On an Apple Silicon Mac, Parallels Desktop + Windows 11 (ARM) will run most VNs effortlessly, including those with DRM protection, and those downloaded from Steam. Textractor fully functional. Unfortunately once you include Parallels and a Windows 11 Pro license, the cost is pretty close to that of a cheap laptop. Another option is CrossOver, which works for some VNs that I tested but requires a bit of tweaking.
On an Intel-based Mac, you could go with Boot Camp, Parallels or CrossOver.
For the few Mac-native VNs out there, I don’t think there’s anything like Textractor, so it all boils down to finding a way to run Windows apps.
I am very much an outlier in my journey, but I’ll share my own experience anyhow.
I started studying Japanese around 10-11 months ago. I finished Bunpro’s N5-N1 + Kansai within 6 months and am now currently level 48 in WaniKani, next level starts the last stretch of WaniKani, where all the levels are short (3.5 days at min), so I’ll be “done” within two months.
Now… Was this all worth it? For me, yes, but only because I am now putting all this time spend studying into use by immersing in native content - if I would’ve left it at that, without this crucial step - I probably would’ve begun forgetting a lot of things by now, voiding a LOT of the time and effort studying. Essentially wasting it.
I was only able to be this extreme because of my life circumstances, however. Whatever you choose to do should fit your own circumstances. There is no one correct pace.
The most important thing is to go at the pace that allows you to show up daily and progress, even if a little bit It’s going to take years anyhow, so you need to take care not to burn out.
Yeah, this is something I’ve thought about, too, and if I reach level 60 in WK, I won’t consider it “finished”, only “completed” in the sense that I’ve seen all the items at least once, but actually finishing it will take longer than a year, of course, even if I reach level 60 in a year
This might sound freaky, but… I actually like doing a lot of reviews You could even say that I am addicted to doing reviews if you really want to
That does not mean that I am not aware of it, though This is something I’ve already thought about quite a few times, and if I would be able to manage it, but we’ll see
I think about it like this: I doesn’t really matter if I go at full speed now, because if I end up not being able to handle it, I can always change my schedule later on.
I am one of the lucky ones to have that luxury This is why I came up with the “Japanese in one year”-thing in the first place, because I have too much free time
I just looked back and it were actually 5 days lol, but that was only for grammar, don’t worry I don’t think I should force myself to something if I don’t want to do it on that day, because if I do that, I will most likely not remember as much as if I am doing it because I really want to After all, even if I’m going at a fast pace, it should still remain fun
Also, a quick side note I’d like to add: Due to WaniKani having waaaaaaaaaaay more items than BunPro, it is actually way more relaxed to go through all times in BunPro in one year than going through all items in WaniKani in one year. This means it is not mandatory that I have to study new grammar every day, I should only do my reviews every day
The reason I started learning Japanese is because I want to start using it myself, whether it is through reading, listening, writing or something else, I really wanna use it and engage with it! And that as soon as possible
OP, I actually remember reading your initial challenge post on WaniKani (I tend to lurk on those forums rather than actually reply). I say just go for it. If you’re the type of person that likes a challenge, why not? The worst thing that can happen is you’ll end up forgetting a lot but it’ll be way more accessible to your brain when you relearn it.
I get the feeling you’re younger (still school aged maybe?) and I did some nutty challenge stuff too when I was that age, because what’s youth for if not to throw yourself at things with reckless abandon?
The only thing I say to be wary of is burnout. It does sneak up on you. You can plan to do something 100% forever but regardless of your resolve, sometimes your body and your brain will just start smacking you over the face and your cognitive abilities can turn into hot jelly. Best way to hold that off in a very fast marathon like this is to look after yourself. Where possible, give your brain plenty of vitamins and nutrients, sleep well, try to get some exercise in too even if it’s light. If you find burnout creeping up you can’t hold it off forever, but you can keep it somewhat at bay for a time. Having a goal date (like one year, as you do) can help too, because you can keep telling yourself “It’s just [x] months” as a motivator.
I say this all as someone who’s studied a semester of human anatomy at uni, which is an absolute gauntlet. The amount of rote memorisation I had to do was enormous, and the basic self care strats above are what got me through happy and with a good score.
OP have you learned any other languages, especially in that fast fashion? Or is it your first time trying to “speedrun” (at least some of) this process?
I agree with the people saying go for it, as long as you have the energy and the motivation theres no reason to purposely hold back. But i do think you should be careful with your future expectations. I would also say im someone who likes to do reviews like on bunpro or WK, and ive been using Anki since like 2016, for different languages. 10 reviews? easy. 100 Reviews? fun. 400 Reviews? Pain
the further you will go on bp and wk and in your personal studies the harder the content will be - and the reviews will get harder.
