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

[sushimonster]

Just finished N2. There’s a few dicey grammar patterns in Lessons 7-10 but nothing that won’t be fixed with some review. Didn’t cram as much for N2. What I would do is read the entire list of N2 terms I’ve covered so far before doing reviews. The time it takes to do this can be as long as 45 minutes, especially when you are near completion of N2. I also take a screen shot of the results for my reviews so I can quickly glance at the terms I missed last time. No new grammar terms until I start N1 on Sunday. Looking forward to a small break. This marks the 8th month of Japanese. Should finish N1next month which would be the 9th month. Then 3 months to cram some vocab and do some reading before I assess where I’m at.

Currently, work has me busier than usual so I’m only doing bunpro, wanikani, and watching the occasional episode of anime. No anki or reading outside bunpro. Plan is to finish N1 in June and then go into maintenance mode for bunpro while resuming anki deck. 5 dead pens and 3 notebooks filled with N4/N3/N2 grammar points. 1 notebook left to go and down to 2 pink pens. Some other fun pictures from the new stats on bunpro:

[GudGud07]

Hello amigo, I wanted to ask you how is your vocab learning going ? do you think you know every words that there is to know for JLPT N2 ?

I just finished N2 and I realised that there are a bunch of N3 words I still don’t know (since I haven’t been exposed to them during my native content consumption). As for N2 words, I’d say I don’t know if I even know half of them, learning vocab takes a lot of time (I’m learning the kanji forms and every words meaning).
My Anki deck is filled with 3.5k words from mining, they exclude the basic N4 and N5 words.
How are you facing this issue, it feels like vocab is the biggest wall that I have to climb to achieve my goal, other than that I’m pretty confident with my japanese, it’s just that it’s super frustrating to learn a piece of vocabulary that is only used in perticular context and 90% of the time since I’m a gaijin it would be socially okay to use another synonym…
I’m very curious to have the pov of a ‘speedrunner’ on how to face this issue.
thank you in advance have a good day

[sushimonster]

Not even close. I think I’m only around 3000 words right now. Honestly, it’s hard to speedrun bunpro and add vocab at the same time unless you’re doing like 8 hour days everyday for months. Going to focus on vocab after covering all the grammar points on bunpro. I don’t know if I will speedrun vocab, but if I do it will be through reading/anki.

As for speedrunning, I’m only speedrunning through things I perceive as mostly finite, aka, hiragana/katakana, 2K core deck, and bunpro grammar. Vocab goes in the “infinite” category but if you want to classify the core 10K as finite, you can speedrun that. Unless you have a lot of time to devote to studying, a comfortable pace will be more important in the long run as most people burn out and quit entirely which is much worse.

If I were to do vocab at a comfortable pace, it would just be WaniKani + reading w/ custom anki. When I first started, 20 words per day was hard but now it seems reasonable. Can do roughly 2000 words per 3 months which would be around 8000 words per year which is not bad at all. So if I went with this, I would have around 5K vocab and all of bunpro grammar complete within 12 months. I think you need around 10K vocab for N1 and 20K to start feeling comfortable. So you’re gonna have to just patiently grind 10K vocab imo.

Something you can try instead of learning each kanji and vocab perfectly, go for a breadth first approach where you see as much as possible. That way you can cover some of the easier vocab without putting too much time into hard vocab that you aren’t even using much. For example, I am covering bunpro grammar quite rapidly but I am by no means an expert on every grammar term I’ve seen. If I let some of the harder grammar points slow me down, I miss out on the easy ones. So just keep it moving.

[GudGud07]

@sushimonster

I am by no means an expert on every grammar term I’ve seen. If I let some of the harder grammar points slow me down, I miss out on the easy ones. So just keep it moving.

This actually helps a lot, when I read people online I always assume that they are 100% experts in what they learned, but we’re all still human after all.
I’ll keep mining and adding new words, I’m nowhere close 20 words per day, but as I don’t have any deadlines I can just take my time and stay comfy on my 10 words per day basis I guess, I prefer that than getting burned out or replacing my immersion time by review time.
Repositioning easy/ complex words is a good idea, I’ll try that
Thank you

[sushimonster]

Pushing off N1 for a week while I slay some ghosts (also enjoying this respite aka not learning any new grammar points). There’d be less ghosts if I wasn’t enjoying myself during Memorial Weekend, among other things. Between work, WK, and bunpro reviews, Japanese is still time consuming

[sushimonster]

Finally cracked open N1 after slaying some ghosts. Somehow managed to lose my streak on 6/3 but it’s fine. ~30 days until N1 complete starting today.

[polevata]

If you did N2 with 6 a day then maybe you’re just built different, but I went for 3 x N1 points per day starting from 2, and retaining them was hard enough. They’re often a bit longer and tend to make less intuitive sense than N2 or N3. But go off! Once you get through them, review is what matters anyways. Amazing work so far!

[sushimonster]

Thanks! I mostly just followed what others had done already. Write down the grammar points on paper to ensure I read it at least once in a thorough manner followed by lots of cramming. I also screen shot my results from every review batch so I can remember what I got wrong last time. I have a discord channel I dedicate to my Japanese learning where I keep all the screen shots from daily reviews. Ultimately, you just have to keep refreshing grammar points until they stick.

