Should I Rush or Take it Slow? What is Best in Your Experience?

Bunpro
#16

Is there a particular reason you choose to do so much srs study?
As I understand for now 5 point + 25 words, that’s quite a lot I would say.
You didn’t mention and seams like no one asked yet, do you do other stuff things except srs? Reading, listening, writing, speaking, learning texts, learning phrases, learning songs?

The problem with srs is that it’s almost always used a utility for learning useless information. Bunpro makes it easier with different contexts, but still, you are learning sentences not related to your life, and you have no interest in then, they are blank for you, adding that you are doing it for 3-5 hours a day, and brain stops receiving new information after a few week, it becomes one mass of data that has nothing new, interesting, or related to you.

With this all brain starts taking it all just as random stuff and saves it for just period of time, and when you stop srs it throws out all that stuff that wasn’t used in practice or maxed necessary for you in another way. Another thing is that with srs amount of “ok I’ve seen this word 2 times, now I know it” moments renders to about 0, because everything in reviews becomes one gray mass without unique form to each element.

As I see it the problem here is not srs but the combination of factor met that renders brain to learn well or not.
According to my latest thinking proses those factors are:

  • interest in pace work being used (book, anime, textbook)
  • interest in word/grammar
  • usefulness of word/grammar for your life
  • novelty (of both context and method being used for learning, new things just activate brain much harder)
  • focus, one of the most important things, everything above makes it so much easier, without those things brain starts fumbling in the mope and finds something new outside of the learning process.
  • deep understanding of the subject (of course we know about ci hypothesis, but going deep into one thing makes retention so so much better, because the subject just becomes part of the learner)
    When those factors are included in study, the extremely cool feats like remembering word for months/years after just a few encounters can be archived on regular bases.

Hope this will give some food for though in order for you to work on your learning method

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#17

You said yourself, you’re completely new to Japanese and already feeling some burnout. The Tortoise and the Hare isn’t just a funny story about animal races.

Even going for the N4 in 4 months is …ambitious. That’s the equivalent of an 8-9 year old’s level in less than 1/2 a year.

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#18

8-9 old is more like n1じゃないか？

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#19

I’m on my second month of bunpro and have been “studying” Japanese for about three years prior using Duolingo. Actually I’m phasing out the Duolingo because, except for vocabulary, I was just wasting my time and not really learning anything. But I digress.

Using the Genki I and II decks, I can see that I still have a long way to go to even get to N4 level, and I am doing all my lessons and reviews every day. So sitting for N3 in just a few months, based on my experience, seems very unrealistic. I’m planning on sitting for it Dec 2026, but I’m not certain I’ll be ready even then.

So you may want to manage your expectations a bit. My $0.02.

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#20

A high rate is sustainable for short periods. For example, you can blaze through N5 at an obscene rate with some dedication and perhaps prior exposure to Japanese via anime/manga or having Chinese/Korean as a second language. You may be able to carry this into N4. But beyond that, it will be very difficult. Even the fastest learners don’t push more than 30 words per day initially and the ones that can do 50+ can do so because they are voracious readers and have a lot more experience with Japanese which enables them to create better memory pathways for remembering words. From what I understand, they start at a reasonable number like 20 and then ramp up to 50 after their reading ability takes off.

I like to keep track of people who speedrun Japanese in order to define limits and place myself somewhere (reasonable) within those limits based on what I know about myself. Currently, the fastest person to reach N1 JLPT that I’m aware of did so in 8.5 months which equates to 40 words per day on top of learning the necessary grammar. It was done during COVID when everything was shut down and he had many 12 hour days of just Japanese. Of course, you’re only aiming for N3 which is more reasonable IMO but the pace that you’re pushing (6 grammar terms, 50 wpd) is quite high. Only you know if you can sustain it, but from available data there is very few that can do this. I myself have spent many 6+ hour days focusing on only Japanese (work from home software engineer gives me more leeway to study), and I could only focus on grammar or vocab, not both, when I was speedrunning.

When I ran the 2K core deck in Anki, towards the end it took almost 4-6 hours a day to finish all my reviews at 20 words per day. Bunpro was also easily 4-6 hours a day doing 6 grammar points a day and often my memory could not keep up without doing a lot of cram sessions. At my peak, the most I did was 6 grammar a day, 15 words on wanikani, 20 words on Anki. This was very short lived (I dropped Anki). Everyone is built different, so I will not tell you what the optimal number is for you, but according to what I’ve read on various forums and reddit, your rate would be at the absolute highest end in terms of pacing.

I think speedrunning has its value as it’s worth pushing as hard as you can while you’re still motivated. As long as you define a reasonable endpoint and don’t entirely drop the language, you should be ok. Dropping the language entirely would nullify your speedrun efforts.

