r/japanese

As the title says, can 妻 be used to talk about someone else's wife, or is it only used to talk about one's own wife?

I have a trip to Japan next year. I want to be able to understand some of what the locals speak and maybe have basic conversation. Kanji seems super intimidating so I’m trying to set realistic goals for myself 🥲 I just don’t know how important kanji is while learning the language. Of course it would suck to not be able to read things, but I think speaking Japanese is an ok goal for now.

As a native Japanese speaker, one thing that surprises me is how difficult Japanese can become at an advanced level.

A sentence can be grammatically correct and still sound unusual to native speakers.

Many learners think vocabulary and grammar are the hardest part.

But natural Japanese often depends on context, tone, and how people actually speak.

Even Japanese people sometimes explain things with:
"It just sounds more natural."

For people learning Japanese:
What part feels the most difficult or unexpected?

I'd imagine they're probably less pessimistic about it? because they have a severe replacement rate problem anyway and have become a leader in robotics in order to design robots that will help compensate for the future lost human labor.

I've started playing forza horizon 6 today and hearing anime openings in the radio is really bizarre to me. But that got me thinking, does japan actually play anime openings in their radios?

Because here for example, we have "enemy" by ImagineDragons, which was made as an opening song to arcane, but is also just a normal song that is played in the radio.

Is japan the same and they occasionally play songs that were made for anime in the radio or not?

Also to specify, I mean normal all around radio stations, I'm sure theres some that specify in anime songs.

I’m currently studying Japanese From Zero! 1 and using Anki to memorise the vocabulary from each lesson. I only move on to the next lesson once I can remember most of the words and feel comfortable with them.

The problem is that once I’ve finished my daily Anki reviews, I’m not really sure what to do next. I can’t do more reviews, but I also don’t want to move on to the next lesson too early.

I already know hiragana and katakana, so I was thinking maybe I should start learning kanji?

#japaneselanguage #jlpt #japaneselearning

If you have any questions or need help with anything, feel free to leave a comment below 😄
I'll do my best to answer them!

I am Chinese and earned a PhD in fluid mechanics from the University of Tokyo at 30.

My publication list is kind of fine, 4 first-author papers. One of Journal of Fluid Mechanics, one of Journal of Computational Physics, and two of Physics of Fluids.

After graduation, I worked as an IT consultant in Tokyo for half a year, and somehow, an urge is growing inside me to pursue an academic job.

I applied for a postdoc position around, finally got one offer from France, a 2-year contract, and one from Korea, a 3-year contract.

Should I leave my current job in Tokyo and go for a postdoc, with a high chance that I will try to find a professorship back in China?

But I also have a girlfriend whom I love very much. She works in Tokyo, but she is from Europe. So basically, she cannot find a visa in China that allows her to work there.

The urge to leave Japan mainly comes from pursuing an academic job, but also from the fact that Japan's Yen is so weak, and high inflation is incoming, and they kind of blame foreigners now

I’ve been taking Japanese lessons for a while now and I had a college class in Japanese. For some reason I feel out of breath while practicing speaking. Any advice?

What do Japanese think of Taiwanese? Do they like them or not?

[supprimé]

I'm looking for a N5 textbook. I looked at genki but I thought that maybe it would have extra content and I'm looking to memorise N5 words for the time being

Lesbianism, is it common?

Hey I was just wondering if anyone who is from or has lived in Japan could explain how common or uncommon lesbianism is. There’s this exchange student I’m really into and I don’t know if she is being flirtatious or if it is a cultural thing within Japanese society.

We plan on going to Peter Luger and Ribera. I know there’s lots of myths and errors regarding “Wagyu” and “Kobe.”

What does a first timer need to know?

Hello! I need someone with a japanese number to get a verification code for an e-shop (ISSEY MIYAKE). Can anyone help me out please? 🙏🏼I need it for one time verification to be able to ship to my hotel before my areival to Japan.

This isn't strictly about Japanese language, but about Japanese English education. Has anyone come across Japanese English learners using srs at any scale? In English-speaking countries I get the impression it's almost universal, but here in Japan, and particularly in high schools, not many people seem to know about it, they're just using 赤シート in the traditional way. One of my schools did try some AI-driven software (~¥6000 per student per year) with an srs component but they've given it up afaict.

Hello, I'm a new japanese learner and I'm having a big issue with going from the sounds to symbols to my language. Are there any tips to make it any easier? I can handle the dissection of kanji, but i find audio just makes it even harder.