For years I have been struggling to dedicatedly study kanji as I find flashcards painfully boring. So my vocabulary was very much lacking in that regard. I took a 2-3 year break studying Japanese because I lost motivation and also to focus on my biology degree, and now that I'm back in the game I truly found the way that works for me and isn't boring — kanken training on the NDS.

Forget JLPT lists, wanikani or kanji damage, kanken training is where it's at (in my opinion of course). I've found it's very useful to learn kanji in the same order as schools in Japan, since they begin with the easier to write kanji and group them by reading instead of meaning, and there's more emphasis on stroke order and radical names. I'm still at 9級 so I don't know how well I will fare when I go further, but so far I'm retaining kanji and readings better than before, since I have to do writing and reading exercises where I, for example, read a sentence and fill in the kanji for the marked kana.

I'm doing this all with a DS software (that's probably very outdated by now) called 財団法人日本漢字能力検定協会　公式ソフト　２５０万人の漢検　プレミアム　which I found out about through a Game Gengo video. From the same video I also use a reading training game as supplement to boost my comprehensive reading skills in a fun way. That one is called うっかりをなくそう！文章読みトレーニング（読みトレ）

Only if I don't know something will I look it up in my dictionary app on my phone (Shirabe Jisho for iOS) and write the sentence in a notebook. And all this combined makes for a more fun and interactive learning experience instead of cramming flashcards and wondering why I just can't seem to remember what 提供 means even though I've seen the card so many times (core 2000 vocab sentence deck step 3).

Outside of studying I am reading One Piece in Japanese and I already noticed an improvement in reading speed since my hiatus. I do want to start reading actual books at some point too.

Maybe my experiences are useful to know for any other learners who hate flashcards and get stuck on kanji and vocab.

やっと金曜日ですね！お疲れ様です！ここに週末の予定について書いてみましょう！

（やっと　きんようびですね！　おつかれさまです！　ここに　しゅうまつの　よていについて　かいてみましょう！）

やっと = finally

週末（しゅうまつ）= weekend

予定（よてい）= plan(s)

～について = about

＊ネイティブスピーカーと上級者のみなさん、添削してください！もちろん参加してもいいですよ！＊

I've been thinking that I want to increase my amount of output, and just practice speaking Japanese more often.

I speak Japanese at work, but it is always about the same topics, so I don't get a lot of variety of practice. Then when I find myself hanging out with Japanese people, I can barely participate in conversations.

I thought I'd just go on iTalki and find the cheapest conversation partners possible and just book one person for one hour every weekday.

Thing is, the vast majority of teachers, even the cheapest teachers, on iTalki are charging about 2,000 yen for 60 minutes. That's 1万円 a week. 4万円 a month. A little more than I was hoping to pay.

Thing is I'm not even necessarily looking for teachers here. I'm just looking for conversation partners.

Does anyone have any recommendations for alternative platforms or alternative ideas for how to get speaking practice in?

I've got a full-time job and two kids under five so I can't really just go to a bar every night and chat up the locals or anything like that.

hey all! has anybody made a good anki deck for the new Tobira Intermediate Japanese textbook?

I’m mostly just looking for a vocab deck with kanji but I would be interested in a grammar deck if anyone has one (I’m not sure how much the grammar has changed from Tobira Gateway to Advanced)

I’m taking a class using the new book and the decks from the Tobira website are kinda…..

I recently downloaded the さくら荘のペットな彼女 light novels as epub files. I've been trying to look for a web browser epub reader so that I can use Yomitan for mining, however, the websites I've found seem to be having trouble loading the format properly. Does anybody have any alternatives? If not, is there something that I could set up that acts as an alternative to Yomitan which can be used on any PC app for mining/autocards instead of only the browser?

When you listening to a video, or anime, without any subtitles, not even in japanese. How often do you pause when you find a word you didn't know, or when you do not understand a sentence?

When listening to japanese I prefer to just feel the flow, pick up something that's for natives but not too hard for me and just listen it without much pausing. In fact, I prefer to rely on context rather than pausing every word I don't know. As much, I might replay some parts if I lost focus or got stuck after some word.

I don't know if that's active or passive listening, as I might pause every 5 minutes or so, and I'm also paying attention, but I'm not looking to every unknown word and thus not being exposed to a lot of vocab. I usually lookup mor things and make flashcards when reading books.

I don't know if I should pause more often even if it is more tedious, I did it in the pass when I mostly watched anime with jp subs, now I mostly watch youtube (not videos for japanese learners) of topics I'm interested in and, only if the video have burned subtitles I might read them.

I would really like to know due to time limitations and specific goals so i can efficiently alot my time into learning those that are actually used commonly

I haven't heard anything do this or talk about this but,

listening to music WHILE listening to a podcast or youtube video AT THE SAME TIME is giving me insane gains,

I started this reccently and I go like literally all day doing this cause I always listened to music 24/7,but now I can get comprehensive input and shadow Japanese in my head at the same time and listen to music for really long hours without getting tired/sick of the podcast.

I set my Japanese YouTube video or podcast to 100%, then my music to 70% ish, using no bg music podcast / yt video and soft / muffled fav music playlist.

why this works:

I get continuous on demand dopamine from music while listening to jp person talking, allowing long hours of listening without getting tired

don't u just focus on the music and ignore the jp podcast playing?:

no cause Jp person speaking is louder than the music so I naturally focus on that, I can't focus on music without hearing the jp person talking, try it out to experience it. the jp person speaking kinda becomes part of the music lol

isn't listening to podcast by it's self better?:

I get bored of it, this method allows me to go all day and not get tired cause it feels like I'm listening to music but I'm making Japanese listening gains. I can adjust music volume lower to focus more on podcast if I want or increase music volume and decrease Jp podcast volume if I'm rlly tired or just wanna listen to music.

details:

the key is to listen to yt videos or podcasts with no background music, like Emma mind, Mr Fuji, ぼっとんの生き様切り抜き , ゆりお言語学習ラジオ ect or whatever u like but thye must have little to no sound effects and no background music.

then for the music, I prefer muffled music but also normal music works best, I listen to soft music anyway so dosent affect me.

I'm n1+ level and it dosent take effort to listen to podcasts and I think this method is best at this level but there's heaps of simple podcasts use those

on andriod u have to enable multi sound in sound assistant plugin in good lock on andriod, idk about iPhone.

I have heaps of other methods like for using dopamine to study Jp, making u want to want to study Jp but this is my fav. I'll prob write a guide one day

Hi,

I am 24, soon to be 25. I finished college and graduated in Business Informatics (generally IT). I have wanted to go to Japan for about 5 years now. I have been studying Japanese on and off for about 3 years.

I finished Genki 1 & 2 and have over 2.5k words in Anki (Core 2k/6k Optimized Japanese Vocabulary deck). But for the past year and a half, I have found myself struggling to improve. It's probably due to a lack of discipline, as I really just finish my daily Anki deck and watch about 2 hours of Japanese content (mainly anime with Japanese subtitles and Japanese YouTube channels). I have heard that immersion is the best way to learn, and what better type of immersion is there than actually living in Japan?

As I mainly studied Japanese so I could go to Japan and experience the culture firsthand, I suppose it's logical to go there long-term and learn the language this way. At first, I thought I would go there for a year through a Working Holiday Visa, but when I watch Japanese videos, streamers, and podcasts, there are often times when I lose track of the conversation because my Japanese isn't quite where I want it to be. So I don't think a Working Holiday, where I would need to find myself a バイト, is a good idea.

Lately, I have been wondering if going to a language school for, let's say, 3 months wouldn't be a better plan.

So that's my situation, and now for the questions:

Do you think my conclusion that language school would be a better idea than a Working Holiday is correct?

If so, which language school would you recommend?

What level of difficulty should I go for? I am not a complete beginner, but I can't really speak Japanese (well sort of I would not die if you left me in the middle of the city or 田舎). I can kind of understand conversations if the person keeps in mind that I am not really fluent in Japanese.

PS: My English is I would say fluent, not like it will really help me in Japan as I want to avoid Tokyo. I would prefer staying in Nagoya / Osaka / Shizuoka. And as for money I have about 5-6k budget but I would like to part-time if possible so that I can earn some money back while studying/staying there, any tips regarding accommodation are appreciated.

WORKING Holiday part:

Also, initially I planned to work at a ski resort for the first 4 months and try to immerse myself in the language and improve my Japanese while working there. I have heard that at ski resorts, you don't necessarily have to be fluent in Japanese to get a part-time job while staying in Japan on a Working Holiday Visa, and that being fluent in English can actually be helpful.

However, I was worried about what I would do after my contract at the ski resort ended and how difficult it would be to find another part-time job and accommodation afterwards.

If I do end up going with the Working Holiday Visa, I would ideally like to find a part-time job at a hotel or hostel, preferably one that provides staff accommodation. If anyone has experience with this or has any tips on how to find this kind of job, I would really appreciate it.

Any tips regarding "wahori" in general also appreciated!

Reposting my JLPT results from the r/JLPT subreddit.

Leading up to the results release day, I was pretty nervous as it was my first go at N1 after having taken N2. Well, turns out I managed to pass.

It was interesting to compare this with the simulated weighted results (in brackets) I got when plugging in my estimated correct answers in each section:

Vocab and Grammar: 39/44 -> 53/60 (47/60)

Reading: 12/22 -> 32/60 (26/60)

Listening: 21/31 -> 40/60 (35/60)

Total: 125/180 (108/180)

These results show that the Item Response Theory (IRT) system graded my results more favourably. This is in line with anecdotal evidence I've read of people getting official scores higher than their estimations.

For the answers themselves, I got lucky that the vocab and grammar carried my test, and my mistakes were 1 in section 2, 2 in section 4, 1 in section 5, and 1 in section 7, which means I got the hardest sections right or mostly right. This probably made the IRT grade this section as 満点, but I was not expecting to get the score I did at all to be honest.

Meanwhile, in reading, which is usually my strongest point (consistently getting 80% in past papers), I got the half or 2/3rds of the medium, long, and comparison passage questions wrong, which is why this score is considerably higher than I expected it to be. Silly thing is that there were some questions I initially answered correct but I changed them because I stayed too long on them. To be fair, some of the options this time had at least two very plausible answers at least for me, and the text could get pretty convoluted. The usual advice of eliminating the wrong answers instead of picking the most correct one didn't work in this paper and it threw me off. I even got one of the information retrieval questions wrong and that's supposed to be the easiest one, and as usual, I ran out of time, so I had to guess 3 questions from the long text.

The listening section is where the final score ended up aligning with my expectations. I did well in the first half of the listening section, but the spontaneous response was tougher than usual. I got 4 questions incorrect on this one. And for the final long dialogue questions, well I didn't get any of them correct. I was supposed to get questions number 2 and 3 correct, my notes were correct and all, but stupidly I didn't focus on which question was which, so I hesitated and got the answers switched, probably would've felt a lot more confident in my results before they came out if I got at least those two questions right.

Going back to the weighted results I got online, I think there is some value in calculating the expected results. Although they're not as accurate, they're decent at giving expectations on how your final score would end up and if you need to prepare again for the next test if your score tanked hard enough.

This is my 6'th year studying Japanese after studying intensely from year 1-3 and studying on and off for the rest. Funny that now I'm a doctor with N1 after starting med school 6 years ago not knowing if I would continue learning Japanese as a hobby.

I think N1 in 6 years is a slow but still realistic pace. If you put your head down and focus on studying specifically for the JLPT, you surely can get to N1 much faster. For me enjoying the ride and not prioritising learning Japanese in some periods of my life were more important to keep the habit going long-term, especially because I don't live in Japan.

Getting this pass felt like a relief, because now I can focus on immersing for immersion's sake, although I will continue to use Anki by mining from my immersion, not from N1 specific decks like I did for N1 prep. My main immersion media was through novels on my Kindle, but now I'm starting to immerse with Japanese movies with subtitles and YouTube videos aimed to native speakers on various topics I like. It's tough immersing with native material, but I'm slowing getting used to it.

I will also focus on speaking and writing which are my weakest points by far. Hopefully I can finally go to Japan, which is the real post-N1 New Game Plus challenge for me.

Resources used:

- WaniKani (2020-2022) -> 2074 kanji, 6501 vocab at level 60

- Anki (2020-now) -> ~4k mining/JLPT vocab cards

(Total vocab ~10K words)

- Bunpro (2021-now) -> Cleared most N1 grammar points at level 100

- Yomitan with mainly monolingual dictionaries and a supplementary bilingual dictionary for sentence mining to Anki

- 新完全マスター N2 and N1 series for JLPT prep

- 5 JLPT past papers for practice exams

- Various Japanese podcasts

- Cure Dolly (RIP) for teaching me grammar fundamentals

Media completed:

Manga:

- Yotsubato

- Girls Last Tour

- Isshuukan Friends

- I Sold My Life For 10000 Yen

- Look Back

- Goodbye Eri

Anime:

- Teasing Master Takagi-san S1-S3

Books:

- After Dark

- The Little Prince

- Japanese Short Essays Collection

- また同じ夢を見ていた

- Before The Coffee Gets Cold

- Lonely Castle in the Mirror

- Kafka on The Shore

(Also a couple of movies recently)

I'm curious to read about your results too if you've taken the test and also your Japanese learning journey so far!

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Did I run out of the free trial period, or something? I don’t remember the app saying I had a trial period

Happy Thursday!

Every Thursday, come here to share your progress! Get to a high level in Wanikani? Complete a course? Finish Genki 1? Tell us about it here! Feel yourself falling off the wagon? Tell us about it here and let us lift you back up!

Weekly Thread changes daily at 9:00 JST:

Mondays - Writing Practice

Tuesdays - Study Buddy and Self-Intros

Wednesdays - Materials and Self-Promotions

Thursdays - Victory day, Share your achievements

Fridays - Memes, videos, free talk

Hi all,

So these types of post seem to be generally appreciated, and I myself have quite enjoyed reading them as a motivation and guide. So without further ado, here’s my “journey,” as they call it.

How long I studied: I first took a year and a half of Japanese at my university, and then spent a year and a half at Japanese universities taking up various classes. I am aware this means I am very privileged compared to many here who may not have had these luxuries, and I am thankful for it. My year and a half in Japan is also what contributed most to my level, as being forced to learn (I had really difficult law, physics, and history classes) is really good for me. After 2,5 years of study, I passed N2. After coming back from Japan, I took a break of many years, and didn’t touch Japanese at all (not even Anki or movies or whatnot) for nearly 5 years, then I took it back up recently and passed the N1 with about 6 months of medium intensity study. 

The JLPT N1: It’s an entirely passive exam for which you can really prepare, so it’s really not too difficult. I’m not saying you’ll pass it without knowing Japanese, of course, nor do I want to insult people who didn’t pass it, but I spent a lot of time taking about 20 mock exams, and once you understand the structure and way of asking questions (and have a decent N2+ level) you can pass it without too much difficulty, I think. I’m also a bit disappointed, having recently passed the Cambridge C2 and IELTS English exams. The N1 is high B2/low C1, in other words, it’s nowhere near native. I’m also not at all as confident in my Japanese as my N1 qualification suggests. I feel like I have no official qualification to work towards now, besides being worthy of my N1. Still, I can’t complain, as I needed the N1 for PhD applications. I’m just saying the JLPT exam is quite outdated, just look at the Chinese HSK in comparison. 

My level: As I said, I still feel very inadequate in Japanese. I can have a daily conversation no problem, and always get praised for my accent and intonation, which for some reason is apparently quite natural despite me having never really specifically focused on it. I am capable of reading short texts (N1 style passages) without too much issue, my vocabulary isn’t quite N1 level yet but I can usually extract the gist. My major issue is long term reading, and expressing myself in more in-depth conversations. I’m still incapable of reading a book, for example. I get really tired and my brain shuts down (I have ADHD, by the way, but I can’t say this is a valid excuse). I’m working on it but reading shorter passages from books I downloaded on my e-reader. I hope it gets better in the coming months (recently got some good advice from a recent post. Another thing that really frustrates me is my inability to express myself adequately in conversation. I really appreciate deeper conversations about philosophy, science, history, etc, but cannot yet do so in Japanese to an adequate degree. This is depressing for me as the point of learning languages for me is being able to connect on a really fundamental level with people, and not have the same what-are-the-differences-between-Japan-and-your-country conversation over and over. 

