Another 1 year speedrun thread (N1"-ish", not JLPT N1)

sushimonster · March 8, 2025, 9:59pm

First post here but I was reading another thread regarding this and realized I was doing something similar. There was a lot of outrage in that thread so I decided to make my own to perhaps get some feedback. I’ve been documenting my journey for a few months now on WaniKani (WFH Robot Log). Off the bat, I think should state that there’s no way I think I will be JLPT N1 ready in 1 year (2 years is possible though!). But I do think I can cover bunpro N1-N5 + 4-5k vocab words in about a year. Comment if you agree or disagree.

No prior Japanese study. Used to watch anime a VERY long time ago. Aside from Edgerunners, I don’t think I’ve watched anything seriously for over 10 years. Started learning Japanese in October 2024 with 2K anki deck at 20 WPD (finished in early January) and WK. Used Renshuu to learn hiragana/katakana via mnemonics + some grammar before switching to bunpro (around November I believe). Had some hiccups but I’m essentially doing 6 grammar points a day on bunpro (3 morning, 3 evening) following someone else’s strategy (writing notes on each grammar point as I learn them). I have an entire notebook filled with N4 (which I just finished), and will start N3 this Monday. Essentially, if you do the math and add a few days of lee-way, N3/N2 take 36 days per at 6 grammar points per day. But the most challenging ones (I’m told) are N3/N4, and N2/N1 are relatively easier. So once I’m done hard focusing N3, it’s relatively chill. At the current pace, N1 bunpro will be done by August. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m N1 JLPT ready, but now that I’ve been exposed to most grammar points, I can let it sink in with time.

The chill zone will be after August where both bunpro grammar and 2k anki deck will be on review while I slowly work through a 10K anki deck (already over 2K words in and learning new words at 10 wpd). Focus will be on slowly adding vocab while focusing on listening and output. I’ve been watching Terrace House but I feel like it’ll be more useful after I have N3 covered. Still useful though! Technically after August I only have 2 months before I hit the official 1 year mark but I’m not holding myself to 1 year exactly. I just want to get the fundamentals out of the way quickly (so that they have more time to marinate), and then slowly add vocab over time while trying to actually use the language in real ways.

Daily learning schedule is something like this:
Wakeup: Bunpro reviews, WK reviews, 3 Bunpro grammar points
Lunch: Bunpro reviews, 10K Anki deck (~120 review, 10 new cards)
After work: Bunpro reviews, WK reviews, 3 Bunpro grammar points
Before bed: 2K Anki deck (Finished, 60 cards in review), 10K Anki deck (~120 review, 10 new cards)

Anki deck used to take me SO long to do (2-3 hours), especially when reviews were in the 240 range and my knowledge of grammar was nearly zero. But now I just FLY through them in about 30 minutes. Doing 10 new cards per day instead of 20 helps a lot. Focus at this time is more on grammar than vocab.

Quickhands18 · March 9, 2025, 5:26am

It sounds like you have a solid plan that works for you at the moment.

I’ve also stretched on some more advanced grammar/vocab to “let it marinate”. But upon reflection, I treated every point equally and might have benefitted from spending extra time on the core stuff in N5 and N4 since it comes up so frequently.

Also, I won’t comment about speedrunning in general as that’s been done in other recent posts. But in my opinion, a good plan should be flexible and adapt as you get on with the project. Maybe you can take the JLPT this July (if it’s offered near you) to see where you’re at.

Lastly, it might help to diversify your study tools. I love BunPro (lifetime member!) , but I also found the Minna no Nihongo textbook series invaluable. Even just adding in things like NHK Web News Easy could help drill in the points you’re learning through BunPro.

Good luck with however you get on! You seem like you’ve made great headway already and are highly motivated!

rustx · March 9, 2025, 5:55am

Yes you can. I did N5-N1 bunpro in a year the same as you’re aiming for.

The other thread got a lot of negative feedback because there’s endless amounts of those “I’m going to be fluent from nothing in 1 year!” type posts, and they never follow through or lead to anything interesting, nearly every single time they just stop posting and assumably quit studying entirely.

lisaef · March 9, 2025, 2:36pm

+1 to this - I’m currently on my 3rd bunpro reset (having completed vocab/grammar lessons up to N3 twice in the last few years) and only now feel like the core grammar is really sinking in.

Back in 2022 I also speedran wanikani in a year all the way to level 60 and have restarted it (now at lvl 34 after a year), long story short I realised that not a lot stuck from the first run (especially kanji I wasn’t exposed to after learning them on WK).

