Weekly Log: JLPT N1 in A Year Or So Speedrun Attempt

Japanese
#1

Greetings Bunpro Community. The title may sound crazy but it’s not clickbait as I am going to lock the f*** in HARD.

Initial Exposure

A little bit of background: Japanese first came on my radar like, a bit over 8 years ago (october 2016), back when I was still only just getting my bachelor’s in computer science.

Back when I thought academia was for me, and wanted to eventually get a PhD, I came across some robotics research from Japan and figured that this is the direction I want to go in. I then found out through a friend that my university was offering Japanese language classes and I was like
brittany-tomlinson-brittany

I had a free period in the morning before my classes and for around 3-4 months or so I would attend and steadily get through what I would later realize are Genki I scans. Unfortunately, next semester came, my schedule changed, and I no longer had the time slots available to continue learning.

For whatever reason, I had not considered continuing on learning it on my own, and so came and went my initial exposure to Japanese language learning.

Bro I f***ing Love COVID

I do not exactly remember why, but a couple and a half years alter, I’d get back into Japanese once the school year was over, and in June of 2019 I’d buy both Genki textbooks as well as Tobira (I figured I’d definitely want to learn Japanese seriously at that point).

I definitely went through half of Genki I in that summer, and then I had to focus on my classes once again as I was getting my master’s at the time. And then came the best gift the world could have given me at the time: COVID.

Not only did all my classes move to an online format, but I was also left completely isolated during lockdowns at home, with no one allowed to come see me or really not even me having any reason to go outside. My productivity skyrocketed, as did my free time and will to focus on my hobbies. I got into piano, guitar, writing . . . and Japanese " full time".

I finished going through Genki I, got started with Genki II, and most crucially, as I was now actively looking up learning resources online, I eventually found WaniKani and BunPro in late May 2020.

According to my invoices, I started my free trial of BunPro May 28th, and once it was over bought the yearly subscription. I was also on the monthly plan of WaniKani starting from June 1st. I’d then buy WaniKani’s yearly subscription in September, and then became a Lifetime member mid December during the end of year sales.

In that period, I went through 20 levels on WaniKani and all of JLPT N5 + half of N4, while also having touched on every chapter of Genki II as well. I’ve also bought hella books on everything from kanji to grammar to Japanese linguistics, and would more or less steadily study until mid 2021.

I had started a new job that year and would have little time to focus on much else. I had made maintaining my music skills a priority over continuing studying Japanese. I’d still try to at least maintain my level on and off (even buying a BunPro lifetime membership in June 2022), and eventually I’ve had a series of work related burnouts and dropped all of my hobbies.

I would not be able to recover and lived life on autopilot until I’ve finally left my job and took a month long break from work before starting a new one.

A New Beginning

So here we are today. I’ve finally more or less settled in at my new position and it’s everywhere I’ve wanted it to be and more. Without going too much into detail, my job essentially allows me enough flexibility to be able to do my reviews (and perhaps full on study) basically whenever I’d like, and I’m planning on exploiting tf out of my privilege (which I’ve started doing 2 weeks ago).

The plan is as follows:

  • Completely go through JLPT N5 by the end of February.
  • Do the same for JLPT N4 by the end of April.
  • Start learning and cover JLPT N3 by the end of July.
  • Do the same for JLPT N2 by the end of November.
  • Be comfortably in JLPT N1 territory by the same time next year (February 2026).

I’m putting myself a hard limit of end of April 2026 for having JLPT N1 “covered” and will then attempt it July of that same year.

I’ll start posting my progress here maybe later this week and then on a roughly weekly basis.

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Hopefully having set a crazy goal, I realistically expect to worst case scenario at least be halfway through JLPT N2 instead, but Imma prove y’all wrong cause I know y’all don’t believe in me like that.

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#2

It’s great to see that you have so much motivation. BUT: you yourself called it a “crazy goal”. And while your burn outs were work related, you should be careful to not stress yourself out by setting such a hard and ambitious limit.

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#3

I think it’s great to have a goal to strive for, I think you’ll whizz through N5/4 as you have had a lot of dealings with them in the past.
My only word of caution is not to burn yourself out, you don’t want to push though too fast and not understand the nuances of each grammar point or be in a position where you have “learnt” the rules but can’t output.
I honestly wish you all the best on your journey and hope you keep us updated but if you need to give yourself time so you can enjoy to language then please do so.
No one expects people to be native in a year, I’ve been learning for a few years but due to burn out - disability related - I’ve taken it slower these last 2 years. I’m enjoying leaning each rule and practising my output.
But honestly 頑張って👍

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#4

Only word of advice for really coming out of this with some level of mastery:
SRS reviews alone can only take you so far. Gotta apply what you learn via real world input and output. You’ll be much better off if you prioritize usage as well.

