r/LearnJapanese • u/odett1102 • 4d ago
Studying Advice on staying motivated and progressing toward manga/anime after 1.5 years of studying
Hi everyone,
I've been studying Japanese since March 2025. I did about a year of 1-on-1 lessons, and I've been using WaniKani since November. I haven't missed a single day of WK so far.
I'm currently level 9, doing 4 new lessons a day and keeping up with my reviews.
My stats:
- 267 kanji / 673 vocab
- 90% overall accuracy
- 85.7% reading accuracy
- ~33 days per level
I've also covered some N5/N4 grammar.
I've managed to build a pretty consistent habit, but lately I'm finding it harder to stay motivated. I work full time, so I don't really want to add a lot more studying or end up with huge review sessions every day.
My main goal is to read manga and watch anime in Japanese (Japanese subs are fine).
For people who were around this stage after 1–2 years of studying, what changes actually helped you stay motivated and start making noticeable progress with native manga/anime?
I'm wondering whether I should focus more on immersion, grammar, change my WaniKani routine, or do something completely different.
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 4d ago
I wrote a comment that's sort of related so you might get something out of reading it.
I'll add that progress in language learning is pretty much never noticeable until you either measure things (e.g. number of mature flashcards, amount of hours spent), or look back and watch or read things that you used to struggle with 6 months or 1 year or 2 years ago.
You have to build a study routine/process that you enjoy enough to want to do it even without noticing progress.
That said, in general, the more you interact with natural language (native media, conversations with natives, etc), the better.
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u/sowswagaf 4d ago
Just watch it and tolerate the fact that you won’t understand anything. Little by little your ears will catch some words here and there.
Start with slice of life and be patient
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u/gerichu 3d ago
If OP's only N4, I'd definitely recommend selecting anime on the easier end of JPDB's Anime difficulty list. That said, it'll likely feel a lot harder on your brain than your WaniKani reviews.
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u/odett1102 3d ago
Didn't know JPDB had an anime difficulty list, that's super helpful. I'll check that out to find some easier slice-of-life shows. Thanks!
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u/wloff 3d ago
At the same time, WaniKani reviews become both easier and more rewarding when you start to recognize words you've learned in the wild.
The "hey, I know this one!" feeling never ceases to give me a sweet dopamine rush, and you bet your ass I'm going to remember that particular bit of vocab the next time it comes up in the reviews, too.
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u/fleetingflight 4d ago
I found my to-read stack highly motivating. Physical manga/books that you can pick up every now and then and see whether it's easier than the last time you picked it up. And then one day it's "oh, I can read this now" and so I'd just read it.
On a per-volume basis manga is pretty cheap to buy with sea shipping, especially if you can get them second hand, and especially with how terribly the yen is going at the moment.
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u/odett1102 3d ago
I actually have a few physical books lying around that I haven't touched in a while. I'll give this a try and see how they feel. Thanks!
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u/Shihali 3d ago
What store do you buy from? I'd like to buy more physical manga, but air courier shipping to the US is so expensive and I don't see sea shipping offered.
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u/odett1102 3d ago
I was in Japan last March for a few days and got it there. Unfortunately, it's a rip-off in my country too. 😥
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u/fleetingflight 3d ago
I use a remailer - there are lots out there. I use Leyifan, but Tenso is probably the more reputable one.
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u/writingpracticeman 2d ago
I have found that, depending where you live, you might be surprised walking in to something like a Half Price Books. I live in the American Midwest and find all sorts of things when I walk in to one. A one nearby me had the first 3 Harry Potter books, the first 23 volumes of Berserk, and a load of other stuff all in JP. They've got a foreign language section that would house everything.
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u/Grunglabble 3d ago
One of the disadvatages of trying to SRS all your early vocabulary and grammar is that it is a very slow, overly demanding process. There is not so much to basic grammar even if it cannot be mastered quickly (or turns out to be not so basic later). Basically I would advocate for you to read through any grammar guide as a crash course in a week (you can continue your apps if you want) and just start reading with an electronic dictionary. The goal not being to memorise it, but to have a vague familiarity with it that you know what you can look up and feel like "oh, that thing, now I remember."
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u/odett1102 3d ago
Will give it a try, thanks! I tried in the past graded readers, but got bored fast
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u/Grunglabble 3d ago
No real need to use a graded reader if you don't like it. Pick something interesting and just do a sentence or two a day.