Great ressources: Thought I’d mention some amazing intermediate/advanced ressources I’ve never seen mentioned on this subreddit before.

• 日本語ききはじめ: Podcast. Way more difficult than the Yuyu podcast that’s always recommended (which I quite like as well for low-effort listening), but also way more rewarding and interesting. Every episode is a 15min deep-dive into horseriding, dyslexia, or some other really random topic, and its history in Japan and elsewhere. It’s a fascinating podcast and I’ve learned so much “real” Japanese cultural and historical knowledge, and not just the basic stuff you always read.
• NHK高校講座 https://edu.web.nhk/kokokoza/ : High school video and audio ressources. I love this. I’m currently halfway through the 日本史 course, and have watched a few from the geography, world history, chemistry, and other courses as well. Subtitles available, as well as PDF containing the essentials from each class. No VPN needed, free access. 
• Netflix + Asbplayer + Anki: Quite a finnicky combo to set up, but it’s amazing once you’ve got it going. Allows you to hover your mouse over Netflix subtitles, and to save phrases with their audio context in Anki. For some reason, I just don’t forget expressions I’ve learned this way. No VPN needed, you get more stuff if you do use it though.
• NHK On demand: Japanese subscription for amazing documentaries and pretty much everything you could want. Cheap. VPN needed. Subtitles always available, but you can’t select them for mining.
• Android e-reader + Hoshi reader app + Anki: Expensive to get an android e-reader (Boox, Meebook, about $200), but very nice for long term reading. E-books bought via Kobo Japan and downloaded via Calibre are very cheap.

Anyway, that’s about it for this post. In the future, I hope to learn enough to be worthy of my N1 tag, and I especially hope my reading gets better, as it’s necessary for research… I hope this wasn’t too much of a pessimistic post, though I thought I’d be honest about what I think rather than making a self-aggrandising N1 post like you sometimes see (case in point, another post on the frontpage is about some guy saying he got N1 in 850 hours, but god knows how that transitions to real-life Japanese usage... Maybe he's just super efficient)

French is my other language aside from Japanese and English, and it has a tendency to come out randomly at... Unfortunate times. I would like some way of explaining that... It is not standard French but Quebecois, which is from Canada, and not Europe. It also sounds very different from the French you are used to hearing. If someone asks... How exactly do I explain? Because there does not seem to be a word for Quebecois. Because it will happen at least half a dozen times, and I would like... An explanation if someone is curious.

In December 2025, I took the JLPT N2 after 10 months of study and passed it. Two months ago, I took the July JLPT N1 and passed that too. Interestingly, I spent more time going from N2 to N1 than I did getting to N2 in the first place (380 - 400 hours to N2, 435 - 450 hours from N2 to N1).
I've noticed a lot of discussion around the gap between N2 and N1 on this subreddit lately, so I thought I'd share how I bridged that gap, along with detailed statistics of pretty much everything I did.
My main approach was simple: read a lot, do Anki every day, and listen whenever I felt like fitting it in. In order to avoid repeating myself, I won't go over my journey from a beginner again, as I already covered that in my last post above, and will instead dive into every aspect of the approach I used to get to this point.
Once again, I've compiled my detailed statistics and individual logs into a spreadsheet, accessible below. Since taking the N2, I switched from my old spreadsheet to Kechimochi for logging immersion, which made my life a lot easier and the spreadsheet a lot more informative this time.

Statistics

Original Post

Total immersion = 714.1 hours

Total Anki = 120 hours

Total time spent learning Japanese ≈ 834-850 hours

Average study time/day: 1 hour 35 minutes (2 hours 8 minutes from N2 to N1)

Reading = 603 hours 23 minutes

Listening = 110 hours 40 minutes

Total characters read = 7,723,074

Visual Novels = 4,960,675 文字 for 384.9 hours

Light Novels = 1,576,956 文字 for 129.1 hours

Novels = 1,069,292 文字 for 82.3 hours

Webnovels = 83,237 文字 for 4.3 hours

Manga = 32,914 文字 for 2.9 hours

Anime = 78.0 hours

Podcasts = 17.5 hours

Audiobook = 14.6 hours

Anki retention = 77.1% (75.2% Young, 86.1% Mature)

