Pick a course.

One short lesson a day covering the phrases you would actually use: greetings, your name, ordering food, asking directions. Each day explains why the Japanese works the way it does, then quizzes you and unlocks the next.

The part of Japanese you cannot get through a day without. Prices and tills, times and timetables, counters and their sound changes, rent quoted in 万 and populations in 億. Japanese groups digits in fours rather than threes, which is why 90,000 is nine of something and a million has no word of its own.

An accelerated run through every kanji on the N5 list, three or four a day. You meet the character, break it into its parts, learn a memory hook, then write it twice: once tracing the guide, once from memory. Go at whatever pace you like.

Keigo explained rather than listed, plus the phone calls, meetings, email and awkward conversations that fill a working day in Japan. Every phrase is shown at the level you would really say it, with the mistakes that sound worst marked as pairs. Assumes the daily lessons up to about day 45.

Anime speech is fast, casual and deliberately stylised, and a textbook prepares you for none of it. Fifteen days on contractions, sentence-final particles, pronouns and role language, plus which parts are safe to copy and which will make you sound like a cartoon.

Manga with furigana lets a beginner read real Japanese years before their kanji is ready, and it is unreadable until somebody explains the format. Fifteen days on panel order, bubbles, vertical text, sound effects, and how to pick a book you will actually finish.