How to Start Learning Japanese: Free Public Options First

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Published: August 29, 2026

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Most advice about learning Japanese starts at the wrong end. It opens with an app, a tutor marketplace or a school, and only later gets round to the question a beginner actually needs answered: what does the country itself already provide, and how will anyone measure whether you are getting anywhere?

Both of those have public answers. The government publishes a free course for foreign residents, the public broadcaster publishes another, and municipal classes exist that cost nothing to attend — though finding the one near you turns out to be its own task. On top of that sit two official yardsticks — a test and a framework — that describe ability in language you can quote rather than guess at.

Where should a complete beginner start?

With the free public material, because it is written for people in exactly your position and it costs nothing to test whether it suits you.

Three routes are open before you spend anything, and they answer different needs. The first two you can open tonight; the third depends on where you live.

The third route is the one people underuse, and it is also the one that is hardest to find — for a structural reason worth understanding before you go looking.

How do you find a community Japanese class near you?

Through your own municipality’s foreign-language pages, or its international exchange association — because there is no single national directory to search.

We looked for one. The Agency for Cultural Affairs runs a Japanese-language education content system, but it shares teaching materials and reports rather than listing classes. MEXT publishes a page on strengthening Japanese-language education in local communities, but that describes the programme, not the classrooms. Neither is a searchable list of the class nearest to you, and we could not find a public system that is.

What that means in practice is that the search happens at city level, and it looks like this. Shinjuku City’s foreign-language portal carries a page for Free Japanese Language Lessons “Nihongo Hiroba”, describing classes “that you can join free of charge without a reservation or registration.” That is the shape to look for: a city page, in your language, with times and places on it.

So the sequence is:

1. Open your city or ward’s own site and look for its foreign-language section. The vocabulary you want is nihongo kyoshitsu — Japanese classes.
2. If nothing turns up there, ask your local international exchange association. Where a city does not publish a class list of its own, that is the next place to ask, because community classes are commonly hosted rather than run directly by the city office.
3. Ask at the counter when you are there for something else. Residents deal with the municipal office regularly, not least because each city writes its own waste separation rules, and the same building usually holds the answer.

That third step has a practical catch. Some municipal enquiry lines are handled in Japanese only, which is a chicken-and-egg problem for a beginner and a good argument for having a line that can make ordinary domestic calls: our guide to voice SIMs and the identity check they trigger covers what that involves for a resident.

What is the JLPT, and what do its levels mean?

The Japanese-Language Proficiency Test is a five-level test of understanding, run twice a year, and its levels are defined by the organisers in one sentence each.

The test has been offered since 1984. The Japan Foundation and Japan Educational Exchanges and Services conduct it jointly: inside Japan, JEES administers it; outside Japan, the Japan Foundation administers it in cooperation with local institutions, and in Taiwan jointly with the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association. In 2009 it moved from once a year in December to twice a year, in July and December, and 2010 saw the introduction of the revised, “new” JLPT.

The level definitions below are the organisers’ own English wording, quoted rather than paraphrased, because paraphrases of these are where most confusion begins.

The organisers also explain how the five fit together: N4 and N5 “measure the level of understanding of basic Japanese mainly learned in class,” N1 and N2 “measure the level of understanding of Japanese used in a broad range of scenes in actual everyday life,” and N3 “is a bridging level between N1/N2 and N4/N5.” Read that carefully and the design becomes clear — the lower levels are about the classroom, the upper levels about the street.

Two limits are worth stating plainly. Every one of those definitions is written in terms of understanding — the organisers describe each level by what a candidate can understand, which is worth remembering when you decide what a result proves. And we have deliberately not printed any equivalence between N levels and the A1–C2 scale in the next section, because the organisers publish no such conversion table; the two scales were built for different purposes.

If you intend to sit the test, the practical detail that catches people is where and when. Every page on the official site carries the same footnote: outside Japan, the test may be held only in July or December in some cities. The organisers publish a list of overseas test cities — the current one is dated as of 3 August 2026 — and it is the only reliable answer for your own city. In the United States, the host institution is the American Association of Teachers of Japanese. Check the list for the city you would actually travel to, rather than assuming a country-wide pattern.

What is the Reference Framework, and why does it use A1 to C2?

It is Japan’s public description of language ability, modelled on the CEFR, and it gives institutions here a shared vocabulary for saying what a learner can actually do.

The report that defines it is explicit about the structure: taking the CEFR as its reference, it sets basic users at level A, independent users at B and proficient users at C, then splits each in two for six levels in total. That is where A1 through C2 comes from. It also adopts the CEFR’s way of splitting up what a language is used for — reception (“listening”, “reading”), production (“spoken production”, “writing”) and interaction (“spoken interaction”) — and describes ability through can-do statements, that is, through what a learner can concretely do.

Two things about its status are easy to get wrong.

It is a framework, not an exam. Nothing about it produces a certificate. Its use is descriptive: the report notes that the Japan Foundation developed the JF Standard for Japanese-Language Education on the same CEFR thinking, that companies employing foreign staff have written their own can-do statements by reference to the CEFR, and that from August 2019 a CEFR A2-equivalent attainment rate was applied as part of the delisting criteria for Japanese-language institutions notified by the Ministry of Justice.

