And regarding slice of life manga, we’re starting のんのんびより on September 1st in our book club. It can’t hurt for you to try it out.
5 Likes
Dude, you just need like an extra 30% or so to pass. It didn’t wreck you at all lol. Only lived in Japan two years and took N1 and didn’t get a zero? How about all the people who lived here 10 years + and couldn’t pass N5 lol. Seriously, fam. You put yourself on the line, it’s better than not trying it all. Better luck next time, dawg.
14 Likes
I’ve recently been watching NHK breakfast news via an Australian broadcaster. I would recommend something like this for the following reasons:
- They put headlines up in text on the screen and also talk about the same thing, so you get to see the kanji in context without having to read a great deal (but you do need to read reasonably quickly) and it’s backed up with the audio.
- Stories tend to carry on over several days, so you get revision of topic material rather than just seeing it the once.
- There’s a wide variety of material covered, including “higher level” topics such as international politics, economic factors, etc.
- The visuals help reinforce the vocab.
Good luck!
4 Likes
I just started reading this mystery novel and it’s pretty satisfyingly understandable for me so far. The text is also full of dialogue and short paragraphs, so it might be a helpful way to work up to the big wall of text.
I’m a fan of pulpy mystery novels when you’re learning (Japanese is my fourth language) because there’s that suspense to carry you through and some payoff in finding out whodunnit even if you don’t understand every single thing
8 Likes
When I have forced myself to finish certain news articles I have felt that exact motivational dopamine boost you mentioned. I will look to “addict” myself to that feeling. Thank you for pointing these things out.
2 Likes
Something that has been very helpful for me in establishing a reading habit is that I decided to read at least two pages every single day.
I find this is little enough that I can make myself do it (go with less if not), but enough that once the ball gets rolling I usually read at least a few pages more and sometimes spend hours reading. Even though I initially just thought “Yeah, better get the reading done today”.
Also, I think it’s good to come into it with realistic demands on yourself. I sometimes feel like I suck when several sentences in a row make no sense, but then I try to focus on the bigger picture and realize that if someone were to ask me what’s happening in the story in general right now, I’d have no trouble answering.
11 Likes
Hey bomaran,
you already got yourself some pretty decent tips 
but I also want to add my two cents. Not really for the N1 (I’m far from that, so I’m not really sure if I’m able to give tips) but on the spoken Japanese and comprehension part.
Back when I was in Japan I went to the local community center called SPIRA (Saga Prefecture International Relations Association) and they had evening classes where retired people spend their time to talk to foreigner ins Japanese and help them when they had troubles understanding.
I’m not sure where you live but probably your prefecture will also have a similar thing. It’s cheap (500 JPY) and it’s awesome opportunity to just practice speaking about basically everything you can think off.
3 Likes
I agree with this assessment.
Frankly, by level 60 (although it may not be the best to say here) you should be phasing out WK as a primary learning source and switching to practical, real world experience.
By now, any kanji list will have diminishing returns. Increasingly obscure kanji will matter less than understanding kanji in their natural habitats.
3 Likes
Although I’m not at your level (finishing up N2 study material as far as vocab and grammar, and then I still have a ways to go with practice before expecting to pass the test), the one of the things that has rocketed up my reading (and even speaking, to some extent) ability over the past year in Japan, and helped avoid “walls of kanji” is … just reading. A lot of manga, easy news, hard news, work documents, recently prose fiction (which is unbearably slow, but so was manga at first); basically whatever I can get my hands on. I’ve done some amateur translation too, which forces a different mindset than just “I can scrape by on general meaning.”
And even though I’m not big on anime generally, I’ve been picking shows to watch recently just for listening practice. You’ll find something you can tolerate. The language is all stylized, but you’ll still be surprised at how it helps drive home basic, or non-basic, constructions. If you can keep up with it, pick something live-action instead. Anything, so long as you’re enjoying it enough that it doesn’t completely feel like study.
If you got N2 without interacting with media, you’ll probably crush N1 next time if you build in some dedicated time for it. Only way through the type of wall you’re saying you’re facing is exposure.
I also would probably recommend additional dedicated vocab resources at this point, or just making sure you’re taking notes from whatever it is you’re reading.
And make it regular too: Like, just call it study time that you’re going to watch one episode of ____, or read a chapter of _____, or _____ number of pages, each day.
2 Likes
Thanks for the message Ian. You make some great points.
I do interact with some media but yeah it wasn’t focused on consistent. I mostly just work with Japanese people and listen to them talk. I also did do mock tests.
How did you get into amateur translating? I want to do this too. Is there a website where we can advertise this service? I’ll do it for free for businesses I don’t care I just want exp.
