News, tips, and stories about learning Japanese from TOMODACHI JAPAN — for kids learning Japanese and their families.
News
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Parents' Guide
HSC Japanese Continuers Past Papers: A Six-Paper Plan
Most Year 12 Japanese students download a past paper, do it once, check the answers, feel vaguely bad, and download another one. That is not practice. That is a slow way of finding out you were right about what you already knew. This gui... -
Parents' Guide
Anime Villain Quotes in Japanese: 12 Iconic Lines Explained
Villains get the best lines in anime — and they are also the lines learners repeat most often without knowing what they are actually saying. Some of them are ordinary Japanese you could use tomorrow. Some are archaic, theatrical, or so r... -
Parents' Guide
Japanese Playgroup: What It Gives Your Child, and What Comes After (2026)
If you have searched "Japanese playgroup" — in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Auckland, Singapore or Hong Kong — you are almost certainly in one of two situations. Either you have a toddler and you want them to hear Japanese from so... -
Parents' Guide
Anime Japanese vs Real Japanese: What Actually Differs
A student of ours once greeted a visiting teacher from Tokyo with a cheerful おまえ、諸んだろ! He had heard it hundreds of times. He meant it warmly. The room went completely silent,... -
Parents' Guide
Japanese Supplementary School Singapore: Who Can Enrol
If you have just moved to Singapore and someone at work said “send them to JSS on Saturdays,” you have probably already found the website — and found that it answers about a third of your questions. Who is actually allo... -
Parents' Guide
Japanese Immersion School: Where They Are and How Families Get In (2026)
A Japanese immersion school is the option most parents wish they had. Half the school day taught in Japanese, by teachers, alongside classmates doing the same thing — not a Saturday add-on, but the child's actual education. The catch is ... -
Parents' Guide
Japanese Oral Exam: 30 Questions, 7 Recovery Phrases and a Six-Week Plan
The Japanese oral is the part of the exam students prepare for last and lose sleep over first. It is also the only part where nothing can be looked up, edited or rewritten — you have one shot, in real time, in front of a person. Th... -
Parents' Guide
Bleach Quotes in Japanese: 12 Famous Lines & Romaji
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Parents' Guide
Outschool Japanese Classes: What Parents Should Check First (2026)
Outschool Japanese classes are one of the first things parents find when they go looking for online Japanese for kids — and for good reason. It is enormous, it is genuinely built for children, and you can book a single class on a Tuesday... -
Parents' Guide
How to Watch Anime Without Subtitles: Five Steps and an Honest Timeline
“How long until I can watch anime without subtitles?” is one of the most-asked questions in Japanese learning, and almost every answer you will find online is either a made-up number of months or a shrug. Here is a more usefu... -
Parents' Guide
Online Japanese Lessons for Kids: A Buyer’s Guide from Teachers
Online Japanese lessons for children are now easy to find and very hard to compare. Every provider promises native speakers, fun lessons and fast progress; the websites look interchangeable; the prices differ by a factor of ten. This is ... -
Parents' Guide
Kumon Japanese for Kids: Where It’s Offered, and Who It’s Actually For (2026)
If you searched "Kumon Japanese", there is a good chance you are looking at two completely different programmes without knowing it — and the one most parents abroad assume they are signing up for is not available where they live. Here is... -
Parents' Guide
VCE Japanese Second Language: Eligibility, Assessment and the Oral
If your child is choosing VCE subjects in Victoria, "Japanese" is not one subject — it is two, and picking the wrong one can cost a year. VCE Japanese Second Language is the course most students take, but not everyone is allowed to... -
Parents' Guide
Tanjiro Quotes in Japanese: 10 Famous Lines & Romaji
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Parents' Guide
LingoDeer for Kids: Does It Actually Teach Japanese? (2026)
If you're looking at LingoDeer for kids, you're probably asking three things. Is it good for children? Is it safe? And can my child learn Japanese on it? The third question has an answer that surprises most parents, so let's start there.... -
