If just ansked about a regular grammar and word usage, in a coherent manner, it will not make almost any mistakes. Taking about Gemini right now. Definitely better than most native at that simple stuff. Explanations are particularly good, when asking to create a sentences ye, it can make it unnatural but make a mistake? Not really. Also, right now LLM’s check themself a few times before responding, so it’s really to get something wrong from them as long as it’s new instance and question is just about a sentences or two
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Agree. I gave a very conservative number, but my experience with AI (and even search engine AI recently) has been probably more reliable but I don’t use AI all that much myself.
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If we don’t want this conversation to be another discussion on AI, we do need to actually move off it, pro, against, or further details.
To help here’s a popular site to find native reading and shows based on perceived difficulty by the community. https://learnnatively.com/
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I absolutely love Learn Natively, it’s gotten me into so many books (that I haven’t finished, but hey! I have them! And I’m reading them! The problem is I’m reading them all at once because I’m a glutton).
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Same, I use it a lot ! Not that much for recommendations but there are so many things I want to watch/read and it’s as good a way as any to order them and pick the easiest ones first
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Woah I was wondering why there were so many new replies, I didn’t realise we’d started a new front in the AI war 
I’ll resist throwing hands on the topic, though I will respond to the original comment about it:
While I appreciate the suggestion, I’m not a fan of generative AI for many reasons and don’t use it. For language learning specifically, I simply don’t trust it enough to give me the correct information every time no matter how ‘high’ the non-hallucination rate now is. I’m not at a good enough level to be able to sift through any mistakes, and unlearning incorrect information imo is significantly harder than learning things the first time.
On a more personal note, I’m an author, so I simply refuse to support anything that steals work from artists. But I do appreciate you taking the time to respond!
That’s really great to know, thank you!! I’m also doing WK at the moment (I reset it not too long ago so I’m only back at level 4), but I quite like hearing when people began diving into reading after starting WK. Trying out video games for reading practice is also a great idea, especially during the low comprehension phase. I saw a while back that a lot of people were playing Animal Crossing in Japanese for practice as there isn’t a huge amount of text and a lot of it is repetitive, so I may give that a try to start.
Also, thank you so much for the additional suggestion! I’ve never seen Learn Natively before but I’ll definitely give it a closer look.
Ahahaha I’m sorry you’re also suffering from flying brain monkeys But it’s also nice to know it’s not an uncommon thing to go through. Also I can totally relate to feeling panicky when you know there’s only one chance to hear something. How did you find the listening section during the N5?
If it helps at all, I did end up taking @Blausternchen 's suggestion a few days ago and have been trying out Natural Japanese. I’m really loving it, particularly as I haven’t been feeling that sense of panic at all when listening. I’ll also check out Mochi Sensei’s channel, tysm for the suggestion!
Thank you so much for your reassurance, and also such a unique perspective. It seemed like just about everyone was reading from pretty early on in their learning journeys, so I was beginning to feel like perhaps I was doing something wrong. I know there’s no real ‘wrong’ way to learn a language as long as it works for the individual, but I did wonder if the lack of reading was one of the reasons for my slow progress. I can completely understand not wanting to slog through something you barely understand though, so it’s nice to know you can indeed learn without becoming a long-suffering bookworm 
Oh wow that’s amazing!! Was this something you did on its own or in conjunction with other learning methods? I’ve heard from a number of people that this works, and while I’m definitely still not at a point where I’d understand even 10% of my favourite anime, it’s a great idea for when I’m just exhausted but still want to try and engage with input. Thank you!
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My main advice would be keep learning vocab. Without proper vocab, making sense of sentences is basically impossible. No matter how good your grammar is, without vocab you won’t be able to parse the sentences. Even doing 20 minutes a day of SRS will massively help your vocab. The reading practice will be very helpful too.
This is what I find has worked for me as well, though I’m only around N4 level now. There is SO MUCH vocabulary to learn and I find that the more words you study, the better you become at picking them out of sentences and once you are able to do that more easily, it slowly becomes easier to parse the meaning on the fly, but its a slow process. I got discouraged with how much I had to look up when I first tried Satori, and then recently while on vacation I started reading Kiki Mimi Radio (easy level story) and I found that often times I could just click one or two words I didn’t know, and then guess the meaning of the sentence and then check the translation to see how accurate I was.
