At least you returned. 
I actually am well on my way for the December N1 test. I now started actually studying for the test (Grammar refresher N2 atm). I think it’s the earliest before any test that I started studying. Let’s see if I can keep up the momentum until the end of November…
I was reading through this thread the other day and saw your initial goal post and wondered whether I should give you a nudge
Done with school and all my exams now! If I pass them all I am secured a job so then there will be routine and Japanese will be back in focus 
Good luck with the exams and job hunting!
Hey @tonkatsu227 , thank you for your suggestion. I did not think about that. I saw that my Netflix (Germany) has some seasons with Japanese audio and subtitles. I’ll give it a go.
In the end I have bought the whole manga set of Boku no Academia alongside many mangas suggested in the beginner book clubs.
Turns out manga are quite cheap when you buy them second hand from Japan. All mangas are in such a great state as well. The owners have really been careful with them.
Yay! I am glad my suggestion helped!
Maybe I am burnt out being here. Maybe I don’t know what comes after JET and I am feeling discouraged, but for the last year my Japanese has been stagnant since I barely want to touch anything.
I had phases like these multiple times.
Take a break and only engage with fun stuff in japanese if you actually feel like it.
Personally, my interest came back on its own again after some time away from the language every time. Even if it doesn’t return and you find other passions, that’s just life and your time with japanese wasn’t wasted either way ;).
Good look in getting unburned.
How’s everyone doing at the halfway (ish) point? I only set first half goals so thought I’d check in here.
finish “reading” また、同じ夢お見ていた
“Read” one more novel: ムーミン谷の彗星
Participate in Soggy’s children’s novel club - see Moomins above
Finish watching all of しろくまカフェ - sad it’s over, will certainly rewatch
figure out what next for broadening my slice of life listening - pending
Get to level ~40 on WK and then reevaluate next steps with kanji / vocab - see block below
Decide whether N3 in Dec is something to aim for - decided; not going to be focused on this
On WK, not that anyone is paying attention to my little level marker, but I paused progress entirely in about Feb. I was having an extremely busy period at work which put in sharp relief the relative time inefficiency of WK. The amount of leeches and inability to deal with them, the relative obscurity of much of the vocab, the review periods, and honestly also because my kanji knowledge had far outstripped any other Japanese skills I had. I have kept up with reviews, so I can restart at some stage if I want to. Unlikely in the short term.
As an alternative I went through the Kaishi 1.5k Anki deck - skipping most of it that WK covered but doing a few hundred words that it hadn’t. That consolidated some basics, but I finished it a while ago and still haven’t really worked out where to go next after this. Partly that’s because I decided to… (see next block)
I spent a lot more time listening, primarily through podcasts and YouTube, than I have done before (plus of course shirokuma cafe mentioned above). Progress is harder to track with this, but it’s very clear when some things that a year ago felt challenging now feel much easier. Akane is the best example of this for me because she speaks relatively fast compared to people I’d listened to before that, which felt very difficult at first and now she’s one of the easier podcasts. I also did the first three stages of Pimsleur, and snuck in a couple of Italki lessons. Not enough to really have an impact, but they were fun.
Fave YouTube / podcasters have included:
I’ve been using Migaku - with varying amounts of success - as assistance. Mostly helpful, sometimes broken. When it works, it allows quick, easy audio flashcard generation on iOS which is the killer feature for me. It also (used to) allow very quick easy subtitle generation for videos that didn’t have them (or only had the terrible YouTube autogenerated ones) but this feature is mostly broken now.
So what next? Well I’m still in the midst of a busy period personally and professionally so really this has been fully relegated to “fun hobby” rather than anything more significant. To that end, goals are pretty open ended. I’d like to:
continue listening - find a shirokuma cafe replacement and work my way through it (suggestions of light hearted slice of life aimed at adults welcome)
“Read” at least 2 books - current children’s novel pick plus continue plugging away at かがみの孤城
Later in the year, come back to the Q of how to continue to progress my kanji knowledge and reading vocab without WK. (This isn’t conceptually difficult, it’s just a Q of focus and time to making the setup low effort and easy)
I’ve not mentioned various other things of the last few months that I’ll keep going with on the side - eg Yotsuba& has become a great bedtime read for me, now that much of that is relatively easy to read extensively. If I don’t understand all of it that’s fine, I can still enjoy it without looking up everything. (Which is kind of cool? Would like to get to that stage with the children’s novels) [1]
We’re planning to go back to Japan for a bit in a few weeks time which will be excellent. But given how busy life is, the focus there will be relaxing rather than powering language learning. Eating food, exploring new places (including Okinawa which I’m excited about) and lots of sleeping. Can. Not. Wait.
So a fun half year of inching forwards where the most important thing is that I’ve continued to enjoy it. No idea where this ends up and I do sometimes wonder whether it’s a giant waste of time. But then what else would I be doing? The time passes anyway. Happy summer all.
Editor’s note: the very next double page spread that I turned to was two adults having a conversation at the start of a chapter and I have no idea what they were talking about and had to look up a bunch of words. Way to keep you humble. ↩︎
At the halfway point of the year I’m feeling motivated! I want to sit the N4 in December, so I’m aiming to hit level 17 on wanikani by then, as I think that covers all but 1-2 of the kanji that should be expected in that exam.
