I’m basically 2 weeks out from having done this for a full year. The real day is the first of June. Because I want to wrap what I did today into it, and I’m excited to talk about all this, can we indulge me and celebrate slightly early? On the scale of a full year, close enough if you ask me. This post is way too long so I’ll collapse it into sections.
IT’S BEEN (almost) A YEAR!
I’ve been studying a lot. Like, it’s what I spend the vast majority of my free time on when I’m not doing something with my fiancée. And honestly I have loads of free time – I’m not gonna retread all the talk about what covid did to me but I’m not itching to go out and take too many risks and I’m lucky enough to be able to hide out more than most. So, might as well do something worthwhile with this time.
So what's my Japanese ability like at 1 year? (JLPT)
Well, the impetus for posting this is I suddenly got it in my head earlier that I had energy and today is the day to take a full official practice JLPT test. More specifically, the N2. And if we assume the questions are all equally weighted (there’s no way I can replicate actual JLPT grading), umm, I passed. 42 points in language knowledge, 23 points in reading (lol), and 44 points in listening, makes for 109 out of the 90 needed. I did this with a timer and replicating the way it works as best as possible, though from everything I hear about the test, I probably cheated by having good audio quality hahaha. The first section had some annoying nuances I wasn’t prepared for and words here and there I didn’t know, but overall, not so bad. Reading was brutal and as you can see, I only got a little over the 30% needed to not auto fail to the whole thing. I think I got a bit lucky because I struggled to understand the passages. The easier novels and visual novels I’ve read are not in any way written like these dry essays. Listening felt shockingly easy (goes to show how much rougher it is to listen to “real speech” in all its messiness), though I did mess up one mini section of it hard while feeling like I had understood it. Those questions are kinda tricky.
But wow, I am roughly like ぎりぎり N2 on a good day, I guess. This is without studying for the test at all beyond a couple little Nihongo no Mori streams of a handful of practice questions just for listening practice, and having done a very shortened practice N3 online not too long ago (so I knew the question format at least). It’s real evidence how well just immersing and trying to learn can go. I’m still slightly in disbelief.
Who cares about tests though? Boring!
What does it feel like to be me doing things in Japanese right now? Well, I’m reading easier books (hovering right below 30 on natively, it seems) and those are going fairly comfortably, just with lots of lookups. Could I intuit some of the meanings? Maybe sometimes. Will I? No, leave me alone. I love my dictionary 
. With said lookups, minus some nuances I bet, I’m basically understanding everything in books at this level. Reading Summer Pockets is similar but with more difficulty spikes – I’ve actually discovered a ton of N1 or N2 grammar in there, and it’s happy to randomly go chuuni for a joke for a minute, or throw made up words or deep cultural references at me. But I also understand almost all of it with lots of outside tool use.
Listening really depends. Pure listening really needs to be easier stuff. Slice of life anime is probably semi ok? I’m mostly using easier podcasts like 4989 American Life and watching videogame streams and stuff to follow what I can. With subtitles I’m starting to get there though. I finally checked out Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, and in the first 3 episodes, it varies, but with subtitles I can at least follow everything I need to (I’ve checked a summary every time but really missed very little; the hard lines are fight banter and whatnot). Live action movies without subtitles are mostly extremely hard still for some reason – I guess I need voices to be clearly enunciated, and I’m reliant on kanji somewhat. But I’m seeing growth.
What did I do for this year on the way here?
Very roughly in order:
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Rushdown Genki 1 and 2, in total it took about 3 months. I did a lot of the individual exercises (without actually writing) but at a certain point I was going through a full Genki chapter in like 2 or 3 days, which also meant adding ~50 words to anki every few days. I refrained from mentioning it around here at the time so I wouldn’t get warned about burnout hahahaha. I can talk about it now that it’s behind me 
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Wanikani, well, yeah, up to my current level 42.
Reading:
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Read the first few levels of free Tadoku Graded readers
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Read manga with the absolute beginner club like Ayumu and Mistuboshi Colors
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Read a lot of manga on my own: 15 volumes of Yotsubato, 3 Ao Haru Ride, 2 Neko Ramen, 2 ヤンキーショタとオタクおねえさん, probably more?
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Read a volume of Way of the Househusband with the intermediate book club
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Read most things on Satori Reader
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Read most of the first Ace Attorney game
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Played most of Paper Mario (N64) without lookups
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Read my first novels Zoo 1 and 2
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Current: Reading visual novel Summer Pockets (really far into that now), reading the book 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん with the intermediate book club, and reading the book スマホを落としただけなのに.
Listening:
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A lot of Nihongo con Teppei podcast, then his podcast with Noriko
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Watched Shirokuma Cafe with subtitles
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Started and stopped tons of shows to various levels: K-On, Nichijou, etc
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Watched Teasing Master Takagi-san with subtitles
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Watched a few movies mostly without subtitles to not great comprehension heh (Good Morning, Aristocrats, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, etc.)
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So, so many unlogged hours of Youtube videos and Twitch streams.
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Currently listening to the audiobook for スマホを落としただけなのに, once before reading a section and once after.
I’m probably forgetting a lot! Had many partial projects I stopped due to dissatisfaction with my ability to hang with that thing, or sometimes just because I got distracted. My listening especially has been rough and all over the place. Along the way with all this, I started mining sentences to put into anki with Satori Reader. At first it was hard to find suitable ones, now it’s too easy as I’ve continued mining with Ace Attorney and Summer Pockets. I usually mine 20 words or more, often can’t resist hitting 30. Oops. My Anki reviews are hitting 180 a day right now PLUS wanikani being somewhere around 150 on average but whatever, these results are more than worth it. I’ve mined 4907 sentences in total so far. Very much trusting the quantity over quality approach, where the more words I “know” somewhat, the easier I can handle seeing them again, and the more I can read to start knowing them better. Seems to be working out for me.
That’s it, maybe? Somehow this is an enormous wall of text but I also feel like I forgot everything I should’ve said. Where from here? At this point we just chill. I mean, in as much as hundreds of SRS reviews and a few hours minimum of immersion a day is chilling lol. Read, listen, do flashcards, be happy(?). I’m on the cusp of adding a lot more stuff I can understand well enough to enjoy without a ton of lookups I hope, so I can increasingly just play videogames in Japanese and get some passive practice without missing so much that it ruins my fun. Beyond that, I’m just gonna move to more shows, more visual novels, more books, and more manga. Writing isn’t on my mind in any way right now; I’ve totally passed it up. We’ll see what the future holds. I do want to practice speaking eventually I think, but I’m happy to wait years on that even, until I’m understanding more and more easily.
My singular goal for this year (calendar year, not studying year) was to start playing Judgment 2 before year’s end, and understand it well enough to have a good time. I fear really specialized terminology, like 1’s deep dive into medical stuff, but I’m relatively convinced I’m on good pace to get there.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for all the support. Love this community. I’ll tack on a few stats images now, to commemorate where I am before moving forward.
Juicy stats
That attempt to stop WK ruined my level up graph haha. I also intentionally left off the WK accuracy because while I’m happy with it, I do use double check slightly more liberally than others, so I don’t want to share a “cheated” accuracy. If you ask me I’m using it responsibly, but some people wouldn’t agree.
Finally, a post that rivals @fallynleaf in length 
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. I’m impressed that you’ve managed to keep up this pace for as long as you have, despite the various bumps along the way. You definitely seem to be in it for the long haul at this point!