Life of two Owls

My goal for learning Japanese was always understanding raw Japanese anime and manga. After 10 years of on and off attempts including a semester of classroom instruction, maybe a year or 2 of Heisig + AJATT in the version of NihongoShark, and occasional exchanges with a friendly Japanese neighbor, I have found an approach that leads quickly to interaction with real anime material. The answer is called Organic Japanese with Cure Dolly , Kawaii Japanese or other names but the substantial process is simple: 1. Clear explanations of Japanese structure on Cure Dolly's youtube playlist . About 12-20 videos, which are less than 15 minutes each are deemed enough for the next step. 2. Watching anime with Japanese subtitles on Animelon or a similar website, pausing each dialogue, deconstructing and understanding each line of subtitles.  3. Re-listening to the audio of the anime. 4. Using Anki and Yomichan to "pin" the words in place until you encounter them again i...

This comic is a fictionalized memory. It is only vaguely inspired by real events and dedicated to Mr. Owl. It was created for a Habitica challenge. The ugly text boxes are due to the fact that the original text was handwritten in my native language, scanned as a pdf and then annotated with english in pdf software. 

Hi! 私はふくろうです。 My name is Owlie and I like to learn Japanese. I have spent a few months learning kanji using Anki and Remember the kanji / Nihongo shark method. Then I have read a part of Tae Kim's guide for Japanese grammar. I also have a Japanese neighbor and we have occasional language exchanges. However, I feel that my vocabulary and grammar knowledge need some interesting input at a beginner level. It was quite difficult to find the correct keywords to find meaningful free websites. Let me share the best five picks I have found so far: 400 pages of a free graded reader, starting from colors and flowers, moving to veggies and other food, on towards Japanese culture and history among other things. I got to page 130 in one day without needing to translate anything:  https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/e4ch4p/ive_compiled_tadokus_free_graded_readers_into_an/ 　 A comprehensible input site by a teacher of Japanese, full of lovely quirky stories he made with his s...