Gettin all sorts of replies, but I didn’t expect one from an LLM. lol
Ya just coulda said, “but I like charts and numbers”. Would’ve saved me the trouble of having to look up the word, empiricism which I’m likely to forget in approximately 1 day, 2 hours, 35 min, and 7 seconds.
Oh god, it’s happening to me now. ChatGPT, what do I do? Determine a goal so that I have a reason to live.
Putting aside the LLM accusation, a tool I don’t require for things like this. Process and metrics are what I get paid to do 
. But based on your response, I can read your original post through a completely different lens. Let’s address the highlights of each paragraph.
Let’s read on to see why you think it’s concerning.
You’ve described a reason why metrics are helpful, and a trend of people increasing their usage of them. Nothing seems concerning here.
Names “which I’m likely to forget in approximately 1 day, 2 hours, 35 min, and 7 seconds.” Sorry! I couldn’t help myself 
This seems like a very helpful metric to measure the health of your study group! Hopefully this isn’t a case of “everything seems to be dictated by numbers” and, instead, a metric you can use to adapt your language group!
I think this is your biggest issue. To flip it around, perhaps it’s not that they don’t show you because they don’t care, but that they don’t show you because you don’t care (about their numbers, it’s obvious you care about the people themselves).
Even more-so, what’s wrong with praising people for putting in effort? Hitting level 10 on Wanikani or mastering all of the N5 grammar in Bunpro is a pretty amazing feat that demonstrates the dedication you desire (but is not a goal in and of itself, see below).
I think the RPG analogy is an amazing one. You gain tons of “stats” on your “character sheet” as you learn. One or more of those “stats” are your ability to handle the chaotic mess that is human communication. Also, people proactively seek a summary evaluation of those stats in the JLPT which could very well end up on your resume which is another character sheet of sorts, is it not? (There were 769,229 examinees last year alone!)
I think this is where we can find common ground. That’s why I wrote the bit about goals. A tool is a means to an end - a goal - not an answer in and of itself. Finishing Wanikani by itself is impressive, but it’s a means to an end. The effort is praise worthy, and once again, I think ignoring it or downplaying it is not a great approach in 2025.
Let’s use empiricism (a word I’m determined to teach you!!) and find out! Past Test Data | JLPT Japanese-Language Proficiency Test is just one source of data. Let’s find other sources with transparency, inspect the data and adapt our approach! If we just use the JLPT results, we can conclude that more foreigners are becoming fluent in 2025 than in 2005.
I think the method people choose to learn a language is largely tied to their goals. If all they want to do is watch Shounen anime, more power to them. Anything else would be unnecessary gatekeeping.
The metrics were a means to an end - communication with people. If it helped him get there, they were valuable. And by your own words, he didn’t regret it, so I wouldn’t say this is a concerning anecdote.
We’ve hit the first concerning thing so far! This is why educating people on metrics is so important. You’re not 1/2000 kanji learned, you’ve mastered 1/1 kanji you’ve studied! Metrics aren’t going anywhere. If we choose to ignore metrics education, we’ll leave behind the people who are struggling with your various mental issues.
Some ways are superior. You mentioned notepads, but is a notepad/physical flashcard better than a digital one? No study I could find proves it, but I’d guess the digital ones are more efficient for most people. But most people isn’t everyone, so while some may be superior it is unlikely that any are absolute.
Agree. And hopefully, through educating people on goals, metrics, empiricism, process, proper tool usage and other things, rather than outright abandoning them, we can share our love of Japanese with others!
You bring up some good points. It seems like a lot of the good points being brought up are from people with an analytical background. I’m glad you took the time to respond.
Honestly, the first response was so robotic and LLM like structured that it was hard to tell if it was trolling or not. That’s why I kinda responded in a troll kinda way.
And you know, when I’m talking to students I’m tutoring or in larger discussions, I do always direct students to things like Bunrpo and Wanikani, mentioning the tracking progress. I’ve even made boring ass slides about them that I had to add gifs to so the audience wouldn’t fall asleep. So like I said, I’m not against it.
