Japanese falls under Category V for English speakers – which means it’s one of the hardest to learn!
Don’t worry, there are plenty of people who have done this. The pronunciation is fairly easy so most of your time will be spent on grammar and reading skills.
If you’re just starting out and want to know where to go, this list of resources will show you where to look for beginner-advanced free Japanese resources.
The Writing System
Japanese is made up of two major systems – Kana and Kanji. Kana is made up of Hiragana and Katakana which are “alphabets” with the same sounds. (They are just written differently.) Kanji are borrowed Chinese characters adapted for Japanese use.
I won’t get into more detail here, but start with Kana. Kanji will take you a long, long time to get through and isn’t essential when starting out.
1 RealKana
Learn both Hiragana and Katakana from this site. They have practice exercises and explanations of what the writing systems are.
This site has all of the Kanji you’ll need to know. It’s divided by levels. N5 is the easiest and N1 is the hardest.
Tip: Check out the post I made about how to learn Kanji in depth.
Grammar + Textbooks
3 Irodori
This is a small textbook series (with English) that will help you learn the basics of Japanese. They go over the writing systems as well, so you can use those parts as a review if you’ve already gone through Real Kana.
4 Tae Kim
There is a blog with the same info as the app but – get the app! It looks much better. The detailed explanations are good for beginner-intermediate levels.
5 Tofugu
A blog dedicated to Japanese learning and resources. There are some paid products here, but I’ve linked to their free grammar articles. These are good for beginners.
A Youtube channel from a native Japanese speaker. She helps you understand tough concepts and goes into a lot of detail. The episodes are well presented and go into advanced topics.
Practice
7 Yomu
Practice your reading and listening with these graded readers. They have audio and go from total beginner to advanced levels.
8 Axtongue
If you like music, this site let’s you listen to songs with both English and Japanese subtitles. They are stacked on the screen and you can pause to look at the lyrics and translations.