Japanese Learning Resources

August 6, 2026
Tomoya with manga

I’ve been learning Japanese on and off for a couple of years with formal classes and self-study. With how long I’ve been studying it, I should be way better than I currently am, but it is what it is. Anyway, people keep asking me questions about learning Japanese for some reason, so I figured I should compile a list of resources I use.

Guides

Learning Guides

Grammar Guides

Free

  • Genki: The most commonly used Japanese textbook and is what my college used too. I don’t really have much of an opinion of it.
  • Minna no Nihongo: What one of the Japanese schools I went to used. My college’s conversation classes use it too.
  • Japanese the Manga Way
  • Bunpro

Dictionaries

Applications and Extensions

  • Yomitan: A pop-up dictionary for your browser. The successor to Yomichan. It also has Anki support. This is the primary tool I use and without it, I am nothing.
  • JL: Like Yomitan, but not bound to a browser.
  • Meikipop: Another pop-up dictionary not bound to a browser. Uses OCR to scan Japanese text. There’s no Anki support, though.
  • Chibipop: Meikipop, but written in 🚀blazing fast Rust🚀 and has Anki support.

Dictionaries I Use

  • [JA-EN] Jitendex
  • [JA-EN] JMdict (without proper names)
    • I prefer JMdict for when I’m mining vocabulary.
  • [JA-EN] 新和英大辞典 第5版
  • [JA-EN] NEW 斎藤和英大辞典
  • [JA-EN] Babylon Japanese-English
  • [JA-EN] Living Japanese Slang
  • [JA-EN] Onomatoproject
  • [JA-EN] JMnedict
  • [JA-JA] Pixiv Light
  • [JA-JA] 数え方辞典オンライン
  • [GRAMMAR] どんなときどう使う 日本語表現文型辞典
  • [GRAMMAR] 日本語文法辞典(全集)
  • [GRAMMAR] Bunpro Dictionary
  • [KANJI] KANJIDIC
  • [PITCH] NHK
  • [FREQ] Jiten
  • [FREQ] JLPT
  • [FREQ] TMW

You can find more (Yomitan) dictionaries here.

Anki

Anki card
An Anki card made from きみが死ぬまで恋をしたい

Anki is a flashcard program that’s widely used in the language immersion community. I only started my reps again recently, though.

Note Types

For setting up Yomitan with the Lapis note type, refer to this.

Add-ons

Install them all at once with these codes:

874215009 1898445115 200813220 2055492159 291119185 385888438 569864517 759844606 1156270186 1610304449 1045800357 738807903 876946123 266436365 1771074083 1247171202 1779060522 580654285

Other add-ons I have are:

Settings

  • New cards/day: 30
  • Maximum reviews/day: 9999
  • Learning steps: 1m 5m 10m
  • New/review order: Show after reviews
  • FSRS: On
  • Desired retention: 90%

Refer to this for setting up auto-generated furigana and pitch accents in Anki using the Lapis note type.

Decks

These are all Japanese-English vocabulary decks.

Manga

Manga in Mokuro
夜明けのポラリス in Mokuro

The primary media I immerse in, as BL manga is my current fixation.

  • Mokuro: My lifesaver. Use it to OCR manga and put it in its web reader to use Yomitan with it.

Anime and Dramas

Video in Subminer mpv
オールドファッションカップケーキ in Subminer mpv
  • Subminer: An mpv overlay that lets you use Yomitan on subtitles.
  • Jimaku.cc: A database of Japanese subtitles.
  • SubPlz: Subtitle generator. Haven’t tried it myself, though.

Novels

Yatsu Reader
Yatsu Reader displaying 修学旅行で仲良くないグループに入りました

Other Tools and Websites