As for other goals, I need to get better at reading. My listening and speaking are quite good, but I am a slow reader and definitely guilty of guesstimating meanings.
I’m doing pretty good 
It’s still pretty difficult, but I did finish the first volume of よう実 recently! and i’m on track to hit level 60 around ~early September or so.
I think the main goal is just to keep at it. The secondary goal is to spend more time listening.
Oooo I like the idea of doing half year updates. Let’s see,
On track, I’m at 168/415 so nearly halfway there (I started in April)
This one might not happen but that’s okay, I’ll get close at least now that I’ve added taking the N3 
WIP I have no idea what I’m doing right now, but I started doing something last week!
I read my first novel! I might also join the intermediate clubs next pick. I’ve been playing FF3/4 and Pokopia this year.
I started listening to podcasts on the way home for work, this lasted like 2 months, then summer started and I was on break so no more podcasts lol. I’ll have to try to build this habit again.
I’ve gone 4 times with another planned for tomorrow
We went, was amazing 
Nice idea of having a half-year update !
Original post:
Errrrr. Not great progress if you look at the objectives…
“Finish the first Higurashi novel… still 75% of the content to go through… about 6.3k words / ~700 kanjis to learn…”
I’m at 31% right now… A good quarter of the year was spent recovering from stopping
Start grammar in truth ? Maybe look at MaruMori or Renshuu… bunpro doesn’t cut it for me…
This one great success, I have gone through enough grammar and especially conjugation of verbs and adjectives for them to stop being a parsing issue when reading.
Or go through a second work ? (candidates: Fate SN / UBW / HF | Clannad | Higurashi 2+ | SAO Progressive)
Oh the hubris…
WK42+
I doubt I’ll ever get another WK level… maybe for fun in a few years ?
Generally speaking my only real win for this year is to not have dropped more than four months… 
Although I may be more harsh than necessary… At the date of the OG post I was still preparing text a page or two at a time for 15 days minimum before attempting to read it, now I’ve switched to reading a section / chapter then digesting before going further…
Sounds like evolution, not failure! Well done for sticking with it.
Like the halfway point thing. Looking at the above, I’m good on the first two so far, and making that the first non-optional part of my study is helpful. I did have to do one or the other late at night for travel or for forgetfulness but I haven’t missed a day yet.
N3 is still a plan.
Producing… may have more on that in a month or so.
Finishing the things I read and watch… iffy. Will eventually but I’ve taken breaks from anime series in particular and don’t feel compelled to go back yet.
The forums, I’ve come and gone a bit, hopefully that’ll be better the second half.
It’s funny that now is the moment when these mid year updates are coming in, because I was doing ok at my reading goals until last week. My goal was to read a lot of novels, but my autism brain got very attached to a specific manga series that I have now read and reread 5? times in the last 2 weeks. Novels, what’s that? Manga is apparently now my life. I honestly don’t feel bad though, I’m still reading.
I’m not really writing much. Idk why I’ve got a mental block about it. I wrote quite a lot last year and this year barely anything. I also am not in the right mindset to try and force it. Maybe that’s the problem, I feel writing is necessary to really improve, and I don’t think I’ve actually wanted to improve. Maybe this year will turn out to be a year where I only do unambiguously fun things, with absolutely no other pressure or expectations. Honestly seems good to me.
Spanish is still not going well. I’m starting to suspect that I simply don’t have a strong enough reason to want to learn it. Or maybe it’s because it’s not at a high enough level where learning it is unambiguously fun. Oh well.
At least I can say these were not realistic to begin with considering I’m spending most of my time doing listening instead of reading 
I thought maybe I could do it since I managed to read 45 novels last year. So far this year I’ve read 10! No finished books in June and by the pace of current book, there won’t be any in July either. That’s a new record of its own 
I’ve never gone two full months in a row without a book finished.
On the other hand, I’m doing very well tracking listening hours 
I’m already 200h+ in July thanks to 3weeks summer vacation That’s a new personal record. Over 900h so far this year:
2025 vs 2026 so far:
How did I listen only 700h in 2025?
One goal finished 
I rate this stuff. Good for exercise too. When I’m in the can’t be bothered’s about a walk or gym session I’ll tell myself “I’ll just put my shoes on and do ten mins down the road and back” - usually that turns into 30mins or an hour. Same with the gym: “I won’t do weights, just some treadmill and a few things”. Then once I get going I just keep on with it.
If it takes lying or tricking yourself to get things going just do it. Don’t overthink.
This is my original Post.
I haven’t done a lot of the Things I wanted to do. During spring I didn’t learn much at all and now I switched to marumori for learning Grammar. For vocabulary I still use Bunpro and I’ve around 1400 words in expert. My goal is 3000. I also started Reading (slowly) the Japanese Graded Readers instead of satori.
I’m done with JLPT related material so I just want to read manga, novels, light novels, law books, history books, animal and sea animal encyclopedias, and play videos games
I want to buy at least 30 books per trip when I go to Japan in the future
