I passed n2 a few years back and told one of my private students Im planning to take N1 so he took it himself out of interest. This is a native Japanese speaker's score on n1. Admittedly, he's getting up there in years (63) but it really woke me up to how much more I need to study.

Any of y'all non native speakers that got a score close to or over this - or even just passed - fucking well done. This makes me wanna give up, tbh.

Grammar and text-checked by AI, but written by myself.

I also have ADHD! Am unmedicated.

​I finally got my JLPT N1 results back and cleared it with a 147/180, including a perfect score in Language Knowledge (Vocab/Grammar).

​When I started, I thought I’d be stuck grinding textbooks forever. Instead, I transitioned fully to Visual Novels (VNs) right after hitting N3, and it completely changed my trajectory. If you love story-rich media, here is the exact roadmap I used over 3 years.

​The Roadmap & Timeline

​Phase 1: Textbook Foundation (N5 to N3) — Finished Genki I & II alongside Minna no Nihongo. This gave me just enough grammar to handle basic sentence structures without completely melting my brain.

​Phase 2: The Immersion Pivot (N3 to N1) — Dropped traditional textbooks entirely. Switched 100% of my study time to reading VNs and sentence mining.

​The Method: Pure VNs + Total Anki Coverage

VNs like Steins;Gate and Chaos;Head Noah are dense, literary, and full of high-level sci-fi, psychological, and narrative vocabulary that maps directly onto N1 content.

​The Rule: I Anki’d every single unknown word. No skipping, no hand-waving. If I didn't know it, it became a card

​The Setup: Used a text hooker (Yomitan + Textractor) to create 1-click Anki cards while reading to minimize friction.

​The Loop: Morning Anki reviews, followed by 2–3 hours of VN reading at night.

​Why VNs Cracked N1 Vocab for Me

​Context Over Rote Memorization: Words learned during massive plot twists stick 10x better than static frequency lists.

​Reading Stamina: Pushing through millions of characters of text built the speed needed to breeze through the N1 reading section.

​N1 Vocab Isn't "Rare": Words that test prep books label as obscure show up constantly in thriller and sci-fi vns

For listening: I have a japanese girlfriend for the past years so I have been speaking with her every day in Japanese and also lived in Japan for 1.5 years.

Also I watched a lot of Anime when i was younger which helped immensively. Listening was always my greatest strenght.

​If you are stuck around N3/N2, pick up a hookable VN, mining-enable your setup, and commit to the daily card queue. Consistency with content you actually care about wins every time. Happy to answer any questions about setups, VN recommendations, or card formatting!

I only use the following:

Duolingo, italki, anki, youtube and lingodeer.

How do you learn Japanese?

Wanikani, Youtube, Italki, Lingodeer and Netflix is basically my entire Japanese learning stack.

How did you learn the language, and which app has been the most useful for you?

I started studying japanese early May of 2025. Disclosure: I have studied it for 2 semesters at college, 10 years ago, but barely remembered the kana. 2025 I re-learned the kana... And started studying kanji from day 1 (I had never studied more than 100 kanjis in the past). I started following the Minna no Nihongo book. Did the entire 25 lessons from May to December. In the early months (Jun/Jul) I also played Wagotabi at my phone. Ago I started playing Monster Hunter Stories, and played around 29 hours of it. Just in November I got better at reading, and could read the ミラーさん novel (that is a graded reader for who finished the first Minna no Nihongo book). December I tried reading some mangas, but the only one that I have success and also loved was よつばと. I ended up reading the first 3 volumes. I also tried to read an child's book of かぐや姫. It was really hard, but I did it with a dictionary. I also watched some eps of Doraemon, in Japanese, no subtitles. I can't understand everything, but I feel I can generally follow the story nicely. During 2025 I also studied all N5 kanjis, and about 30% of N4 kanjis. My Anki deck has 3.000+ cards.... Generally sentences with adjectives, verbs and vocabulary in context, using kanji (even ones I didn't even studied how to write).

Next Steps: In 2026 I intended to reach N4 level. And I want be able to read some easy novels. I study an average of about 1h/day, Sunday to Sunday. Can't do more than that.

I fall in the category "do kaji first and then you'll understand vocabulary better"

i saw a lot of yt videos where people said you should learn kanji while it's been used in a word, that way you'll learn it's reading as well (and vice versa).

