Japanese Language

Hi. I'm a big YouTube guy. I spend a ton of time watching YouTube videos. But for the life of me, I can't seem to enjoy Japanese YouTube. I do enjoy watching SOME vtubers occasionally when they play fun games. Other than that I don't really read much unless it's on reddit/lemmy or github. Someone pointed me to a Japanese mastodon instance but it has a pretty intense VPN block.

What do you guys watch/read in Japanese?

i finally went over and gave up the romanji completely, it really does make my lessons so much easier that i have to kick myself for not just sitting there and putting more time into learning the characters sooner, but now i find myself really thirsting for the kanji study that i was always putting off

i remember being recommended a website, i don't think that they had an app at the time, but it actually went through and pointed out connections in the pictogram aspect of the kanji to build off of which made things a lot more interactive and memorable for me than some of the apps that i've been trying out recently that all seem pretty "memorize these flashcards" and i sit there feeling like dennis on that family feud ep of always sunny and it's like, they're stealing my thirst and i just want to feel good learning kanji again like i did that time, does anyone know what site i'm talking about? or any apps that actually try and teach you before just endlessly quizzing you?

ty in advance for sharing your knowledge, or if there is another community that you'd recommend that i crosspost, feel welcome in sharing, ty

I stopped learning Japanese in a classroom about three years ago, with passing N4 being my biggest achievement. Since then, I've been occasionally doing my Anki reviews and trying to read and listen from time to time.

As a molecular biologist, I was thrilled to find a couple of great thematic podcasts: Researchat.fm and 研エンの仲. A game-changer for me, though, was Nihongo Con Teppei, which I could actually understand.

The problem with the first two podcasts, which are not designed for Japanese learners in any way, is that while I’ve started to pick up some nouns and phrases over time, I can almost never, for the life of me, grasp the meaning of entire sentences. I can tell they’re discussing a specific topic, but the overall gist almost always eludes me.

Does anyone have advice on how to improve comprehension? I feel like verbs are the trickiest part to understand...

Last year: https://bookwormstory.social/post/279316

maybe it's another Duolingo bullshit they push upon us or maybe a typical thing in Japanese? namely in phrases like けんさんは二年生ですか it could mean both "Is Ken a second year student?" and (according to duolingo) "are you a ~~second year student~~sophomore, Ken?" how do i know if it's directly addressing the person? which is which?

So for 2-3 years I have been using flash cards to get to 1000 kanji and then switch for full immersion and extrapolate meaning with some dictionary. I only know around 150 kanji.

This method already worked for english and russian but without flash cards part. I learned first 1000 words + grammar in school by osmosis thorough textbooks.

My routine is 30 min a day for two weeks and then 2 week break due to boredom or some other factor. It makes my backlog huge and discouraging and my retention seems terrible (60-70%)

For the past 6 month I didn't make any new flashcards to remember. only reviews of old ones.

Do y'all have some better method to get to 1000 kanji inefficiently? Because it seems efficient method doesn't work for me.

Like "radio" or "fantasy" or "game..." They're basically the same in Japanese (radjio, fantaji, gaamu) so if I just said them in English pronunciation, would someone with no experience in English still be able to tell what I'm saying?

Hi, I use Rikaichan/Rikaikun at the moment but I'm not sure how to turn on pitch accent if it has it. Does anyone use a pop-up dictionary that has pitch accent, by any chance?

相席（あいせき,） means "sharing a table with someone you don't know (e.g. at a restaurant)" (Takoboto).

What other fun words have you all encountered that just don't translate well to English or require a short explanation?

I'd like to make a sentence that's very long in translation, and/or read a silly sentence like that.

({凸|のの})

{Testing, 1 2 3|Look I made a face!}, I just want to try this in a post.

I am designing a tshirt with a friend and we wanted to put some japanese on it. Since my japanese is extremely basic (こんにちは、ミカです) I wanted to ask whether the symbols DeepL gave us mean what we think it means. We want to have a skeleton inside a water bottle and the text should read "stay hydrated" and we got these symbols: 水分補給. Do they work in that context? Or are there any better suggestions we could use? Thanks in advance!

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/11661821

"〇〇だったば、...." is this legitimate?

I want to say "If it was 〇〇, then... ", is "〇〇だったば、..." the right clause?

Or 華金? Well, either way: TGIF!

In the car on the way to a castle (お城) with my host family's kids, no less. They thought it was hilarious that I was excited to see the お尻 (butt).

Any other gaffes out there? 🙃

救急救命士（きゅうきゅうきゅうめいし / paramedic） is one of my favorite Japanese words because it has きゅう three times in a row.

Any other fun words like that?

I met two Russian people who were running a booth at a festival. One greeted me and tried to converse with me in English, but it soon became apparent that that wouldn't get us very far. So, we switched to Japanese, and made small talk for a few minutes before I made my purchase.

Not a huge deal overall, but I thought it was super cool to be able to make use of Japanese in a novel context. It was also interesting to meet someone where the best language for communication for both of us was an L2. As a native English speaker, that doesn't happen very often.

聾者（ろうしゃ） looks like 龍（たつ・りゅう / dragon）＋耳（みみ / ear）then 者（しゃ/person）

Etymology-wise, it seems the "dragon" part was added just for the pronunciation, not because of dragons.

I love the visual aspect. They areでこぼこ and おうとつ and mean bumpiness.

If I understand this 使い分け explanation, the core meaning (bumpiness) is the same. However でこぼこ is spoken and can be used in more ways: to mean miscellaneous, as an adverb, or as an adjective. おうとつ is written, and strictly a noun about bumpiness.

Anyway, I still like these characters because they're awesome!

吉（き↑ち↓）= Lucky (especially from a fortune)
不吉（ふ↑きつ）= Unlucky

Why is it not ふきち!? Makes me want to quote Atsugiri Jason: WHY JAPANESE PEOPLE WHY!!!

/rant