You may think Japanese people have trouble reading Japanese all the time, but that's not necessarily true. In this video, I used kanji that were particularly tricky to read and some of those words aren't usually written in kanji. If you learn some patterns, reading kanji isn't always super difficult so if you are interested in learning Japanese, don't be discouraged. If kanji intimidate you, you can still start learning how to speak Japanese. In fact, I have some free Japanese lessons for you, so subscribe here bit.ly/39n5COH

if a lot of actual japanese people cant read kanji, how am i supposed to

5:37 "I like Harry Potter" 5:45 "I only know this in a sexual context" She has been reading Harry Potter fanfictions

I'm worried for the girl who sees the words "pass away" only in a sexual context.

That one girl: “iku” That sent me to the graveyard laughing

"is this music monster hunter?" I like that guy

6:29 they are seriously besties Their reactions are Literally the same

Those two: Se no My brain: Bakemonogatari renai circulation

That "eeeehh?" japanese make when confused is so cute and andearing

Please make "Do japanese elders know kanji?"

This just made me feel less pressure on learning much and much kanji

I liked seeing them trying to piece together the meaning of the kanji based on other words and the radicals present. It gives an interesting insight into how they understand and read the language from a native perspective. There isn’t really an equivalent in English that I can think of.

As a Chinese native, I only know half of them😂 1、所谓 So-called (Same in Chinese ) 2、汎用?????????（99% Chinese people don't know this word, not at least for modern Chinese, totally no idea about this word) 3、贴付 Paste （Simplified Chinese 粘贴，贴付means pay for something in advance） 4、逝去 Passing away（same used in Chinese） 5、捗るProgress（Mainland Chinese use 进步，捗is not used as a Chinese character in modern history） I found it very interesting and fun to watch this video, I know there are a lot of differences between chinese characters and japanese Kanji, for example, 結構（けっこう）means enough in Japanese，but in chinese it means structure, actually I was floored about these two. So, Chinese and Japanese are both great culture, I all pay my respect to, glad you guys from the west are interested in them!!! have fun!!!

As a japanese major student struggling with kanji, this video really made me feel better haha.

The girl with the long orange hair with the guy were so funny and cute I couldn’t stop laughing when they were on 😭😭💀💀

Yuta: are you confident? Girl in grey coat: of-course! *doesn’t get any of the kanji*

As someone just learning Japanese, this makes me feel a whole lot better.

Lmao when she says "Iku" and the guy goes off camera like "I don't know that person"

"Oh no now they know we're stupid" YOU GUYS I FOUND MY JAPANESE TWIN!!

After learning kanji for years, i just want to 死

1:28 “it’s hanyou, stupid” He’s a king

"oh no, they will know that we are stupid" 2:50 hahaha that's why I avoid public tests like this hahaha

Someone included this link in a forum about learning Kanji. Bless their heart, it's good to see that the thing I find most difficult about Kanji is true even for natives. I think it's interesting that Roman-character languages and Japanese have the opposite issues--in English, Spanish and French I can pronounce an unfamiliar written word with high accuracy, but not know what it means. In Japanese, it seems that you are more likely to know what a word means without being able to say it.

guy: “is this music monster hunter?” yuta: “...what do you think this character means”

6:50 "Ah, I see you are a man of culture as well."

As a Chinese speaker who doesn't speak Japanese, it's interesting to see how Japanese combine characters into combinations that are unique to Japanese but still comprehensible to Chinese speakers, but at the same time it is surprising that they have difficulty guessing the meaning of these words. Growing up I always thought that Japanese studied Kanji really painstakingly, people always told me Japanese students know 5000 characters or more. That would mean they know far more Chinese characters that the average Chinese speaker. It could be that because the people tested in the video have been out of school for a while, they have no need to memorize so many characters and so the difficult vocabulary slowly fades away to accommodate space for more practical knowledge. Edit: Some people have misunderstood my meaning and I would like to clear things up. It was growing up that I thought Japanese knew 5000 characters. I believed this because my teacher told me this as motivation. At the time I didn't know how many characters we are supposed to know, so it was easy to believe. If it had been true it would mean that Japanese know more Chinese characters than Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong people etc. However, because of comments below am clear now that average Japanese know somewhere over 2000 Kanji (there are various answers). In my own efforts to create software for foreigners to learn Chinese I conducted Chinese proficiency surveys in China and Taiwan. I found people China know on average 3300 characters while in Taiwan the average was about 3800. On the other hand professional Chinese language teachers in both countries knew about 5500 characters. The surveys in each country were only conducted for 20 people. It was not exactly scientific, but I tried my best to keep things consistent, I used the same test sheets for all participants but used simplified Chinese in China as many there don't understand traditional characters. I hope that clears things up. Thank you.