I’ve been studying for 4 years or so, getting a bit more serious about the frequency in the past 2 years, so its definitely not something that comes quickly, but you will notice the progress if you keep at it.
I think the key is find some native media that you find enjoyable, whether its anime, a game, a podcast, a drama, a cookbook, whatever and regularly take a bit of time per day to read or watch or listen. If you care about the content, it will keep you coming back.
Lately I’ve been trying to improve my kanji so I’m using an app intended for literal grade schoolers on my Nintendo DS, and the example sentences there are awesome because they’re graded such that they only use the kanji you’d be expected to know at your given grade level, and even reading these “simple” sentences I probabaly add 2-5 new vocab words to my SRS review queue every time I sit down with it. Its humbling to see just how many words a first grader knows that I still don’t know yet. Languages are HARD!
Anyways I hope you keep at it, it will get easier!
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I’m currently stuck in N5 too, my biggest blocker is grammar more than vocab. I just need a chart that gives it to me plainly so I can just stare at it and soak it in. te-form is the worst, I just can’t grasp it.
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How much do you learn a day?
The reality is that with N5 alone there is no normal content you can consume even close.
With N4 you can start to use very simple content with some struggle, and N3 is where you start to get some fun in Japanese.
Japanese is alot, but the N5 isnt that big overall. You might increase your study time, otherwise youre stuck in a tiring position.
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Just gonna make it clear that almost nobody does immersion only with no studying ever, at least not in the early stages. “immerse a lot” generally means study and then immerse, and as you get better the need to study becomes less and less important and replaced with immersing and looking up unknown words. Considering they are posting here, they definitely did more than just stare at anime hoping to one day understand everything. I also watched some anime with 0% comprehension in the beginning just to focus on the sounds. I don’t know if it was helpful or not, but it prepared me mentally for the long road of understanding very little and working my way up by studying and reading.
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100% agree about how important vocab is. When I first began trying to learn Japanese, WK was my primary resource. While it does teach vocab, it’s not the focus like it is on Bunpro and I was struggling to remember soo many words. Bunpro has made vocab retention so much better which does make it possible to at least guess what a sentence is talking about even without all the grammar knowledge. Thank you for the encouragement! And good luck with your studies too ^^
Honestly same here, I’ve just got something of a block about the grammar. I’ve been trying out Natural Japanese the past few days which was suggested by another member and it’s been really enjoyable so far. It could be worth having a look if you’re struggling too? I’m going to keep working on vocab in Bunpro, but I’m hoping this will fill in the grammar gaps in a way that feels less rigid and rule-based. I hope you’re able to figure out te-form soon! (it does suck )
At the moment I’m doing 10 new words a day in Bunpro, with a grammar lesson or two sprinkled in every few days. I’m also doing WaniKani and (now) Natural Japanese on the side; with WK I’ve restricted my lessons only to kanji and vocab words that I’ve already learned in Bunpro (this way I can focus entirely on how each word is written in kanji rather than trying to memorise the words themselves and it feels a lot less stressful than my previous attempts). I’ve also added 60-90 minutes of NIJ watch time to my study load which I’ve been finding very helpful so far.
You’re right about what the sort of content I can realistically consume, I think I was just being a bit hard on myself. In my mind it’s been 2 years of study, but realistically it’s maybe been a very broken 6 months of actual applied study all up. When I think of it that way it makes a lot more sense to be at the level I am.
Oh I figured haha, if doing nothing but listening to advanced native content was all you needed to become fluent in Japanese then I would’ve hit fluency some time ago 
But I know it can indeed be very helpful to people who’ve been studying for some time. I appreciate the clarification.
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One other note on this. Nothing wrong with what you’re doing at all btw, but one other thing that I’ve found has massively helped me is to prefer adding vocab words to my bunpro SRS based on what I encounter in interacting with native material rather than going in the order of e.g. the Bunpro N5 vocab deck or Genki I deck.
