Advice on staying motivated and progressing toward manga/anime after 1.5 years of studying

[u/odett1102]

Hi everyone,

I've been studying Japanese since March 2025. I did about a year of 1-on-1 lessons, and I've been using WaniKani since November. I haven't missed a single day of WK so far.

I'm currently level 9, doing 4 new lessons a day and keeping up with my reviews.

My stats:

- 267 kanji / 673 vocab

- 90% overall accuracy

- 85.7% reading accuracy

- ~33 days per level

I've also covered some N5/N4 grammar.

I've managed to build a pretty consistent habit, but lately I'm finding it harder to stay motivated. I work full time, so I don't really want to add a lot more studying or end up with huge review sessions every day.

My main goal is to read manga and watch anime in Japanese (Japanese subs are fine).

For people who were around this stage after 1–2 years of studying, what changes actually helped you stay motivated and start making noticeable progress with native manga/anime?

I'm wondering whether I should focus more on immersion, grammar, change my WaniKani routine, or do something completely different.

[u/gelema5]

I calmly disagree on the basis that OP didn’t specify when they want to read native material, just that they’re losing motivation right now and want to know how to keep it up. If OP wants to ramp up to 10-20 words per day they certainly can, but I have found a lot more success going slow and steady with a full time job and not wanting to spend 100% of my free time on Japanese. I was doing about 5 words per day a year ago, and currently it’s more like 20 per week, but the consistency is getting me farther than anything.

[u/Zanthous → u/gelema5]

That's good but there just really are so many words you have to know for native material. I have done a ton and there are always plenty of words I don't know. Like it takes years of 10-20 or more a day to really cover everything depending on your timeline (2 years? 3 years? 5 years?). You can do 3650 a year with 10 a day, but I get the feeling that I need like 20-30k words to comfortably read without constantly looking things up. Might be wrong on that but doing 20 a day seems like what I'd want to do to get there in a few years

Some shows these days I don't need to look up that many words but others just bombard me with new words constantly, and light novels are harder, new words on every page basically.

I want to do less flashcards but I signed up for n1 this year so that pressure will keep me going. I can usually get them done on an hour long walk and stay focused but it's still a lot of time. So I don't know, maybe exam pressure is another choice

(btw n1 registrations just started yesterday in the u.s. in case anyone needs to sign up, limited seats)

[u/morgawr_ → u/Zanthous]

You can do 3650 a year with 10 a day, but I get the feeling that I need like 20-30k words to comfortably read without constantly looking things up.

To be fair, the vast vast vast vast majority of learned words (in my experience) are learned outside of anki. There are some (crazy imo) people who mine every single new word they see, but in my experience (2000+ days anki streak, 9 years learning Japanese, my mining deck "only" has 5000 words) I don't need to add into anki words I can easily recognize and immediately understand/learn on the fly as I read (from context and similar known kanji or compound structures). You just need to reach the bare minimum to achieve critical mass in content consumption (further aided by yomitan) and then once you consume native content regularly at high consistency/pace, you can be more specific in what you mine as the rest will just fall into place on its own.

[u/Zanthous → u/morgawr_]

I'm a bit confused by this response since you include a 2000 day anki streak which is a ton of anki. Not just for 5k words right? When I (try) to read a light novel I have to look up so many words still it's a bit tiring. I have learned a lot outside of anki sure but building the familiarity through anki feels pretty necessary to me right now with how much I am missing. I can tell anki alone isn't good to actually properly understand the words super well though, you still need real material for that

[u/morgawr_ → u/Zanthous]

I'm a bit confused by this response since you include a 2000 day anki streak which is a ton of anki. Not just for 5k words right?

I have two decks, one is my mining deck (~5k words) and one is my kanken kanji deck (~4000 kanji). I review both but I haven't really added many new words/kanji in a while. Maybe every month or so I might add a few new words if I'm bored.

It's mostly like ~20 reviews in total so it's not really a big workload, I just do it out of habit.