Best of luck!

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#5

you have no enemies lil fella. I hope you’ll get there ASAP

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#6

I wish you luck, but these types of posts appear all the time, and it seems like burnout is the inevitable conclusion. Please make sure you try to enjoy yourself - it’s a marathon not a sprint.

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#7

It’s great to be ambitious!
Hope you make all your deadlines, though plz factor in a plan to keep going and keep learning in the case of missing the original deadlines, in case it takes longer than anticipated.

Just as a useful guide, people say it takes roughly twice the amount of time for each N-level progressively.
So for a really fast learner, if N5 takes them 3 months to get to passing level, for example, they could expect to spend maybe something like 6 months on N4, a year on N3, etc.
It’s just a very rough guide, but it could be useful to bear in mind when making estimates of completion times.

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#8

Can’t imagine what your daily reviews will be like. It could all end in tears :dizzy_face:

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#9

Oh wow! That’s an intense goal! I’ve just finished going through N2 grammar points (just added the last one to my reviews) and to properly digest all of that I plan on going slowly with N1, a short break from new grammar and then no more than 3 new grammar points per week so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed with new stuff and can focus on solidifying things I’m already reviewing. I’m really curious what’s your progress is going to be like!

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#10

I think 3 grammar points a week is a good target, it’s enough to feel like a chunk of work but not so much that it leads to burnout.
I think the thing I have noticed about people speed running is that the review queues are manageable for the first month but as things go on they end up with hundreds of reviews each day across various platforms.

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#11

(Unfortunately?) I’ll have no choice but to deal with hundreds of reviews a day, and so far I’ve been managing it well.

I’ve reset my progress entirely last Sunday and have been keeping up a pace of 100 vocabulary entries and 20 grammar entries a day roughly with JLPT N5 material.

Since I’ve already seen most of that content before besides getting stuck on what I forgot every now and then it’s been alright. I tend to do my reviews pretty much as soon as they come up, which is manageable except for when I wake up since they accumulate while I’m asleep.

I definitely want to take it a bit easier but since I saw I can keep up this pace without much effort for what I already know there’s a chance I’ll be done with JLPT N4 material by the end of March instead of April.

Instead of 100/20 vocabulary/grammar entries a day like I’ve done up to now, since at this rate I’ll have all of JLPT N5 entirely covered by next Wednesday, this would essentially give me 40 days if I aim for end of March.

For JLPT N4, there are 1’100 vocabulary and 177 grammar entries (I can get started on grammar a bit earlier cause I got done with it just now) so I’m looking, if I spread it out evenly, at a rate of 28 vocabulary entries and 4 grammar entries per day it’s much more manageable than what I’ve been up to till now.

I’ve checked ahead of time on what this would look like for JLPT N3 and JLPT N2 content, and both are at 2’000 vocabulary entries and roughly 215ish grammar entries each. With my plan of JLPT N3 by end of July and JLPT N2 by end of November, that puts me at a steady 17 new vocabulary entries and 2 new grammar entries per day.

Since I’d have relatively few reviews in March for content I in theory already know, I’d want to get started on An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese which looks a good deal more manageable than Tobira (I have both). I’ve heard that Tobira is a big jump from Genki in terms of how much content you’d have to go through “per chapter”.

I figure doing a chapter a week of AIATIJ starting in March would prepare me decently well for also doing the same for Tobira starting in mid April.

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It would have been more manageable if I took 2 weeks per chapter for Tobira and did 8 months total for just JLPT N3 but that would be reasonable and that’s not what we’re about here. That’s more of a plan for when I start feeling like I’m getting close to burnout.

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#12

Yeah, I’ve thought 1 new grammar point per day wouldn’t be too much but going through N2 like that was at times exhausting and from time to time I had to take a few days long breaks of not learning anything new to manage ghosts. I also need to review grammar points on my own besides bunpro reviews to really understand and memorize them and that takes extra time as well. That’s why starting with N1 I’m going from 7 new points a week to 3 a week. I’m also not in a hurry since in July I plan to take N2 exam, not N1 :stuck_out_tongue:
I think in the beginning more new stuff isn’t so bad but later on it’s tough because you also need to manage older grammar points that come back in the reviews. They might appear less frequently than new stuff but they still fill up the reviews. Plus besides grammar you need to practice kanji, vocabulary, reading and listening. Oh! And if you’re not studying just to pass the exam, you also need to squeeze in some time to practice output :sweat_smile:

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#13

Aight so here’s the results after One Week of steadily using BunPro:

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There were considerably more words than I thought that I didn’t know and I’ve raked up a fair bit of ghosts (20/4 vocab/grammar) as a result.

