I have mention before that learning the the most common Japanese words first is an essential part of learning to speak Japanese quickly. You want to learn the words that you will use, not just the ones that are ordered in a book. However, wouldn’t it also be great if there was a simple way to learn the words that didn’t require just pure repetition. A...

Over the last few weeks I have been spending a lot of time preparing for an sanshin performance. For those who don’t know, the sanshin is an traditional three-stringed instrument popular in Okinawa. I started playing earlier this year and ended up joining a サークル (club) in my area. Last week, the サークル (myself not included) performed at a...

So you finally figured out how to read and write Japanese on your computer (if you haven’t, do this right away). The problem is that the standard fonts for Japanese aren’t very good. In addition to just being plane bad looking or difficult to read, there may occasionally be characters that don’t show up. Since you will see Japanese words written...

I am always on the lookout for good Japanese learning tools. With all the available channels there are a lot of different types products, but to be honest, many fall very short of really teaching you the language. But every once and a while, I happen to stumble across one that really impresses me. What’s even better is that this particular video series...

I happened to come across what I think is a very good video for practicing Japanese pronunciation. Japanese doesn’t have a lot of sounds, but some of the sounds it does have are difficult for English speakers. Luckily, the more you practice the better you will get. Even if you are advanced, getting back to the basics every once and a while is a good...

The most popular post on JapaneseWords.net has been 1000+ Japanese Words List. As the title suggests, the post contains a list of over 1000 common Japanese Words and Kanji. I am proud to announce that the list has just gotten much better. Thanks to the hard work of Michele Romanini and his wife Bika Fujioka, the list is now available for download for Anki...

I have mentioned several times that studying Japanese should be fun. If it’s not fun then it is going to be much harder and take you longer to learn. An ideal method would be one that makes you feel like you aren’t studying at all. Over the last few weeks I have been playing with a Japanese learning tool called NihongoUP. And I say “playing”...