I already have picked my web novel xD Re:Zero is going to be the first one. I am going to actually translate it to polish for a friend of mine in the future.
But I need something to account for my arrogance and narcissism. It would be to easy for me to say: “Yeah, I understand 100%, easy-peasy”. I need some tests to say “No, you don’t, you moron…” xD
I will have a look at it, thanks 
Wait. Really? It feels lower-level than that, or maybe I’m lowballing myself 
Speaking of Onomappu, I like his videos a lot too. I’ve also started slowly getting into Twitch, since a friend of mine started streaming and I realised I do actually enjoy them (usually I need subtitles, even for English, so it’s a lesson in just listening and accepting I’m not gonna hear everything). So I’ve been searching around for some Japanese FFXIV streams to listen in on. It’s a trial, but the more exposure the better.
I think you for sure underestimate yourself. I am just a beginner and if find Tobira readings to be too patronising (sure: I need to look up every second word but still… How many times they need to repeat 昔話 in one dialogue? It is not hard to remember word…) and I believe you were worried that it may be too hard for you. I think you may need some testing as well xD I need it to keep my ego in check, you to boost your. Your Japanese is for sure far better than you think it is
this is from a reddit post found here:
From a paper examining the comprehension difficulty of News Web Easy:
2.1 Features of Japanese in News Web Easy
Target level
We were involved in the production of News Web Easy content. Our aim was to ensure that while the news texts were easy to understand, they were as natural as possible. After many trials conducted by NHK the pre-intermediate level was found to be the lowest level necessary for achieving these aims. This level was consequently set by NHK as the target for Japanese rewriting. It approximately corresponds to the proficiency level ranked between levels 3 and 2 of the old JLPT, and between levels N3 and N2 of the new JLPT.
always ask yourself when reading nhk easy - do i really understand every nuance?
That’s very kind of you to say, though I’m still absolutely a beginner when it comes to speaking and I’m slowly but surely improving on listening. Certainly not gonna get ahead of myself ego-wise though, haha.
I’m sure there’s the occasional thing I miss, but on average I really don’t have any issues reading it and understanding exactly what’s going on. I’ve been thinking it was N5/N4 this entire time, haha. Good to know!
I am taking my statement back… I am for sure not even beginner in terms of speaking xD I did not even start writing yet 
(I am following input first methodology. It will take me at least another 2-3 months before I will start writing and 6-9 months to start speaking )
Btw: aren’t you guys here a little bit too harsh on yourselves? I am ultra proud I can read 3-5 pages of Harry Potter in one day and need to add to my Anki only about 150 new words (some of them I know already since I needed to create a brand new deck ). And I for sure don’t understand even 50% of nuance. Just enough to understand what is said and how given sentence works in given context.
I mean, the difference is I live in Japan and literally need it for every day living, haha. If I didn’t need it, I’d be in the same boat as you! 
It’s the skill I’m looking to improve most at the moment. I can コンビニ日本語 with the best of 'em but actual conversations are a bit trickier…
i did the last winter jlpt before covid hit and was almost sure to be at n3 tier already (was about 80% through bunpro n3). in the last moment i switched from n3 to n4 and barely passed. excelled at vocab and reading but really failed in text comprehension. thats when i noticed how many little nuances i missed with nhk easy and sometimes there is even a big difference in difficulty between articles.
I am firm believer that active vocab is just subset of your passive vocab. When I was in UK and needed to learn to speak asap to get promotion I used this as my text book:
And it was a job at a restaurant, nothing to do with programming. A lot of rather simple sentence about something interesting to me so I could easily read like 50-100 pages a day, and after that harass my coworkers with my broken English until it become not broken enough to get management position, and tell them what to do with poor grammar xD
It was the most impressive jump at English I managed to pull off. 1-2 month from struggling to hold a conversation about anything interesting to me, to be able to speak without any stress over the phone (granted: my most often used sentence is by far “Say it again, please” and I will probably not live long enough to use any sentence more times than I had to use this one).
BunPo (yes, BunPo) is a fun app that is approached more JLPT-like . They have several different exercises for grammar and comprehension. I see they switched to a subscription model recently but they do have the some free access to sample. Their list isn’t as comprehensive as BunPro 
, but sometimes a different approach just helps keep it engaging.
