Furigana, instead of forcing yourself to read "Watashi wa fish desu" you can slowly learn that 魚 is "sakana", and since you know that 魚 is fish, you just connect one thing with the other, and boom: 魚 → Sakana → Fish.
Simple and cool, right?
All of the resources I'll talk about in this section were taken from UsagiSpoon's 30 Day Japanese Routine, so whenever I talk about settings or dictionaries, you can find those in the routine site.
If you wanna see screenshots of the results of what I'm about to talk about, check my Learning JP #11 post, the second half shows some screenshots using the Doraemon manga as an example.
The first tool that I'm gonna recommend, which is a great tool to use regardless of whether you're gonna be reading, is Yomitan, a browser extension that works as a dictionary, you just hover over Japanese characters, hold shift, and you're gonna get information on them. Warning: You have to download and add dictionaries to the extension.
If you're gonna be reading Manga, you may wonder how to use this tool with pictures, since the extension can't recognize text in images. Well, all you have to do is run whatever manga you have through mokuro, it lets you turn manga into HTML files, if you hover over the image text, it will show you the "raw" text, you can select it, copy it, and even use Yomitan on it. It can be a bit scary to use mokuro if this is your first time dealing with programs from GitHub, CMD commands, etc. But just read everything carefully, and you're gonna realize that it's simpler than it seems.
Summary of resources:
Dictionary
I'm sure that there are multiple good dictionaries out there, but in my opinion, the best dictionary that you can use for your daily studies is Jisho. You can search in English and Japanese, using either Kana, Kanji or Romaji. When you look up something, you get individual Kanji, words formed from multiple Kanji, names, strokes, radicals, the parts of the character, readings, JLPT level, and more!
It is crazy how good this site is. Nothing more to say. This one resource is so important, I had to give it its own category.
Summary of resources:
Extra resources
Lastly I'll list a couple of miscellaneous resources that may be useful during your Japanese learning adventure.
A great, minimalistic Pomodoro technique timer. I prefer a simple physical kitchen timer because less screen means more focus, but this works well.
The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method that usually consists of the following sequence:
Work - 25 mins → Break - 5 mins [Repeat 3 times] → 15-30 mins longer break
I recommend this technique a lot for studying. It doesn't matter if you are great at studying, this technique will keep you fresh and motivated. I recommend following the exact sequence I showed above.
In case you need the "raw" sequence: Work (25m) → Break (5m) → Work (25m) → Break (5m) → Work (25m) → Break (15-30m) ↺ Repeat.
原稿用紙 is a type of Japanese writing paper, lined with a square grid. Perfect for writing practice. I recommend using it for learning stroke order of all Kana, a couple of Kanji you may find yourself using often, and practicing things like writing your name, country, numbers, etc.
No need to buy an overpriced 原稿用紙 notebook, choose the best file from HappyLiliac's site and print it yourself at home!
Still Experimenting
I'm still going over the "conjugation" of Japanese verbs. A lot of people have recommended Lan-Don's Japanese Conjugation Drill, feel free to check it out, but I have yet to try it myself.
An internet user also said:
If you just want to get good at saying them quickly, just practice saying all the conjugations for a verb out loud a few times each time you learn a new verb. Eventually it become second nature.
For comments, recommendations, corrections, and more, please leave a message in my Guestbook. Don't feel the need to be formal, and let me know if you want me to delete the message afterwards. Thank you so much for reading.
This compendium was created on 04 Jul, 2025.
This compendium was last modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago.