In a previous post, Books for Japanese Children, I talked about some of the books I have been (attempting to) read! In this article want to share some links to websites I have found and bookmarked. To be honest I haven’t used these to their full potential, but I really hope I get to them because they look like fantastic resources, which is why I wanted to share them!

きょうのイソップ童話

This one is great! It is a short story for every day of the year. There is text in Japanese and audio you can listen to while you read. The audio is nicely narrated and I hope to make an effort to improve my listening skills soon with this very resource. You can download the audio easily too, so you can easily put it onto your mp3 player of choice and listen on the go.

The stories are short so it is easy to either quickly listen to it and move on, or to study in depth.

Also, check out the parent (gateway) site, which leads to other websites for children. They include videos and more stories, etc. Click on “パソコン” to access the sites on your computer, the other links are for mobile phones. Some of the content is a bit too much for children (irritating videos on washing your hands because of the flu) but other stuff is cute and easy to understand. Highly recommended! There is also a website to learn about other countries, featuring national anthems and all.

日本の歌

This is a website full of Japanese children’s songs, ordered from easy to hard. Each page has the lyrics, music notation, and music with and without singing. Very nice! There is also a grammatical terms guide.

This one is a bit different in that the website itself isn’t aimed at children but at language learners. However, the songs themselves are children’s songs so I thought it was appropriate to include them on this list.

ふぁんた時間

I really want to explore this website more! It seems like it is a podcast. It feels very professional and I think it may be done by NTT. I’m listening to one now and it has background music which is great, but perhaps also a bit distracting for the language learner. Def one that I want to look more into!

If you know of any more websites intended for Japanese children, please leave me a comment! Also check out my post on Japanese Children’s (print) Books! I think there are advantages to reading from a book, but no audio…

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• Japanese Readers for the Middle Years


An interactive website designed for children (perhaps high school?). The Japanese here is very simple, however it is a bit of interactive fun. If you are new at Japanese it has visuals and audio to help you along. For those who are a bit futher along, it’s just a bit of fun for five minutes.


• News of Japan

Short news stories from Japan. You can chose if they are displayed in romaji, kana or kanji. There is also an audio file you can listen to as you read. Again, it’s all very simple and I think a great resource for those of us who are trying to jump into reading actual Japanese. It also refers to the book 2001 Kanji Odyssey (what numbers the kanji are on the website in the book), for those using that resource.

• Kansai Ben

An awesome reference on the Kansai Ben/Kansai Dialect. This is the best page I’ve seen on it yet! I haven’t even scratched the surface of this site, but it has audio and video examples, and is set out clearly with tables comparing Kansai Ben with standard Japanese.

• Japanese Onomatopoeia – Algorithm March

A post about onomatopoeia in the algorithm march. I was so disappointed when I saw the algorithm march on TV that it had no ninjas in it while I was watching (that I could see, anyway). I love the algorithm march!

A little while ago I made a post called All You Need To Learn Japanese Is Time, a response to a post on a Language Learning forum. The argument at the forum was that all methods are equal, the only factor in language learning is time. I argued that both time and method are necessary. I liked how Alex summed it up in a comment:

Method is as important as time. Neither should be sacrificed for the serious student.

Since then I have found some other people’s responses to the forum. What follows are some highlights and some of my thoughts on them. If you are interested in this topic, here is some further reading for you and I’d love to hear your own thoughts.

Edwin at the Tower of Confusion has written a post called No Best Method Hypothesis. He writes:

Perhaps learning a language is like building up a personal relationship. People might have different tactics to ‘befriend’ your target person. But eventually if you want to build up a true relationship, you have to spend time, a lot of time. And you have to keep yourself motivated in the process.

There are many interesting comments to the post as well. In one comment, Keith writes:

Rather than merely saying that there is no best method, I would go so far as to say that ALL methods of language learning are inefficient. People are not learning from their methods. Instead, they are learning from their REVIEWS. Or perhaps they are learning from their USAGE of the language. But they are certainly not learning from their methods. If they were learning from their methods then they would not need to review. They would be done and could just move on to the next thing to learn. However, their methods are not that efficient.

I’m not sure that I agree with that comment. I think, perhaps, that no matter what, you will always have to review what you have learnt – whether that review is from an SRS program or from hearing it in a conversation, it is still review. I don’t think they are learning from their reviews – in fact, I believe it is better to learn before you review – but rather are just reinforcing what they have already learnt. That is, if your definition of “learnt” is to understand something, and the process of reviewing is to ground the information more firmly in your head.

Another response is by Gbarto who posts What’s The Best Language Learning Method For You?

In this light, the debates about which method is best are silly. But if they keep people talking about new things that others might not have tried yet, they’re still useful. Ignore the bombast about who’s best, then, and keep reading the forums and blogs. You might just find what you are looking for now in spite of everyone’s best efforts to settle what’s best left unresolved.

In this post Gbarto talks about the way s/he uses many methods and changes them up every once in a while. I do exactly the same thing.

I am beginning to think that perhaps, in a sense, the best method is to use many methods – both methods that are suited to your learning style (primary focus) and ones that are not (secondary focus, or for reinforcement of what you already know). For instance, I am a terrible listener. I like to be reading something at the same time (a transcript) and I often feel like I need no background noise – even if I can understand what is being said, the background sound distracts and annoys me. But listening skills is an important part of learning any language. I often do not “learn” anything while just listening, but I definitely strengthen skills and knowledge I already have. And lucky for me it is a task that I don’t like, but is made fun when attached to something like watching TV, (and where there are visual clues to help me).

Finally, Tae Kim had something to say:

In the end, it doesn’t matter what study method you use as long as it helps you spend more time with the language. Still, I have to argue that you have to do my very simple method at some point for fluency, which as many of you already know, is to practice in a real-world context with real people and primary source materials not just artificial textbooks and dialogs. Ok, I guess it’s more common-sense than “a method” per se.

I think we would all agree that primary sources are needed in learning a language. In fact, this is perhaps the goal of many (most? all?) people starting out learning a language. But getting up to the stage where you can use those primary sources effectively is the hard part. Hence why many people want to get up to this stage as quickly as possible, and the debate over which method is “best”.

I’d say you can’t learn a method in 30 minutes. But there are no short cuts where you can skip over bits and get their quicker. But I would argue that while it takes time to learn a language, there are more effective methods out there. But what is more effective for me may not be more effective for you. So you have to find the best method for you. And then you have to use the best method for you, combined with other methods, combined with real world sources….

I think there is definitely some sense in saying “Enough arguing about method and just do it!” So just do it, just try every method you can. You’ll no doubt find a few that stick, and when the methods unstick themselves, do new ones. And spend the time doing it. And eventually you’ll learn that language. It’s all about the journey anyway, so just do it.