With ups and downs, I averaged 534 reviews per day with a minimum of 243 (Wednesday) and maximum of 823 (Thursday).

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Throughout this I’ve maintained an accuracy of roughly 98% all week except for today where I had an accuracy of 93% due to having a lot of the newly learnt words being words I either haven’t seen before or forgor :skull:

The plan for the next week is as follows:

  • Sunday: Finish off the Genki I and Bunpro N5 Grammar decks, and get the Bunpro N5 Vocabulary to 800/1’100.
  • Monday to Wednesday: Do 100 entries of the Bunpro N5 Vocabulary deck a day to finish off the N5 decks for good.
  • Thursday to Saturday: Mostly chill, and just go through reviews as they come. If I feel like studying N4 and don’t actually feel tired yet then I’ll set up the N4 decks and set the learning rates at what I’ve outlined in a previous post.

Hopefully this is the last week that feels a bit more like a cramming session than actually learning, as I’ll be lowering the amount of entries I go through per day by at least half even for N4.

I’ll also go through the Genki I book once more and do shadowing on the dialogue, as well as mentally go through the exercises just to make sure I’m actually good on the content and not just getting CIA psyopped by SRS.

I’m also going to start looking for tutors for the “actually holding a goddamn conversation” part of Japanese learning to do that for at least an hour a week. That’s probably going to be for when I get started with N3 onward.

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#14

500 reviews per day on average! How much time does it take for you to go through all of them? I feel like 50 a day is a lot!

#15

If you’re one week in doing 500 reviews per day, by about a month you will be seeing numbers approaching the mid thousands consistently.
If your only goal is to make it through all the JLPT content as fast as possible, I totally think you can do it in a year, but what is your end goal for learning Japanese?
You mentioned in your first post that you want to have a hard limit of taking the JLPT N1 Exam in July of 2026 at the latest, are you planning on moving to Japan? Are you already in Japan? Are you looking to earn a certificate? Are you planning to be completely fluent in Japanese?

The reason I ask is if your only goal is to finish the JLPT1 test in around a year, then you’re on track to getting that done. The issue is once you reach that goal, then you’ll actually have to learn Japanese.
Learning a language for a test and learning a language for everyday use is a completely different set of skills. A previous post mentions how the JLPT is a fill in the blank, rearrange sentences, and listening/writing portion. This does not adequately prepare you for communication skills in Japanese, and you will almost certainly have a difficult time of properly articulating yourself and comprehending what actual Japanese people are saying in the natural flow of conversation.

I don’t want to ruin your motivation for learning. You seem to be very excited to learn and you have very lofty goals, but depending on what those goals are you could be sabotaging your future self, and giving yourself lots of extra homework to do.

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#16

be careful OP, the first few weeks are easy and makes you feel like you can archieve anything, the reality is that so far you only been exposed with stuff you have already covered, I hope you’ll be able to keep up when you’ll reach harder level since the key to japanese language is to be able to understand the nuance between one grammar point and another and this comes with consuming a lot of native content. Beside Bunpro you’ll have to spend time reading a lot if you want to pass N1 as the reading section is no joke.

I’m not saying that you won’t be able to do it, but a ‘one year to get to N1’ is already hardly archievable for a full time japanese learner student living in japan, so for someone with a full time job… it’s gonna be quite the challenge to not burn out.

Also due to the fact that you are currently doing 500+ review a day, this will stack up TREMENDOUSLY and by next month you’ll be in a 1000+ review basis, that + the N4/N3 grammar points that are also harder to grasp than the N5… Man I don’t want to be in your shoes tbh

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#17

I wish you luck! I don’t think having unrealistic goals is necessarily a bad thing :wink: To grind through all the grammar and vocab points on bunpro is one thing, but to actually read and listen quite another. Do you have a strategy to practice that, too?

If you really just want that N1/N2, I honestly would not spend an hour each week with speaking practice, but instead be grinding tests of the previous years.

