Online Japanese courses from hiragana to the JLPT certificate

More than 120 million people speak Japanese as their first language, almost all of them in Japan. Outside Japan, larger Japanese-speaking communities live mainly in Brazil, Hawaii and on the US West Coast.

Most learners name one of five goals.

• They work for a Japanese company or with partners in Japan.
• They plan an exchange semester, a degree or a language school stay in Japan.
• They want to live and work in Japan for a year on a working holiday visa, which Japan offers to citizens of countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
• They want to understand anime, manga, games or literature in the original.
• They travel to Japan and want to get by in daily life.

Online lessons suit Japanese well, because local classes outside university towns rarely go beyond beginner level. Over video you reach teachers in Japan and in your own time zone, and apps train the scripts every day in short sessions. The Japan Foundation, Japan's public institution for cultural exchange, also runs its own learning platform, JF Japanese e-Learning Minato.

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI), the language school of the US State Department, places Japanese in its hardest group, Category IV, together with Mandarin, Korean and Arabic. The FSI measures the time native English speakers need to reach level 3 on the ILR scale. The ILR scale is a proficiency scale used by US government agencies, and level 3 means you can negotiate and hold technical discussions in the language.

The FSI figures assume full-time classes of 23 hours a week. English helps a little through katakana loanwords, but the grammar, script and politeness system are new. Four areas take most of the time.

With three hours of class a week alongside a job, you collect about 130 classroom hours a year. That is usually enough for simple everyday conversation and reading kana after one year. For newspapers and meetings in Japanese, plan for several years.

Japanese uses three scripts at once. A normal sentence often contains all three, and each has its own job.

Hiragana and katakana are syllabic scripts. Each sign stands for a syllable such as ka, shi or tsu, and you can learn both in a few weeks.

Kanji are characters that Japan adopted from China many centuries ago. The official list of jōyō kanji, the kanji for general use, has contained exactly 2,136 characters since 2010. Many kanji have a native Japanese reading and a reading borrowed from Chinese. The character for person is read hito, jin or nin depending on the word.

Rōmaji is the transcription into Latin letters. It helps in the first days but slows you down if you keep using it. Many textbooks switch to kana only after a few weeks.

Japanese has only five vowels (a, i, u, e, o), and most syllables end in a vowel or n. For English speakers the main task is to keep the vowels short and pure. English tends to glide vowels and to reduce unstressed ones, and Japanese does neither.

Four points cause most trouble.

1. Length changes meaning. Obasan means aunt and obāsan grandmother. Kite means come, and kitte means postage stamp.
2. Japanese has a pitch accent. In Tokyo Japanese, hashi with a high first syllable means chopsticks and with a high second syllable bridge.
3. The Japanese r sits between r, l and d. The tongue taps once behind the upper teeth.
4. The u often almost disappears. Desu sounds like des, and sukiyaki like skiyaki.

Japanese has no tones like Chinese. A wrong pitch accent rarely makes a sentence incomprehensible, but it sounds foreign. Strong online courses record your speech and play it next to a native speaker's version.

In a Japanese sentence the verb comes last. Watashi wa ringo o tabemasu reads literally as 'I apple eat'. Small words after the noun, called particles, mark each role: wa marks the topic, o the object and ni the destination. There are no articles, and verbs do not change for the person. The subject often drops out when the context makes it clear.

The biggest hurdle is polite speech. Japanese adapts verb forms and vocabulary to the relationship between speakers. Textbooks start with the polite -masu form, which suits everyday contact with strangers.

Respectful and humble forms together are called keigo. They are expected with customers and in business correspondence, which is why business Japanese courses focus on them.

Online Japanese courses differ in how much you speak, who corrects your mistakes and how systematically they build kanji. The prices are rough guide values for 2026 and depend on the provider and teacher.

The JLPT is the most widely taken Japanese exam, with levels N5 to N1. A MOOC is a massive open online course run by a university or platform. An AI tutor is a program that talks with you, scores your pronunciation with speech recognition and adapts exercises to your mistakes.

For work goals there is business Japanese with keigo, emails and meetings. Specialised courses prepare for care work, hospitality or technical jobs in Japan, often for people who plan to work there on a work visa.

The JLPT (Japanese-Language Proficiency Test) is the most widely taken Japanese exam in the world. Outside Japan, the Japan Foundation runs it with local partners, and inside Japan the organisation JEES does. Many countries hold it in July and December, some cities only once a year. N5 is the easiest level and N1 the hardest.

The JLPT tests language knowledge (vocabulary and grammar), reading and listening. It does not test speaking or writing. Each level is scored from 0 to 180, and you pass only with the total pass mark plus a minimum score in every section.

Since the December 2025 session, score reports of candidates who pass also show a CEFR level. The CEFR, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, describes language skills in six levels from A1 to C2. According to the Japan Foundation, the reference covers only reading, listening and language knowledge.

The JLPT certificate does not expire. Employers and universities in Japan often ask for N2 or N1, because these levels cover texts and conversations at natural speed.

Two more exams matter for moving to Japan. The Japan Foundation's JFT-Basic tests everyday Japanese on computer, usually runs every month and shows the result immediately. For the Specified Skilled Worker (i) work visa, the programme's official website lists the JFT-Basic and the JLPT as Japanese tests. The EJU (Examination for Japanese University Admission), run by JASSO, takes place twice a year and is used for undergraduate admission in Japan. Japan relies on these tests because its Specified Skilled Worker programme recruits foreign workers for sectors with labour shortages and needs a reliable proof of language skills.

Ask these eight questions before you pay for an online Japanese course.

1. Does the course teach hiragana and katakana completely in the first weeks and then drop rōmaji?
2. Does it build kanji systematically, with words, readings and review?
3. Is the syllabus tied to the levels of the JLPT, the most widely taken Japanese exam, or to the CEFR, the European scale from A1 to C2, with goals for every unit?
4. Do you speak for more than half of each live lesson?
5. Does the teacher explain which politeness level fits which situation?
6. Do lesson times work across the time difference if your teacher lives in Japan?
7. Can you book a trial lesson, and do prepaid lessons expire?
8. Does the provider explain how it stores recordings and voice data, for example under the GDPR, the EU's data protection law?

Many learners combine one or two live lessons a week for speaking and polite forms with an app for kana, kanji and vocabulary on the other days.

1 Staying with rōmaji too long

If you learn words only in Latin letters, you will have to learn them a second time in kana. Switch fully to hiragana and katakana after the first weeks.

2 Ignoring long vowels and double consonants

Obasan and obāsan are different people. Pay attention to length from the start.

3 Drilling kanji as single characters

A kanji without a word helps little, because the reading depends on the word. Learn kanji in vocabulary and example sentences.

4 Studying only for the JLPT

The JLPT, the most widely taken Japanese exam, does not test speaking. Learners who only do mock tests understand a lot and answer slowly.

5 Ignoring politeness

Casual speech with strangers sounds rude. Learn the polite -masu form first and the casual form afterwards.