10 Human Japanese alternatives

Erin's Challenge

Beginners who like video

BeginnerIntermediate

Free

Erin's Challenge: free video series from the Japan Foundation following a student in Japan, with lessons on everyday phrases and culture.

Duolingo

Building a daily habit

Beginner

Free + paid options

Gamified language app with a Japanese course built on short daily lessons. Free with ads; the paid plan removes ads and adds extra practice features.

Genki

A complete beginner course from a textbook

Beginner

Paid

GENKI: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese, published by The Japan Times. Two textbooks (Genki I and II) with matching workbooks take beginners through grammar, conversation, reading, writing and kanji. The official site has free extra resources and audio.

Minna no Nihongo

Classroom-style beginner study, in Japanese from day one

Beginner

Paid

Beginner textbook series from 3A Corporation, written entirely in Japanese, with separate Translation & Grammar Notes books available in many languages. Widely used in language schools in Japan, and now in a third edition.

Easy Japanese

Free beginner course with audio

Beginner

Free

NHK World's free Easy Japanese course: short audio lessons built around a story, each teaching one key phrase, with text, grammar notes and quizzes.

LingoDeer

Structured grammar for beginners

Beginner

Free + paid options

Language app with structured lessons for Asian languages including Japanese, teaching grammar step by step with kana and kanji practice built in.

NativShark

All-in-one daily study plan

BeginnerIntermediate

Paid

Japanese course that combines lessons, vocabulary and spaced repetition reviews in one daily study session, aiming to take learners up to high proficiency.

JapanesePod101

Lesson-based listening practice

BeginnerIntermediate

Free + paid options

Large library of audio and video Japanese lessons sorted by level, with transcripts, vocabulary lists and an audio dictionary.

Memrise

Everyday vocabulary and phrases

Beginner

Free + paid options

Language app built around vocabulary and phrases with native-speaker video clips, plus courses aimed at specific goals.

TheMoeWay (learnjapanese.moe)

Setting up an immersion and sentence-mining routine

BeginnerIntermediateAdvanced

Free

Free community guide to learning Japanese through native media. It lays out a study order (kana, Anki decks, grammar, then immersion) and has step-by-step setup guides for Yomitan, Anki mining and text hookers for visual novels. Opinionated: it pushes heavy immersion over textbooks.