My main takeaway has been that repetition does really have an impact, and there’s nothing wrong with going back to things you’ve already learned and reinforce them - took me a while to get over my own ego to acknowledge that, as I used to think as soon as I’ve seen it once it’ll stick (but it obviously didn’t).

Best of luck with your plan, worst case it’ll help you realise where your gaps are after you’re done and you can go back and focus on closing those

Alphaz · March 9, 2025, 6:11pm

You said to post your opinions on whether it’s possible or not, so my opinion is that:

It depends on what you mean by N1-ish. You could in theory be N1-ish in speaking and listening, but have zero ability to read kanji, if you focus on learning vocab through kana and learn by talking to people on HelloTalk and other apps. If you are including learning readings of kanji, then this becomes much harder.
Full package N1-ish with kanji readings, extensive vocab, grammar and ability to communicate & listen & read native material is definitely doable in 2 years of consistent study. One year is extremely rough and still likely doable for a miniscule amount of people who can handle the workload without burning out and losing passion. If you lose interest & passion (pre-burnout stage), then your brain stops retaining the information, and you’ll see yourself slow down heavily.

I watched 500+ animes, which easily translates to 3000-4000 hours of inactive listening to JP content. Even though it was inactive, I picked up a lot of words and often find vocab that just sticks instantly, because I heard it so many times in anime. Same with grammar points, some of them like まず, らしい, みたい were points that I’ve seen so many times in anime, that I just read the grammar point description once and they just keep going up in SRS. Then you have conjugation stuff that are borderline impossible to just pick up from listening (especially inactive one).

My point is, with so much time spent listening to JP content, I’ve had it much easier to learn vocabulary & grammar points when it came to it, and yet it is still extremely hard. I took numerous breaks on Wanikani over the 4 years and always found myself forgetting some kanji I learned previously, having to go over them again etc.

This year I even made “old kanji deck” for WK, where I wanted to refresh the ones I burned. I did exactly that, and then you start forgetting & mistaking the similarly visual ones in isolation. The conclusion I reached is that isolation learning, as in learning just one kanji, or one vocabulary outside of a sentence etc. is only good for “going over it” a few times. You’ll eventually forget most of advanced vocabulary if unused, and only the very easy, distinct words will stick. The only real way to progress efficiently and learn is to consume native material.

Anki/SRS is a great system in theory, but the reality is that I think so many of us get a tunnel vision with this approach, and think it’s a one-cure-all system that will lead us to fluency. My advice is to reduce isolation studying to the minimum. Using Anki to learn vocab? Good. Go through the deck, suspend cards that reach higher interval, suspend cards that are constant leeches. It might sound counter-intuitive and wrong at first, but by doing so you reduce your workload, speedrun through isolation studying, and finish that part of studying ASAP. Then you jump into doing native reading, and in that environment, everything will stick.

Summary:
Native material is the key, treat isolation studying as a stepping stone to native material. Delete leeches, delete high interval cards, reduce isolation study workload, simply go over the material to retain it even at the lowest point possible, and then start native reading. It will refresh everything, and present the vocab you learned in context, solidifying it in your brain.

Ps. Try different ways of studying. Different things may work better for you than it did for me, but if you’re into gaming, then try these out: -N4- -N3- → They’re amazing, I watched them before learning grammar with same principle of “going over things”, and found studying grammar points a breeze afterwards.

KurokawaMasumi · March 9, 2025, 8:01pm

Brah I believe in you, you absolutely can do it. Don’t listen to the haters. You just gotta be built different and by God I believe you are, so do your best to prove everyone wrong.

EmperorLicht · March 9, 2025, 10:25pm

I respect the ambition, and I don’t want to discourage anyone. But I think it’s important to have a realistic view of what reaching N1ish in a year actually takes.

Passive Learning Through Anime

Watching 500+ anime sounds like thousands of hours of “learning,” but unless you’re actively listening, breaking down sentences, and studying the grammar, you’re mostly just reading subtitles.

Recognition isn’t comprehension. You might pick up words like ヤバい or 甘い (あまい), but that doesn’t mean you understand how they actually work in different contexts. Grammar, kanji, and sentence structure don’t just “click” through anime. Otherwise, we’d all be fluent after binge-watching our favorite shows.

Anime definitely helps with exposure, but exposure alone doesn’t lead to fluency; especially when subtitles are involved.