For example every time I meet with my italki sensei (which I cannot recommend enough as a way to practice output and listening, assuming you can afford it) I come away with probably at least 10 new words that I learned that came up in conversation. Or if I’m reading a story or playing a video game, I’ll add those words. The benefit I find to this is that you tend to learn vocab that is directly relevant to you (like if it came up in conversation, you’ll likely use it again or you’ll see it often while playing a game) rather than like learning a bunch of vocab that’s not actually common in everyday speech. Speaking as a guy who is in his 40s, I don’t really need to learn vocab words for school words like 学期、留学生、試験、宿題, etc in order to have daily conversations (though of course these words are useful to learn in their own right, they’re just probably not the most important words to learn unless you’re studying in school).
And in general just learning more vocab that you’ll use helps to keep you more engaged. At least I find this to be super valuable as someone who is self-taught and an adult.
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I did only Anime + Wanikani to begin with, then after a while I added Anki. And maybe after 1.5 yrs I added Bunpro, haven’t changed it outside of that. Haven’t sat down with any traditional textbook ETC like Genki or the other popular ones.
If you’re familiar enough with your favorite anime, its likely you’ll understand a fair amount of what is said without actually comprehending the words. The biggest help is it removes the “I’m not good enough for this” yet hurdle as you start straight away
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I just finished not too long ago the vocab from n5, and am onto n4, and still finishing up the last of the grammar from n5. I found by using wanikani to learn kanji has been a pretty decent help when paired with bunpro. Right around the 800 word mark from n5 I too felt like I wasn’t learning it [so I slowed down with the learning words every day], and after much repetition I just looked at the sentences, and it just seemed to click; once I felt more of them clicking [where I may had forgotten a U for fill in the blank] I knew it was time to learn a new batch of words. Just keep plugging away, as anything worth having doesn’t come easy.
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I used the audio CD that came with Genki and Pimslur
Were there any resources or habits you found useful?
I did Genki 1 and 2 with listening CD and LingoDeer got me through N5
Until N5 level, you will be learning from bunpro and don’t expect to understand anything. I read recipes on CookPad, or watch Ghibli movies. Once you get to N4, start looking up words, for now just enjoy looking at pictures.
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I did kanji Damage + N5 before reading manga. Studying Kanji helps reading comprehension alot.
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Just to throw in another resource that I’ve found incredibly useful especially at the N5-N4 level: Nihongo con Teppei for beginners. https://nihongoconteppei.com/
Teppei-sensei has been making podcasts for Japanese learners for a while now, and has a few different series’ at different difficulty levels. I eventually found his beginner series a bit too easy so now I am listening to the intermediate ones for a bit more of a challenge, but I listened to at least like 200-300 of the beginner ones before moving on. They’re all short, like 5 minutes long, and he does a great job of speaking in a natural way (at least as I’ve been told, I don’t know for sure since I’m not a native speaker) but slightly more slow and using simpler language. Great way to practice listening that’s going to be a lot easier to comprehend than anime. I listen to it often while walking my dog.
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i have the opposite problem. very good at listening and feeling the meanings. but struggles at reading and grammer rules
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Mine’s was output. Vocab and grammar is only good the more you output and use what you learn. I barely passed the N5 and was only writing for a bit but almost no speaking (Though I’m at a point now where I almost breeze through News articles and stuff with almost little to no trouble expect for names and easily understand anime with no subtitles.) Now, I’m writing down almost every new word or ones am struggling with down in a sentence, self talk and short journal writing on my day, an Italki tutor plus from time to time in VR Chat with EN-JP exchange server and one or two other servers (don’t need a VR set, just a mic and decent computer/laptop.) I was pretty far in my studying and thought I can only speak with native speakers at a certain point but no, it’s surprising how few of words and knowing some grammar can get you a decent conversation. That’s just my take try to get to speaking as early as you can and practice that framing around a word or grammar point that add new ones in and so now. I’m far from perfect but I’m definitely going on the up and up and I wish I’ve done it way earlier and was very scared to speak or try it.
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Once you are at a good enough level in your native language, you’ll see how even the people you respect most hallucinate and steal, and you got to the high enough level regardless, since that doesn’t affect you after being burnt a few times. Valuing quality input during the first 10-100 hours is understandable but staying at a language level so fragile that a YouTube comment with bad grammar or a typo/lie in an article could destabilise your progress is not something to be proud of. Sooner or later you will memorise the common hallucinations and common typos as well and will be immune.