Parents' Guide
Japanese for Kids: What to Teach at Each Age (with a First 50 Words)
Search “Japanese for kids” and you will be offered worksheets, printable PDFs, YouTube channels, apps and textbooks — hundreds of them, most of them free. Parents rarely have a resource problem. What they have is a sequ... -
Parents' Guide
Japanese Tutor for Kids Online: 2026 Costs and When Not to Hire One
Hiring an online Japanese tutor for your child is the obvious move, and for a lot of families it is the right one. But it is also the default that gets chosen without comparison — parents search for a tutor, find thousands, pick on... -
Parents' Guide
Shadowing Japanese: How to Do It Properly (and What It Will Not Fix)
Shadowing is the most recommended and most badly executed technique in Japanese learning. Almost every guide describes it as “listen and repeat” — which is not what shadowing is, and the difference is the whole point. T... -
Parents' Guide
Is HelloTalk Safe for Kids? What the Terms Actually Say (2026)
Parents searching "is HelloTalk safe" are almost always asking one of three versions of the same question. Can my child use it? What are the rules for under-18s? And is there something safer that does the same job? Here is the honest ans... -
School Comparison
Japanese Academy of San Diego Tuition: What Is Published
If you search Japanese Academy of San Diego tuition, you will find exactly one price on the open web: $50 to enrol, $92 a month. It comes from a community newspaper dated 16 July 2015, and it describes a Saturday supplementary school run... -
Parents' Guide
Japanese Classes for Toddlers: What Actually Works (and What to Skip)
Search for Japanese classes for toddlers and you will be told, within about two clicks, that you are already late. Windows are closing. Brains are hardening. Start now. The research is less dramatic and much more useful. Across studies o... -
Parents' Guide
HSC Japanese Continuers Vocabulary List: What NESA Prescribes and How to Study It
Every year students search for “the HSC Japanese Continuers vocabulary list” hoping to find one file that guarantees the marks. There is an official list, and you should download it. But before you print 40 pages and start hi... -
Parents' Guide
Haikyuu Quotes in Japanese (Romaji, Meaning & Grammar)
Haikyuu!! has something almost no other anime gives a learner: a single room in which a coach yells 下を向くんじゃねえ, an adviser says ですます-form sentences to teenagers, and a setter from Osaka drops 打てへん instead of 打てない. One... -
Parents' Guide
Is Duolingo Good for Kids Learning Japanese? What Parents Should Check (2026)
If you searched "Duolingo Japanese for kids", you probably want to know three things. Can my child actually use it? Will they learn real Japanese from it? And is it enough on its own? Here is the short answer. Duolingo is a genuinely goo... -
Parents' Guide
HSC Japanese Beginners Syllabus: Eligibility, Topics and Marks
Most guides to the HSC Japanese Beginners syllabus start with the topics. That is the wrong end. The first question is not what will I study — it is whether you are allowed to study it at all, because Japanese Beginners is one of t... -
Parents' Guide
Japanese Subtitles on Netflix: Why They Are Missing and How to Use Them
You want your child watching anime with Japanese subtitles, not English ones — because reading the words they are hearing is where anime stops being entertainment and starts being input. Then you open Netflix, scroll the subtitle m... -
Parents' Guide
Japanese Tutor for Kids: What It Costs and When 1-to-1 Is the Wrong Tool
Most parents start here: find a Japanese tutor for my child. It is the obvious move, and for some children it is exactly right. But after teaching a lot of children who arrived at Japanese through a tutor — and a lot who quit one &... -
Parents' Guide
Luffy Quotes in Japanese: 10 Famous Lines & Romaji
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Parents' Guide
HSC Japanese Beginners Past Papers: All 11 Years, and How to Use Them
The 2026 HSC written exams run from Tuesday 13 October to Thursday 5 November. If you are sitting Japanese Beginners, that leaves about six weeks — and the single most useful resource for those six weeks is already free on NESA's w... -
School Comparison
Penang Japanese School Fees 2026: RM1,390 a Month
