How to learn Japanese with the news — at your JLPT level, 10 minutes a day
Reading the news in Japanese is one of the best ways to learn real, current Japanese — the words people actually use at work and in daily life. But newspaper Japanese is written for adult native speakers, full of kanji and set phrases. Most learners give up after a few days.
The fix isn't more willpower. It's using news that has been rewritten for your level.
Three rules that make it stick
- Read at your level. If you know almost every word in a sentence, you can follow the story without a dictionary.
- Keep it short. A headline, a summary and a few sentences is enough. Five minutes every day beats an hour on Sunday.
- Use each sentence three times. Read it, listen to it, then say it out loud (shadowing).
A 10-minute morning routine
- 1 min — read the headline with furigana and a summary in your own language
- 3 min — read the story while listening to native audio
- 3 min — shadow a few sentences out loud
- 2 min — answer 3 quick questions
- 1 min — save one word to review later
How Tuned does this for you
Tuned turns today's Japanese and world news into short lessons at your JLPT level (N5–N1). Every kanji has furigana and romaji, explanations come in your own language (English, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Traditional Chinese and more), and each lesson has audio, vocabulary, a quiz and shadowing. No ads.
Living in Japan? Try the Japanese phrases for life in Japan — city hall, opening a bank account, the convenience store, apartment hunting and more, each with a sample dialogue and audio.