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Every Tuesday, come here to Introduce yourself and find your study group! Share your discords and study plans. Find others at the same point in their journey as you.
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.
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!
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)
I've been studying Japanese for quite a while and I would roughly estimate my ability around low N2. While I love Japanese and could spend all day studying, I'm in college and also working almost full time. I don't have a ton of time to study, maybe an hour or so per day.
Anyways, lately I've been mostly reading for 30 minutes and watching a drama for 30 minutes or so most days. I'd like to focus on grammar and perfecting my pitch accent, etc, but at this point I kinda have to pick one or the other.
Am I handicapping myself by just doing input every day? Should I alternate focused studying and relaxed input every other day? I just feel a little stagnant and I'm not sure what the best strategy would be here. I'm not sure if I'm doing the most time efficient method. Any input would be appreciated.
Because Japanese lacks punctuation like English, I'm having a hard time discerning when phrases begin and end. I've translated it as "after halfway ... I don't understand." But that middle phrase with "なると” at the beginning is throwing me off.
I am preparing for the N3 using Renshuu and I don't quite understand how schedules work. Could someone help me a bit?
When I chose my level, four schedules were selected for me:
Intermediate Japanese
Words for Intermediate
Intermediate Kanji (N3)
Intermediate Sentences (N3)
They seem connected in the order in which they show items, but I'm unsure exactly how. Am I right in the feeling that they all depend on the "Intermediate Japanese" schedule, and that choosing to study a new grammar item adds a bunch of new items to the other three?
Additional question: Should I, then, wait until no more items are left to study for the first time in the other three before going into a new topic in the "Intermediate Japanese" schedule?
I used this sub's resources when I first started studying Japanese, and now I'm living and working in Japan and just passed N1 this July! I figured I'd try and pay it forward by offering some free tutoring for anyone interested.
If you want me to review something you wrote, do conversation practice, or even just talk about Japanese, I'm open to anything!
comment if you're down and we can get something going
edit: gotta go sleep now, if you wanna chat comment or feel free to dm me your discord and i’ll try to get to it later
Speaking has always been one of the harder things to practise, so my speaking level has always been terrible. Last week, I spent a week with japanese students who came over for a short field trip. In those days, I spoke more japanese than English, and I made noticeable improvements since the first day.
After about 2 days, we became more comfortable with each other and used tameguchi. I learnt many slangs such is 「っつんた」 and Kansai ben words and jokes as well. We had many fun conversations that ended with us all laughing. It was especially entertaining when they were teaching me words like 俺様 and 貴様 and 連中. But these twats be asking me to use it if I get arrested by the police.
They also did many "listening practices" for me, where they would speak at their normal speed about a topic, then they would ask me a few questions about their conversation. Needless to say I couldn't grasp anymore than the key details at that speed. But it built my listening confidence alot more, which is good as I'm taking n3 this December.
They were surprised by how much japanese I knew, and they complained that they weren't getting enough English practise with me around haha. I also met a few other japanese learners, but surprisingly most of my country's people who joined this exchange event knew basically 0 japanese.
In conclusion, if you ever get the opportunity to meet people from Japan, jump for the opportunity! I made many friends and they asked me to come to Japan, promising to show me around this time. I look forward to joining more events like this, and the tremendous impact it had on my speaking ability due to constant usage and immersion is amazing!
This thread is for all the simple questions (what does that mean?) and minor posts that don't need their own thread, as well as for first-time posters who can't create new threads yet. Feel free to share anything on your mind.
The daily thread updates every day at 9am JST, or 0am UTC.
Read also the pinned comment below for proper question etiquette & answers to common questions!
Please make sure to check the wiki and search for old posts before asking your question, to see if it's already been addressed. Don't forget about Google or sites like Stack Exchange either!
This subreddit is also loosely partnered with this language exchange Discord, which you can likewise join to look for resources, discuss study methods in the #japanese_study channel, ask questions in #japanese_questions, or do language exchange(!) and chat with the Japanese people in the server.