SRS (Exponential Reviews)

Adding 20 new words per day sounds doable at first, but reviews snowball fast. Within weeks or months, you’re buried under thousands of flashcards, struggling to keep up.

If you don’t consistently review, you forget. If you only add new words, you overload. If you don’t reinforce words through real use, they never stick.

This is why so many learners—including myself—burn out or have burned out. SRS is a tool, not a magic bullet. You need reading, writing, and real-world application to actually make things stick.

N1 or “N1-ish” in a Year? Extremely Hard.

It’s not just about memorizing 10-20k words—you need to read, process, and use them fluently in real-world contexts.

Also, N1 texts are dense, abstract, and unforgiving. Memorization alone won’t get you there. Trying to learn kanji only by recognition isn’t enough either; you need to know readings and radicals since you need to consistently differentiate visually similar ones. Knowing radicals and breaking down kanji also makes learning way easier in the long run.

Grammar is more than just rules—it’s intuition, knowing how and when to use something in which way, and that takes time to build.

My Experience & What “Actually” Works

I’ve been studying for years and did a vocational training program in Germany for JP/EN. As of now, I’m studying Japanese at university. Despite knowing more kanji and vocab than most of my classmates(allegedly), I still struggle with grammar and forming sentences.

In my experience, real progress comes from:

reading native content like books, articles, and manga.

practicing output through writing, speaking, and shadowing(not just passive input, but actually forcing yourself to use it).

Keeping SRS manageable; if you notice your reviews start to overwhelm you, just stop adding more for a short period of time(like 1-2 days).

Actively engaging with kanji; I write them down every single time I review them, no matter if I got them correct or wrong.

Final Thoughts

N1 in a year isn’t impossible, but it’s brutally hard. I personally failed it before because I’m a lazy fker, and I think most people underestimate the actual workload and what it means to review for 3-4 hours a day(pain peko).

The real danger isn’t failing. It’s not keeping momentum and burning out before you get anywhere.

If someone’s serious about it, more power to them. If they achieve it, even better. But don’t let chasing N1 or even just N1-ish kill your motivation(I know that wasn’t in debate but still).

I personally procrastinated way more with these theoretical number games than actually spending time learning the language in the past(I mean why you think I write this).

Eventually, my conclusion is/was that you don’t need to rush learning anything you should take your time as you’ll still have the rest of your life to enjoy it after.

As a baseline, just try to keep your ambitions in check with reality as you move forward. And most importantly never stop moving forward.

mrfuuton · March 9, 2025, 11:05pm

No hate or rage from me.
Just a reality check.
It’s all fine and good to want to get to that level as quickly as possible.

If your goal is to be able to use it more in writing and speech, then that’s the practice you’d need to include more of.

If not, then you don’t have to do much more than what you’re doing, besides managing your expectations of what completion of this would look like.

It’s something I used to say to my Japanese students before they went on to university. English to them could be much more than a subject to pass or a TOEIC certificate. They just need to figure out what to aim for while they’re learning.

sushimonster · March 11, 2025, 7:27pm

Thanks for the feedback all. My version of “N1”-ish is more like covering all grammar points and having a decent foundation of vocab to where I can start reading/listening without being surprised by grammar or having to pause after every single vocabulary word. Over time, the grammar points should solidify themselves. Want to get to a state where I’m mostly adding new vocab.

Thanks! I’ll look into this after N1 or N2 bunpro.

I’ve already had to reset once because I ran thru N4/N3 too fast while trying to finish 2K anki deck simultaneously. I’ve since sidelined vocab (still do WK though) in favor of focusing on grammar. Repeating definitely helps.

Thanks! I’ll definitely look into this. 4 hours per video isn’t too bad. I’ve watched entire course lectures in the span of a week that go for as long as 30 hours. Very doable. I’m also highly aware of active and passive. I do realize that many advocate reading as the best course of improvement and it’s no different in the states. People who read newspapers growing up do better on the reading portion of standardized exams. That’s kind of why I’m speedrunning bunpro and some vocab. I know the other things you mentioned are more important.

This is actually the reason I’m speeding through bunpro. Even if I studied each grammar point very carefully, it will still be in isolation and I will still forget some of them so there’s no point dwelling too long in the isolation portion. Just want to see “everything” in grammar land once and have a few thousand vocab under my belt.

This is the part I’m good at. Spending an inordinate amount of time on something difficult. Nothing to worry about here.

My goal is to know enough Japanese to be able to converse with Japanese locals outside of surface level conversation and read. Writing not important, but I do write a little bit. Will be far from N1-JLPT ready.

