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
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.
(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
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!
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.
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!
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.
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)
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