My point was that I think there is a over-reliance on it, to the point that the number becomes the defining factor for many. But you know, if that’s what makes you happy who am I to judge? You’re an intelligent person and I’ve met many people like you in my Japanese learning journey. I’ll be open to your opinion, but you be open my perspective as well. Truly intelligent people never believe that their perspective is absolute, and often question what they believe to be true.
Reading recent responses made me want to add my five cents.
I believe it’s that the systems people adopt simply have too few parameters. That frequently makes people focus on quantity and fully give up on quality.
Quality in the sense of looking not only for numbers, but how well you know concepts (word has to be seen in many contexts, quite a few times to be internalized, as well as being associated with other concepts (like its parts, kanji (as roots), are they used in other words? And those kanji, with which other kanji they share sound components?), general level of the language. As well as in the sense of how engaged you are, how much time you can spend with the language until brain goes foggy, starts floating away, and generally start hating what you do.
Basically the foundation is broken, just by the means of numbers, I would guess that is what we don’t like here.
As an example, I don’t see any disadvantages in traking, for example, how was my day on a scale from 1 to 10, or something of a kind, it won’t make you lose the sight of things, what are you gonna do, make your day better 
If you track your sleep, food and energy level, you might see that you always have less energy when you sleep less, or maybe when you eat too much or too little you fall asleep slower, or some other patterns.
Tracking can then show us connection we couln’t notice before so we can try to find the cause and then the root of that cause.
So it’s probably not the obsession with numbers itself, but the obsession with numbers that do not serve much, and by buffing which you just lose numbers from other aspects that you just haven’t heppen to track.
Edit: ok, I’ve stoped for a second, those numbers are not usless, they give some sort of guideline, goal, accountability, feel that you are not doing less then yesturday. It’s that thay just have those week point I’ve listed above
That’s a good point and something that I also think gets lost in all the flashcards and apps. When an app tells you that you know, or “mastered” something, whether it be grammar, vocab, or something else, the feeling is just so arbitrary as you might have just mastered it within the confines of the apps limited examples.
And like I said, I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong with tracking your progress, it’s when it becomes the main factor when people lose the plot. It’s when people tend to forget why they were studying in the first place.
Hmmm, from my perspective, it seems like they are not losing the plot, but rather they are still trying to find it following the best way they can see at the moment, even if they don’t know about it.
This way of thinking is a bit narrow. Semantics of the word “mastered” aside, anything you study is going to be limited in scope. Everyone needs to find their own arbitrary in life.
I’m focused on キャトルミューティレーション, not 航海薄明
I need the slang 雑魚 not 風呂キャンセル界隈
That’s an interesting take.
I don’t agree with it, but it’s interesting none the less.
Look, you’re probably right, but for some of us it’s mentally necessary.
I am the typical 30-something ‘former gifted kid’ person who struggles with the idea of never really ‘meeting my potential’ of shining in something. Struggling with the acceptance of forever being average. I’ve got a good job, but I’m not making 6 digits. I’ve got a decent amount of money, but I’m not a millionaire; I’ll probably never even afford to buy a house. I’ve got friends, but a lot of them are busy, leaving me lonely. I’m pretty sure there’s many others like me.
After the pandemic I, like many others, was left with my sense of values completely shuttered and with no longer having anything that truly gave me meaning. Studying Japanese was the only thing that made me truly happy outside of my job in a really long time. And seeing those numbers go up is probably, as you say, my only source of dopamine. I can finally feel like I’m achieving something, even if it’s completely inconsequential in my life.
TL;DR: Just let us have our fun and feel a sense of achievement for once in our lives, even if it’s a “false” sense of achievement. Not all of us have a goal to study the most “efficient” way, learning Japanese is never going to be anything more than a hobby for me because I do not, and cannot, live in Japan. Nobody other than me cares if I pass the N2 or N1 or if I can have a Japanese conversation at the level of a 6 year old or a 10 year old.
I notice this on some discords I’m in, people have 5k+ kanji learned but never spoke a single word of japanese to anyone.
