I am not sponsored by Human Japanese in any way, I know that I am very positive about this app but try to find something negative to say about it haha. Just to clear that up. In this article I’ll be reviewing both the Human Japanese and Human Japanese android app. I have used these since the very beginning of when I started learning.
Link to the site: https://www.humanjapanese.com/
Features
Looking at the site you can easily see what this application is about and what it has. Actual recordings, good explanations, quizzes and reviews. This is what they say they have. They also claim that Human Japanese is everything you need to get started.
Human Japanese doesn’t go much into detail of the Kanji, but the intermediate app starts covering this.
They basically offer a very interactive book and study experience. But let’s take a look at the actual app so you can really see what it is about.
Resource review
Watch the video to have more of a review. Basically it is like a book, there are chapters, interactive quizzes, there is even a note system to create bookmarks so you can keep all studying to the app itself.
Pressing the words will make you hear their pronunciations, you can learn the stroke order of each character. Everything, including the characters is slowly being taught to you with some cultural notes in between to keep the study pace nice and smooth and not too steep.
The overall aesthetics are also quite nice, a bit on the older side looking especially when you were to open the menu, but still beautiful nonetheless.
My experience
I have used Human Japanese since day 1 when I decided to take studying Japanese seriously. Which was during my first trip to Japan in 2016. I finished this and moved on to the intermediate version which I bought one week after buying the first Human Japanese as I really enjoyed the quality.
I did finish the first app, but the intermediate I didn’t finish as I started using other resources. When I finally got around to finishing it years later, I kind of wished that I did finish it earlier before moving on to different resources.
They have a claim on their site that Human Japanese is everything you need to get started, and I can confirm this. From all applications I tried, this has the best quality and actually does contain everything you need.
Positives
First of all, yes this is an application which isn’t free, however there is a lite version which you can use to experience the app for yourself to see if you like it or not. Even though it’s not free, the quality is really worth the price and perfect for beginners.
Real recordings, nowadays everything feels like it has been made with AI, luckily this was made before all the AI stuff started happening.
The notes, I really like this. Together with the level system. I wish there was some more stuff the level system did in terms of seeing your friends levels, but it did help for my motivation.
Honestly, this app has given me a positive feeling and looking back at this app after 8 years, I still can’t think of a resource as good as this one. ^^
Negatives
For negatives you’d have to dig deep, but there are some which directly jump into mind.
I don’t like that progress isn’t saved across devices. If you uninstall the app, you lose your progress. But to be fair, with a one time payment this isn’t something you should expect anyway. You can not expect them to pay monthly for running a server for keeping everybody their progress stored. What would be nice though is an option to save your progress locally so you can transfer your progress manually.
Another downside could be that they split the app in a normal Human Japanese and an intermediate one. Personally I don’t really mind this as this is a better approach compared to having one app and charging double the price. At least with separating them, people who decide to not continue studying Japanese have at least saved some money. So not that much of a downside if you ask me. Making study resources takes time, trust me I know it, and they should be paid fairly for their work and effort.
Pricing
And talking about them needing to be paid fairly for their work, … how is the pricing situation looking?
Most people who know me know that I’m not a big fan of monthly payments at all, that’s why I am very happy about both Human Japanese and Human Japanese Intermediate are a one time payment. It’s about 1080 JPY which I think is a very fair price for such an interactive book. If you look at books such as Genki, then you’ll be spending over four times as much.
If all you want to do is get the basics of Japanese down so you can move on to more native materials, then this is excellent in my honest opinion.
My opinion
As mentioned before, this was the very first application I used when I started out studying Japanese and I honestly still love it. The quality is high, I like the features it has and it’s perfect to get the basics down. The company who made these applications also created another application called Satori Reader which I can also greatly recommend. But sadly, and understandably, Satori Reader is a subscription based site and application.
When you start out, or when you are struggling to get the basics down, I’m sure this app will help you get there. But as always, there is no one app wonder which will make you fluent, so be certain to also use other resources to get more practice. For that their new app, Satori Reader, is quite a good one. Again, not sponsored, but I do really like their work.
Alternatives
As for alternatives, I guess you have the Genki books and as long as you use the CD’s when going through the book you’ll also be able to learn the correct pronunciation of words. But if you want convenience together with high quality, I still haven’t found a better resource such as Human Japanese.