I really love the kanji “夢” (pronounced as “yume” and means “dream”)

0:11 When the microphone covers the shirt, it spells the C word

I loved that couple that kept jokingly being confident about their kanji knowledge haha. Sound like they have fun together.

The girl in the grey fur coat looks like a Japanese Jessica alba.

The kanji in this video can be read by Japanese people in general. However, iwayuru is not used very often in daily life. The words "所謂" and "所詮" are indeed similar. There are many ways to read the same kanji, so it is interesting to learn new ones.

Some of this people seems straight out of a sitcom. You got the tired teacher and his excited wife, the funny couple and the two friends who looks like sisters

03:41 The way she said so "Shippu" so proudly ... just too cute for my ears. Im getting diabetes from that sweetness.

Is this music "monster hunter?" I thought the music was added by yuta ahahah that was cool

Watching these make me feel a little more confident in my Japanese studies.

Honestly, it's endearing and a bit comforting to know that even a native speaker sometimes gets it wrong or can't read a certain character, because it allows me to not be so hard on myself when I don't remember or understand a kanji character.

THAT MONSTER HUNTER MUSIC!!!!

I went to Japan having done business in China for three years. I can barely speak a lick of Chinese (due to my business taking place all over the country instead of in just one region) but picked up around 400-500 characters over the years, so I was constantly happy to see these same characters all over Japan. No idea how to read them in Japanese, but I sure knew the meanings!

As a Chinese from Hong Kong and learnt to read and write in traditional Chinese I was able to navigate through Japan just by reading the signs in Kanji. It's worth learning as you can use it in places like Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia and Singapore

thank you so much for adding english subtitles, it was awesome to hear them speaking and be able to see and understand what they are saying!

6:49 "Is this music Monster Hunter?" exactly my thoughts

I hope the two university graaduates do well. :)

Seeing this makes me more confident in learning kanji since it’s hard even for native speakers 😊

I love this video. All the people you interviewed were so charming and warm.

I noticed that the people your are interviewing looks more relaxed than in earlier videos. I don't know what you are doing, but you are doing great !

I was hearing Monster Hunter music throughout the video but wasn't sure if that's what it actually was, thankfully the guy at 6:49 pointed it out xD

Much like a lot of others, this makes me feel much better about taking on new kanji. It also sort of reminds me of parallel problems with English-speaking people - a lot of words can be read with decent accuracy, but many people have no idea what the obscure ones mean. Whereas these Japanese people seem to know the words but not how to read them. It's so strange how different writing systems can create different errors in the reading and comprehension of their native speakers - very interesting!

great video! it makes all of us struggling feel a little less dumb. to be fair to the participants though, a couple of these words (like いわゆる) are pretty common but i think are always written in kana.

That one dude is the first time I've ever seen a Japanese person act sarcastic.

The girl in the grey coat with fur is adorable!!

Okay so I've unnecessarily memorized 捗る when studying, nice...

Being a chinese, its really interesting watching this! The meaning of most of the words are so obvious for me! The "iku" part makes me laugh haha

Hair goals, the one with blue sweater.

even the Japanese have trouble.

Your channel is awesome man 👍 I already subscribed...I’m Brazilian and I speak Portuguese,but I a also speak English and Spanish and now I’m learning a Japanese cuz I will move to Japan on Abril of this year! Keep up the good Work 💪

one of my biggest fears is him approaching me on the streets asking me to do this because i can never remember

As a native Mandarin speaker, and knowing very basic Japanese I managed to guess 貼付 and 逝去 correctly based on their respective Mandarin pronunciations - there was luck involved of course, but it would be really interesting if you have the opportunity to see if Chinese speakers can somehow guess Kanji pronunciations too :P as long as they're similar ofc - stuff like 所謂 and 捗る would be almost impossible

9:12 He's definitely joking, I have friend who always overconfident and that's how he usually joke around.

