Home - Yookoso!

Yookoso! is a portal for those who study the Japanese language (Nihongo) and writing (Kanji) and those who want to travel to Japan or learn more about Japanese culture, life, music (JPOP) and more. On the site you will find unique content (see below) as well as a hand-selected directory of useful online resources.

If you are interested, read more about the history of this site.

Site re-designed!

After many years of doing little to this site, I have recently completely re-designed it. You can read about all the changes but here is the tl;dr version:

Migrated from hand-coded to WordPress
Changed the software used for the Kanji and Grammar email lists
Updated the Kanji and associated popular words to reflect the current JLTP levels
Replaced the older stroke order diagrams
Rationalized the email lists (there were too many)
Added new resources (still ongoing)

— Jeff

Original Content (You'll Find Only on this Site)

This site started off as a way for me to share notes from a few of my Japanese courses. Over time it has become a directory of useful resources but below are the things you won't find elsewhere on the Web.

Course Notes

I have digitized notes summarizing different courses and textbooks. Most of these are quite old now, but since language doesn't change that frequently, they should still be useful.

Yookoso! textbook summary notes (book 1 | book 2)
Nichibei Kaiwa Gakuin course notes (advanced beginner or lower intermediate level)
An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese textbook summary notes (Chapters 1-8 | Chapters 9-15)
ビジネスのための日本語: Getting Down to Business &ndash Japanese for Business People textbook notes
Summary notes about the Causative, Passive, Passive-Causative and Natural Potential Verb Forms

Daily Kanji Email Service

Get a nicely formatted email every day with a new Kanji to study. Each email includes the readings, the meaning, a stroke order illustration, the Henshall mnemonic, and a list of common words that use the specific character. There is also a link to download a PDF version of the email.

Below are the latest Kanji:

Level	Kanji
N1	索
N2	缶
N3	加
N4	会
N5	語

Daily Kanji RSS Feeds

If you are a fan of RSS (if you aren't, you should be), you can access the daily Kanji levels that way instead of via email.

Daily Grammar Email Service

Similar to the Kanji email service, get a daily dose of Japanese grammar, courtesy of the jGram.org database.

Below are the latest grammar entries:

Level	Grammar
JLPT 1	hatashite
JLPT 2	youganai
JLPT 3	nitotte
JLPT 4	Basic Japanese Grammar

Kanji Study Tool

I created a Kanji study tool in conjuncion with the email lists but you can use it to randomly test and expand your Kanji knowledge. Choose by JLPT or school grade level or just any random Jōyō Kanji. The format is the same as for the emails. There is also a link to download a nicely formatted PDF version of the information for each character.

Japanese Popular Music to Study

Music is an excellent way to study and improve your language skills. In Japan, of course, karaoke is hugely popular so it will also be helpful if you know at least a few widely popular songs that you can sing to impress your local friends. I have collected 14 songs of varying styles that you can listen to and read the lyrics in original Japanese, romaji and English translation. Note: most of these songs are slow enough and clear enough that you can actually understand the words being sung.

Vocabulary Study

In addition to the course notes, I have created a basic study tool to review the vocabulary for some of the textbooks I have used, specifically:

I have more vocabulary in a spreadsheet somewhere that hopefully I will get around to adding in the future.

Anki study decks

Anki is a popular free (except iOS) flashcard system that uses spaced repetition for more effective learning. Recently, it occurred to me that the kanji information sheets I use for my daily email service would make for a great Anki flashcard deck so I have done just that. In putting together my deck, I tried to take advantage of some of the program's useful features. In particular, I realized that many, including myself, will want to be able to study by JLPT or grade level, or possibly even by radical (bushu). In creating my deck, I included those as fields, but to study a subset of a deck you need to filter based on tags, so I also tagged each entry accordingly. Since there are more than the 1945 (old) standard Joyo, I have also tagged Joyo as well. The nice thing is that you only have to download one complete deck and then just use the "Custom Study" button. Once you click that, you can choose the "Limit to particular tags" option and then choose accordingly. You can also do more complicated filtered study with the search routine. Check out the user manual for more specifics.

Download Anki (.apkg) File (39MB)

I also offer the grammar content for Anki here in partnership with jGram.org

Download Anki (.apkg) File (NO Audio) (1MB)

Download Anki (.apkg) File (Male Voice Audio) (8.6MB)

Download Anki (.apkg) File (Femal Voice Audio) (8.7MB)

Pera Pera

This is NOT original content but tracking down the original files is a bit tricky, so I have made 99 of the 100 (cannot track down one of them) available to download directly from my server.