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#21

I’m about a third into bunpro N5, I started using it about 2-3 months ago after years of not studying Japanese and there’s grammar/vocab I’m familiar with but trying to take it slow so my reviews don’t pile up. What you’re doing seems rather crazy to me. Can’t give you much advice about Japanese itself but you seem like a very ambitious person. You should be proud of anything you’re able to accomplish, especially in school/college and all that since it can be quite stressful, at least it was for me. Ofc I don’t know anything about you, you could be older than me for all I know but thought I’d leave my 2p anyway. if you really want to take an apprenticeship in Japan then it doesn’t matter if that’ll be next year or two years after, you’ll keep learning Japanese until and after you’re able to do it, if you really want to do it. But try not to abandon the rest of your life that is outside of studying, that’s all. Good luck on everything!

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#22

Hi, tangent here! Korean is my second language, and I’ve found that it’s increasingly useful as I progress through the N levels as more of the formal/literary style expressions in both languages have shared etymological origins in Chinese (e.g. ーを契機に、을/를 계기로). Understanding the basics of the sentence structure, word order, etc carries over well between the two, same with words that have been borrowed over (e.g. ちょっとー조금). However, as far as kun’yomi and all the more “natural” or “informal” sounding semantic building blocks that are set in the early N levels, at least knowledge of Korean doesn’t prove to be a particularly useful speed booster.

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#23

Thank you for your reply! That is super insightful. I was kinda looking around the block for what is the upper bounds of learning Japanese, but didn’t really find anything. So this is exactly what I wanted to know.

Super assuring to know that my current study load is supposed to be difficult, because I was struggling pretty hard to keep up. Also from reading other people’s responses, I inadvertently surveyed everyone’s study numbers.

I will drop it down a lot. I tried 30 vocab and 5 grammer today and it felt so much better. And I set my goal to N4, following everyone’s suggestion.

The part about reading + ramping up vocab learning is very interesting. And does encourage me to read more!

I have Chinese as my second language, I’m not very fluent, but it does help with recongnizing kanji and meaning of words. The bit you said about people with korean/chinese as a second language and the knowledge only going as far as N4 is new to me as well.

Thank you for all your information! A very insightful and interesting read.

@yourleftsock - Thank you that’s so sweet of you. Yes, I will not not back down, no matter how long it takes. Best of luck on your journey as well!

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#24

I also thought I wouldn’t back down and then I did because I overdid it like you seem to be doing and it all came crashing down. So I took a break and restarted in a more sustainable way. What I especially realised is that you can’t prelearn everything. Immersion is way more important than SRS.

Starting with N3 you’re getting way too many grammar points which are basically the same with slight nuance differences. These aren’t things you should grind on Bunpro, but which you should learn through repeated exposure in different contexts and sentences. Language isn’t meant to be crammed, it’s a thing to use. And words and grammar will stick so much better if you encounter them in the wild or use them when writing/speaking your own sentences compared to mindlessly grinding SRS.

After doing at most the N5 and N4 decks here, both grammar and words, I would stop doing prefabricated lists and only learn grammar and words you encountered immersing. An hour of SRS could also have been an hour of reading or watching somethingr, which is much more useful.

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#25

I’d rather aim for how many items to review per day than how many new items added. In my case “if reviews are under 50 cards, I can add a bunch” works for me without getting tired.

I do the same for Skritter where I’ve found out that my mental capacity declines after 70 reviews, so I actually do over 100 SRS reviews per day in total but I don’t wanna spend my whole time outside of work in review hell, my relationship with Japan exporting its media is for me to enjoy not to extract comprehensible input from them.

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#26

I was studying ridiculous hours at university, I was probably around N3 level at the time but they were pushing me to study N2 grammar/vocab/kanji even though my N3 foundations were shoddy.

I ended up burning out after 9 months of death by study and hated Japanese so much that I abandoned it for over a year and a half. But I’ve got the itch back now that I have left uni, and I’m back to studying at my own pace (I actually want to study grammar and vocab of my own volition, yuck :laughing:).

I’m taking the N3 in December 2025 (whilst taking that much time off from studying was good for me mentally, in terms of my brain holding onto all that information… I can’t remember any of the N2 vocab and grammar that I crammed at uni lol :sweat_smile:). I’m currently doing 5 grammar points a day and maybe 50 vocab words (when I can be bothered).

I contemplated trying for N2 in December but I knew in my heart of hearts that I would end up burning out again. It won’t stop me from learning N2 related stuff but I will pursue all N3 stuff and if I have more time near the end I’ll just top up my knowledge as I go. I’ve decided that I really want to solidify my N3 knowledge and then take the N2 in July 26.