Total vocabulary cards ~ 7,320

Average reviews/day = 336

Total Kanji in Anki = 2660

Detailed immersion stats - Immersion Spreadsheet

Reading

(Check the spreadsheet out to see what I read exactly!)
A large portion of my reading this time around was concentrated around visual novels, even more so than last year. Although I did read a good amount of novels, I found it easier to concentrate and read for longer periods of time with visual novels. My reading speed right after passing the N2 was around 13-15k 文字/hr on most "simple" media. The first novel I read after the N2 was ノルウェイの森, which was a pretty good book for learners IMO (subject matter aside), owing to its relatively simple vocabulary. This book in particular happened to have a lot of sentences that worked in ways I hadn't seen much of before, which made deciphering those sentences a bit more interesting than usual.
I've always believed that reading native material is the key to comprehension and acquiring vocabulary and grammar, and fully believe that reading as much as I did was the reason I managed to pass N1 in such a short period of time (relatively, at least). Between taking the N2 and taking the N1, I read a total of 5,289,000 characters, which is an average of 25k 文字/day.
I got a lot of questions last time about how I track my immersion, and it's quite straightforward. For visual novels, I use Renji's Texthooker to hook text for lookups, and it counts my character count and time every session for me as well. I use ttsu to read on my laptop, which lets you track both metrics as well.
One of the biggest lessons I relearnt this period was that if I wasn't enjoying what I was reading, it felt like it took thrice as much effort to sit down and read it. Even if a book was difficult, as long as I was invested in the story and looking forward to seeing what came next, I could make it through long reading sessions without thinking too much about it. On the other hand, when i forced myself to read novels I wasn't enjoying even after a while, both my reading stamina and speed suffered as a result. There is value in finding material to immerse in that is easy and "at your level", but if you don't want to read it, you likely won't have the will to read it hours on end either.

Mining & Anki

Most of my Anki cards come from mining native media, which basically means that whenever I find a word that would be useful to remember while reading, I click on a button using Yomitan that automatically makes a card for it in my Anki. I see a lot of posts around here about what deck to use after finishing Kaishi 1.5k, and I'd like to recommend mining — there's nothing quite like repping cards that you remember seeing in your immersion, since the added context helps you remember way better.
As of taking the N1, I had around 5,820 cards in my mining deck, which, combined with my mature Kaishi deck, brings me to a total of ~7,320 vocabulary cards.

My new cards per day honestly depends on how I'm feeling about Anki that day/week. I have weeks when I get fired up and do 30-50 a day, and weeks when I burn out and stop new cards completely. A more balanced approach would have probably done me a lot of good, but I'm not very good with balancing myself unfortunately.
According to my current stats, on average I spend 16 minutes a day on my Anki. This low time in proportion to my card count is probably because I rep cards really fast — 2.5 to 3 seconds on average.

For the first few months, I tried to make sure I graded my cards strictly based on whether I remembered the reading and meaning, but as my vocabulary grew larger, I started heavily favoring grading based on reading over meaning instead, in exchange for shorter rep times which means more immersion!). I prefer to solidify the meaning of these words when I see them in context during immersion in the hopes that it sticks better. I don't really recommend this approach until you have a solid vocabulary base, since you'd just be holding yourself back.
Personally, I think keeping reps under ~5–8 seconds is a good target. If I can't recall a card within that window (sometimes even shorter), I usually treat it as a failure rather than sitting there trying to recall in vain.
Personally, I've found that only using the "Again" and "Good" buttons to grade cards is pretty beneficial. It's good for FSRS and also good for you, since you don't have to worry about whether you partially got a card right or not. If you don't remember the back, you press 1 — simple as that.