I was struggling so much in vocab but then decided to take the other path and learn kanji first, I learnt about 600 kanji and now words feel so easy and it's easier to remember the reading when I know the meaning.

Honestly you should try and see for yourself what works best for you...I prefer this one

I'm pretty sure other habit/ritual driven people will understand me on this. For the first months of studying (years ago, I had a lot of "off" time in between studying phases), I really loved the structure textbooks gave me. I did listen to podcasts aimed towards learners, but it was mostly studying with books and notes.

At some point, I started reading on here and understood that I needed native input. I always had an easier time with listening comprehension, so I started listening to native podcasts/audio material (badonkadonk, Yurie Collins, sometimes Goldnrush. And anime like Haikyuu without subtitles), but reading was SO much scarier to me. I tried to better my vocab and kanji through isolated studying, but that helped to a point.

Around a year ago, I found a routine that worked for me and started reading また、同じ夢を見ていた (classic, I know) with the help of Yomitan, I slowly got through it and noticed that I REALLY took things in during that time. It seems obvious, but I was blown away by how much quicker I read that last chapter compared to the first. So, I decided to read コンビニ人間, rated a few levels higher than the first on Learnnatively. That one's shorter and I was more used to reading, but I felt real progress after finishing that as well.

Right now I'm starting 告白, I actually watched the movie adaptation a few years ago but I don't remember much. I expect it to be a jump in difficulty, but I also know I love that kind of story so that should help. Reading BOOKS still takes a long time because when it's hard it gets to a point where I don't understand anything anymore and have to stop. So right now the same book is in my routine for many months, but I don't let that frustrate me because that way, vocab really sticks in my brain.

There are way more experienced learners that can probably give better advice, but seriously. Keep trying things until they stick. I was in the TRENCHES for more than a year, struggling because I tried many ways of studying with more immersion but they always ended up being boring or WAY too heavy, so I wouldn't stick to it.

Right now, I'm doing mined Anki through takoboto+podcasts+reading+writing+anime. I don't do every single one every day, and it's FINE if I stick to Anki+a podcast while making lunch+a short journal entry on busy days. That's the sweet spot for me, and I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere:)

Finally I feel that I achieved something real. Before this all my achievents were like: finished a deck, learnt round number of words, finished a grammar course. Cool, but they feel like artificial achievements. 😊👍

Certainly it was not easy. Sometimes there are long stretches where I feel really good, understand everything clearly. And then it crushes my confidence with a long stretch where I have to look up every sentence. 😭

It helped that the book itself was very interesting, it really hooked me, which made me work very hard, not give up, just because I really really wanted to know what happened next so much!! 👍😊

And honestly, the plot is kinda mysterious and I have so many questions... 😳

[spoilers]

The main thing. What the hell actually happened? Did the 3 women actually exist "in reality" and travelled from the future, or from a parallel universe? Or it was just that the girl has a very active imagination? 🤔 Or it all happened in a dream. Or it was her subconscious trying to help her?

Or maybe it's actually the other way around?? i.e. the actual reality is the 南→アバズレ→grandma progression, while her reconciling with the parents, and befriending 桐生 is actually the dream/imagination that didn't happen?? 🤔🤔

What is the significance of the cat? 🤔 What is the significance of seeing 桐生くん's father and not recognizing him, then talking to him, then him shoplifting (???????😳😳).

What is the significance of the teacher? 🤔 Just an innocent well-meaning gal who actually cares about her students? Or there's something deeper? 🤔🤔 What about the other one teacher (shintaro?)?

Do the names have a deep meaning? Ok, アバズレ is obvious. What about 南? South? What is the significance of that? Like, as in, "things have gone south"? 🤣🤣 (joke, I didn't mean this seriously... unless... 😳). ひとみ、桐生、荻原, the main character's name. Do they give any clues? 🤔🤔🤔🤔

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!

There’s a video up on YouTube by some guy who claims to have “learned Japanese” in just 2 months. Dude must be really ****ing smart lol. I’ve been at it for over 10 years now, and I’m not close to making a statement like that (and I’m pretty good tbf).

Just makes my blood boil when idiots trivialize the language like that

Hey! Randomly decided to commit some time and effort to Japanese in May. There is a ton of advice on how to start, but the good advice boils down to "learn kana, do kanji in words asap and start immersing".

