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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(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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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 
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 
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Aight so here’s the results after One Week of steadily using BunPro:
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).
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 
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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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!
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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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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I wish you luck! I don’t think having unrealistic goals is necessarily a bad thing 
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.
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.
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.
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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I’m starting to feel like people here are under the impression that SRS is literally all I do.
To be fair, this is a forum for an app that uses SRS, and you have only really mentioned Bunpro and WaniKani as applications you’ve used/are using for your information, aside from textbooks.
The only other thing you’ve mentioned is potentially getting tutoring for 1-2 hours a week, which as I mentioned would likely be insufficient for your goal.
I don’t know what you do, as I am not you. I’ve seen a couple things in your posts that may lead to bad learning practices in the future, and I’m trying to provide an outsider’s opinion incase it may be helpful to you.
We will only know what you tell us, and we say the things we do because you are not the first nor will you be the last person to attempt this gauntlet. I’m just trying to cover all my bases, and I’m sure others are too.
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I didn’t assume that you only do SRS but I can see why people can have that impression. I try to have daily reviews at about 30 per day on average because I spent time on kanji and vocabulary otuside of bunpro (Skritter) and then outside of apps I do some textbook grammar exercises to reinforce the grammar, I do some native content listening and when I play video games I play them in japanese to hunt for some extra vocabulary and I try to practice speaking for about an hour a week (not a lot, I know, but my priority is input). All of that takes time and 30 grammar points a day on average is a lot when I do that extra stuff and have a full time job, hobbies and also need some free time to unwind/meet up with friends and so on.
Also people study differently, for example when I do grammar reviews on bunpro, I read sentences several times to make sure I understand all of the words and all of the grammar used in the sentence, sometimes I say out loud the breakdown of the grammar used in the sentence as if I was explaining it to someone, so 1 grammar point can take me more like 30 seconds to even a minute or more. People might assume you study like them.
So what you’re doing is really impressive and takes a lot of time and dedication, that’s why I think people might assume you only do SRS because adding more stuff on top of that is crazy! Good luck! Fingers crossed you achieve your goal! 
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Not to mention you need to find the time for eating, sleeping, socialising, work etc etc. hahah
Y’all are straight up demons sent by Satan himself to demotivate me or something lmao
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It’s okay, I can take the negativity. I’m built different.
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I don’t think anybody is trying to demotivate you. Quite the opposite—they’re trying to prevent you from being too aggressive and getting burnt out/demotivated in the end.
If you really can power through that crazy volume, then all power to you. Just don’t beat yourself up if it proves to be too much.
Personally I’m in the middle of trying to do something similar. Just passed the N3 in December, and aiming to take the N1 next December. Did the math and that meant I have to do 2 grammar points + 15 vocab items per day (plus learning base kanji, listening, long form reading, etc). I knew it was a stretch, but I figured I can always course correct and settle for the N2 if it proves to be too much.
At first it seemed to be going surprisingly well, but in the past week or two I’ve suddenly hit a wall where two things are happening:
- older vocab items are coming up and I can’t recall them (sometimes I don’t even remember learning them in the first place)
- example sentences come up with alternate meanings that I need to learn
So now the Ghosts are piling up and I’ve decided to pause learning new material until I can get them under control. Starting to look like I won’t make it to N1 in time for December, but like I said, I always knew it was going to be a stretch.
Times like this I’m always reminded of something a friend told me: most people overestimate what they can accomplish in 1 year, and underestimate what they can accomplish in 5 years. Try to keep that in mind and don’t feel like you can’t adjust your goals if/when you need to.
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Part of me thinks that is a bit too ambitious… I can see where its coming from… Whatever happens, I hope that you can at least stick with Japanese in the long term and try to study most days. ( Ie not burn out completely and try to remember that this period of studying a lot helped you accelerate your Japanese language ability)
Just some things to keep in mind:
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Try different learning methodologies from time to time as some techniques become more effective at different stages (eg shadowing, coping small passages from books etc)
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Reading / listening become more and more important over time as your knowledge increases. Towards the end of N3 manga / simple light novels become quite accessible
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If a light novel / book / manga / podcast etc is not interesting enough, drop it and move to something else. Sometimes I would pick a light novel and force myself to read the volume to the end even though I realised by 1/3 of it that I don’t enjoy it. In these cases it takes me months to finish a book compared to days to finish a book that I find interesting haha.
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N3 / N2 grammar at one point is kind of hellish as many grammar points are very similar . Push through and don’t give up. Maybe try Kanzen Master N3 and N2 grammar for extra question practice.
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Maybe after every grammar level, try to do a mock JLPT test to see how things are going?
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Don’t be afraid to lightly change your goals and postpone them (not give up!). Eg try the actual JLPT N3 exam (this December) and N2 exam (eg next July) to see how it goes. It would be cool to have the certificates and it will help with motivation as you can see your hard work has some physical results
Good Luck! I really hope you succeed and in 2026 you look back and get amazed at your progress.
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This mindset is really reminding of the protagonist David from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, you should give it a watch if you haven’t. Because I don’t think the other people in this thread are intending to kill your motivation, they’re just trying to think ahead and look out for you so you don’t end up like David.
He was “built different” too, until he wasn’t…
But on a serious note though, you know yourself better than any user here. If you feel it’s working for you just keep going until you need / want to adjust your routine.
There are always outliers that can perform at a higher level than expected, no reason to believe you’re not one of them.
Good luck, I hope you smash your goals.
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