LLearn Japanese

Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (October 06, 2025)

  • October 6, 2025

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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18 comments

  1. Is there a tool or something out there or a method where I can take an assortment of kanji characters and sort them by stroke count lowest to highest.
    I have a block of about 1500 kanji, some of them very old or out of use that I need sorted but I cant find anything to help me and doing ti by hand is killing me.

  2. Oops, reading too much of this and missed the new Daily Thread, but there’s a lot of stuff in this VN that’s tripping me up.

    >レナ：「圭一のお父さんがカッコイイ」
    圭一：「当たり前だぜ？！俺の半分程度はカッコイイ」

    I understand the meaning (I think? He’s saying his dad is half as cool as he is as a joke?) but I don’t understand the grammar. Why does 俺の半分程度 make sense as the topic? Is his dad the implied subject?

    EDIT：Interestingly I ran into this passage in the same VN (知恵先生は一度は圧力に屈したはずだった) which seems like a similar usage, and makes me think there’s some usage of は having to do with degree or amount that I haven’t picked up on until now?

  3. Is anyone else learning Japanese while in school/college? Do you spend less time learning or do you just spend one hour per day on it if you can, even with the exams and HW’s?

  4. I’m looking for general advice for people who are completely fluent in a second language, Japanese or otherwise. Native Japanese speakers too.

    By most measures, I have learned Japanese. I have my N1. I live in Japan. My friends overwhelmingly only speak Japanese. My part time job is in Japanese. Hell, my doctor doesn’t speak English. I have essentially no obstacles to my life in Japanese.

    But lately, I’ve been feeling my lack pretty hard, and it’s hurting my confidence. I don’t sound like a late 20s/early 30s guy, and I don’t just mean pronunciation. I say weird things, I don’t catch idioms or cultural references. I don’t use appropriate slang even when I understand it. I know I can’t really be expected to, but I *want* to. A recent example: A friend of mine was light-heartedly mocking me for going on a date with a mutual friend of ours. I had absolutely no idea how to joke back and ended up just shutting down a bit.

    So… what do I do? How do I bridge this final gap, as quickly as possible? Is it just a matter of shadowing, researching, and practicing with friends? Somehow even more exposure? A private tutor I can get specific feedback from? I’ve never been at a loss on how to study, but I am now.

  6. Hi all,

    I need an help to understand the following verbal form:

    出でかけなければなりません

    That should mean “I have to go out”.

    Except for the verb 出る, all the remaining part of the conjugation for me is almost undecipherable. Could someone please help me to understand better the single parts that compose this verbal form?

    Thanks!

  7. How do I double consonant for the n+vowel letters? Like っき but for な letters

  8. Darenimo mirenai yume wo mite iranai mono wa subete suteta
    Yuzurenai omoi kono mune ni yadoshite

    these are the lyrics to the ending song of death note, I keep seeing this in songs and i can’t find the goddamn answer and i feel like it’s realy important to understand.

    Why is the te form at the end of “mite” it keeps getting translated as “had a dream” and I keep seeing this te in songs that ends one sentence and it always gets translated as being in the past form which makes the most sense in the context of the sentence but the te form doesn’t have anything to do with the past form, what is this te form, it’s not the request te and i don’t think it’s any of the others either also it repeats itself again with yadoshite, this is the best example i could find of it appearing back-to-back so please if somebody knows. it would help alot!

  10. can someone tell me what 理恵 (りえ）means? I have started reading some short stories, and there is a story that starts with these sentences.

    私は、⼆⼗歳のとき、初めて外国へ旅⾏に⾏きまし た。⼀週間のイタリア旅⾏です。友達の理恵も⼀緒です。

    When I search for 理恵 on [jisho.org](http://jisho.org), it can’t find anything. So can anybody tell me the meaning of this word?

  11. Currently going through Genki I. There is a sentence saying “I will go to Kyoto tomorrow”. It starts with Watashi wa.

    Can this be omitted? Is “Ashita Kyoto ni ikimasu” still valid? Or is there a reason why watashi wa must be used in this particular case?

  12. First time question asker! So I’m going through the Kashi Anki deck and came across this sentence: 時が過ぎるの速い and noticed “hayai” is using a different kanji than I have seen previously (早い, as opposed to 速い here) and I’m a bit confused. I looked it up on Jisho and it redirects me to the kanji I’m more familiar with. Is there something specific I should know about this kanji or does this matter at all? Thanks for your time!

  14. What is the most natural way to ask someone if they have brothers and specify brothers instead of siblings in general?

    Like when I say 兄弟はいますか。Do they tend to first think siblings in general or brothers? Should I just ask about sisters first and then contrast with this question? I can’t think of a conversation context where it’s that important, but I’m sure there is one.

    If I had to guess, I could say something like “お兄さんか弟さんはいますか。But I feel like that doesn’t sound very natural. Could totally be wrong though idk.

  15. Maggie Sensei lists this as one example of using よう-

    >1) ように ( = youni) = to do something ~  in order to do ~ / so that ~ / in such a way ~

    >(to intend to make things work as you hope)

    >★verb (→the result you hope, your goal/non-volitional verb/ verb potential form )  ように ( =  youni) + verb (what to do/what you did/ to hope, to wish)

    What exactly does the ‘verb →the result you hope, your goal’ part mean?

    This is a bit of a tangent, but how does ように work for ‘when you warn someone to do something or give someone an order’ as well? I was especially confused by ［ 帰ってくるまでに仕事を終えておくように（して下さい。*/ しなさい。）］ Is that just just a wish, at the end?

  16. What’s the best way to say “tried to blow up”? For context, I’m talking about Guy Fawkes Night, and I have something like:

    イギリスの議会を爆破よとしました。

    Specifically it’s the “try to” grammar I’m getting my head round. I’ve previously learned ~みる for this but that feels more like “try my hand at” rather than “attempt to”.

  17. Recently finished the kaishi 1.5 deck and am looking to switch over to sentence mining for new vocab 🎉. though does anyone have tips for sentence mining from video/audio content? Or at least remembering to… I feel like the few times I’ve tried, it ends with either lookups being a complete distruption to watching, or I get invested and forget about sentence mining altogether

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