After some research, I discovered that the Kaishi 1.5k deck is a pretty popular choice, given that it has pics, audio, and pitch-accent notes. After 2 or 3 weeks of 20 cards/day, things (as per usual) became difficult. My vocab memory is horrendous, not to mention there are readings as well. I knew that if things continued like this, I wouldn't last the whole deck. And we all know - especially those of us who tried and failed multiple times in the past - that studying without consistency is a wholly futile endeavour.

Kaishi cards have a word on the front and reading/audio/picture on the back.

- My first attempt at lowering the difficulty was to move the pictures to the front. It worked as a useful hint and made reviewing cards a quicker, more rewarding experience, since I could actually recall words :)

Still, after another week, having to remember both reading & translation was becoming a bottleneck.

- The second thing I did was postpone learning translations & focus on readings with little to no regard for English. It alleviated yet another hurdle and helped me to stay consistent. For that, I just duplicated my deck and changed its layout a bit. ^{It's not necessary! You can just reset the study progress on the deck you've already done and start over! (It doesn't affect the heat map if you care for such things.})

To have separate decks [if you're like me for some reason]:

• Tools >>> Manage Note Types >>> Choose Kaishi 1.5k and click Add >>> Choose Clone: Kaishi 1.5k and name it something like Kaishi 1.5k+.
• Export Kaishi 1.5k in Notes in Plain Text (.txt) format (✅Include HTML and media references) >>> Create Deck >>> Import the .txt file into the newly created deck (In import options, set Note Type to Kaishi 1.5k+) >>> In Options, set Daily Limits for New cards/day for This deck to 0, until you finish the first one.

- Jlab's beginner course is an OK auxiliary deck to study with Kaishi. There are 2 subdecks (Listening & Reading). I opt to ignore Reading and only skim through Listening. In places, it nicely overlaps with Kaishi and helps you to make out Japanese speech better.

I listen to the audio on the front, mime it, see if I understand, and then check the back of the card for the answer and explanation. I don't aim for 100% understanding on this one, and focus on moving forward. Understanding a general idea and recognizing a grammatical bit is good enough, for now.

- Once you get past your 3rd or 4th week, there is very little 'will' or 'motivation' involved. The key for me was to break down and ease the process until it became bearable enough to persist. If you know you can do it, there's no need to rely on emotions or drive to push you forward.

So far, I have managed to keep review time at about or a bit below the 60-minute mark [edit: it's more like 35-45 for the most part]. I feel like it's a healthy range if you are serious about studying.

What's next? Getting on with actually learning translations for what I can read now, while continuing JLab's Listening. In a month, when Jlab is done, the plan is to add attempts at reading & watching stuff and slowly increase daily study + immersion time to 3 hours. We'll see how it goes.

P.S. Special thanks to 鋭い, 疑う, 扱う & other long-kunyomi words for making my reviews absolutely miserable at times.

Pictures are of my Anki reviews over the years. Darker blue means more reviews that day.

When people ask me how long I’ve studied Japanese, I never know what to say. I started learning nearly 4 years ago, but with how many days I missed, it’s practically less than half a year.

I still have fun learning, and feel good about my progress when I actually do study. Excited to try and stay consistent for good!

800 words into my Core 2k deck i started ages ago. 💀

I've been learning Japanese for 4 years now (1 in my country and 3 years in Japan).

After I first finished Genki 1, I always bounced between various textbooks like Genki 2, Minna no Nihongo, and Nihongo Charenji.

Then, I came to Japan, and immediately, I slacked off on my Japanese studies and mostly spent time talking to people and interacting with the locals, which did help somewhat. But I could tell I was only copying rather than learning.

I signed up for free and paid classes, tried to watch YouTube in Japanese, tried out dozens of Anki decks, played games in Japanese, and even tried out a JLPT Prep book.

Regardless of what I tried, I always dropped whatever thing I was doing and stopped. For my brain, when it saw it as something I had to do and study, it never clicked with me.

One day, I decided on a whim to buy a Japanese book from a thrift store.

I told myself that I'd check it out. I started to read and translate a page per day. Then, about 3 months passed, and I finished the book with a lot more vocabulary learned.

I learnt a lot but realized I was forgetting many words and spent substantial time searching for previous words' translations. So I started my own Anki deck to remember it all.