#18

I appreciate the concern, specially when it comes to the amount of reviews I’ll be dealing with, and I am aware that as far as what I’ve done last week and will continue doing this week I’ll be seeing some brutal review batches in the upcoming weeks.

SRS decks, with a steady input of new entries, tend to stabilize at around 10x the daily input amount. What this looks like long term is, if I were to maintain my current pace (which I won’t and cannot either way) would be closer to 1’500 reviews per day, which is clearly not sustainable.

If we take the inputs I’ll have for N4 for around 40ish days then that number becomes closer to 320 reviews per day. When it comes to the 8 months of N3 + N2, it’s closer to 200 reviews per day.

Closer to the direct consequences of my current pace what I can count on is that some days I’ll get my current daily input amount of ~150 and will see them added on to the previously cited stabilized review numbers, so for shortly after my N4 period that would look more like 470 reviews some days.

If we assume (and it’s likely to happen) that my retention rate will somewhat suffer (although if it ever drops under 90% I’ll just slow my pace down), we can 1.5x that number to get something closer to ~700 reviews some days.

That’s in theory at least, as far as my current (admittedly rough) comprehension of the SRS system goes. I’d need to shitcode some tool real quick to get the actual numbers I can expect.

When it comes to my actual goals with Japanese I don’t really care about the JLPT, so even if it means I’ll have to slow down to be able to converse properly, that’s what I’ll do, hence my plan to spend an hour a week on a tutor (maybe even two hours a week).

I also plan on taking classes with small groups of students starting September with the goal of getting some actual more tangible benefits than just recall. Part of the reason why I’m rushing through the early levels to get back to “where I was” currently is so I can book trial sessions before the current study period ends so I can assess whether or not those classes are a good fit for me or not.

#19

I haven’t really ever checked the time it takes me but I know that when I know an entry well it takes me 2-3 seconds, and if I’m struggling with it I’m like “aight fuck it” after 10 seconds or so.

So if we say I got a retention rate of 90%, let’s say 500 reviews is 450*3 + 50*10 = 1’850 seconds for the first pass.

Then for what I got wrong, most of them are resolved quickly, but every now and then (maybe 30% of them) I need to like lock in and decompose it into the kanji and perhaps also go through the etymology in wiktionary either of the word itself or the components (I find studying etymology helps me with retention by far the most).

I’d say that process takes me an average of 3 minutes or so per entry. So you can do 50*0.3 = 15, 15*3 = 45 minutes.

If you add 15 minutes or so of general ceremony around it then I’d say a fair estimate is that 500 reviews a day takes me 1.5 hours.

Edit: I just did a batch of 90 reviews and it took me 7 minutes (420 seconds), and I got one mistake in that batch. So that was an optimistic estimate. I guess it takes me more like 4-5 seconds on average for entries I know.

So that 1’850 seconds number is more like 2’750 seconds, which brings the amount of time it takes me to do 500 reviews closer to 2 hours.

#20

This is also the time it takes you to deal with reviews of information you pretty much already know. This will likely change drastically come N3+ as it seems like a majority of your prior experience was N5/N4 material. Definitely something to look out for in the future.

Studying the vocab/grammar directly is a great way to pass the JLPT, but doing 2 hours of reviews is a really bad way of gaining fluency. Two hours of tutoring a week is good, but if you want to improve your fluency you’ll need to spend as much time (or more) as you spend reviewing, immersing.
If you can work while listening to podcasts/livestreams/shows/etc, I highly recommend you find Japanese content that you’re genuinely interested in and have that playing often while you’re not directly engaged in work. It will help get your ears used to hearing Japanese, as well as slowly adjusting yourself to hear differences in pitch accent (essential for fluency/native-like speech) as well as other quirks of the language, such as high-vowels becoming unvoiced when between 2 unvoiced consonants (why “desu” and “masu” sound like “des” and “mas”).
Even if it’s anime, if you speak like anime it’s better than the alternative (in my opinion).
I’ll be checking in here and there whenever you post. I really do hope you don’t burn out, feel free to ask for help from the community if you ever find something you struggle on and we’ll do our best to assist when we can.

edit
One more thing,

I really recommend you give yourself longer to work out things you don’t remember right away. Active Recall is incredibly important for meaningful learning, so really digging into your brain to try and remember something can save you a lot of pain later.
If you truly cannot remember something that’s fine, but don’t just mark the question as wrong if you don’t get it right away. It’s good test taking strategy to leave questions you don’t understand right away until the end of the test and use all your remaining time to try and work your way through things.

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