Learn Japanese Today

It’s hard for me to do this, but I’m willing to let you in on the best kept secret for learning Japanese on the web. To work on your listening, you can’t get much better than watching subtitled Japanese TV shows, and crunchyroll.com is the place to do that. Crunchyroll offers hundreds of East Asian dramas and anime, fully subbed, for you to peruse free of charge. Make sure you don’t just read the subtitles, listen to the Japanese first and then look to check. Anyways, on to the review:

Ease of Use: 7.5

The site sorts its shows into anime and drama, and has an alphabetic index for each category, but you can’t search and you can’t sort by Japanese/Chinese/Korean and you can’t separate movies from TV shows, but these things aren’t too much of a problem, just make sure you don’t learn Korean by accident.

Authenticity: 7

The authenticity is, of course, dependent on the show/movie you choose to watch. In some cases it will teach you a lot of relevant colloquialisms and slang that are hard to find other places, but it can also mess up your Japanese. Just remember that what’s right for a gal in Shibuya is not necessarily right for you, and talking like Naruto NEVER makes you sound cool.

Quantity of Knowledge: 10

I dare you to try to watch all the shows and movies on this site, oh wait, no I don’t, that’d be a good way to get convicted of 3rd degree murder. What I mean is that there are more subtitled Japanese shows and movies on this site than you can possibly watch. There’s also some sweet game related videos too, which are cool even without teaching you Japanese.

Price: 10

The best thing is that all of this is for free. You can even watch the videos in hi-def. You used to have to pay for it, but the guys over at crunchyroll decided to make it free. You can still become a member and be first party to their beta features (not really worth it), but I would recommend signing up if you have the extra money. These guys deserve it.

Fun: 10

What’s more fun than watching TV? Oh yeah, watching Japanese TV. Nothing will make you want to practice your Japanese more than being caught up in a great drama or anime. For drama reviews check out my homey Kumo at kumojapandrama.blogspot.com

Overall: 9.2

This site is great as long as you know how to watch drama or anime as a student of Japanese rather than a regular Gaijin. I would put this higher if you had the ability to single out the Japanese stuff on the site, but as I said earlier, its only I minor problem. Enjoy!

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