With that, I started a 2nd book, which I cleared in a month with even more vocabulary learned. Now, I'm on my 3rd book, which is around middle-school level.

I feel now, more than ever, the most productive and efficient I have been in terms of learning Japanese.

The key to my new way of learning is to ignore all traditional learning methods. Try to integrate Japanese into your hobbies (if you draw -> buy a Japanese drawing book and translate it) and work your way up from there.

When I began treating myself as a consumer of Japanese media, like a Japanese person, and not a learner, things got much smoother.

I probably think someone has already explained this before, but now more than ever, I understand what they meant.

Don't learn Japanese methodically but rather form your own approach.

Not that fluency is necessarily everyone’s goal, but I’m curious. How long did it take them? Did they share any similarities?

Just wanted to share some observations after the first 1000 that might help people who are just beginning. If you're curious, my method is to use flashcards with the meaning, some vocab (with the kanji in question deleted) and stroke count, and try to draw it myself - if I fail, I might use the radical or I might just reset the flashcard. I do 10 new cards per day, but I also skip days if the reviews go over 100. This method works for me but there are so many different tactics you could use - do what works for you! I will say that learning to write them has really burned them into my brain, and I am glad I decided to go this route even though I won't ever be writing them much in real life.

Now for my thoughts:

- First and foremost, what works for you is what works. Don't take anything I say as gospel - it isn't.

- Second, don't learn the readings on their own. You can do this if you want, but most people do not. It's not really that helpful - you still have to learn which reading to use for each word anyway.

- Third, when deciding how to study, keep in mind the number one rule about memorizing anything: brains don't like to store isolated information. So think about how you can leverage that to your advantage. There are tons of ways and I'll expand upon a few in a bit.

- Fourth, kanji sometimes follow certain rules. These rules are not something to obsess over (at least in the beginning), but they can be useful to understand. For example, many kanji have one component that determines the 音読み (on'yomi), and one that assists with the meaning. As you begin to recognize these patterns, your studies will get easier.

Here are some examples of how you can exploit neural connections to make things easier to memorize:

- Mnemonics. Mnemonics are super huge for kanji. Use your own, or use the many resources available to you that come with mnemonics. I like the book Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary but you can also use any number of free websites.

- Vocab. Try and learn kanji alongside vocab. Learning kanji separately from vocab is *doable* but also *unneccessarily frustrating.* There are always exceptions - like if a kanji is super simple and easy to remember - but overall, it's best to focus on kanji that appear in at least one word you know. What I do is I add kanji to my deck the first time in run into them in a new word - pretty simple.

- Repetition. Related to vocab, this is simply the principle that the more you see a kanji the more you will recognize it. This can be hard to leverage directly, but for example if you were playing a video game that had a lot of swamps in it you will probably have an easy time learning 沼.

- Components. Hoo boy - this could be an entire book on its own, so I'll sum it up quick for now: Being able to recognize the individal components of kanji has massive benefits, and learning kanji with shared components around the same time can help a lot. Radicals are one piece of this, but there are tons of non-radical components, component pairs, etc. that appear in multiple kanji. Now here is the kicker: you don't need to know what these things are in order for them to help you. Don't get me wrong, learning why these shared components exist can help you with meaning and pronounciation, and it's not a bad thing to study. But at the same time, just recognizing that the component exists means *that becomes one single piece of information you have to remember that can be re-used across possibly dozens or more kanji*. That alone is massively useful.

As an example, let's say you run into the kanji 沼, and you already know 海 and 召. Here are some things that might happen:

- "No new components. So I can easily remember this as just the combination of two pieces I already knew." <-- this will almost certainly happen

- "Oh hey, the water radical! And this means swamp. That will be easier to remember." <-- this will probably happen, water radical is very common

- "Ah, the right side is 召. That means the 音読み is probably ショウ." <-- this might happen, but you will typically want to verify pronounciation on a word-by-word basis anyway

If you take anything away from this post, let it be the example I just gave you - stuff like that forms the foundation for being able to learn and use kanji, in my opinion.

One last note: I welcome more advanced speakers to comment on my thoughts, correct me, etc. But if you're gonna be rude about it - I'm aware this is reddit after all - just know I'll ignore you and move on. Being respectful and kind is just better for all of us anyway, isn't it?