Past Threads
You can find past iterations of this thread by using the search function. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.
I have been studying japanese for about 2 years now in university and managed to pass n3, but I really didn't expect to, because I have been really slacking on my studies. I am really behind on grammar, vocabulary, kanji and just about everything else, but since I managed to somehow pass n3 I want to "lock in" and ACTUALLY get to n3 level and even try for n2 in December, but the problem is I don't know where to start. I don't know where to get resources to fill in the many gaps I have and reinforce what I already know. If anyone has suggestions how I can improve please let me know 🙏
Pimsleur is an OG foreign language resource, like books on tape from the 90s. They took the listen-and-repeat or try-to-say-the-following format and made it into an app with a lot of other materials. But the core is 150 30 minute lessons split into five “levels.”
Pros:
Kept me motivated with a clear goal (lesson a day ideally, or at least keep going to finish the curriculum and stop paying)
Speech recognition exercises are decent and I made a rule to do it after every lesson.
Mostly practical vocab like actual conversations you’d have as a foreigner trying to travel, eat etc. And small talk.
Equates to listening practice where the same stuff comes up over and over until it feels routine.
Focus on casual versus formal - mostly deals with friendly dialogues. This was a good contrast to other Japanese materials that want us to default to formal speech.
Cons:
$20.99 usd per month
Overall not a ton of content covered, really drills a few dozen practical conversations. Doesn't give “coverage” of common phrases or anything.
Like duo, progress does not really map to anything real. I’m still N4ish.
Overall very glad I did this. Having the English handholding kept me engaged and I was making progress on other things at the same time. At this point it’s much easier to jump into the easiest Japanese only podcasts etc.
A few people have asked me how I passed the N2 after 2 years of study under one of my recent posts, so I have decided to explain it here. I took the N2 in December 2025
DISCLAIMER:
I can't recommend my process to anyone tbh, I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning and my study methods have remained largely inconsistent, but at the end I will discuss what I believe to be the most effective study methods.
Sept 2023-2024
I learned Hiragana and Katakana on duolingo. It's the only thing I would ever actually recommend duolingo for, although there are likely better ways of learning. I also wrote the kana down repeatedly. After I had memorized a few hundred words, I began using the Genki 1 textbook to study grammar, although I only got about halfway through the book before I stopped. That period lasted about 4 months, and I probably only studied 15 or so minutes a day.
A little ways into my journey, I found the Jouzu Juls youtube channel and watched Krashen's comprehensible input video that has probably changed the lives of many foreign language learners. Afterwards I set up an anki deck and began looking for immersion in any way I could, although everything was nearly impossible for me to understand at that point. I found some simple Japanese youtube channels that retold stories like The Tortoise and the Hare or narrated simple online games.
After about a month of that, I was finally able to move onto one of the GOATS of Japanese language learning, Japanese with Shun. I would often watch his videos multiple times, once for practice, one for looking up words, and once more to see what i had learned. I was also beginning to do some simple reading in Japanese using this website.
For the last 6 months or so, I probably averaged about an hour a day. Sometimes I would get three hours in, sometimes I would only do my anki, but it was certainly more consistent.
Once I had studied for a year, I went on a 2-month study abroad to Japan. I went to a language school called EF, although I would never recommend it because of how awfully expensive it is. I honestly was not the best student while I was there. I occasionally skipped classes, and I spent most of my time exploring the city. I was in Tokyo after all. But I feel that I was not able to study as much Japanese as I would have liked. Luckily, I lived with a host mother, so me and her spoke Japanese together quite frequently. Overall I would say I spent at least 5 hours a day studying/speaking Japanese, although my social anxiety held me back from utilizing my time very well. If I had to grade myself at this point I'd give myself a mid N3.
2025:
Once I returned, I began to study much more effectively. I worked at a warehouse, and I was able to just put my headphones on and listen to whatever I wanted. From January-July I basically went crazy. Listened to 5 hours of Japanese podcasts every day, a lot of it was yuyu no nihongo and I was starting to branch out a bit into other topics, listen to content designed for native Japanese speakers, etc.