I find knowing the origin or literal translation of a grammar point to be very helpful. Knowing the kanji used in a grammar point also helps. When it’s really whacky, sometimes you just have to come up with your own mnemonic or let it become a ghost so the SRS will beat it into your head.

[sushimonster]

1/3rd of the way through N1. Also, cramming is back on the menu. A lot easier to quickly browse thru a lesson, cram it, repeat for the next lesson. Keeps the solution space small which I find useful in the short term. Need to also find time to cram N2 again. Should note the most troubled lessons from N5-N2 and cram those semi-regularly.

An example of the screenshots I take at the end of every review session and save in discord. I did notice that bunpro adds your latest reviews into your profile which I found useful when doing reviews on my phone (those screenshots have low resolution).

[sushimonster]

2/3rds done with N1. Looking to be done by July 11 or 12. If I was super efficient it would be done by the 9th but I’ll probably have a few days where I only do 3 grammar terms instead of 6 (I still owe 6 for today). Reading is getting better and better despite doing no reading outside of bunpro review prompts.

Been doing a lot of cramming for N1. Most of the time, it’s not that the grammar is hard to understand, I simply cannot remember what the terms are when asked to recall. If this were multiple choice, I’m sure my accuracy would be a lot higher. But I enjoy fill-in more because it feels like the brain is forced to make stronger connections.

Seeing some weakness in N2 so will likely need to full-cram that once, identify the troubled lessons, and then full cram those lessons. Will do the same for N3-N5 once N1 is done. I’m sure there are some fundamentals in there that could use a second look.

As an aside, I thought about why the SRS on bunpro feels painful compared to WK for instance. I feel like WK likes to sprinkle in a lot of old vocab you already know like “sheep” for example despite having correctly answered “sheep” forever. Perhaps Bunpro should do this for grammar to make percentages look better and to have mastered terms become less stagnant.

Some random review screenshots so you can reference some real numbers:

Speak of the devil…

[sushimonster]

4 notebooks and ~10 pens, it is done.

Required spending at least 4 hours a day (often more) at an average of 6 grammar points per day for months. An unsustainable pace if it were not for remote work. Time to take a “break”, where I essentially do wanikani per usual and bunpro reviews as they come up. Need to go back and full cram N1/N2 a few times. Don’t consider myself an expert by any means but at least I’ve seen “all” the grammar points so I can start applying pattern recognition with less risk of a “surprise”.

The way forward is to just read a TON using yomitan while maintaining my reviews for bunpro and acquiring new words from wanikani. I was doing a 10k anki deck at some point but I didn’t like how some cards used hiragana instead of kanji so I’m leaning towards the N3-N1 vocab decks from bunpro as a structure way to fill in my remaining vocab (my vocab is probably sitting around 3000 words atm). Not sure when I’ll start that. Vocab is not something I plan to speedrun. From here on, I will develop a comfortable pace for the long term.

[GudGud07]

Congratulations what Books are you currently reading ?

[sushimonster]

Thanks!

I don’t read books yet. Just keeping up with my reviews. I prefer to read things that I can pair w/ yomitan. So if it’s digital, it’s fair game. I’m currently facing low to mid 70% on my N1 reviews and also being stuck thinking longer than I would like while simultaneously understanding the fact that a lot of the esoteric N1 grammar terms aren’t even used often. But it’s ok. I’m coasting right now to take a break and looking to focus up later. Officially hit the 1 year mark in October and my original plan was to drill about 1500-2000 more vocab before that but I’ve scrapped that. Need to dial it down for a bit.

If I were to read a book, it would be one of those Japanese grammar books that goes into more detail on the particles and their meanings/usage. Someone linked one on the forums the other day that looks promising.

[sushimonster]

POV You pressed the WK sync button:

Real sh*t:

Ended up backing out the WK sync cuz the way bunpro does vocab is too different. Will keep them separate.

[polevata]

2 stages full ghosts is the way 🫡

[rustx]

Judging from @sushimonster’s level it looks like hes almost done it.

I believed same as my previous post, this one was the most realistic ‘speedrun’ goal posted on here/wanikani in a long time

[sushimonster]

Thanks! Your words of encouragement were helpful

[ErLouwer]

What exactly is your goal?
It seems that you arent doing “1 year” and neither doing “N1,” so why do you call it “1 year N1 speedrun”?
There isnt something like "N1-“ish”. You either are N1, or you arent.

Also, if I understand this correctly your daily learning schedule has no immerson in it. If you really want to “speedrun” it I recommend reading alot of novels in particular, since that is by far the hardest medium to study.

Also be aware of the three major risks when doing something like this (aka pushing yourself for the sake of a speedrun goal):
A: Burnout which leads to B: The realization that you cannot meet your own expectation which leads to C: a lack of motivation.

If you want my advice: Have fun doing it and Ignore N(anything) for now.

[aPaincake]

I have strictness divide by half and ghosts set to on. Maybe that’s to harsch but it works for now at least

[aPaincake]

What do you find different between them? The thing I sometimes struggle with is hints being very different or Bunpro expecting me to know a meaning which was not on Wanikani.