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Resources

A hand-picked shelf of the best free places to learn Japanese — and the handful of habits that make it stick. No account needed to start.

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Kana trainer

Learn hiragana & katakana by typing — adaptive drills, mnemonics, no login.

How Japanese actually sticks

Decades of research and the immersion community mostly agree on three things. Everything on the shelf below serves one of them.

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Input comes first

Linguist Stephen Krashen's case, in one line: you acquire a language by understanding messages a little above your level — not by memorising rules. Study grammar to make Japanese understandable faster, then spend the real hours reading and listening to things you can mostly follow.

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Immerse every day

The idea behind AJATT (“All Japanese All The Time”) and its modern descendants like Refold: make Japanese the default in your day — what you listen to on a walk, what you read on the train. Consistency and volume beat the occasional heroic study session.

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Look up, save, review

When a word stops you in real material, look it up, save it, and let spaced repetition resurface it just before you'd forget. That's the whole loop Shirabe is built for — and the one habit that compounds over months.

The shelf

Free, well-loved resources, grouped by what they're for. Open in a new tab.

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Learn the kana

Start here if あ and ア still look like squiggles.

Tofugu — Learn Hiragana The definitive mnemonic-driven guide. Read it once, then drill. Tofugu — Learn Katakana Same treatment for the angular script used in loanwords. Kana Pro Stage-based kana quizzes with audio and progress tracking.

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Grammar foundations

Once the kana stick, learn enough grammar to start reading.

Tae Kim's Guide The classic free grammar guide — clear, example-led, beginner-friendly. Sakubi A short, no-nonsense grammar guide you can read in a weekend. Nihongo no Mori Lively JLPT grammar lessons on YouTube, taught entirely in Japanese. IMABI Encyclopaedic and rigorous — for when you want the full story.

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Reading practice

Real Japanese, graded so you can mostly follow it.

NHK News Web Easy Daily news rewritten in simple Japanese with furigana and audio. Tadoku graded readers Free leveled story booklets — extensive reading from day one. Satori Reader Graded stories with click-through grammar notes and audio.

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Listening & watching

Comprehensible input you can press play on.

Comprehensible Japanese Beginner-friendly videos built on input you can follow from day one. Nihongo con Teppei Hundreds of short, easy podcast episodes in simple Japanese. Game Gengo Learn Japanese from the games you already want to play.

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Tools: look up & remember

The two habits Shirabe is built around — instant lookups and SRS.

Yomitan A browser pop-up dictionary for instant lookups while you read. Anki The open-source SRS flashcard app everyone eventually uses.

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The method: immersion & input

Go deeper on the philosophy behind the shelf.

Stephen Krashen — Principles and Practice The free book behind comprehensible input. Dense, but the source of it all. Refold A step-by-step immersion roadmap — the modern descendant of AJATT. The Moe Way A free, community-built guide to learning Japanese through immersion. AJATT (archived) Khatzumoto's original immersion manifesto — the blog that started the movement.