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TheMoeWay Resources Sheet

Welcome to TheMoeWay Resources Sheet, resources are categorised into "Learning Japanese" and "Acquiring" Japanese".

Learning Japanese

Kana

  • ※ - Tae Kim - The Writing System - This page has an explanation of what the kana are and what they are used for. You may find this useful if you don't already know.
  • DJT Kana - A simple kana recognition game. You may want to enable all the hiragana, and katakana and the combinations in order to properly test your skills. It also features a "play sound" button, which I recommend you make use of.

Kanji

Important Note: Reading a lot is the best way to learn kanji. This means you should learn kanji through learning to read words. However, you can seek alternatives below if you keep forgetting how to read words you come across, or if you want to learn how to write.*

Vocabulary

  • Kaishi 1.5k - The basic vocabulary deck the guide suggests to learn Japanese. You can also find it here (click on the .apkg file).
  • TheMoeWay Tango N5 Deck - An older deck that was recommended before Kaishi 1.5k was made.
  • TheMoeWay Tango N4 Deck - The follow-up deck to Tango N5 above, now superseded by Kaishi 1.5k.
  • Core2.3K VN Order Deck - The optimized Core deck but ordered in terms of visual novel frequency. Got absorbed into Kaishi 1.5k.

Grammar

  • ※ - Cure Dolly’s Organic Japanese - Cure Dolly is a new grammar guide that has sparked recent attention because of its unique way of teaching Japanese grammar. It aims to teach Japanese grammar in a way that sticks true to the roots of the language, in contrast to other grammar guides that take shortcuts that could cause confusion later on. For that reason, I recommend you start with this. Because of Cure Dolly's speech, and the audio quality presented in the videos, you may find it difficult to understand. However there are subtitles available for all videos that may alleviate this issue, which I recommend you turn on.
  • Cure Dolly Complete Transcript by dinuz UPDATED - A complete transcript of Cure Dolly videos.
  • Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese, a guide for grammar - Tae Kim's grammar guide has been around for as long as anyone can remember. It is often recommended as a good grammar guide however you may want to use Cure Dolly instead, for a more optimized approach.
  • Reference list of all Japanese grammar patterns. - Very useful for referring to a point.
  • "Making Sense of Japanese - What The Textbooks Don't Tell You" by Jay Rubin - similar to Cure Dolly, it's like the equivalent of the first few videos. It dispells common misconceptions about Japanese grammar people have due to studying Japanese grammar the "traditional" way.
  • NihongoKyoshi JLPT grammar - JLPT "grammar" taught in Japanese. I recommend most people learn these after Cure Dolly/Tae Kim. You should learn these because many of the grammar points can be easily overlooked when seen in the wild if you don't already know them.
  • ※ - NihongoKyoshi Anki Deck - Highly recommended. It only has Japanese definitions, an intentional choice in order to avoid false associations of Japanese grammar with English words.

Sorry to overwhelm you with information, but also check out my grammar dictionaries for Yomichan (pop up dictionary browser extension).

Acquiring Japanese

Anime

  • Nyaa.si - torrent tracker with raw anime, this is the best place to get anime. I recommend you use qBittorrent!
  • Hianime.to - anime streaming site where you can turn off subtitles and switch to Japanese 日本語 audio.
  • asbplayer Chrome Extension - Chrome extension that allows you to drag and drop subtitle files (See Subtitles) on a video you are streaming. It works with hianime.to, and it may work with other sites.
  • Itazuraneko Anime Library - collection of anime.
  • Animelon - stream anime with Japanese subtitles.
  • ※ AnimeCards - Subtitles - Goes over how to get Japanese subtitles and how to sync them for the video.
  • Crunchyroll - it's free but with ads. You can turn off subtitles.

Movies & TV Shows (J-drama)

Manga

Refer to the tools section for info on how to make lookups easier for manga.

Novels and Literary Texts

  • ※Itazuraneko EPUB AZW3 MOBI Full List
  • Itazuraneko Old Novel Library - This page has a lot of books, and you are able to sort by genre, author, kanji count and such. You may want to uncheck "Hide books translated from English", as it is enabled by default.
  • Itazuraneko New Novel Library - A more updated version of the above, with more books, but it lacks sorting.
  • [PeepoHappyBooks Torrent] - Collection of 30000 unique epubs compiled from boroboro, itazuraneko, etc.
  • Itazuraneko Extended Ebook Novel - Huge list of books, 20000+ books. Takes a while to load when you click on the "検索" page. You can click on the name to read it in a web browser, or you can click on the file size to download it. Please note that the EPUB files that it gives you have highly compressed images. The search function does not work no matter what. Use CTRL+F/Find in page feature in your browser instead.
  • Boroboro - Has EPUBs of some series that may not be on Itazuraneko.
  • Syosetsu Web Novels - Web novels. In contrast to Itazuraneko and Boroboro, which has retail books, this has only web novels and 二次創作 (fanfiction)
  • Kakuyomu - Similar to syosetu.
  • Hameln - Also similar to syosetsu.
  • Aozora Bunko - read Japanese classics. Books go on here if the author has died more than 50 years ago.
  • ※ ッツ Ebook Reader - Japanese book reader that supports EPUB and HTMLZ. Text is displayed in 縦書き (vertical text) by default. This is one of the best options for an authentic experience reading Japanese books.
  • Japanese Media Recommendations List

Note: Gaining the Student rank or above in our Discord channel grants you access to more books than just these.