Its home has moved. Japanese-language education for foreign residents was transferred from the Agency for Cultural Affairs to MEXT in April 2024, and the Framework’s own pages followed from April 2025. The Agency for Cultural Affairs now states that its remaining pages hold information up to March 2024. The report itself is still correctly cited to the Japanese Language Subdivision of the Council for Cultural Affairs, dated 12 October 2021 — the document has not changed, the ministry responsible for it has.

When is it worth paying for lessons?

Once free material has stopped matching what you need — usually when you want conversation practice, correction, or a schedule someone else enforces.

The paid market divides into three shapes, and they solve different problems:

For the first of those there is a public entry point: MEXT operates a portal for accredited Japanese-language institutions under the 2023 accreditation law, and that is the official place to start looking for one. For the other two there is no equivalent public register, and no shortage of confident rankings written by people with something to sell. This site is not going to add one — what a lesson is worth depends on what you cannot yet do, which is exactly the thing a ranking cannot know.

A more useful habit is to compare on the same axes before you pay: what the trial costs, whether lessons are individual or shared, whether the material is aimed at living in Japan or at passing a test, and what happens to unused lessons if you stop. Those four questions separate the offers far better than any star rating.

If you want to see what the marketplace model looks like in practice, Preply’s Japanese tutor listings are a concrete example: each tutor sets their own per-lesson rate, and you book lesson by lesson. Apply the same four questions there as anywhere else — the filters show you price and availability, but only a trial lesson tells you whether the teaching fits the gap you identified.

FAQ

Do I need to take the JLPT to learn Japanese? No. The JLPT is a measure, not a course, and nothing about learning depends on registering for it. Its value is that each level is defined publicly in a single sentence, so the label describes the same thing wherever it is quoted. If you only want to hold conversations with neighbours, the framework’s can-do descriptions may be a more useful yardstick than a test result.

How often is the JLPT held, and can I take it outside Japan? It has been held twice a year, in July and December, since 2009; before that it ran once a year in December. It is offered overseas as well as in Japan, but the official site notes that in some cities outside Japan the test may be held only in July or December. Check the organisers’ overseas test-city list, which is published with the date it was compiled, for the city you would actually travel to.

Is there one website that lists every community Japanese class in Japan? We could not find a public system that does this. The Agency for Cultural Affairs’ content-sharing system distributes teaching materials rather than class listings, and MEXT’s page on community Japanese-language education describes the programme rather than the classes. The practical route is your own municipality’s foreign-language pages or your local international exchange association.

Does A2 in the Reference Framework mean the same thing as a JLPT level? Do not assume so. The Reference Framework is built on the CEFR’s six levels, A1 to C2, and describes what a learner can do; the JLPT is a test of understanding with five levels, N1 to N5. The organisers of the two do not publish a conversion between them, so any equivalence you see quoted is someone’s estimate rather than an official mapping.

Are free public materials good enough on their own? For getting started, they are courses rather than tasters: NHK’s runs to 48 lessons with downloadable audio and textbook, and MEXT’s is built specifically for people living here. What neither can give you is someone correcting your speech in real time. That is the specific gap a community class, a tutor or a school fills, and it is the honest reason to move on from free material — not that free material is thin.

What to remember

The order matters more than the choice. Free public material first, because it exists, it is aimed at residents, and it costs nothing to abandon if it does not suit you. A community class next, found through your own city rather than a national search that does not exist. Paid lessons last, bought against a gap you have identified rather than a promise you have read.

For measuring where you are, keep the two yardsticks apart in your head. The JLPT gives you a level defined in one published sentence, twice a year, at a test centre. The Reference Framework gives you six levels and a vocabulary of can-do statements that Japanese policy and some employers already reference. Neither converts into the other, and you do not need both.

Everything above reflects what MEXT, the Agency for Cultural Affairs, NHK, Shinjuku City and the JLPT organisers published as of 12 August 2026. Test dates, city lists and the location of the ministries’ own pages are the parts that move, so check the official page before you register for anything. Residents who are also sorting out the rest of life here may find our guides to converting a foreign driver’s licence and sending money out of Japan useful alongside this one.

Sources: MEXT: Tsunagaru Hirogaru Nihongo de no Kurashi, NHK WORLD-JAPAN: Easy Japanese, Shinjuku City: Free Japanese Language Lessons “Nihongo Hiroba”, JLPT: Objectives and Organizers, JLPT: Message from the Organizers, JLPT: N1–N5 Summary of Linguistic Competence Required for Each Level, JLPT: List of Overseas Test Site Cities, Council for Cultural Affairs: Reference Framework for Japanese Language Education, report of 12 October 2021 (PDF, Japanese), Agency for Cultural Affairs: Japanese language education (notice of transfer to MEXT), MEXT: portal for accredited Japanese language institutions, MEXT: strengthening Japanese-language education in local communities (all accessed 12 August 2026).