Need help on balance between brute force learning and immersion

Japanese
#1

Context: I passed N3 and want to undertake N2.
In order to prepare for the N2 exam I’m doing what people like to call a ‘’’’‘speedrun’’’’ even though I know I’m not ‘’’’’‘built different’’’’ and that this process is only temporary in my japanese learning journey, I want to go through every N2 words asap (1530 unseen, 20 new words a day, will be done in 77 days on December the 12th.)

I want to undertake N2 exam in july 2026, the reason I’m aiming for N2 is to get a certification that helps me find a baito that involves communication for a gap year in japan on a work holiday visa.

I found out that being exposed to all the N2 words even once is more productive while doing reviews or while doing JLPT mocks, hence why I want to get done with the N2 vocab list asap.

However I found out that either most of these words don’t have to be learned (I can guess the meaning through kanjis) or might be so rare that I will only see them during the exam or while exposed to very specific situation. (I’ve noted a few that fall into this [non exhaustive] list: 年鑑, 紡績, 孝行)
Basically it’s either I already know the kanji and I’m happy to learn a new word and deepen my knowledge on said kanji, or the word is in the top 50k dictionary and I’m reluctantly learning it for the sake of learning even though deep down inside me I know I’ll never ever face this word in my whole life.
Those ‘once in a lifetime’ words sucks up all my energy. I feel discouraged, and I spend more time brute forcing those words into my head than actually practicing japanese (immersion, reading, speaking).
However I already face those ‘once in a lifetime’ during my N5, N4 and N3 learning and in the end they kinda ended up handy ? Maybe I never used them but they exposed me to new kanjis.

I know N2 is a relatively weak japanese base level, so I’m willing to brute force those words as an habit since N1 is mostly made of stuff like that. But I’m sacrificing a significant amount of immersion for the sake of the JLPT and it’s frustrating.

It feels like those once in a lifetime is acting like background noise, it’s replacing my spontaneous easy gaijin japanese with hesitation on which word I should use in that context, that might sound great written like that but I’m actually losing confidence on my output skills, japanese language is never endlessly humbling me.

I saw people on reddit getting N1 満点 just from reading LN. which surprises me as I’m only facing political, economical, societal vocabulary through bunpro and mocks, and never through regular immersion (novels, anime, youtube, drama, podcast).

I wanted to ask those experienced people, should I keep on brute forcing mindlessly those words for the sake of the JLPT and sacrifice immersion for a few months, or should I skip them, focus on the easy stuff first, and then slowly go through difficult words ? Or maybe I’m being delusional and my approach is wrong, if that’s the case please let me know.

I might be burning up, but I want to archieve N2 so bad, I’m spending 1 hour on anki in average (2 months into the speedrun), 200 reviews, 20 new words.

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#2

I’m not qualified to comment on either passing N2 or speedrunning, so please take this with a grain of salt.

I passed N3 with pretty high score without ever looking at a list of all N3 vocabulary. The strategy was to read and SRS most of the words encountered while reading, except for the most rare ones. I’d attempt N2 with the same approach, but alas registration failed this year.

1530 is not that many words, so perhaps you could still go through that list, just be mindful of leeches and drop them from SRS before they sap too much time and motivation?

JLPT has a low passing score, so even if you have to guess a few questions where you don’t know the key word, that’s probably not that impactful on end result.

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#3

I’m team “all words are important”, so I would definetely go over all the JLPT vocab, even if they are troublesome. But I wouldn’t expect myself to be fast or perfect at learning the most troublesome. You know what I do with those terrible money words when they pop up in reviews? I give myself full marks as long as I recognize them as money related words. I bookmarked them all, though, so I can get over them when I’m in the mood for them (so probably never). Maybe I should make decks for them so I can forget about them for a while: train words, money words, medecine words,… :sweat_smile: They do pop in immersion, though. Lots of medical terms are in slice of life anime, animal crossing has a lot of money words, etc,…

N2 level here on bunpro contains somewhat above 2000 items. You said to intend to be done with that in december by doing 20 items a day but want go for the JLPT in June. Why not going a bit slower? Finishing N2 items in March still gives you a lot of time for reviewing them, while opening up space for immersion?

Not sure what else to say to help. More infos could give you better help. How much time do you want to spend on immersion vs SRS? What else are you already doing (textbooks, listening exercuses,…), what do you use for immersion? etc…

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#4

I passed N2 a while ago. Your main concern is passing N2, right? I would just study for N2. You can worry about which words are useful when you have your certificate. For now, they’re useful for passing N2.

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#5

For immersion I listen daily to yuuyuu podcast, the topic are various but the amount of new vocabulary I get from these podcasts is low. I also tried a few videos from “Japanese immersion” since I wanted to listen to people having a conversation instead of a single person talking, but I got bored and stopped watching them. Beside that I read easy novels, romcom manga, and seasonal animes (with Japanese subs)

#6

Congrats on passing N3! I wouldn’t necessarily call going from N3 to N2 in a year a speed run at all. It’s perfectly doable (albeit, I guess that depends on how much time you have to devote to studying).

However, I would say that you’ll need to be pretty dedicated to specifically studying for N2 if you want to pass. I never took the JLPT prior to N2, but I would say I took about a year of dedicated practice to study. My rough schedule was:

  • Took a practice exam to start, just as a baseline.
  • I had studied kanji on WK for almost 3 years, so I hit level 60 right around halfway through the year of dedicated study.
  • I did the N2 vocab and grammar decks on Bunpro as well during this time. The reviews got pretty hectic at times. I felt like I was living in SRS.
  • Went through Quartet 2 with my tutor on iTalki (2 lessons per week for ~6 months)
  • The remaining 6 months, we did drills together, and talked about the difference between similar grammar points in Japanese.
  • For the last 6 months, I did the Shinkanzen Master grammar textbook. Working through the reading textbook the final month before the test. There was also a YouTube channel with previous listening exams that I did for the ~3 months leading up to the exam (but I’m not sure the legality of them, so I’m not going to link them).
  • Throughout the year I played games in Japanese and watched Japanese YouTube for fun in any free time I had. I listened to Yuyu’s podcast during my commute (but I really don’t like podcasts so it was painful), but it was good practice. I also set a goal for myself to read for around 30 minutes a day, mainly light novels.

To address a few points. The idea that N2 and N1 vocabulary and grammar points don’t appear often is a myth. I see them all the time when I’m reading and consuming content. I would also not assume that just because you know a kanji, you automatically know every word that kanji appears in. It may be helpful, but it’s not a safe assumption, and oftentimes the JLPT doesn’t test specifically whether or not you know what a word means, but what the best word is for the context.

The final thing I will say is I would not pay a bit of attention to what people on Reddit (or anywhere) say about their test results. First and foremost, there is absolutely no way to tell if they are being honest about their test results or their study methods. Second, they may have unique circumstances that give them an advantage.

So TLDR: Awesome, achievable goal I think you should go for. If you want to really focus on passing the JLPT, you should probably make a vast majority of your study JLPT-oriented. Don’t assume that the N2 or N1 isn’t useful.

You’ve got this!

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