I was doing like 150 a while ago… after finishing N5 and going higher that number has dropped a lot lmao
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go figure!
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（；＿；）
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sure is
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The rest of that quote refers to having 150 of them, you only did 25😂
It’s even more annoying to have that many for n3 and above because of all the synonyms. Getting asked for the same thing 6 times during a single session and failing every one of them because you answered using it’s relative is in fact the definition of frustration 
(none the less congrats on your progress🎉)
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If this starts happening to me and it’s legitimately not my fault for getting them wrong, I’ll just switch to reading/anki mode…
thx! had to slow down on new lessons because it got really hard, hence only 25 reviews a day. should pick up again soon
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Nearing the end of n3 and it’s been happening a lot for me. Not that bad because I only have about 10-30 reviews per day, but the “nice guess! That totally works, but can you say it differently?” After 3 different inputs drives me insane lmao
I can appreciate it sometimes though, because it means I’m on the right track and it does help me to remember different ways to say the same thing, or highlight a reason why my similar grammar would work differently in a given sentence.
I see the finish line of n3 so I catch myself trying to rush it more than I should when I see the 30+ reviews due two days in a row later… trying really hard not to do more than 2 points a day until it’s back down some. But if you don’t do too many at once it should be better and more spaced out I think.
When you input a synonym it doesn’t mark it as wrong, just asks you for something different. Sometimes I just cannot remember any other way to say it so I fail it and then “bah! I remember now”. Which just shows I had forgotten that particular point, even if I could say it differently in a pinch. Other times I cycle through different ways to say the same thing until it’s correct, so those other points sort of get a lil review in too 
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And N3 is just a forerunner for the grammar doom that is coming. 
In N2 with all the ancient and very formal forms of all the stuff you have already learnt, it gets much worse.
And these are forms you’ll rarely see in books, so the immersion bonus you may had, is also gone. 
N5 and N4 are really easy, in N3 the problems with synonyms start and in N2 you have to develop strategies to get along. I’m making a synonym list with the differences right now while taking a break from new cards to get my reviews down from 90 per day.
Fun fact: I search for the grammar phrases on youglish.com to get real world examples from YouTube where they are used. Until N3 is was just normal stuff. Since N2 it’s mostly TED talks. 
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Nuuuuuuuu not the Ted talks I don’t have the attention span for those in english
I thought n2 would still be more commonish/novel stuff, and the more obscure stuff would be n1 which I decided I wouldnt go out of my way for
But that link looks really promising thanks!
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The vast majority of stuff taught even up through N2 is normal everyday Japanese (and even a lot of stuff in N1, although it may come up a bit less). There are more and more written forms as you go but they aren’t that rare for the most part. There are a few exceptions but basically everything in the JLPT is normal Japanese (maybe this is a controversial opinion). If you never see some structures it may just be because you consume only one type of media. Lots of stuff on Bunpro I would basically never see when reading novels or listening to conversations but suddenly I would see constantly when I started reading the news. It’s not like the average TED talk in English is that advanced or anything, in fact they are deliberately easy to understand.
The most major exception I can think of is なまじ which is an entry in the Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar and which most natives I ask about it say they don’t know it or if they do then they would never use it in any context. Only one native out of maybe 10 I have asked said they use it. It isn’t even a difficult word or anything, just rare.
Japanese is just hard lol (crying)
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I read the first Harry Potter book to get an easy entry into reading Japanese books. Since then I read books by Haruki Murakami because I love his books and that keeps me motivated. So it’s not really easy stuff.
After my experience the ancient stuff is widely used if it’s part of a phrase. E.g. I saw “ni mo kakawarazu” a lot but “zu” or “nu” as a general replacement for “nai” not a single time for now.
Maybe I should read more news again. I read a lot of news in the beginning with NHK Easy News but after a while it was far to easy and I stopped. Does anyone know a good source that doesn’t have geo-blocking or a paywall? I remember that I was looking for something like that after NHK Easy News but most of the stuff had geo-blocking for European countries because of GDPR and I gave up soon.
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I have read two novels by Murakami in Japanese and found them to be relatively smooth, obviously still difficult because I’m learning but just in comparison to some other stuff I’ve read. The one book of his I read in English wasn’t exactly difficult from my perspective as a native speaker though.
I think classical forms that are in use in contemporary Japanese are still normal (even daily) Japanese, especially in phrases as you mention. The kind of fake classical Japanese that gets used in samurai dramas and stuff is distinctly not modern sounding compared to things like -ず (off the top of my head something like するが良い; I think this stuff doesn’t come up on the JLPT but could be wrong).
I have a digital subscription to 朝日新聞 and live in Japan so I’m double-useless for suggestions. I highly recommend the daily 天声人語 opinion column for more difficult reading practice though. It’s very short but normally uses quite difficult language and is always on a different topic so it covers a lot of specialist vocab. I forget most of it immediately but it really shows me what I don’t know compared to the safety of easier things I normally read for studying.
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Has it ever happened that you searched for something on YouGlish and nothing came up?
No, I always had multiple videos. But I don’t search for every grammar point. Only the ones where I’m not sure I understand everything or where I want to see how it is actually used.
In case you didn’t find anything: the default is set to English, you have to select Japanese first (right next to the logo).
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Murakami is surely not written in difficult Japanese (otherwise he wouldn’t be that successful) but for learners it is not simple at all and grammar from N2 and N1 is used not that rarely. I’m around N2 level (grammar a bit less, vocab a bit more) and I have to look up stuff on nearly every page.
I checked Asahi Shimbun and it doesn’t seem to be blocked at all, thank you! Interesting… I checked all major Japanese newspapers a while ago and none worked but maybe they adapted to GDPR in the last year or so. A few US websites were also blocked and are now open again.
yahoo.co.jp is still blocked though. 
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What do you think is a good novel by him? Trying to keep track of cool stuff to read once I finish the N2 grammar here in Bunpro
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A good start would be a short story collection like 女のいない男たち otherwise it takes ages to finish a book which I personally find demotivating. The movie “Drive my car” from 2021 is based on two stories of this book (ドライブマイカー and シェエラザード).
If you haven’t read Murakami yet, a short story would also be a good start to check whether you actually like his rather unusual style.
For some of his short stories you can also find audiobooks on YouTube.
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There is an extremely short story called by him 夜中の汽笛についてあるいは物語の効用について (I think) which you can quickly read to see if you like his style. I think you can find it just by googling.
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It’s not that it marks them wrong, just nudges you towards the nuance that is appropriate.
I haven’t read those but I watch the movie when it came out and it was good, but it was definitely strange being the only foreigner watching that particular movie with 100 Japanese grandmas and grandpas haha.
I also agree that while the N2/N1 stuff is not ‘easy’ it’s also not that I don’t hear them all the time. It’s also a corollary to the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon You don’t notice how common it is until you learn it.
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