I would imagine that in order to pass the N1 you already have a better reading speed than most people here!
I only say that because I’m way too slow reading and I failed the N4 last year partly because I took too long on the reading 
That sounds to me like a normal plateau. Typically at the start of learning a skill, you notice improvement like crazy, and as you advance, things tend to slow down, even dip sometimes. Hopefully you can still find some joy in reading in the meantime regardless. <3
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I had to answer a few questions randomly for the same reason when I was doing N2 (still passed it though). With N1 I actually learned from my mistakes and focused the questions, not the text. Helped me finish the exam something like 15 minutes before everyone else. Somehow reading ended up being my worst section, despite me thinking I’d done it close to flawless.
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Perhaps I can’t fully appreciate what you’re experiencing because I’m not at the N1 level yet (at least in terms of grammar and non-Chinese-based vocabulary, since I probably know enough kanji from Chinese to help me guess some meanings from context), but to me, this feels like you’re trying to learn to speed-read Japanese instead of just trying to read faster. Also, be able to ‘read [a sentence] out loud without a single pause’ isn’t really a clear indicator of what sort of speed you’re at now. How quickly would you say the words if you read a sentence aloud? Do you say them as quickly as a native speaker, or just fast enough to read smoothly? For all we know, you actually read faster than many of the people on this thread and you’re at a point where only native speakers can give you further tips.
By the way, while I definitely can’t say what your experience has been like reading other languages like English, some research has shown that it’s normal to read words out subconsciously/inside your head even while reading extremely quickly, so that’s not an indicator of being slow.
Could I ask what these subtitles are for? I could be wrong, but I really think that people speak at different speeds depending on the type of media and the situation. As an example, I feel that anime characters speak a lot faster than the people who read the recordings in Tobira, which is an intermediate textbook pitched at the N3-N2 level. Perhaps my Japanese ability isn’t currently high enough to understand what’s happening for you, but I frequently feel that even in English, people don’t often read a lot faster than their maximum speaking speed. (OK, someone is definitely going to come in here and tell me that that just means I’m a slow reader, because they can do it, but while I probably read a little faster than I usually speak, there’s definitely a point beyond which it’s difficult to take in all those words while still understanding them fully. Even the world’s most famous and fastest speed readers understand less when they exceed a certain speed.)
In essence, what I’m saying is that I think we’re looking at one of two situations here:
- Skimming and quickly getting the gist is difficult because Japanese sentence structure is still relatively unfamiliar for your brain because it’s probably still quite different from what you see in English and in Russian, meaning that you probably just need more time and practice. You can keep up with most everyday speech, but perhaps not when people get very excited and fast.
- You’re actually able to read passages aloud just as quickly as native speakers, but you want to go faster. In this case, I think almost no one on the forums is advanced enough to help you.
My personal goal is to get to the point where I can read aloud just as quickly as native speakers when they’re doing stuff like intense voice acting sequences. I know I’m not there yet, and that my main obstacles are a lack of familiarity with saying words at that speed and the occasional unfamiliar grammar point. However, I also know that my brain is able to process information at that speed because I can still follow what goes on in some anime when people are speaking that quickly. In other words, I speak more slowly than I can understand while listening. If, however, you can already blitz out sentences at the same speed as native speakers reading aloud at top speed, then I think none of our advice will be useful, and that you might even be giving yourself too much pressure to read quickly. So, in other words, I guess I’m asking… which situation are you in?
EDIT: OK, while trying to read the transcript of an anime episode, I started to understand what you meant. It’s hard to skim Japanese because you need to know what each character means, and you need to constantly switch between just pronouncing what you see (for kana) and recalling readings (for kanji). My experience with Chinese tells me that the ability to skim will come with familiarity. Right now, I constantly need to stop because I need to figure out what each character is and then see how it fits into a phrase. However, once I’ve seen the same phrase enough times, my brain will start to see it as a block and simply tell me what I’m looking at based on the shapes I see. The foreignness of kana to my brain definitely provides an additional challenge, but I can tell that my brain is already chunking certain sets of kana e.g. common verbs etc, which I’m then able to fill in based on context without reading them in full. My belief – which I can only back up with experience with other languages and not with science, unfortunately – is that forcing yourself to read as quickly as you can, ideally aloud or at least in your head, will eventually help you achieve all this. Speed comes with familiarity. Knowledge alone isn’t enough because processing and recall time slows us all down.