Listening

As with my last post, I still haven't put a lot of effort into improving my listening ability, which is a fault I'm trying to work on right now. I've managed to barely cruise by thanks to passive listening from all the visual novels I play, but that really doesn't compare to dedicated active listening.
Most of the listening I did in this period came from anime once again. The main reason I didn't watch more is simply because I burnt out a bit and had trouble finding stuff I enjoyed watching. Most of the time I try to watch without JP subtitles, since I'd like to rely less on subtitles and hone my listening as much as possible.
I also listened to podcasts and audiobooks a bit. Audiobooks in particular are quite fun, since you're still following a story. Audiobooks can sometimes be really spiced up too, with multiple voice actors, music and sound effects sometimes. My comprehension rate with audiobooks varied a lot: I listened to one where I comprehended 90-95% of what I was listening to, and the one right after that was a lot worse with around 70-80%. I suspect this is because I have trouble picking out words that I already know yet largely rely on kanji to identify, which can really only be fixed by listening more.
Podcasts are harder than audiobooks in a different way. Native speakers speak in all sorts of ways, and often even faster than audiobooks. However since you aren't really following a narrative, you're punished less if your mind drifts off while listening to one. I probably would've listened to more podcasts if I found more I was interested in listening to, which is unfortunate.

Preparing for and taking the N1

Regrettably, my "success" with the N2 led me to believe that I didn't really need to study much for the N1 this time as long as I read a lot, which is partially true. I had plans of going through Shin Kanzen Master N1 文法 at least once, which ended up not happening until the day before the test.
My only N1 mock test was taken 3 weeks before the real thing. I scored 62%, with high scores in Reading and Listening. I noticed that I was able to narrow a lot of answers in 言語知識 down to 2 options, with the difference being specific contextual nuance that I wasn't familiar with yet. Nevertheless, I passed all sections comfortably and decided I didn't need to do much more preparation.
On the day before the test, I panicked after realizing how ill-prepared I was and foolishly tried cramming the first section of SKM 文法, only managing to get half of it down. I don't really know why I did this since I was unlikely to remember any of these "niche" grammar points, and all I got out of it was a bad night's sleep.
Taking the N1 itself went a lot better than I expected. Curiously, I thought I did really well in 言語知識 and pretty decently in Reading, this time managing to finish on time with a minute to spare. Listening was a different story, though. I distinctly remember fumbling multiple questions, losing momentum thanks to staying stuck on a question while the next one started playing. This was my lack of listening catching up to me — my mostly passive listening could only take me so far, and for the N1, where you have to keep track of multiple topics for each question in order to answer correctly, I found myself doubting my answers more than once. It went so badly that after the test, I was sure that if I were to fail, it would be because I failed the listening section cutoff. I ended up scoring a...

109! A bit below expectations honestly, I could have definitely done better in Listening if I simply did more active Listening practice. My Vocabulary was an A and Grammar a B, which checks out given my trouble with Grammar this time around. Unlike the N2, where my bottleneck was vocabulary, thanks to having read the amount I did since then, my vocabulary shot up, and I was able to recognize almost every word I saw on the test. Questions which test your understanding of the nuance of certain words, such as 問題４ in 言語知識, still gave me a lot of trouble though.

Tips

1. Read more!!! Reading your favorite manga, light novels or novels in Japanese for even 15 to 30 minutes a day is fun and does wonders for your Japanese. As mentioned in the Reading section, it really is a tremendous slog for the first few months, and you will want to give up because it's not as fun as you thought it was yet, but as long as you put the time in every day, I promise you will start to see improvement!
2. Try not to use the JLPT as a syllabus. Unless you need the JLPT for a specific reason, like a school or visa application, try to view the JLPT as a benchmark of your Japanese progress instead of something you specifically study for to pass. It makes studying feel a lot less constricting and allows you to concentrate on what's important to you, whether that's immersing, speaking, writing or whatever else you love about Japanese.
3. Find a community of people learning alongside you if you can. I was active in TMW's Discord, and having people around who were immersing a ton every day too motivated the hell out of me to immerse even harder, since I didn't want to fall behind. It also made the process more fun, since I could compare notes on what was and wasn't working with people who were a lot better than me.

Thoughts

I'm pretty happy with my progress since I started to learn Japanese. While I do think I could have put more effort into my earlier months, I don't have many other regrets and wouldn't change a lot. I definitely didn't think I would get this far when I started out.
Do I feel good at Japanese? To be honest, no. Passing N1 is a cool benchmark, but it doesn't suddenly make Japanese feel "easy" to me. Although I can read a good amount of native material without a lot of hassle (around 17k-18k 文字/hr on most average light novels and visual novels), I still feel way too much friction while doing so in order for it to feel similar to reading in English. I plan on trying my hand at a few harder novels in order to deepen the breadth of my vocabulary and improve my comprehension, as well as watching a lot more anime I'm interested in now. I'll also start getting to a few titles I've wanted to read for a long time (like my first goal, サクラノ詩 which I plan on reading at the same time as a friend later this year).
Leaving input aside, my output is obviously still severely lacking. I haven't done much besides write book reviews and put thoughts together in my head. While I do personally think that the quality of my book reviews has been improving a lot recently, it's still nowhere near where I'd like it to be. Unfortunately, I still don't have an immediate need or urge to practice my output, and will probably keep holding it off until I hit some other goals (my goal for now is Eternal Idol, a vocab rank in TMW).

In order to read more about the immersion stuff I talked about over here, I highly recommend giving these guides a read.
Kuri's guide and TMW guide are still the best guides around IMO, the latter introducing me to the language. If I had to recommend a guide to a beginner today, I think Kuri's guide is a great starting point.

If you're still here, thanks for making it all the way through this really long post! Feel free to comment or DM me if you have any questions, and I'll do my best to answer them!

TL;DR

• Read a lot
• https://donkuri.github.io/learn-japanese/

hello everyone!

i’m going to be in n3 class by the end of the month and i’m a bit nervous since i’m scared i’ll fall back into my hold habit of not studying.

see, i’ve never been a studious child when i was in school and i only really put in the effort when i started learning japanese because of how much i love the language.

over the past few months i’ve been consistently studying kanji and vocabulary, reviewing grammar on japatalk, and trying to read manga in japanese and watch japanese drama for the listening aspect (i tried those jlpt audios and podcasts on youtube but i keep zoning out lol) but i’ve never fully “locked in.”

i’m worried once summer break is over and i’m back at work, i’ll be too drained to even review one flash card deck. i have my goals tapped to my desk with some motivational messages, have a light study schedule, and i’ve been using the pomodoro technique but i’m worried that i’ll burn out and use work and my anxiety as scapegoats.

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Hi ppl! First time posting something here, please be nice :)

I completed JLPT N3 last year in July with 109/180 but I don't feel worthy of the tag. My speaking skills are shit T_T

I got 50/60 in listening, 31/60 reading and 28/60 in vocab grammar. I never really focused on grammar in any language and vocab I am not doing the right way with consistency for the same reason I suck at speaking Japanese. I have been working along with studies so it gave me a reason to fail once (IK IK). Now that I have failed N2 twice, this Dec will be my 3rd attempt and I don't want to fail. Given the 3 months that I'm left with I don't think I'm going to make it. Along with this I also have to find a job, I left a month ago without an offer in hand cuz that place suckedd. I planned to find an entry level job in Japanese only since that is the only option I've left for myself. I come from a non IT background and have almost zero knowledge of any technical skills. I have been doing underpaid jobs to support my studies but now I don't seem to be going anywhere with it. I haven't made any money except for surviving a month and funding my graduation+ japanese. I feel so stuck rn. I'm 24 & all my friends who had started with me seemed to have found their way but I on the other hand seems to be standing at the same place. Idk what to do atp. I haven't really taken any Japanese interviews till now so even finding an entry level job seems like a task (not to forget my terrible speaking skills). I also don't seem to have much time to survive without a job to make it through till Dec and then find a job since I fund my family too. If I take another shitty job with low to average pay I feel I'll be stuck in the same loop with no improvements in language and will probably fail N2 yet again... Pls helpppppp T_T

Hiii so I studied japanese in high school and a bit in university as well, passed the N3 at the time but that was 7 years ago.

I was surprised that I still remember enough Japanese to have to have daily conversations with natives (had a new neighbour for a while), but I can't say that I remember much aside from that and maybe some basic kanji.

For those of you who passively brushed up on their Japanese, how did you do it? Ideally I'd prefer an app instead of going through Genki again, even better if it's something that can assess your current level. I've started learning Spanish atm so I'd like to focus on that for a while until I get to a decent level, then to pick up the pace from where I left with N3.

Basically I'm looking for an app of sorts that will allow me to do daily exercises that fit my (now unknown?) level.