I always think to myself, I’m the tortoise not the hare, I’m in the for long haul, I want to keep learning Japanese for many years and I don’t want to rush into pushing myself towards something that could potentially make me give up on Japanese altogether. All that wasted effort because I pushed to hard, too fast.

Apologies for the long message!

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#27

You didn’t just know it in you heart, you experienced it once and learned from it. Learning from past mistakes (even if others pushed you to it) is a highly valuable skill! I hope you appreciated how rare and wonderful of a skill you managed to develop :slight_smile:

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#28

Regardless of pace I’d highly recommend losing the focus on JLPT in the first place. Realistically if you need an exam for a job application of course do it but the #1 focus is to be able to communicate in Japanese. I knew people studying for N2 that weren’t able to fluently order a coffee at Starbucks. If you’re at an N4 level for grammar and vocabulary, now is the perfect time to begin immersion - listen and read as much as you possibly can!

#29

I’ve read as a nice rule of thumbs to not get more than 100 items within the novice progression tab (SRS under 24 hours).

#30

I’m hoping it’s not. Some native friends have claimed that N1 would be hard even for them (for its extended use of dated language), and though I can’t reliably discern whether that’s true or just their usual overreaching courtesy, the N1 test I took last year was excessively hard even for someone arguably above N2 + semi fluent conversation level like me.

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#31

At least much better at kanji, but overall vocab, fluency, grammar, is on the side of kids in my opinion.
But I’m not n1 so it’s just thought.

#32

Hopefully I won’t regret opening this can of worms :sweat_smile:

I’ve gotten many natives (20+ at this point) to take various sections of the N1 over the years to see how they find it (I also have N1 myself so can compare it with “Real Life :tm:”). My personal estimation is that getting 100% on the N1 is about the same level as a 14 or 15 year old who likes to read but who somehow is bad at processing audio information (agnostic of output level). The listening section is by far the easiest section for a native, followed by reading, then language knowledge. I’ve seen natives have to pause on the most difficult reading questions to pick between two answers (they still get it right, mind you), but I’ve only ever seen natives get N1 questions wrong on the grammar section (they were high schoolers making silly mistakes). As it is multiple choice, natives can easily eliminate incorrect answers for kanji and vocab.

Keep in mind that the above comment is about natives scoring 100% (which they can do in far less than the allotted time). If someone needed to merely pass (100/180) then you could genuinely be getting into the territory of “a child could do this”, however they would be guessing a large chunk. Probably general lack of reading comprehension and contextual knowledge of the kind of topics that come up on the N1 (pop-sci, simple non-fiction, customer service emails) would be an equally big barrier besides having smaller kanji and vocab knowledge. Like my knowledge of certain specialist vocab is way higher than the average native 10 year old but I bet they could do a better job at naming animals and telling me what noises they make.

Very importantly (and the reason I was reticent to originally make this comment), the JLPT is a test designed for foreigners, not natives. If you’re curious how your Japanese stacks up compared to a native then I’d suggest checking out school/university entrance test prep books, or have a go at the 日本語検定 level check. For reference: 五級 is aimed at elementary school grads, 四級 is aimed at middle school grads, 三級 is aimed at high school grads, 二級 is aimed at uni grads. The things that are tested, how they are tested, and the time given is quite different.

If you’re curious how the N1 would feel in English (perhaps actually a tad harder) you can try an 英検一級 paper. You can see that the worst part of the reading is how boring it is, and the listening is very unnatural insofar as it is very over-voice-acted.

I wasn’t sure if I should post this since people can find this stuff discouraging, but hopefully the information is useful, especially for more serious learners (like yourselves and the sort who are lurking on this forum). I definitely wish I knew this stuff when I started learning and heard similar conversations.

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#33

That is really insightful!
Thanks a lot for the post

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#34

I overwork myself my entire life, and always put unrealistic goals. I had a similar goal to you, and it’s just not plausible unless you make japanese your entire life and do it 8-9 hours daily. And even then you’ll likely just burn out after a few weeks, and quit as you won’t enjoy it anymore. Just take it steady, do daily reviews and take a few ambitious goals at the same time but at slower paces, and you’ll complete all three but in a longer timeframe.

#35

Do you want to pass the exam or learn Japanese? There is more to the language per JLPT level than just grammar and vocab, if you focus solely on those things you will find it difficult to read, write, listen, and speak, which are the goals that BunPro is trying to bridge the gap between. Even ignoring the amount per day you do/did, knowing a BunPro point is not the same as knowing the word or how it is used. You need to be exposed to the words in context and slowly learn their nuances. Unless you need the exam certificate for something, I don’t think you are going to get as far as the numbers say you will have gotten.

If this sounded like a lecture I did not mean it as one. Sorry for the late reply and Good luck with your studies!

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