I only quickly read through it but it looks like saying it is about N2 may be a little bit of overstatement. It looks more like “N3 but we will use some N2 if there is absolutely no way around it” kind of deal. On top of that it seems the aim of NWE was to make it even easier and it is likely they manage to pull that off between now and the time this paper was conducted.
I have no much idea how hard N2 is suppose to be, but if the NWE is anyway close to that then clearly N2 is much easier than I consider it to be. I hope you are right it is since it would great news for me
I will opt out from using it though if there is no way to turn furigana off… It makes me too lazy. And articles look boring as hell D :
There is a way to turn off the furigana on NHK Web Easy. The right button toggles furigana:
Edit: Maybe its just me, I always considered NHK Web Easy more close to N5/N4 with a mix of N3…
Lol, I am a moron xD
I did not read the button, but I clicked it and I don’t know why my brain registered it as turning kanji into hiragana xD
Hmm… probably i was looking for a word 振り仮名 or ふりがな and just ignored it 
That’s what I’ve been thinking of it as, too.
One question: I am lagging behind with my listening comprehension by a lot (I did not give it almost any love…) and I wonder if listening to NWE after reading it can be consider a good start. Any chance that this ultra slow pace can be more harmful than useful? I listen to HP audiobook and I started trying watch those YT channels but it quite expensive in terms of energy (and I don’t understand that much anyway)… I would much rather prefer something more relaxing since most of my energy is already allocated to vocab and it will stay that way at least for next 2 months.
I should care more about listening from the day one I guess…
Maybe you can recommend something ultra simple but reasonably enjoyable? If that would be for example some TV show (anime or whatever) that is often references by adults as something important for their development, then I can manipulate myself into believing it is important to study for the sake of understanding the culture xD
It’s very unpopular among the “cutting edge” Japanese learners on YouTube and forums like these, but I got a LOT of listening comprehension from the 1500 or so hours I spent completely finishing the current Japanese tree on Duolingo. 
Other than that, things that I have found useful are:
Watching content I liked on Netflix with the “Language Learning for Netflix” plug-in on.
My go to stuff is Terrace House and Midnight Diner (深夜食堂). But maybe for some people it is Anime or different kinds of content.
In any case, I switch between really trying to get every single thing that’s being said for periods of time (rewinding, re-reading, repeating what they’re saying, looking up kanji I don’t know) and just letting go for a little bit and enjoying the show with an occasional pause or glance at the Japanese subtitles. I like being able to just be as hard on myself at my current day/mood/lockdown exhaustion allow. And then switching over to lazily enjoying a show I like.
Podcasts: my favourite one is “Let’s talk in Japanese”. I have listened to each of his episodes at least once. In the first episodes, the background piano music keeps going and that gets annoying, but in later episodes he fades it out after the intro. I started out listening to only the ones marked “N4” or “N5” but then after having listened to all of those I moved on to N3 and N2. Turns out being able to understand/follow is more dependant on the subject matter (is it vocabulary I know from Duo or Wanikani) than on the grammar/jlpt level.
Japanese music. I didn’t know any, but through some googling I found a couple of bands that I’m really into. My favourite is Maison Book Club. A weird cross between girl group pop and avant garde modern classical stuff. Right up my alley. But again, to each his own.
Good luck everyone.
頑張って
Thank you a lot. I will have a look at your suggestions. They look very useful to me.
Hmm… Maybe I will have to review my opinions about Duolingo. I don’t like it for the way they “teach” Esperanto (I am shock they manage to make this language difficult…) and some of their business ethics, but…I remember that some time ago (2-4 years? not sure) I find this useful for getting accustom to the language. I will give it a try if it is worth the time.
Btw if duolingo works for you then I heard a lot of people are doing “reverse tree”. To be honest I feel I learnt more English than Japanese or Russian on Duolingo so there can be something to it. Hmm… I just got some ideas to test out
I was under the impression I need to buy VPN for that. Not true?
If you can share some nice bands then it would be great. From looking at you avatar I would bet we have very similar taste in music if I would have to make a bet.
Thank you a lot for taking time and helping me out.
I live in Belgium and I don’t use a VPN. There is quite a bit of Japanese content available on Netflix here. The learning languages plugin is free of I remember correctly. (But I might have forgotten that I paid for it if I did.)
Here is a link to my japanese playlist on Spotify. It’s not all good but it’s a starting point.
Bonne chance
I will give it a try tomorrow
I don’t know why I did not even think about Japanese music xD Maybe because when I think “Japanese music” I hear this:
