Nihongo Lessons Reviews

I love NihongoLessons. As a UX designer, I give NihongoLessons ’s UI a big thumbs up! It looks nice (though dark mode would be nice), it’s easy to use, and the flash card feature is super intuitive. But as a learner of Japanese and former language teacher myself, I’m skeptical about ONLY reviewing words in the context of a sentence. Learning a word in context is great! And I love that about NihongoLessons. However, reviewing a word in context? Hm… how can I really test my ability to recall a word if it’s always in a context that gives away the answer?

The struggle to recall a word is what really helps you learn vocabulary. That’s what any learning designer will tell you, and that’s the whole point of flash cards! Does NihongoLessons help you accomplish that? Not really.

Humans are really good at memorizing a sentence when they have cues. After I’ve reviewed a sentence a few times, I have the meaning of the sentence memorized, even if I haven’t memorized each word individually.

Let me give you an example. I just reviewed the sentence, “ここでは、日本人は稀だ.” I can easily remember what the sentence means after reviewing that sentence once or twice, therefore I can tell you what 稀 means. Remembering the meaning of a sentence is easy because it’s full of cues. But what if you showed me the word 稀 on its own and asked me to recall the meaning. Could I? Probably not. Or what if you asked me if I knew the Japanese word for “rare”? I would probably not be able to pull the word 稀 from the recesses of my memory.

Here’s my recommendation to the product owner. First you need to teach the word in context (as you’re already doing), and THEN you need to quiz for understanding using just the Japanese word. If you really want to test my understanding, then surface the Japanese definition and make me remember what the word was. That would be so good for learning! It would also really differentiate you from anything else I’ve seen.

At the moment, this is an awesome app that just doesn’t accomplish its purpose. I think if you add the features I mentioned above, you’ll have the best Japanese learning app on the market.

So far I’ve enjoyed using NihongoLessons . Quality content with quality audio.

I have two requests for improving my experience. I wish there was a way to automatically play audio when flipping the card. I use the front to quiz my pronunciation and understanding and would like to automatically hear the audio upon flipping the card. Often, I have long car rides. I’d like to play the cards while driving to maximize my studying time.

Everything we love about Jalup cranked to 11. The layout of the cards is improved from the original app and the review system seems more thorough since you have to pass a card 3 times to move it to the review pile. NihongoLessons focuses on the sentence decks, and hiragana and katakana kanji coming at a later date. So far I’m pleased with NihongoLessons and plan to use it for as long as the dev supports it.

Great rollout, and improvement, from the original Jalup app. I admit that I was skeptical of what this new version would “feel” like. So far, I’m impressed! The appearance, layout and ease of use have all been designed with much care and attention to detail. As is, NihongoLessons is already great, but I look forward to the future of Nihongo Lessons and how it may grow.

I just found out about JALUP and am so glad that someone is maintaining the project. No problems with NihongoLessons so far and I’m excited to see how you grow this project moving forward!

Saw off Hacker News and was quite impressed by the way NihongoLessons was done. Visually appealing, suited for tactile learning. This is why Jobs made the iPad.. its a total tool for learning!

I never knew about Jalup, but should have. If you have and love Nihongo you know what to expect, this is serious quality at a serious price. Pro tools are serious $$$ and “Nihongo Lessons” is in this “professional” space, it has a LOT of structured content in those decks.

My user case: intermediate to advanced, but haven’t used Japanese seriously in years, started to forget things, so bought the full monty as a “refresher course.” Even if you’re at a higher level, give this a download and try the first few decks to get a feel.

I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Bonus that it integrates with Nihongo with very little friction. One of the other reviewers mentioned iPad, I’d love to see NihongoLessons optimized for iPad but it’s not a dealbreaker. It’s is in my iPhone dock and gets used every day.

Really looking forward to the Kanji decks but busy enough with filling gaps in my grammar and vocabulary now.

The best source for true I+1 comprehensible input Japanese cards out there, with a sleek modern interface and amazing dictionary integration! A fantastic update to the JALUP decks. Add this to your Japanese studies-don’t skip any days-and you won’t regret it!

As someone new to the Jalup community, I am thrilled and relieved that you not only saved such incredible content from the possibility of abandonment, but improved on NihongoLessons presentation! Thank you! I’ve already paid for the full package in NihongoLessons , and I’m loving the quality and experience. Looking forward to seeing what else you have in store for us in the future.

Thank you for saving this, it is some of the best Japanese learning content out there. Instantly bought the full set. Clean and snappy interface as well.

Do you have a timeline/ballpark for when kanji will be added?