LLearn Japanese

advanced! what youtubers are we watching?

  • September 16, 2025

i really want to get into japanese auditory media outside of anime and music, but i cannot stand the general editing and hyper acting in most japanese youtube vids. i love a good video essay or calmly playing games like a normal person would. also japanese booktube? sounds great

thanks!

by Reasonable-Bonus-545

29 comments

  1. VTubers. If you want chill gameplays try male ones, for example 水無世燐央 or 荒咬オウガ or anyone from Holostars JP, really.

  2. It’s mostly vlogs but I like “bite size japanese” and “Yuka” (https://www.youtube.com/@yuuka_chan815)

    The very good thing with bite size japanese is how broad she can speak about many things, keeping the vocabulary simple but not trying to oversimplify how she speak. Podcasts that are too slow for early beginners get very old very quick and also, you still have to get used to how they would speak a bit normally (but still, clearly).

    Yuka, I really like her content because it’s not targeted to japanese learner, she’s simply a vlogger that has a ~500k subscribers, so she can move a lot in japan, and it’s really more interesting than just seeing the bedroom of some podcaster in my opinion. You see her taking the ferry just like any Japanese would do. She doesn’t try to speak overly clearly, but since she just describes what she thinks in a straightforward way, it’s pretty easy to understand just by the context alone.

    Funny enough, concerning the “hyper acting” point, that’s also what I like with some female vloggers like Yuka; for whatever reason, they are in the other end of the spectrum: a very slow way of speaking, not always articulating that well, but extremely chill and to look at. It’s also nice because since she articulates less clearly, you kinda get used to hearing Japanese not spoken the “articulated way,” like you would in beginner’s videos, etc.

  3. Twitch, and look for 日本語 as the tag. Find some streamers you like. Alternatively, make a new Japanese YouTube account using a VPN and set it to Japan (never watch a single English video on it or use it without a VPN though). That way you will be perceived as a Japanese person by YouTube and can get recommended normal Japanese YouTube rather than the shit they push for Japanese learners on their English profiles. Yeah there is still a lot of the hyper produced content, but you can find small channels that are just normal people.

    I’m a big fan of Japanese asmr. If you wanna find some just type in the search bar 囁く as a keyword and you can find loads. I like ones that read books to you.

  5. For booktube, try Kaho Miyake. Also, I think you’re categorising all of Japanese YouTube with your own algorithm, as I don’t recognise that description of it at all. Most of what I watch is extremely chill lifestyle, fashion, skincare and gardening content.

  6. i like レトルト as far as japanese let’s players go. He’s pretty calm and collected. He sometimes plays japanese translations of English indie games which I’ve found really helpful as a learner. Plus you get a bit of linguistic commentary when he complains about stuff like translations being weird or cultural stuff that doesn’t carry over well.

  7. I wouldn’t really consider it ‘advanced’ but Kusaan (best mario kart player in the world) streams every morning and he’s really chill with a nice voice.

  8. あかね的日本語教室
    Japanese podcast with Hana
    Haru no Nigongo

    These are high intermediate to advanced.

  9. In terms of youtubers related to video games, in case you’d like something other than let’s plays or streams, I personally enjoy and can recommend looking for some guide videos aka 解説. They can dive into strategy talks and explain various concepts, which utilizes more complex language than the typical short reactionary quips of live gameplay commentary.

    Though this kind of content might be mostly applicable to live service games such as gachas. Those incidentally prove to be a great immersion resource IMO, particularly ones with hundreds of hours of fully voiced story like 学園アイドルマスター、ガールズバンドパーティ or プリンセスコネクト.

  13. 牛沢 in Youtube for let’s plays! He’s not loud and has a deep, calming voice. ~~Idk what level you are but he played a dating sim game called Tokimeki Memorial (Girl’s Side) which has pretty simple vocab. I especially love this let’s play because he’s seriously trying to win the guys’ hearts and gets into character lol~~

    Edit: just re-read the title 😅 He also played Yakuza games which has pretty advanced vocab. My personal favorite is the 7th one (龍が如く7 光と闇の行方).

