LLearn Japanese

Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (May 12, 2026)

  • May 12, 2026

This thread is for all the simple questions (what does that mean?) and minor posts that don't need their own thread, as well as for first-time posters who can't create new threads yet. Feel free to share anything on your mind.

The daily thread updates every day at 9am JST, or 0am UTC.

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10 comments

  1. Just a quick clarification. Am I supposed to understand

    耳を澄ます

    As a set phrase that means “listen closely”, because the definitions of 澄ます when you look it up don’t really correspond to listening i.e. 聞く.

    Am I being dumb?

  2. I’m trying to determine what’s the best way to refer to myself as being an uncle. like, “I’m an uncle”. or “I became an uncle at a very young age”.

    but without the possibility of people thinking I’m just calling myself old. Is there a different word to use than just おじさんです.? Or is that something that’s usually expressed in an entirely different way?

  3. How do you write something like (noun) is/are/can be/etc.. (adjective) to (verb)? For example, “My wallet is hard to lose” or “that can be easy to forget” or “kanji are fun to write” and so on.

    I’m not really sure what this grammatical point would be called in English, so I wasn’t sure how to look up what it is in Japanese.

  4. Currently I read at a rate of 6 to 8,000 characters per hour. What should I aim for? What’s a decent reading speed that’s close to native? While it’s definitely getting easier as I go it is pretty annoying to spend 3 to 4 months for each visual novel I’m reading. I don’t seem to get faster over time anymore; instead I just don’t get tired as much.

  5. sentence from a game i am playing.

    コイツが赤の他人なら関わりあわない。努めて平行線な生き方をすれば、こんなことにならなかった。

    from a fan translation: “If she were a stranger, we wouldn’t be involved. If we stayed on parallel paths, things wouldn’t have become this way.”

    i understand the second part of the sentence but the 「コイツが赤の他人なら関わりあわない。」part feels kinda weird. when i first read it i understood it as something like “if she were to meet a stranger she wouldn’t get involved.” how am i able to discern that 関わり合う refers to the POV character’s relation to the girl in question rather than the girl’s relation to other people? is it purely contextual or is there something i am missing?

  7. Hi, I’m new to learning Japanese and would like to start learning more seriously, does anyone know a place where I could find a tutor maybe a study group. I am not the best at language so studying by myself has not been the best. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Also sorry if this isn’t the right place to ask this question.

  8. I’m doing wanikani (lvl. 5) but I’ve been considering starting to use Anki too. Do you think it’s a good idea? And if so, should I go with kaishi 1.5k, a different deck or just use it for mining? Again, keeping in mind I’m doing wanikani and I’m planning on sticking to it.

    On another note, what does America have to do with rice?

  9. Hi! I want to read the book/novel “Project Hail Mary” in Nihongo. What proficiency level would I have to be to read the book from start to finish?

  10. I’m listening to podcasts and trying to transcribe them (for practice). This one in particular doesn’t have any official transcription anywhere, so I can’t check if I’m correct or not. Mostly, it’s been going fine, but there is one thing that sounds weird to me. I’ll write out the entire sequence first, the way I heard it;

    A: (talking about a person)目がね普通じゃないぐらい真っ赤に充血してたんだった。

    B: 充血？

    A: 真っ赤でね、なんか餅みたいな色してるんだって。

    No matter what, I hear “餅みたいな色”, but that confuses me because I don’t associate mochi with the kind of red that is 真っ赤, which is the color mostlt used to describe this persons bloodshot eyes. Is there something I’m missing here? Would love some input.

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