As an aside, I’m 3 days into N3 deck (18 grammar points). Will update when N3 is finished or to replay to comments/suggestions.

MaxChaotic · March 13, 2025, 2:54am

I think this is an appropriate mindset and a good way to set your expectations. Put very simply; you learn what you study. Through bunpro you study how to fill in a grammar point in a sentence, often with some kind of minor hinting/prompting. It is, of course, very important to connect this compartmentalized behavior with other contexts if you want that information to stick and be useable in other contexts.

Fundamentally it’s just part of how our brains work. You have made strong neural pathways in your brain for accessing Japanese information while studying. You likely have much weaker and less-connected pathways for accessing that same Japanese information while walking around a subway station in Japan or trying to have a conversation in Japanese. And that’s totally okay. You can study and practice those things if you want to at a later date.

In my entirely subjective opinion, though, I would recommend starting with easy reading/listening appropriate for the level you’re already at sooner rather than later. I fully understand the desire to build a knowledge base and then start using it, but I think more often than not, lack of integrating experience can create frustrating gaps between structural language knowledge and functional language knowledge.

Even at a beginner level, integrating experiences (like reading, listening, having conversations) help both with connecting the information you have to real experiences - making it easier to access that information in general situations - and reinforce the things you learn by putting them in new and varied contexts. If that strikes your fancy, there are a handful of online graded media resources available that I strongly recommend checking out.

Plus, it’s often just fun to consume media, and extraordinarily gratifying to be able to do so thanks to the knowledge you’ve built.

Good luck with the study!

sushimonster · March 18, 2025, 7:31pm

Yep. I’m highly aware of the potential pitfalls and limitations. For example, when doing bunpro, you want to avoid being simply “good at solving bunpro reviews,” which to me means reading the review sentences out loud and trying to solve the prompts correctly while considering alternative answers and the surrounding sentence structure. Basically try to extract more value from each review than simply inputting the correct answer. This is also why I’m trying to get through these “preliminary” things as quickly as possible–because I know there is a lot to do outside of bunpro and anki deck reviews. And even if you’ve finished bunpro, that doesn’t mean you’ve mastered each point. Also, how harshly you grade yourself makes a difference too when it comes to mastery. We haven’t even touched real life application yet! So I’m gonna rip the bandaids off. Get it done. Move onto the big stuff (real life application). In terms of the neural pathways, I’m essentially focused on laying down the nodes first (learning all grammar points, some basic vocab) and forming the webs later (reading/speaking).

Small update: By the end of today I’ll have 60 N3 grammar points completed. I also crammed all of N4 over the weekend and some N5. I also cram each N3 lessons after each grammar point within a lesson is completed. When you’re doing grammar points at a fast rate, cramming is useful for retention!

sushimonster · April 14, 2025, 2:53am

Finally finished N3!

Not sure how many days it took, but I was pretty consistent with 6 lessons per day. I’ve used up another pen taking notes on all N3 grammar rules. I currently have 2 notebooks filled with N3 and N4 grammar rules, respectively, and 3 dead pens. Lessons 8 and 9 were kinda dicey but Lesson 10 was free which is nice. I’ve noticed that as I do more and more bunpro, my ability to read the review sentences has gone up and it’s no longer as painful to go through 30-40 reviews as it used to be. I also notice (and understand!!) past grammar rules being used in review sentences. Feels nice.

I tried to read some VNs this month but it turned out to be a slight PITA. The VN I was trying to read needs 64 bit textractor and it still couldn’t find the right hooks. At the same time, I’ve discovered and have been using Yomitan for reading bunpro reviews in preparation for further Yomitan-enhanced reading in the future. Now that I’ve finished N3, I’ll try to figure out the VN stuff again (perhaps a different VN). I also watched Kiki’s delivery service and Totoro recently (purposely chose the easiest Ghibli movies), and was surprised by how much I understood. I was also surprised by how much casual language is used. Thankfully, bunpro and cure dolly pushed me towards the ‘standard’ form instead of always getting bludgeoned with polite form.

Gonna let N3 marinate for 5 days (do some N3/N4 cram in the meantime) and start N2 on 4/19. As with N3, ETA for N2 is 36 days. Then another 5 day break into 30 days of N1. Plan to be done with learning new grammar points by July 1st.