  15. Hmm, there’s a great channel called “Speak Japanese Naturally,” its is basically Japanese Listening Practice. She goes around to stores, parks, cafes, and points out things, where she’s headed, all in Japanese with Japanese subtitles.

    I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for, it’s very basic grammar, but I always enjoy watching her videos. She has lots of other topics besides listening practice as well.

    [(146) Speak Japanese Naturally – YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@SpeakJapaneseNaturally)

  20. 積読チャンネル、ゆる言語学ラジオ, and all the other related channels, there are quite a few 🙂 like ゆるコンピューター etc. I enjoy society-related topics so they’re really fun and challenging for me (I don’t think I’m advanced so they might be just fun for you). I generally enjoy queer topics and even “just chatting” from someone I know is “safe” in that sense on English/Italian speaking YouTube/social media, but right now these are the channels I know.

    Sometimes I go on twitch and search games I like and filter 日本語. I haven’t gotten attached to any one streamer yet, but I like those streams in the background while I read.

    I’ll probably make a new account and a dual yt app and only watch things in Japanese, to see if I get cool recommendations

  22. I’ve been watching a let’s player called 牛沢 （うしざわ). He has a very nice voice. Besides that I’ve just been listening to the 話し方のハナシ podcast, and I do try to pick up some unusual slang/vocab from anime, although I’m mostly watching for entertainment and not for educational purposes

  24. If you want to try out history, Coten Radio makes phenomenal videos(they are a podcast). Their series on Perry (ペリー) being one of my favorites from them.
    Definitely much more on the advanced side since you’ll get historical terms and some figures thrown around casually

  29. I’ll recommend some channels I’ve been into lately: these don’t really match your request since they all produce short videos (under 5 min) and you’re asking for video essays or gameplays (which are both usually long), but these are definitely not like the videos you’re complaining about (the first three barely have any editing).

    – [ドン・ウー生活](https://www.youtube.com/@donu_life): from [eerily accurate recreations of real-life situations](https://youtu.be/fY_v5E6u8oE) to unhinged gems like [「えび　４時間」](https://youtu.be/S3DlNYZK-Qs).
    – [フジビ](https://www.youtube.com/@bitofujino): funny one-man skits with unlikely premises, such as [「メモ取らせてる時の喋り方で話す奴」](https://youtu.be/2SQ2obuJDgk) (“A guy who talks the way you do when dictating”). Some of these require quite an advanced grasp of the language to understand, like [「「不」がつく時の発音で言ってくる奴」](https://youtu.be/3lQxtY2iCXU) (“A guy who says stuff with the pronunciation [pitch accent] you use when when [the prefix] 不 is attached”).
    – [リザ](https://www.youtube.com/@rizaaa__1209): skits with funny characters. I’d recommend her latest videos but you need to watch the first ones to understand what the characters are meant to be; it’s okay though since she doesn’t have that many videos yet.
    – [いくとん](https://www.youtube.com/@ikuton_1111): animated anthropomorphized inanimate objects in relatable everyday situations. I’d say the heavy use of 関西弁 kansai-ben qualifies this as “advanced“; a lot of the time I don’t get what they’re saying. (ドン・ウー speaks in 関西弁 too but it’s more toned down).

    If you really want long-form content though, I have to recommend [ゆる言語学ラジオ](https://www.youtube.com/@yurugengo). It’s more of a podcast format than a video essay, but it doesn’t have too much editing and it’s not over-acted. I’d recommend you start with their older episodes, some of them are less well researched than the current ones but there’s a higher percentage of them that are actually about linguistics (they’ve stuck to a more or less consistent schedule for years which imo has made it so that they have a lot more “filler” lately). I don’t really like their sister shows like ゆるコンピュータ科学ラジオ (the first episodes were okay I think but the quality went down really quickly), but you can check them out to see if you like them.

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