What catches me the most is not the kanji reading game, but the 興味津々ていう感じ and briskness radiating from all the participants. Really joyful and cooperative interviewees. As an East Asian, I would feel a bit awful to interview strangers and ask them kind of hard questions cause I am afraid of embarrassing them. The young ladies and guys were just delightful in learning to dispel such doubts. Must be cool to make friends with them~

I've watched this video many times and every time I come back to this video, it never fails to have me laughing 😂

Hello Yuta, I always keep quiet in the comment sections, but I'd like to tell you I am a long time viewer, and I love all your videos. They always help me to refresh myself when I've been studying Japanese for a while and I can still study while having some fun. Thanks a lot for all the work you put into making these videos, I really appreciate it!

Hey Yuta can you make a video about Japanese hand signals vs American ones? Thanks.

That Gakusei Janai Desu made me feel proud my Duo Lingo courses have paid off enough for me to remember that one sentence. Cant wait for the day I have to use this sentence. 私はりんごです

If I ever go to a japanese tatoo artist, they better have a university degree in khanji :D I always wondered when I watched japanese (or chinese?) characters in films, when they practice with a brush on huge papers. I never understood why writing words is such a high art until watching some of your videos.

I appreciate that at the end of every video you give your opinion on the results.

Can you make this a regular series? It's so fun to watch!

so many beautiful and charismatic people, this was one of the best videos yet

There once a Learning Japanese series of books/Monthly magazines called "NIHONGO JOURNAL", where KANJI had "crib-notes" written underneath for pronunciation, ...EVEN FOR SOME JAPANESE (people). I loved this series, but it was discontinued some-time ago and I haven't been able to find a modern equivalent. Even some Japanese (people) I knew loved this series; IT WAS GREAT!!! Why is it when some good, great and all-around beneficial to many has to be short-lived and/or discontinued???

This is really fun. Its mainly this aspect that drew me into learning japanese. I hope to watch this when I have learned more to maybe have a similar reaction and still get it wrong

0:48 omg she is so pretty

this actually help me to get the will to continue learning japanese language after hiragana and katakana. i also found that in shonen jump(maybe not all) kanji written followed with hiragana to read em, so ill guess continue from that

I've been studying Japanese with the Memrise app (not a valid learning, but it has taught me how to read hiragana and will be moving on to katakana shortly). The basic Japanese level was full of hiragana, but when I moved up to Japanese 1 it started throwing in random kanji all over the place. Now, I know maybe 3 kanji characters in total (watashi, Ni and hon) and I feel like I've hit a road block. Studying them over and over again will cause them to stick in my memory (starting to remember the kanji for genki) but it is seriously daunting to have elaborate kanji characters thrown at you randomly without the app teaching you the kanji.

It's funny when, people expect other people to completely know every word in their language. And then tell another country how their language should work,. xD English got like several readings in a word too. address-address. fair-fair-fair. homographs, homonyms, homophones etc. etc. I mean, sea, see, too, two to, bow, bow, bow, bow, and bough. wtf. lol. and so many more. and english learners just learn it eventually through time and context clues. Kanji is like their context clues. makes it easier to their language.

Clever mic placement at beginning of video Yuta... very clever....

Anyone watching in 2021 lockdown? I just appreciate that they had the time to answer all the questions, like took a moment and just had fun with it

漢字読みたいなら、自分の好きなジャンルの本を延々と読むのが一番 漢字そのものに興味が無くても、読んでいる文章を理解したいがために意味を調べるようになるから

kanji episodes are good，please make more！

As a Chinese who is learning Japanese, I know the meanings of most of these words, but I often can't read them in Japanese excactlly. Dictionaries are useful when I am learning and using Japanese, especially understanding how to read Kanjis. In my opinion, Kanjis in Japan have many Jions（字音）and every Jions have its unique meaning so that foreigners, even Chinese, should spend more time on picking them up to master them. It's the same as learning Kanjis(Hanzi) in Chinese.

