Having lived in Japan for two years now, it is about time I took learning Japanese seriously. I have taken a few small community classes, practiced with my co-workers, and purchased several textbooks and JLPT prep books.

I’m a visual learning and prefer to learn how to read over speaking (however this is a shortcoming for sure). I have mostly been studying Japanese grammar and vocabulary, and while this has led to me improving my written Japanese skills considerably, I am still in need of practice when speaking.

However, I decided to post a few resources I have been using to learn Japanese while I live here.

Video Resources

• Japanese Ammo with Misa – an excellent YouTube channel devoted to thorough explanations of Japanese grammar.
• Kitani method of Japanese – another great explanation of basic Japanese grammar in one video.

Book Resources (Amazon links but I don’t receive any compensation from this)

• Japanese from Zero – All levels are great for beginners, not so much for advanced learners.
• Easy and Fun Kanji – A good and straightforward kanji learning workbook.

These are just recommendations. I will update this post with any new material I get in the future. Good luck with your own studies.