Nihongo Life is an interactive and holistic approach to learn Japanese. We produce videos, lessons, textbooks and apps to suit your learning needs, so all you need is 10 minutes a day to study and improve.
Learning Hiragana and Katakana on Nihongo Life will always be free. Our Pro subscription is $8.99 a month and includes access to thousands of words, kanji, sentences and lessons to keep you going with your studies.
The Nihongo Life iOS app is a great tool to study offline and to practice handwriting. The Web app is available on any device with an internet connection, including Android phones and tablets.
Language
Japanese is a tricky language if you're English as it introduces some new grammatical concepts, such as 'particles', and 'Kanji', not to mention the different alphabets. Once you understand the basics, the rest will follow naturally.
Start by setting some time aside each day, it only needs to be 10 minutes to get your started. Set up a quiet study area where you can focus, or put your headphones into minimise distractions. Start by learning Hiragana and Katakana, the alphabets of Japanese. Then you can begin learning words, sentences, and Kanji - roughly in that order.
Yes, but it's much harder. Surround yourself with likeminded students to succeed, Nihongo Life has a dedicated website, just for that.
Romaji is the Latin alphabet in Japanese. 'roma' for 'Roman' and 'ji' meaning 'letter'. It's not actually used in Japan very much since Katakana is the best way to represent foreign, or loan words in Japanese.
With hard work and dedication, you can certainly master the basics and achieve the JLPT N5 or N4 by then. Even native Japanese speakers will spend years studying Kanji.
Learn both together, but speaking Japanese will make you much more confident to use your language skills. Writing is good if you want to focus on passing exams.
Yes! Japanese is fun language to learn, keeps your mind working and helps you understand more around Japanese culture.
Hiragana is used for Japanese sounds. Katakana is used for foreign or 'loan' words. Kanji comes from Chinese and is used to carry meanings as well as sounds.
Yes, but be careful with the speaking style, as a lot of anime could sound informal or childish when spoken. However, it is great to learn new words.
You can learn Kanji on the Nihongo Life for iOS as part of the premium plan. It includes Kunyomi and Onyomi readings, native speaker pronunciation and stroke order so you can practice handwriting. It is better to learn Japanese in context and there are over 1,000 sentences to learn the Kanji in context.
The Nihongo Life for iOS app and our website is built from the ground up as a bespoke platform to teach Japanese in a simple and straightforward way. So you can get started and not have to worry about being overwhelmed with information and only learn the useful parts to begin with.
The iOS and Web applications currently use different systems. We are working on a way to syncronise the accounts so they work across all of our platforms.
Books
Prices vary depending on your region but are $9.99 charged in your local currency. The books are a part of Kindle Unlimited so you can download them for free.
The grammar books are read in order starting with Red, Yellow and Green. The Kanji books start with White and then Pink.
We'd love to work with you! Please get in touch with us if you would like to arrange a syllabus with us for your classes or need some bespoke learning materials for your course.
We use Amazon Kindle to manage purchaces and downloads of our books. At this time there are no other formats available for purchase. You can download the Kindle reader from Amazon on any digital device such as for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android
