Hello! 👋🏻 There are many helpful tools that exist to help you learn Japanese - I hope you can learn about some of them here. I will present them roughly in the order that I found them.

For me, the Japanese language skills ranked by their importance are: listening, speaking, reading, writing.

Physically writing (by hand + with stroke order) is much less important in the era of tech and smart keyboard software - even Japanese people forget stroke orders and difficult kanji!

Duolingo

I began my journey with Duolingo, which is a great place to start. Duolingo is a free app that provides low-friction lessons to start learning languages (but you won’t become fluent through it).

Vocab Learning System

When I began studying Japanese in college, I stopped using Duolingo because our class met every day. We used the Nakama textbook series.

Jisho

I came across Jisho and it was especially useful for learning the meaning of individual kanji and their stroke order. (Jisho means dictionary in Japanese). Also, to tell the difference between two words with the same dictionary meaning (like あの vs その), Google is your friend.

DeepL

To translate more than a few words, I’ve found DeepL to be the best.

Anki

Now, once I look up a word, I add it to Anki. Anki is a spaced repetition app that helps people memorize user-created flashcards. Anki is the closest thing to a download-to-brain technology.

• There are 3 categories the cards can be in: New, Learning, and Review. The first time you see a card is when it moves from New to Learning. Then, after you get it right a couple times, it moves to Review. Once in Review, if you keep getting the card correct, Anki will only show it to you after longer and longer spaces of time (so for example: one day later, five days later, twelve days later). If you get the card wrong it goes back to Learning.
• Anki can sync with a phone app (which is free if you’re on Android but $25 if you’re on Apple). The phone app is where I do all of my studying because I can use it while commuting.