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Good point. Practice seems to be the key. I was thinking about the ability to skim Japanese text. I’m really missing it compared to alphabet-based languages.
But I’ve only read two books in Japanese! So I really hope to acquire it with practice. It might take years but 仕方がないだろうか
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This super interesting to me! I’m only fluent in English, so I probably can’t be very helpful. But can I ask how long have you known/been consuming English compared to how long you’ve been consuming Japanese? I wonder if there’s some kind of brain process or linguistic block that explains what you’re experiencing. Maybe it has something to do with Japanese using kanji rather than an alphabet? IDK
It is just a matter of practice. Keep reading and it will get faster. Just like how it took you hours to read a few pages in kindergarten, and now you can breeze through maybe a hundred or two in one hour. I do understand your frustration though, it sucks to feel slow and want to consume things. You can also read stuff with less text, like manga though if you feel like you want something quicker. A volume of Naruto only takes like 45 min for me at this point.
Actually for a long time. I was exposed to English since like twelve, mostly through videogames. I only started actively watching anime when I was 19-20 and didn’t hear much Japanese before that. It definitely has something to do with it being Kanji.
Hundred pages in an hour? You for real? Yo, either I’m an extremely slow reader or you’re an extremely fast one. I think I read about 20 per hour, at least last time I clocked myself reading paper books (bout half a decade ago).
Hundred pages is quite fast, but 20 in an hour seems a bit slow. Of course this depends a lot on the size of the page. Tested myself with an average looking fantasy book and averaged about 45 seconds per page = 80 pages an hour. Of course the test error may make me read a bit faster, so if reading leisurely, it’s probably something like 60 pages.
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This is a great book that I have used, I personally recommend it.
Damn, guess I’m a slow reader overall too then. That sucks. We are talking paper book pages, right? Not the ones in smartphone readers? Guess we are. Well, it’s my Russian reading speed. Maybe if English was my native language, my basic English reading speed would be faster than Russian. Gotta tell that myself now 
The text in Pokémon on the slowest settings in battle moves too fast for me in Japanese… I catch myself thinking often “how are you supposed to read that fast” … Then I have a look at the same lines in German (native), English (learned) or even French (learned years ago, no immersion whatsover) and still it seems even SLOW 
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Pages isn’t a good measure really. You could try a few reading speed tests online. They measure reading speed in words per minute (wpm) and they also check comprehension, which is important… There’s a joke:
I went to a speed reading workshop and then read War and Peace in an hour. It had something to do with Russia.
I am at around 200-230 wpm, which is considered average.
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Yeah, wpm is definitely better.
But for fiction it’s a bit irrelevant, since you are not trying to memorize the text, nor are books that fact heavy (unless it’s a school book etc.). I don’t feel those tests represent an average text. From my experience, they also purposefully include confusing alternatives.
The details when reading for example fiction for leisure still add to the scene in my head, but I don’t really make a point that I remember every detail after a scene. Real books also have a lot more context.
I just scored 310 wpm on an English testing site (all questions answered correctly). Now let’s try German.
To be honest, my English might be faster by now, I read more English in my life
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Of course, there’s no ideal (and quick) way to find your true reading speed but those tests give an estimate.
Subjectively, it seems I read much faster if the text is really gripping. And when reading academic articles I have to re-read some parts multiple times to even understand what the authors were trying to say… (I hate lazy writers in academic circles) There’re some amazingly well-written papers though. Always a pleasure to discover such gems.
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Well, mixed feelings on the German one. I sped trough with 446wpm, but I only got 6/10 questions right. The text was really stupid and the questions really detailed
Which gives you 446 * 0.6 = 268 effective wpm.
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I’ve always been good at skimming over boring texts, to get them done. This example was one of them