I agree. I feel like I should have begun phasing WK out or at least upping native reading significantly around level 40.
Haha, no, nothing that formal. I just wound up taking on some scanlation projects for untranslated manga I enjoyed since other people offered to typeset.
But even if there weren’t an audience for it, it’d be a great experience just for study, so I’d recommend just hauling out a text you like and trying it anyway. Bonus points if it is untranslated, as you might be able to find an audience for it at some point. I know there are professional translators who have gotten their feet wet by translating something already in print in English, then comparing theirs to the official version every few pages, and while that was specifically for practicing the craft of translation rather than language study, I’d imagine it’d be just as interesting for language study too.
1 Like
lol so true.
Then for the other issues, for me what really helped with the weak fundamentals was hearing explanations instead of looking for it myself. So what might help is nihongonomori on youtube. Hearing them explain and having that ‘ah, I see!’ moment does so much for comprehension. It has subtitles too if I’m correct, so you’ll get more used to reading Japanese while listening to it, too. Listening to stupid songs like vocaloid (I like them a lot actually haha hmm) makes you notice the grammar and vocabulary too. You can link the readings to the kanji and reading lyrics with the song increases reading speed as well.
Secondly, I also have problems with actually reading a novel, but just reading subtitles or lyrics helps overcome the ‘mental wall’.
As others have been saying, at some point there is no other way but to really push yourself to finally read something… maybe blogs on the internet are better?
Anyway, good luck!! I can’t even think of N1 so for that I admire you!!
what have you used to study outside tae kim and wanikani?
Ah I forgot, but some textbooks made for practicing reading might also help a lot!! Just go to your local bookstore and check out the japanese books for practicing reading haha. Go a few levels below N1 and build up from there. Texts are short and have some questions to check whether you got it
(shinkanzen master is good I think??)
Yo Owl,
Somatome primarily
Fansubs maybe. There’re tons of people waiting for the next kind soul to translate that new show 
regarding you problems with seeing a wall of kanji when looking at a newspaper:
well it takes time until your brain recognises kanji at an instant and as such only one thing helps. and you will find that to be a recurring theme. no matter how well you factually know something you need to process language intuitively and you can only achieve that by practising over and over again.
i am at the moment in japan and whenever i see kanji i try to read them. if i struggle i ask natives (friends, people i just met at walk together with e.g. going out of nightclub) and or my non native friends to help me. i do that by discussing the meaning with them and how it might relate to the radicals and if that is enough for me to get the meaning of the word i ask for the reading. this is basically free reading practise. because of that i have basically no problems reading street signs or advertisements that dont use to hard kanji. do that. its free easy reading practise. if you cannot read even though you did wanikani you should consider a reset to maybe level 30 because you will only learn kanji for real (even with wanikani) if you use them.
about talking. man get over it. everyones japanese is shit. mine is especially shit. speaking is my weakness and even then i had quite long and quite deep conversations in japanese. i might have only used n5 and a bit of n4 grammar in those and looked up a hell of a lot of words in between sentences but you can speak and only speaking will get your speaking good.
so yeah its always the same only practise can get you fluent. because fluecy is pretty much a passive process in your brain.
why would you do that? even if it’s stylised it still the language and is you want to achieve mastery you will need to indulge yourself as much as possible. manga are easy because they have pictures. same goes for anime. maybe watch drama tho less stylised
anyhow, i feel like you just want to get n1 and that all you want. you dont care about being good at japanese you just want n1. how about you drop that idea. its just a stupid test you dont need it. instead read more, read newspaper for maybe 1 hour a day.
and talk to natives. otherwise you wont get good and if you eventually pass n1 you will just lose all motivation to get better at japanese and your japanese is still shit
I actually get the point of wanting to avoid overly stylized language.
It will still help, but to be blunt, half of what you get out of a lot of Sci-fi/fantasy adventure manga will be useless, actively misleading (In the sense that words are often “reused” with completely different meanings for magic/sci-fi elements, the same as in English, only even more frequently), or make you sound crazy (example: pick up any of the speech patterns found in Blazblue, literally any character, and you WILL sound insane).
You can obviously solve this by being diligent to take any vocab used in adventure manga with a grain of salt. However if you don’t like the genre anyway, save time and pick from more “realistic” genres.
I would try drama or romance. You will need to research any language you pick up from any source, obviously, if you don’t want to talk like an idiot. However, these should offer far more useful, everyday words. Unless you actually ever need to say “Galaxy Buster Fist of the Heavens Cannon”.
2 Likes
There are professional translators out there who couldn’t pass JLPT1 it’s supposed to be obscure and incredibly tough and doesn’t have concrete benefit in the way I’ve heard 2 does.