My Japanese Practice Media List
This is a list of media I’m currently using to practice ingesting Japanese. I will update this over time as I find more.
Series I’m Reading
So far I can only read content with furigana, so all of these have furigana so far. If anything doesn’t have furigana, I’ll mark it..
Yotsubato! - just bought vol 4
Nichijou - mostly through vol 1
Fullmetal Alchemist (special edition) - bought vol 1, read a little
Koupen-chan - still on vol 2 (多分)
Studying Happiness Theory with Koupen-chan (コウペンちゃんとおべんきょうする「幸福論」) (no furigana) - I’ve read and transcribed a few pages. This is my current personal translation project, but I don’t plan on publishing it in full due to copyright infringement.
Games
Some games I’ve started playing as reading practice, as well. Lack of furigana will be marked, but otherwise most/all have furigana so far. Most are also on the Nintendo Switch, which conveniently doesn’t have region locking and lets you switch system languages easily.
Okami (Switch) - I love this game, I played it in English back in middle school. I highly recommend this one for gameplay and story. Lots of archaic words, but I improved my reading speed greatly with this game.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons - I actually have trouble understanding this because the villagers speak strangely, and the constant influx of events makes me worry about missing info, so I primarily play in English. But, it does have full furigana, so it’s good reading practice.
Pokemon Sword/Shield: I have Sword. I actually dropped this in the meantime because there’s no furigana, which makes it hard for me. You do have the choice to play in all hiragana, but that makes parsing sentences more difficult, and doesn’t give real reading practice, in my opinion.
Genshin Impact: has no furigana but I can understand commission dialogue and it has a whole trove of book excerpts to practice reading on!
Tales of Vesperia (Definitive edition on Switch): started but switched to English because of the increase in gameplay difficulty. If I replay it, I may play in Japanese again. Has NO furigana.
Shows with Japanese Subtitles on Netflix
These are ones I’m watching personally or that I’ve found and want to watch. See Learning Languages with Netflix for a more complete list. LLN is a useful Chrome extension that lets you view multiple subtitles on Netflix videos, as well convert the original Japanese subs to hiragana, which you can display concurrently. Note: The hiragana conversion is not always accurate for names.
Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) - still in progress..
Nakitai watashi wa neko wo kaburu - I haven’t finished my second Japanese-only viewing of this. I really need to. Update: I finished it, lol.
Durarara!! - Admittedly this is too hard for me to understand at the moment.
Cells at Work (hataraku saibou) - not listed on LLN’s site for some reason. Also hard with all the biology terminology, but it’s fun to watch regardless.
Erased (boku dake ga inai machi) (live action) - I love this!!! Currently watching it again in Japanese-only with my study group. I highly recommend this one!! It’s not anime so they seem to talk more normally and you get snippets of Hokkaido dialect that the subtitles make obvious!
Little Witch Academia - dropped in the meantime, but I should finish it eventually. Akko speaks a little fast sometimes, if I recall correctly…
Aggretsuko - this was enjoyable in English. I just forgot about it until now that I had been watching it in Japanese. oops.
Kantaro: The Sweet Tooth Salaryman- watched a handful of eps with Japanese subs, but forgot about it, too. It’s a little weird, but it’s a neat way to learn more about Japanese sweets (and real-life spots you can visit!).
Midnight Diner - similar to Kantaro where each episode features a different dish and one-shot story (unlike Kantaro, which has continuity). It’s not weird like Kantaro, and the stories are as heart-warming as the food would be.
Japanese Style Originator - a Japanese TV show that features various aspects of Japanese life and culture, from food to gardens.
Jimmy: The True Story of a True Idiot - a dramatized documentary of Jimmy Onishi’s rise as a comedian.
Podcasts
Let’s Learn Japanese from Small Talk! - twitter (@smallTalkInJP), spotify - I just started this the other day (10/4/20) (found out via my study discord group via this tofugu post) and it’s easy listening so far. I look forward to listening to this more and more!
Japanese with Noriko: A certified Japanese teacher, she has all sorts of resources, from short videos on Instagram to podcasts! I love her so far! She talks clearly and is easy to understand, and she even provides transcripts on her website! Also from the Fall 2020 Resources Tofugu post linked above.
