Anki
Japanse - Kana
This deck contains cards for learning both Hiragana and Katakana.
This are the fundamentals that are needed for later learning Kanji.
It’s important to be confortable with at least Hiragana before starting more complex lessons, to avoid using romaji as much as possible.
Core 2000
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2141233552
This is a variation of a pretty classic way of studying a language, it’s a deck that contains the most common 2000 words used in Japanese.
Contrary to Wanikani, this cards contain very little information, they simply have the word, the reading, the category (verb, noun etc.) and an example of how to use it in a sentence.
You don’t get any tip or mnemonic to help you remember the words, so you’ll have to come up with them yourself.
I like supplementing this with a dictionary or AI to get more detail information on words.
Other resources
Jisho Dictionary
https://jisho.org
This is the standard English-Japanese dictionary, it contains examples and variations of words and details on the different readings.
JapanDict
https://www.japandict.com
Another dictionary, but this one more focused on the actual language studying.
It contains translations not only in English but also in other European languages.
It also has pitch accent diagrams, stoke order, related words, example sentences and expressions
Dong Chinese character wiki
https://www.dong-chinese.com/wiki/search
Interestingly enough I found that using a Chinese dictionary is a great way to learning the etymology of words.
I find kanji a lot easier to remember when I understand the origin of the character, and since there aren’t any good Japanese dictionaries that contain this information, you can use a Chinese one.
Dong Chinese is great, specially for the historic view of the character transition through out the ages.
It also tells you when the Kanji you are searching is Japanese only, and it points you to the Chinese counterpart.
Tae Kim Guide to Learning Japanese
https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/
This is a comprehensive guide/book that explains the writing system, and grammar.
It’s what you need to study on top of the vocabulary to actually being able to understand and speak the language.
AI LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini
AI is actually a great resource for language learning.
I use it for insights on vocabulary and expressions that dictionaries don’t explain in detail
This is specially useful for informal expressions that you just don’t find on dictionaries.
LLMs can also be used for practicing, once you get to a decent level, with the advantage that you can tell them to correct you, or use specific vocabulary, explain itself, and talk about anything you are interested in.
You need to be mindful of the information it gives you, it does lie and it lies with complete confidence, specially if you ask about some obscure knowledge like etymology.
Browser plugins
Furigana
This plugin for Firefox inserts ふりがな (phonetic characters) on top of all the 漢字 on the browser, which is very useful for reading things.
Yomitan
Yomitan provides translation and information on point for the browser, you can highlight any text in japanese and get it’s meaning, pronunciation and use.
This one is specially useful, even if you don’t have Furigana you can get the reading of kanji with Yomitan
Previously tried options
Wanikani Unimate 3: Tokyo Drift Anki deck
For getting the deck there is a discord server
This deck contains a port of the Wanikani course by Tofugu
It has 2000 kanji and 6000 vocabulary words.
It should be one of the best ways to learn vocabulary while also learning how to read them and associate their Kanji.
What this doesn’t provide is grammar, which should probably be learned separately after reaching a certain level of vocabulary.
My initial approach was to use this deck, but I found it too abstract at times and way too slow to actually learn vocabulary that I would use on daily life.
The idea of learning grammar after you knew some vocab first was also not great, I would advice starting to read Kim Tae’s Guide at the same time you start with vocab