Yeah that specific recommendation is definitely the most controversial part 
I stand by it but I understand it is certainly not for everyone and may not be effective as a long-term strategy.
I mean, if it suits you, why not. I’m currently spamming bunpros SRS with 35 vocab and 5 grammar/day. Besides that, I try to read novels and a bit more complex pieces. Wanna pass N2 this December.
2 Likes
Wow 550 hours of learning + 180 hours of input from 0 to N2 is impressive. If it’s real it’s in the mega genius territory. I think even Japanese kid with 100% immersion would struggle to achieve that.
1 Like
I’m also a bit confused by the time spent on Anki. I use several sources and combine them.
I use the JouzuJuls optimized 2k/6k Core Deck in Anki. It has JP > EN plus EN > JP, including sound, plus example sentence that is read. If I know a vocab card and listen at least through the whole sentence, one card takes like 15-19 seconds. My average speed is 22 sec per card. So ~ 3 cards per minute.
As I have several source to learn Japanese I set my daily new vocab to 6 meaning 12 new cards every day. I also use FSRS set to 90 % (what ever that means 
).
As repetition of cards adds up over weeks and month I am in the range of on average 120 cards per day. This makes on average 40 min (if i mange the average time spent).
If I would go up to 30 new vocab so 60 new cards or similar numbers per day, this would just explode the time needed for all the review. I don’t know how this is possible in 45 min other than taking something like 5-10 sec per card (I did not really calculate it 
).
1 Like
The way to speed this up drastically would be to lower retention by 5-10%, skip example sentences, delete en->jp, and fail cards that take longer than a few seconds so you can go through far more cards per hour, and then have more time to read/watch things.
Personally I have the time and like sentence audio for hearing the word in context with pitch so I don’t mind spending 10s per card due to listening, but people who do a lot of cards fast tend to spend 4-5 seconds at most with a lower retention to do as many cards as possible with the least amount of time.
Of course you don’t have to do this method and I don’t even though I believe it is overall more effective, but anki time discrepancies are easily explained by differing methods. If you want to mimic someone’s speed, you’ll need to consider doing their methods too. Even just cutting out the EN->JP cards and lowering retention to 85% would probably cut your reviews by 1/3 if not 1/2.
3 Likes
I have nothing to add to this post but I am soooo jealous of your amazing progress, congratulations!
5 Likes
Congrats! I also passed N2 in 300 days (562 hours).
Here is a quick breakdown of how I spent my time before taking the N2 exam:
-
Watching Anime: 170 hours (35 shows, 421 episodes)
-
Reading Light novels: 103 hours (9 volumes, about 900,000 characters)
-
Memorizing Vocabulary and grammar: 283 hours (8,000 words, 538 grammar points)
-
Test prep: 6 hours (did 3 practice tests one month before the exam)
A total of about 562 hours of study over 300 days, averaging less than two hours a day, which is about the amount of time an office worker can carve out.
The method used was immersive language learning, with no textbooks and no online courses.
Btw, my FSRS desired retention is 70% now.
4 Likes
Congrats on great work!
Based on the name I assume you have Chinese or Korean background, correct? According to the internet that usually cuts the required work for N2 by half, but it’s still very impressive.
5 Likes
With this kind of achievement, I think you are both clearly very atypical human beings.
Congratulations.
Unfortunately I think that invalidates any “advice” or “tips” that you offer, as your success is down to amazing linguistic talent and genetics more than anything else.
If one has a photographic memory, reading a dictionary is probably a very reasonable approach to language learning as well I might imagine, but not a practical one for most people.
8 Likes
One of the most important points to pick up here is to do a lot of listening. Dxtee mentions his structured study habits, but also has a long list of Japanese podcast recommendations.
I have a friend in Japan, who has been paying for Japanese classes for two years who I don’t think could pass N4 unfortunately.
One of the main reasons is that he spends his media time with English media, when he could instead spend hours per day with Japanese media.
One of the best ways to learn a language is to watch the same movie over and over again until you can speak along with every line of dialogue. It’s a grind, but I’ve personally witnessed someone go from zero English to B2 level English in 2 years by doing this. He watched Zootopia around 300 times. Kids naturally do this kind of thing as part of the first language acquisition process.
8 Likes
I’m really curious if that would work like that!
1 Like
That is awesome work, very impressive , seems like you’ve been dedicated and locked in since the start. Was N2 your end goal? Obviously not an ultimate end goal but more in the sense of the thing you were working towards as it was for me.
I must admit I have been a little slack in the time directly following after the test, but ramping up my efforts again now.
1 Like
What a great and grounded post! Hope this will give some insights to other learners. 
Your journey and routine sounds almost exactly similar to my own, except I did N4-N3ish in just over a year. I should really rethink the amount of new vocab I do a day to increase my progress (it’s around 10-15 new cards a day now), since this is still a big hurdle when I read native content.
1 Like
Thank you!
I think there is little harm in dipping your toes into slowly increasing it day by day, doing 20 new cards this week, trying 25 the next etc. When I was at my peak new card limit, there was obviously days where life took precedence and I knew I couldn’t commit to the full 50-60 new cards that day, so I would temporarily lower it (to 10 or so) so at least my reviews were getting done.
1 Like
If only such a thing existed… (but how horrible it would be to remember everything in detail??)
2 Likes
It wouldn’t because there’s no such thing as a photographic memory unfortunately, though there is such a thing as eidetic memory, which allows you to hold a crisp picture of something in your mind for longer than the average person, but it’s still only a few minutes. I dont think it would help with long term memory sadly, especially because eidetic memory is apparently only found in young children. I guess kids just have more flexible memory in general.
4 Likes
Out of curiosity, and im sorry if I missed it, @Dxtee , but what motivated you to study japanese and to do it in a year?
Im also curious about your goals moving forward 
2 Likes
This is what piqued my interest–I personally have never used Anki (blasphemy, I know), but did you learn the terms and then have to review them the same day? That’s what I tend to do when I add new terms in Bunpro/WaniKani, but even with 25 new terms a day in Bunpro it was taking an hour+. Granted, it takes more time with Bunpro since there’s a bit of a “guess which word I’m thinking of” since it gives you the definition/sentence and you have to figure out which one it wants out of the synonyms you’ve learned, but even then learning that many terms from scratch and then reviewing them same day seems like it would take much longer.
No worries. At the start I had no aims towards any JLPT level. It was really just wanting to learn it to be able to communicate and be better placed whenever I was in Japan. Maybe several months I had been presented the potential opportunity to move to Japan with work and I had looked into what getting a PR may entail. Through that saw that getting a minimum of N2 gets credit towards many pathways, and for me atleast there was no practical benefit of taking the lower levels of the JLPT. Based on that I would say the pursuit of a exciting change of country was the main motivator, and especially with the political climate surrounding immigration in Japan right now I did not want to delay this opportunity.
(Also the N2 was not held in my city was I had to fly and book accommodation so the $$ aspect was probably a good motivator too 
)
1 Like
Moving forward my main goal will be to heavily prioritise my output now, I have been doing italki lessons but I plan to ramp that up so my speaking is up to par with my other language skills.
I doubt I will plan for the N1 anytime soon as there’s no practical reason for me to do it anymore
1 Like