Doing 100 reviews of words you remember just fine and have no problems with? great, but also in a way wasted time. Thats what the SRS is for after all, so you dont have to constantly review words you know perfectly fine. But doing 100 reviews where you really have to try hard to remember, have to remember mnemonics from months ago and what ever, realizing you cant remember it…with grammar having to read up on it again… that can take a looot more time and a lot more energy. Also should you start sentence mining, which many people learning japanese do, its also gonna take a lot more time to review these.
I think if youre enthusiastic then the beginning of learning a language will always feel exciting and - in a way - easy. But do NOT expect it to be this “easy” forever. But if youre prepared for that, then sure
Either way i would say, stop worrying so much about the future and where you will be in a year, focus on where youre at now and what youre doing now. Go as fast as you want to, as long as its not burning you out. But dont be hard on yourself should you not reach the goals you want to reach in a year - who knows what happens in your life in a few months that changes how much you can study per day, you just dont know. and PS: i also second the post from @Jose7822 , going fast on WK at first can be really good, but speedrunning lvl 60 is often just not as useful (or fun) as you think in the beginning. I would recommend focusing more on getting started on reading easy material, getting comfortable with N4…N3… eventually N2 material - before focusing so much on learning N1 Kanji or Grammar.
And in general!! Its better to only do 10% of your reviews than none. I know the feeling of thinking “400 reviews… i cant finish these today, so i will just not start at all”, but its just not about finishing it all fast, just keep going!
I am actually almost 17, yes And maybe you’ve already heard that I am in homescholling because of bullies, family and so on, which is why my schedule is so insanely flexible!
Thanks a lot for sharing your personal experiences and for the adivce! I will definitely keep it in mind, thanks!
Yes, I’ve already learned English and Latin, though I have to admit that I’m learning Latin for the third year now. I wouldn’t say that I really speedrunned it, but if I had a lot more vocab knowledge, I could read pretty much every Latin text there is, as I’ve already learned all the grammar that I found
I totally belive that lol, I think I might be scared a bit if I woke up one day and had 400 reviews at once Then again, I do have a pretty high accuracy (on WK, on BP, it’s near the global average), so I’m usually pretty fast with my reviews
That is definitely true, although I would like to add that over time, you also get better (at least I hope so )
Sentence mining? Sorry if this is a stupid question, but what is this and how can I do it?
I’ve already read a lot about the intermediate wall/plateau/the time where you seem to not improve at all, even though you’re learning all the time. Some said they’ve never experienced something like that, other say they’ve been there for months or years. I believe this will be the moment when it stops being easy?
If ever something happens in my life, I would, of course, always (temporarly or, if necessary, completely) adjust my pace to be able to handle everything, as it is indeed very important to not burn out. I am not completely sure, but I think my Mum had a burn out shortly after our dog died, due to all the stress she was having, and it was awful to see in what condition she was. She needed a full month to completely recover! And, in the WK forum, I’ve also talked to someone who had a burnout, and he said although he was able to manage everything so perfectly before he had his burnout, he is still not able to do so, even though months have already passed.
Don’t worry WK level 60 is something I still want to get at fast, but I have a lot of free time (in fact I have way too much lol), and thus it won’t be really hard for me to also start implementing to consume some material while also keeping my pace at WK and BP, although I reckon that keeping my pace at BP won’t be too hard anyway, since it has a lot less items to learn than WK
But, again, if at any point I realise that I can’t handle everything, I’ll adjust my pace and start prioritizing certain points more than others!
Everyone’s journey is different, but I would question how much one can truly comprehend the entirety of N5 grammar points (including their use in listening and speaking practice) in two weeks.
This is what practice will do You don’t only have to learn things, you also have to practice their usage, which is what I will be aiming for as soon as possible, and I want to get somewhat comfortable with N5 before starting with N4 anyway, so it doesn’t really matter whether I go fast or not, because I also intended to write a short and structured summary about N5 grammar, as I’ve noticed that doing so help me understand things better and faster
Tbh, and I know I’m probably a little painful at this point lol, but I’m actually really cheering for you. I want to see you actually make it and achieve this monumental little goal of yours.
I’m working towards trying to become a doctor, and given my disabilities the odds are very against me being able to do that, but I guess that old “shoot for the moon” quote sort of applies here. A bunch of people told me I’ll never be able to do it too. But really, that only makes me want to prove them wrong.
You can achieve whatever you want if you just work hard enough for it Your disabilities only mean that you’ll probably have to work harder than others, but you can definitely do this, I believe in you Also, I know the feeling when someone claims that something is impossible and you want to prove them wrong
OP what’s your native language? Also, I noticed after that I took exactly 14 days on N5 as well
If you want, you can do it right now, it will just be easier with more and more grammar. If you wish, install yomitan on your browser, go to bilingualmanga.org and pick a very easy manga (like a comedy 4-koma, idk). I use a bunch of other tools, but this is the bare minimum.