Search Penang Japanese School fees in English and you will be told the school is at 140 Jalan Sungai Pinang, and that fees are somewhere between RM8,000 and RM80,000 a year depending on which page you land on. Both are wrong. The school ... -
Parents' Guide
Blue Lock Quotes in Japanese (Romaji, Meaning & Grammar)
Blue Lock does something to Japanese that almost no other manga does as relentlessly: it writes one word and tells you to read it as a different one. 救世主 with the reading プレイヤー. 怪物 read as ともだち. 國神 read as おれ. Every one... -
School Comparison
Japanese School in Ho Chi Minh City: Fees and Who Gets In
Ho Chi Minh City has two Japanese-medium schools for children — a full-time one and a Saturday one — and both publish their fees. You would not know either fact from an English search, where page one offers an encyclopaedia e... -
Parents' Guide
Japanese Classes for Teens Near Me: Why There Are So Few, and What Works
Searching "Japanese classes for teens near me" usually produces one of two results: nothing at all, or a list of adult classes with a note that under-18s are welcome. Both are worse than they look, and the reason is structural rather tha... -
Parents' Guide
Domain Expansion in Japanese: What Ryoiki Tenkai Means
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School Comparison
Manila Japanese School Tuition Fee: The Real 2026 Numbers
Every English page about Manila Japanese School quotes the same two numbers: ₱17,000 tuition and ₱7,000 facility fee per month. Those numbers are from April 2023. The school's own 2026 handbook, revised 5 February 2026, says ... -
Parents' Guide
Japanese Classes for Kids in Atlanta: Every Option, and Who Each Is For
Metro Atlanta has one of the largest Japanese business communities in the American South, a Japanese Consulate-General, a Japanese immersion charter school and a Saturday school that has been running since 1974. On paper, a child here ha... -
Parents' Guide
All Might Quotes in Japanese (Romaji, Meaning & Grammar)
All Might's catchphrase is translated "I am here!" — but the Japanese is 私が来た, which is past tense and literally means "I came." That gap is not a translator's slip. It is a real property of Japanese verbs that English does not have,... -
Parents' Guide
Japanese Classes for Kids Who Are Complete Beginners: What to Ask
A parent in Ecuador wrote to us this month about her nine-year-old daughter. The girl loves Japan, speaks no Japanese at all, and there is no Japanese school anywhere near them. Her mother's questions were completely practical: can a tot... -
School Comparison
Japanese Supplementary School El Paso: Why It Is Closed
Short answer, because you will not find it anywhere else: the Japanese Supplementary School of El Paso is closed, and has been for about four years. Both governments say so. Japan's Consulate-General in Houston lists it as エӤ... -
Parents' Guide
Naruto Jutsu Names in Japanese: 12 Kanji Explained
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Parents' Guide
How Much Do Japanese Lessons Cost for Kids? 2026 Prices Compared
Ask three families what Japanese lessons cost and you will get three answers that are all correct and none of them comparable. One pays $4 an hour. One pays $319 a month. One pays $799 for ten weeks. They are not buying the same thing. T... -
School Comparison
Japanese Supplementary School Houston: 2026 Fees and Entry
If you are an English-speaking parent in Houston looking for Japanese for your child, you have run into a wall that has nothing to do with your child's ability. ヒューストン日本語#... -
School Comparison
Japanese Supplementary School Luxembourg: Fees and Hours
Every guide to Japanese supplementary schools tells you to plan around Saturday morning. In Luxembourg that advice is wrong, and it will cost you the year if you act on it. ルクセンブルグ補... -
School Comparison
Japanese Supplementary School Oslo: Fees and Entry Rules
If you have searched "Japanese supplementary school Oslo", you have probably landed on a Norwegian business directory showing an address in Tøyen. Do not drive there on a Saturday morning. Norway has exactly one Japanese supplemen... -
Parents' Guide
Rengoku Quotes in Japanese (Romaji, Meaning & Grammar)
心を燃やせ is three words long, and every one of them is first-year vocabulary: heart, object marker, burn. What makes it the most quoted line in Demon Slayer is the ending — 燃やせ, not 燃やして, not 燃やしましょう. Rengoku speaks almos...