I also made a friend during my study abroad, and upon returning we would call once a week and watch an anime episode together and discuss words/phrases we didn't know. It was super fun.
I also finally started reading actual novels, the first one I read was コンビニ人間、and the second one was 地球星人 by the same author (do NOT read that second one). I also read this manga called 水は海に向かって流れる (which I read 3 times, eventually understanding it quite well) and began to read おやすみプンプン、and a third novel, かがみの孤城 although I didn't finish either of them before the test in December.
Throughout the summer, I also got a tutor to practice my Japanese speaking skills, but I changed tutors in August because I started university. With that tutor, I went through the TRY N2 grammar book with him.
The last half of the year was quite stressful as I was going to university and working full time. My study at this point was minimal. I did Anki, I did whatever textbook lesson I was working on with my tutor, and I didn't even START doing practice tests until October or something which is insane because I had never taken the test before.
I think my practice and preparation shows in the score that I got: 102/180. I keep telling myself it's because I had to take the test during finals week.
FINAL THOUGHTS/WHAT I WOULD CHANGE
I barely passed, and while I don't think it was for lack of effort, more consistent study would have definitely improved my score. I always regret not putting an emphasis on reading sooner, especially for the test. Reading is just so incredibly useful as kanji practice and as a well of new vocab.
I also think I would have preferred to study a textbook on my own or just not have used it. Tutors are great for conversation practice imo, but it's much more effective to study grammar on your own. Besides, the internet has a ridiculous amount of free resources, I could have just looked up grammar points I didn't recognize and watch a short video about things I don't understand (which is what I do now)
While my study was still heavily restricted by work and school, I settled into a good rhythm, and was able to study even more this past summer. My current study method includes:
- Anki (about 30 new cards a day) about 30 minutes
- Daily reading (currently コンビニ人間, I want to see how much better I can understand it) about 1 hour
- Daily immersion (podcasts, yt videos, anime) 1 hour
- Weekly Kanji study (I do 2 sections of the Kanji in Context book weekly, currently on section 18)
- Chat with friends
Now that I am living in Japan and will be taking university classes in Japanese, I expect to make some changes to this routine, and I expect to make some extreme improvements. This month officially marks 3 years of learning Japanese for me!
4 days ago I finally arrived in Nagoya, and I'll be here for a year at university studying foreign languages, Japanese and others.
I have been looking forward to this moment for years. I first came to Japan 2 years ago, and I've been studying the language for almost 3 years now. I passed the N2 about a year before coming here, and actually being here has made it feel like every second has been worth it. My language has helped me out of some seriously difficult situations already.
My flights were delayed, and I ended up having to reschedule 4 times through United (united SUCKS, choose another airline. It was the most stressful 3 days of my life.). In all the chaos, my luggage was lost/delayed. Luckily, I was able to talk about the situation with ANA employees over the phone and real life, and I was able to describe my luggage, the contents, why it was missing, and communicate that it needed to be delivered to the front desk of my apartment complex so they could receive it even while I was out.
I have been able to ask for help at stores, I've been able to understand my landlords instructions when she kindly explained how to sort trash to me, I was able to receive my luggage once it was finally delivered to me, and I've also had a few genuinely pleasant conversations with locals which has been a nice change from the madness that was my flight here.
All in all, it's been an extremely gratifying experience. While studying in the states I occasionally struggled to remember what it was I enjoyed about Japanese, or language learning in general, but now I remember.
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Not a translation request; I've translated the page, it goes something like:
"I'll try it your way for once,"
"oooh what's gotten into you?"
"Do you still remember my catchphrase?"
.....
"Well, let's go!"
"FIGHT!"
"Ippatsu!"
The issue I'm running into is the last line. It has so many different meanings that I don't understand it. My theory is that it's a baseball reference, since "Fight!" is something people say to dramatically encourage something, and "ippatsu" can be used for baseball, but I have no context, since I live outside Japan.