One last thing. As I continue to learn, I’ve been evolving my approach and I’ve discovered that people who jump into reading ASAP seem to learn vocab WAY faster than just anki deck. So a push towards reading is a MUST imo. Feel free to suggest or correct!

adorable · April 14, 2025, 10:29am

This is true. I started reading with N4 grammar and it’s more than enough to enjoy stories even with lower comprehension. It also made some the grammar reviews piece of cake because i’d see it so much more. It was difficult at this stage, not going to lie about that, but I kept going.

Lately most of the words I added to anki reviews are just the words I’ve read a lot in a recent novel that I suspect will come up in the next novels I’m gonna read that I want to keep fresh in my mind until then. The reviews go swimmingly easy most of the time and then the word comes up in a novel and I read through it with no hesitation usually because I’ve already seen it used in several sentences for the meaning, and I’ve got the reading in the back of my mind thanks to anki.

I meant to reduce my anki words per day, but it ended up being so easy learning this way (at this stage) I increased it instead so I can read the novels faster which again makes the reviews even easier because I’ll see the words even more so the time spent doing reviews hasn’t even gone up. Some kind of barrier feels like it broke.

At this point I can read from morning to night without feeling tired and being upset I have to go to bed and stop reading. I still remember when reading manga for 5 minutes after doing N5 on bunpro made my head hurt. I wouldn’t get here simply doing reviews.

I also keep “accidentally” learning new words I haven’t even added to anki reviews because I just keep coming across the same word over and over when reading things for fun. I usually just mine it and not immediately add it to my reviews and it can just rot in my new words pile forever and if I do ever get to it one day it will probably be suspended after a few reviews or immediately.

Something I do sometimes is to try pick some VN’s by the same author, you’ll come across the same vocabulary more often. Read one or two immediately however long that takes, then read something else for a week, then pick up a VN by the previous author again to get exposure to her vocabulary again. Like a natural SRS. Obviously you should actually like the VNs, but I find I usually like more than a few made by the same group.

Also, the words I am good at are by no means the ones I’ve reviewed a lot. It’s the ones I’ve read a lot. Reviews do help with the words I rarely see, but still want to learn fast though.

sushimonster · April 14, 2025, 5:17pm

This makes sense. I’ll probably do the same. Out of curiosity, how many new words per day is your anki set to? Also, how much has bunpro grammar helped you with reading? Is there a big difference after completing a certain N-level?

adorable · April 14, 2025, 5:57pm

The biggest help for me was finishing N3 grammar, but there’s a ton of stuff not well covered in N2 or N1 as well. I think some of the N2 and N1 points are fairly common and probably belong in lower levels, but it is what it is. Just go at whatever pace you like. I did 4 a day, but it’s not like doing 3 would have slowed me down much.

Vocab is the most important part after N3 since word recall and lookups is what will slow you down most at this point if you’re regularly reading, but I don’t see any reason to delay N2 and N1 grammar.

Bunpro helped a ton. It has to have, I haven’t really used any grammar resources other than bunpro and jitendex lookups and sometimes I’ll look things up on the internet in Japanese because it’s not anywhere else. Most of my confusion around certain things get solved by just reading more though, there are some “ohhh” moments.

I’ve done 30 words a day for the past half year or so, but every now and then I’ll do 40-50 depending on what I’m adding (especially if it’s all kinda obvious words and known kanji that I won’t struggle with), but that’s more of a temporary thing when I start a new novel that’s different from what I usually read and want to grab a bunch of words fast because I am confident I keep running in to them over and over and save more time doing the reviews than slowing down my reading. Anything grammar related and not a word I tend to add immediately on top of the usual 30 words.

I really try to not go over 30, but it’s hard to pace myself some days especially because a lot of the words in my reviews currently aren’t so rare that I need anki. A tactic I’m experimenting with is taking 15 from the immediate top of the pile, then adding another 15 while reading, and past these 30 words added to my reviews I reposition any new words that I try to mine that I’ve already mined so they’re prioritized the day after without adding extra reviews yet. I figure anything I try to mine regularly and such reposition to the top of the pile should be prioritized because it must be common in what I like to read (also the benefit of still being somewhat recently read words when in the learning pool, makes the first reviews faster). I’d change it to most recently mined, but then all the common words I mined earlier when I started mining would be stuck in a backlog despite being more important.

It’s probably fine to do less. I think 20 is pretty common. I have plenty of time and energy for reviews and reading so I don’t care if I have to do a bit more reviews. The sooner I can get to 20K heaven the better for my reading. (Currently at around 10k after 1 year, aiming for 20k next year).