However you probably will need to check every single word on the dictionary, since you apparently didn’t start your vocab learning yet. I started pretty early on, when I tried manga, i already had all Genki 1 vocab and a few more, totalling ~1k of vocab cards on jpdb.
If you want to speedrun japanese, you need to start vocab as soon as possible. Then you will feel the pain to juggle 3 SRS apps at once, but well, you don’t have much of a choice. Having lv60 on wanikani, but no grammar and vocab is useless.
Most people use anki, and there’s a lot of tutorials and posts everywhere that will recommend how to set it up, which decks and extensions to use, and how to set up vocab mining with all kinds of media. This is a pain in the ass for me, so I only use jpdb, and it’s the best for me. Check here about it. Bunpro also have a vocab SRS now, and it looks pretty good. Will probably use it myself later, to fill my gaps.
Also, I don’t know if you entered this rabbit hole deep enough, but learning kanji in the wanikani way is not really necessary. So I would just drop wanikani entirely, for myself it’s a waste of time, and you have “only one year”. You promised everyone that you will reach lv60 in a year, but if this will not actually help you in your primary goal, I wouldn’t worry not a single a bit about breaking this promise. But this is just my take on things, if it’s helping you, by all means, go ahead.
German, I don’t live in Germany, tho, I live in Austria I have achieved a near-fluency level in English, tho, and thus have no problem with using English resources.
Lol, what a coincidence
Ok, I will try that then, thanks a lot!
Yeah, I didn’t really start yet, I only know the Vocab from WaniKani so far, which appearently are about 400 words (close to nothing IMO).
I am actually already doing 3 SRS at once, but I am only doing WK so strict, as I think that one year for N1 Japanese grammar is fast enough, and I don’t have to do my lessons so strictly then or do my reviews as soon as they are available, I only need to do them regularly
My third SRS is KaniWani, which is basically a backwards version of WK for vocab, so I get an English word and have to type the Japanese reading.
Yeah, I’ve already thought about adding Anki to my routine, but I haven’t quite read through it yet. Thanks for the advices, I will definitely look into it today!
Maybe, but I really enjoy it, kanji as well as WK, and my journey of learning Japanese should remain fun, right?
Although it might sound like it is a lot of work to go at such a fast pace on WK, it actually isn’t. I do the reviews like 4 or 5 times a day, and I don’t need more to go at the fastest speed possible (yet)
OP if you’re loving the SRS life and want to make sure you really get that Kanji, I recommend The Chase Colburn Kanji Study app (May be Android only?) on top of Wani Kani as it’s far more configurable and approaches it from a completely different direction, and I’m finding it a great companion to WaniKani. It also has graded reading which is great practice as an extra service, as well as a dictionary of kanji etymology so you can see exactly what makes up each character. And you can add writing and stroke practice which is my favorite just to do for fun. I’ll run writing drills as I learn the Kanji and it really helps retention.
I’m speedrunning N5-3 and WK as well as I was a Japanese major in college and lived there for a year but let it all rust, and have hit level 33 of WK like 8 years ago (so glad I bought the lifetime back then!) but while it’s great fun it doesn’t quite have the same sticky capabilities of the more traditional 360 class approach for Kanji, which I find Kanji Study much closer to. The graded reading practice is also a great way to start practicing that ASAP as well and learn a lot of natural phrases and usage.
Thanks for the recommendation! However, I personally prefer working and learning via my laptop (also I can’t really get to my phone rn because… let’s say, my parents are taking care of it ). But that sounds very interesting, maybe I can find a version of it for Windows, I’ll definitely give it a look! Thanks for the recommendation
You can get through all of N5 to N1 in a year with moderate studying.
However, JLPT is basically useless unless you plan to work in Japan. Even then, the value is pretty low depending on what job you’re pursuing. Unless you specifically need JLPT scores for something, it’s probably better to take your time and focus on conversational fluency.
That’s cool to hear and I believe it, the app shows a lot of love and focus on user experience and being feature rich! I love being able to access so much info and different types of practice for a single kanji
It’d be cool if it had different versions/a web version I’d love to do the quizzes when on my comp! The kanji drawing practice would need a touch screen of some sort hmm
Actually, I don’t plan on taking the JLPT exam (yet), as I couldn’t even do that in the next 10 years. I eventually want to take it, yes, but not now But I think JLPT is a good orientation to see where I am knowledge wise, at least it’s better than having no clue
Thanks a lot! I’ll look out for a computer app or a web version
It’s going to take years anyhow, so you need to take care not to burn out.
You could even say that I am addicted to doing reviews if you really want to 
This is something I’ve already thought about quite a few times, and if I would be able to manage it, but we’ll see 
Then again, I do have a pretty high accuracy (on WK, on BP, it’s near the global average), so I’m usually pretty fast with my reviews 
And nah, you’re not painful at all 