Hi! I’ve been using the listening app “NumEar” to try to learn numbers in Japanese and things are going well but I’ve hit a big wall I can’t overcome.
So far I can recall integers upto 5 digits, months, days of the month, weekdays, time (both 12 hours and 24 hours), years etc. with an accuracy of at least 95%.
I moved onto the final “unit” for dates/times which requires me to hear a string of numbers in the format: year/month/day of the month. For each of these individual components I’m scoring 95%+ but as soon as it’s all combined into a single string of numbers my accuracy drops all the way down to only 5-10%.
I just hear white noise as soon as it starts. I’ve tried isolating just the year and ignoring the rest, I’ve tried doing two components at once, I’ve tried typing as soon as I hear it and I’ve tried waiting until the very end of the numbers to start typing. So far I’m just not improving. I think I’ve attempted 250 numbers and the score is still super low.
It’s weird because I thought maybe I just need more practise in the unit for year and I’ve gotten rusty.. so I went back to listening to just the year as an individual component but I still score over 95% every time. So I went back to hearing the full year/month/day and again white noise.
I’m screwed lol
If anyone knows a good study method for improving this specifically that would be amazing.
~3.5 years, ~500 hours and ~€5000 later… Passed the N5 last July, but just barely scoring at 89/180 (minimum of 80 required). To be clear, N5 was never really the goal for me. I took the exam mainly as a way to measure where I currently stand.
And that makes the result a little weird to process. I've been learning Japanese for roughly 3.5 years. Books, apps, classroom lessons, even Japanese language and cultural classes while actually in Japan. Countless hours of vocab and kanji SRS, podcasts, J-dramas, shadowing, etc.
I know comparison is the thief of joy, but when you constantly read online that N5 level can be acquired in about 6 months, it's hard not to feel a bit lost.
My vocabulary and kanji are probably somewhat beyond N5, but I'm still struggling with grammar basics like beginner conjugations and easy sentence construction. Also very frustrating is knowing a word when I see it written, but completely failing to recognise it when someone actually says it.
I (still) genuinely enjoy learning Japanese. But I guess limited exposure in real life makes learning it just so tremendously slow and the approach to learning relatively static and passive. As Japanese isn't really a necessity in my life but just a mere hobby, so sometimes it's hard to justify continuing spending lot of effort, time and money towards it when progress feels so slow and there's no clear goal to meet.
So I'm wondering:
Has anyone else been in a similar situation? If you were 3.5 years into learning, still struggling with basic Japanese despite putting in a lot of time, would you completely change your approach, keep going, or just accept that it's a slow hobby and stop worrying about the timeline?
Especially interested in hearing from people who managed to break through a similar plateau with (getting faster at) comprehension and actually producing sentences.
I'm not necessarily looking for the usual "don't compare yourself to others, everyone's journey is different" (although obviously that's true). I'm more interested in hearing from people who were genuinely stuck at a beginner plateau and what they actually did about it.
Because honestly, passing N5 feels simultaneously like an achievement and like a slightly embarrassing reminder of how much effort I've put in compared to how little I can actually do with the language.
As my time will always be limited, I guess most important for me at this stage is to pick just a few good resources that I am happy to use every day, be consistent, and turn learning again into a daily habit. Choosing quality over quantity so to speak.
I believe focus on grammar, vocabulary, and kanji are still key at this stage. I will just need to get better at these main components of the language to be able to more comfortably consume media in the target language, let alone getting better at output.
So I've done RTK first, then started Kaishi 1.5k, I'm currently like around 550 words into Kaishi.
I know a liiiiittle bit of grammar from past attempts, with ''Tobira Beginning Japanese''.
How do I move from here ?
I tried Bunpro but it doesn't really go in depht enough. I'm thinking maybe I should go back to Tobira but the vocabulary order is not the same than Kaishi and learning vocabs from two sources at a time feels annoying, I like when things are straightforward.