On this point, Japanese does also seem to attract a fair amount of people who see it like a game rather than a communication tool. I think there are legit some people who just want to master the kanji because its there to be mastered and it’s quantifiable but have less than zero interest in doing things like talking to people. I feel like other languages don’t attract this kind of learner nearly as much, for some reason.
quick edit to add: I think these learners are distinctly different from learners obsessed with stats though, as talked about in the original post- these learners are hobbyists of a different kind? I don’t know if I am explaining myself well.
To be fair, kanji are really cool and most languages don’t have them.
I mean, yeah, thats what got me interested in Japanese too tbh. It is unique aesthetically from a Western perspective. Also absolutely no shade in being interested in Japanese just because you think it would be fun to master 5000 kanji, thats a valid hobby too! Just a curious phenomenon.
I think I was one of those at first who focused on the numbers game instead of the language. I think with the sheer amount of content online it could also be that its a bit overwhelming at first until you find something that works. It’s also difficult to tell if you’re making progress and the numbers and stats apps give more of a sense of direction until you get your legs.
1,470,989 examines in 2024. Pre-covid, 1,168,535 in 2019, roughly 25% more examines. How do you define massive? Availability might be the constraint rather than number of people studying, especially since test centers have shifted since the pandemic.
With enough time and money, everything can be quantified.
Not me learning deeply about Second Language Acquisition (SLA) in the same timeframe and finding out how just bad most online tools are.
Yup, there are people who find satisfaction in getting 100% achievements in games, requiring tedious tasks, multiple play-throughs, etc… In Japanese, there are more people that use it as a method of comparison to others but in games? Nobody is going to randomly look up your profile and care that you’ve beaten the game on the hardest difficulty or achieved all 67 endings.
I have an interest in talking to people and I can achieve that with English, there’s no particular reason for me to do it with Japanese yet. Japanese culture/daily life while appealing to me, isn’t enough for me to intentionally seek out Japanese people and try to build a social network around. I don’t have a necessity for speaking in Japanese, it would be great for travel and that’s the extent of my motivation for talking. Japanese probably attracts most people in this demographic because of the nature of its media, resonating with games and such. In my environment, another contending language could be Korean due to the rise of kpop and manhwa 
Why do I want to watch anime without subtitles?- To understand what’s going on in the anime… but wait, can’t I do that with English subtitles already?..
Yeah for anyone saying this, they probably weren’t able to clearly express their thoughts. I want to watch anime, not read. I want to understand the nuances lost in translation, whether that’s watching anime or reading written text. The vibes are different when consuming material via translation. There’s a reason why English dubs are less popular beyond worse VA. There are a number of English-native animated shows I enjoyed, which I had never even thought of watching in Japanese lol… The emotions and tones are different between languages. I think back to when I was younger and having watched one of my all time favorite shows. They stopped production and so I had to wait for translations of the LN. There was a pause on official translations and so I turned to fan translations. Oh wouldn’t it have been great to just have known Japanese and read the original material 
I think something that gets lost is that communication doesn’t need to be two-way. I just want to understand what the Author wants to convey and how they want to convey it.
I think 30% conversion to N3 post-covid, and 15% conversion to N2/N1 post-covid is a pretty massive increase. My guess is the bottleneck isn’t lack of willing participants but lack of testing slots.
I highly recommend this book. It has many real world examples. How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business: Hubbard, Douglas W.: 9781118539279: Amazon.com: Books. Hopefully it will change your mind! 
Some interesting takes there. Thank you for reading through.
Makes a post about over-reliance and obsession over stats and numbers in modern Japanese learning.
Everyone ends up talking about stats and numbers, lol.
I guess in some ways it’s simpler than I thought. People look at numbers and stats intellectually, until you realize that sports fans seem to only talk about stats and numbers too, but no one views them intellectually. It’s the easiest way for them to measure success and prestige. Hell, they crunch numbers for fun by playing Fantasy Football. So as a very mild sports fan I dunno, maybe there is some fun in it. It’s like having your very own ESPN post game show when you look at your stats. Charles and Shaq not included.
I don’t know, who knows, and I’m not gonna pretend to know. Like I said, what I stated was an opinion and not gospel.