...And the Journey Begins!

Introduction

まるもりへようこそ, visitor!
MaruMori e yōkoso
Welcome to MaruMori, visitor!

I hear you want to learn Japanese! Well, this is the place to be. Whether you're someone who already knows a bunch of kanji and grammar, or you're still 100% dependent on subtitles when watching your fave anime, I can't tell you how excited I am to have you here. All of us in the MaruMori team are!

Now, I won't sugarcoat it, Japanese is a tough language to learn. But it's also so much fun! And besides, you've already taken the hardest step of all: starting!

And you certainly won't be alone on your journey. MaruMori is going to be there for you, every step you take.

You're in good hands. Or paws, rather.

Get it? 'Cause pandas... have paws. Ahem, moving on.

How does this all work?

MaruMori will teach you everything you need to know to master Japanese: from kanji and vocabulary to grammar and reading. Different types of content are denoted by different colored tiles, like the one you clicked on to get here!

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  Blue tiles are grammar articles, like this one (although I have no grammar to teach you just yet)!

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  Purple tiles are vocabulary/kanji unlocks, and you can click on them to start drilling these via our flashcard SRS system on your home page.

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  Green tiles indicate drills, where you can practice your skills!

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  Finally, once you become powerful enough, you'll start to see some red tiles, which are reading exercises!

Okay next, if you click on "Adventure" at the top of the site, it will take you to an overview of all of our regions, or islands. Let me tell you a bit about them!

Each island has a different difficulty level, based on the the Japanese Language Proficiency Test or JLPT, which has five levels: N5 being the lowest, and N1 being the highest. We've organized our lesson roadmap according to these levels, although the vocabulary and kanji you learn may deviate a bit here and there. We really want you to be a well-rounded learner, so we'll give you enough JLPT-orientated content to help you pass the tests, but we'll include useful things that might be outside of its scope as well.

As a rough guideline of difficulty, we'll refer to each level in ascending order as Elementary, Apprentice, Adept, Advanced, and Expert. What's more, to make it easier for you to read and listen to the example sentences once we jump into Elementary, we came up with this Introduction section for you.

Things will be a little different once you get past these first few levels, but I won't overload you with those details just yet. I bet you're itching to start learning and I won't keep you any longer...

Let's get to your first real lesson!