In the 6 years of Japanese study we have bought many many books always looking for the one to rule them all. It became almost a weekly habit and an obsession, so after all that here is what we think are the best ones we would recommend to others starting the journey.
I moved to Saitama about three months ago, which gives me a commute time of roughly 40 minutes to work. This is longer than the 10 minutes or so from my previous apartment in Tokyo. Well, something interesting happened to my language studies as a result. I find that I am learning a lot more Japanese! For the record, I am a full-time Japanese-English translator; contrary to popular belief, translators still need to constantly learn new vocabulary and industry terminology to stay competitive. This game never ends!
In this series, I’m going to share how you can better use your commute time for learning a foreign language. In today’s post, I will talk about the benefits of studying on your way to work or school.
Continue reading Stop texting and start learning! Studying during your commute: Part 1
Getting a lot of messages about Perapera for Firefox. The answer is that we are no longer updating it. The last update, we had to hire a freelancer to help fix some issues (no time these days) and barely anyone donated. I’m not sure why people stopped donating lately. I think we got about $40 and spent several hundred. I don’t say that to complain (and we don’t usually keep count anyways), but that’s basically why we are stopping the updates since it’s no longer feasible to continue them. Thank you for your support for all these years. The blog and the Chrome extensions are here to stay but Firefox just got too annoying.
If anyone wants to take it up on themselves to fix the Firefox add-on go ahead. 🙂
https://github.com/peraperakun
One question that I’m asked all the time is whether Japanese is a difficult language to learn. My instinctual answer would be to say that it’s easy, but I’m 11+ years invested in the language already. Well I would say that wouldn’t I? 😀 However, I do truly believe that anyone can learn Japanese with a little time and effort.
Continue reading Is Japanese hard to learn? Yes and no!
Whether you are just starting out with learning Japanese or at a more advanced level, having a good dictionary available is vital. In this article, I will break down my favourite Japanese-English dictionaries for various purposes. Bear in mind that this is by no means an exhaustive list nor is it intended as one. It simply represents my own personal experiences with studying Japanese and using it at work.
Continue reading What is the best Japanese dictionary?
When I started out on my path to Japanese fluency, resources such as textbooks and audio courses on CD were the only realistic way to make progress with this challenging language. Happily, there are now a a lot more choices when it comes to studying Japanese online.
The problem that students of Japanese now face is one of quality rather than quantity. So which solutions give you the best bang for your buck? In my humble opinion, JapanesePod101 is one of the best online courses out there for people who are serious about making significant progress in the language. As promised, I’ve finally got around to writing a complete review so here goes!
Are you a regular user of our Chinese and/or Japanese plugins? Do you wish to see them continue to be updated into the future?
We get daily emails and messages from people requesting improvements and bug fixes. This is great and we are happy that many people still value our plugins. Unfortunately, we can’t continue development work without your support.
Without boring you with the details, we have hired freelancers for the last couple of updates. One way or another, development comes at a cost.
Please make a donation now to support our project.
Podcasts can be a fantastic way of rapidly expanding your familiarity with a language. For Japanese, there is a multitude of resources available. In this post, I am going to list up the best Japanese podcasts that I have come across.
Continue reading What are the best podcasts for learning Japanese?
The more I study and reflect on my language studies, I have semi-regular realizations about myself and how things work. The most recent is a simple one: A lot of this language learning stuff is as much about what not to do, as what you actually do.
Continue reading 5 ways to reclaim your brain and master a foreign language
We have released an update of Perapera Chinese for Firefox 44.
You can download the latest version of the Chinese plugin below:
Learn in Your Car is a cool series that I’ve been meaning to do a review of for a while. There’s no time for that tonight (I just finished work and it’s almost 3am). However, the other day I noticed that the complete Learn in Your Car audio courses for both Chinese and Japanese are currently available for free with a 30 day Audible trial.
Over 10 hours of quality audio for nothing. That’s a pretty good deal if I ever saw one.
You can download the Learn in Your Car programs from below:
Learn in Your Car Japanese
Learn in Your Car Chinese
And yes, we are still working on the next plugin updates…watch this space!