It's a pretty fun experience watching this, because I'm a Chinese person learning Japanese, and it's amazing how you can know the meaning but not the pronunciation in Japanese. It's an awesome language that I will pursue!

Although Japanese, kanji that Japanese people usually use are 2136 characters. I think kanji is very difficult even in Japanese. For example, the combination of hiragana and kanji may change the way you read it, or even the same word may change its meaning due to subtle differences in pronunciation. So when you're talking, you often get confused and misled.

This makes me feel better. As a non- native person trying to create fantasy Japanese-ish names using Kanji. I have no clue if the Kanji I wrote makes any sense or means what I want them to mean. Glad to see even Japanese people need to do a lot of guessing to read Kanji as well. Like, I wrote 明照/明照大神 which I want to vocalize as "Akaterasu/Akaterasu Ōmigami" as the fantasy version of a Sun Goddess. 明照 meaning "Shining Sun" as opposed to the real Japanese Sun Goddess whose named "Amaterasu" 天照 "Shining Heavens".

Yuta made this video for us to feel better since he probably knows we all struggle with Kanji too.

That video was very inspiring :)

Well... We don't know all the words of the English vocabulary. PS: I'm Brazilian, but the logic behind it is the same. I don't know all the Portuguese words.

6:45 It's definitely Monster Hunter, screw this interview, gotta go farm more Rath Gleams (or whatever the Japanese name is.) Did you record this in front of a CAPCOM store or something?

this video always gives me life and renewed hopes of being able to learn japanese to a decent level lol

「捗る」とか「逝去」とか、、日常的に目にする漢字やろ。。読めないのやばすぎん？日本人として。

「貼付」や「汎用」が読めなきゃマトモに仕事もできないだろうし、「所謂」や「捗る」すら読めないとなると、読書すら厳しいだろうに...

I'm half Japanese and I always felt upset because I suck at kanji (writing at least). My mom (who is Japanese) always told me that I don't have to worry because she doesn't know all of them and because of computers, we don't write them often so many people forget. However, I didn't really believe her until we moved to Japan and found many people asking each other about kanji 😂

I kinda have a feeling that in a few years I'll know more kanji than Japanese people because if I learn a language I include every single detail and just try to learn everything that could be useful. japanese is my 6th language but I understand a few other languages a little.

Reminds me of the time I studied in Japan as a foreign exchange student, this one prof I had was intelligent but super humble. He knew how to read 5000+ Kanji, and understood their meanings but admitted that he could only write a thousand. With the advancement of technology, we’re seeing a trend where more Japanese are becoming less literate in Kanji

this is so relieving because I've been trying to learn japanese and was so ready to memorize every possible kanji for every word I'd learn. This makes me feel better about taking the kanji learning a little slower lol.

If the japanese themselves can't spell kanjis then I'm screwed :v

your videos are great...made my day

As a Chinese speaker I could easily read almost all the kanji in the video, including 所, 谓, 逝, 去, 贴, 付. At the beginning, I just didn't get 汎, which is a variant of 泛 (pronounced fan4 in Mandarin), but I understood this point only when Juta revealed the meaning of the word 汎用 in Japanese. The only ideogram that I really didn't know was 捗, which is not common in modern Chinese.

この現代語の先生大丈夫か😅

LMAO WHEN SHE SAID ORGASM I DIED

Is that the Moster hunter theme (Proof of a hero) from Monster Hunter World in the background of the whole video? Neat

Actually I’m a high school student but can read most of them (I’m 16yrs old) it’s just that people who were doing the tests probably didn’t study Kanji seriously cause if you read books and watch TV, these words often comes up. It’s like how some people who speaks English can’t spell words correctly,,, it’s not everyone but particularly some who aren’t well educated or not spending time studying Kanji can’t read them properly. I’m kinda sad that many of the foreigners will think that “Japanese people can’t even understand their own language” even though those are the minority compared to the rest of us:(

the moment is said “how you say paste in japanese” I lost it because he actually asked that question is in japanese. Kanji is a new world