Visual Novels and Games

Console/Emulator

Japanese video game immersion tip: The PlayStation Vita is easy to hack and get Japanese games on. It has a huge Japanese game library so it could be useful for your immersion, especially if you want to play console exclusives.

Hook VNs with Textractor!

Audiobooks & Podcasts

Subtitles

  • Immersion Kit - Search sentences from anime, games etc. with translation. Made by Game Gengo.
  • Youglish - Sentences sourced from YouTube video subtitles. This is a great tool to improve your pronunciation, as the words will be said by native speakers speaking naturally.
  • Massif - Uses syosetsu novels as its source.
  • Yourei.jp "The World's Largest Japanese Sentence Search Engine"
  • Twitter - You might need to be logged in to use this.
  • SentenceSearch - Sentences sourced from multiple learning resources. You can also grab audio for the sentences here!
  • BritVSJapan Repo- (Use the Repository search feature)
  • Kotonoha Corpus
  • BCCWJ Search
  • NWJC Search
  • Jisho.org - From tatoeba project.

Condensed Audio

Mining

Japanese Fonts

Dictionaries

Yomichan

Yomichan, a browser add-on that allows you to look up Japanese words easily.

Online

See Applications (Mobile) section for mobile apps.

MDict (MDX)

Contains the most up-to-date dictionaries such as 新明解国語辞典 第七版 (Shinmeikai 7th Edition) and 大辞林 第三版 (Daijirin 3rd edition)

EPWING

Contains older but better known dictionaries such as 新明解国語辞典 第五版 (Shinmeikai 5th edition) and 大辞林 第二版 (Daijirin 2nd edition)

E-Reader Dictionaries

Applications (Desktop)

Manga Tools & OCRs

Visual Novel Tools

  • Textractor - for copying text from visual novels.

Other Tools

  • ※ Anki (Windows, Mac and Linux) - Spaced repetition flashcard program. A must have.
    It is tricky to use at first. So please see the Mining section for guides on how to set it up.

  • EBWin) - An epwing format dictionary reader. Good for look ups without a web browser.

Applications (Mobile)

Android

  • AnkiDroid - Port of Anki for Android devices.
  • AnkiConnect for Android - use AnkiConnect for 1 click card creation on Android.
  • Akebi - Bilingual dictionary for Android based on the JMdict project, has cool features such as auto-correction and AnkiDroid integration.
  • Takoboto - Bilingual dictionary for Android based on the JMdict project.
  • EBPocket Basic - this is an EPWING, Stardict and MDX dictionary reader, useful for monolingual dictionaries.
  • EBPocket Professional APK - APK of the full vesion of EBPocket.
  • ※ jidoujisho - A mobile video player, reader assistant and card creation toolkit tailored for mobile language learners.
  • ※ Typhon Reader - An EPUB reader for Android that lets you look up a word with one tap. Also supports EPWING monolingual dictionaries. Does not work correctly on newer phones.
  • Typhon改 - Fork of Typhon Reader made to work with newer devices.
  • Kiwi Browser - Chromium based browser with extension support. You can use Yomichan on this.
  • OCR Manga Reader - Manga scans reader with an OCR to look up words. Supports EPWING monolingual dictionaries.
  • Tachiyomi Manga Reader (Get the Japanese sources) - Manga downloader/reader. Get the Japanese sources.
  • Rin - Adds the iOS "Look Up" feature to Android for Japanese. It also has a standalone app that works like Yomichan, supports 2 bilingual dictionaries and 3 monolingual ones.
  • Kaku - System-wide OCR.

iOS

Immersion Helpers

Browser Extensions

  • Yomichan - Yomichan is a browser extension that allows you to look up Japanese words with both the meaning and the reading on web pages with ease.
    Android users can use this on Kiwi Browser.
  • Clipboard Inserter - Used for the texthooking page (MPV and visual novels)
  • exSTATic - Japanese language immersion progress tracker.
  • Language Learning with Netflix - Enhance Netflix for language learning.
  • Asbplayer - Load local subtitle files to video streaming sites.

Downloading Tools

  • qBittorrent - best torrent client, clean and open source.
  • Jdownloader2 - A download manager that helps accelerate MEGA and Google Drive downloads.
  • youtube-dlp - download YouTube videos, playlists, channels, etc.

Other Software

Useful for stuff like visual novels and manga you may download.

  • 7-Zip- Archiver/Compresor.
  • WinCDEmu - Mount ISO/MDF/MDS files as a virtual drive on your computer
  • WinRAR - 7-Zip alternative.
  • DAEMON Tools- WinCDEmu alternative. Fares better with UDF volumes.

VPNs (Japan location specific)

Free

  • Mullvad - You can trust this the most if you care a lot about privacy.
  • NordVPN - confirmed to work on Japanese streaming services.

Premium Cracks/Cheats/Accounts

Other resource collections

Kuzuri - Huge collection of completely legal resources.

Guides/Methods/Motivation

"Other"