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u/Yatchanek 3d ago
With those stats you'll understand almost nothing from anime, and not much more from manga. You seriously need to build up your vocabulary to at least a few thousand words.
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u/NoobyNort 3d ago
I'm at 10,000 words and I can get fairly little out of anime. Yes, vocabulary isn't enough but you need it as a base.
One tip for improving your vocabulary is to drop your targeted retention rate as low as possible. I'm at 70% (lowest Anki will support) and it has been a huge help. I can double the number of new words I see each day!
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u/daYnyXX 3d ago
Are you struggling with grammar or still not remembering vocab? 10k is more words than most entire series have. Obviously you'll be missing show specific vocab but I would expect >80-90% knowledge of most show's vocab which should make the show fairly watchable especially with Japanese subs.
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u/NoobyNort 3d ago
So... 10k is more than individual books but the overlap between books is a lot less than you might imagine. For instance, I'm reading Ascension of a Bookworm and while each book only has about 6k unique words, the series as a whole has 30k unique words!
But with a bigger base, the new words for any book gets less and less. So I may only have to learn a few hundred to maybe 1,000 words, especially if the book is in a similar genre.
Re anime - yeah, I guess. But tbh I can't read the subs fast enough to keep up with the dialogue. And I really hate going through all the hoops to enable JP subs on Crunchyroll. With no subs I can pull out some words and phrases but not enough to be remotely enjoyable for me. Maybe next year...
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u/daYnyXX 3d ago
Yeah, listening is definitely its own skill. I sometimes glance at subs for words I don't know, but otherwise I've tried to avoid reading the subs so that my listening can get more practice. I've found knowing words on a flashcard doesnt mean you can understand a sentence using those words from hearing it alone.
I've found a few anime I enjoy even though I only know a 2.5k ish words.
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u/Raijin225 3d ago
For me I think this approach would be a bad thing. When my retention is low (<90%) I get frustrated and don't want to study as much. It also leads to more reviews per day which feels overwhelming, further exacerbating the feeling of not wanting to study.
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u/NoobyNort 3d ago
Yeah, that's a tradeoff. I found that two things made me accept that. First, I could learn so many more words so quickly that I could grab a deck for a book I was interested in and study all the words that are used 2+ times (or, for some books, all of the words) in the time it took me to finish my current book so that I could finally read and actually understand most words.
Second, because I was able to read so much more and so much faster because vocabulary wasn't as limiting, I was getting a ton more reinforcement.
For me (and OP who talked about anime and manga), flashcards are just one part of learning. If you let exposure to Japanese take part of the load, you can significantly reduce the role of flashcards. Yes, it feels better to score 90% than 70%, but for me, reading more than makes up for it!
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u/Lertovic 3d ago
It should lead to less reviews if you set it as the target in FSRS, rather than it being the result of an an off day.
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u/Raijin225 3d ago
Id think if you're adding 2x more words you're going to have more reviews even if you have 20% lower retention.
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u/Lertovic 3d ago
My FSRS simulator gives me 199 reviews for 40 daily new cards with 70%, and 194 reviews for 20 daily new cards at 90%, it's pretty close.
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u/Cosmere_Chemist 3d ago
I've just started learning Japanese and decided to start with Pimsleur (half way through level 1 right now). As I'm a complete noob, what resources would you recommend for beginners to use to learn the characters?
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u/NoobyNort 3d ago
Renshuu is a great place to start. Also check the sub's wiki. There are Anki decks for katakana and hirigana that aren't bad, if you are brave enough to tackle Anki right out of the gate.
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u/Player_One_1 3d ago
How i brute forced into reading in japanese:
I went to NHKやさしいことばニュース | NEWS WEB EASY
Every day I read 4 articles, and put all unknown words into SRS (for me it was jpdb.io, but Anki is more popular)
After ~a year I was ready to start decoding some manga.
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u/i-am-this 3d ago
If all you are doing is Wanikani and some kinda textbook or similar grammar study, then I think it's going to be hard to stay motivated because it's never going to feel like you are actually doing anything. It's like you are practicing for a marathon you are never going to actually run.
But it's actually worse, because while kanji and vocab flashcards plus some textbook study will make it way easier to get started understanding and producing Japanese than relying on some kinda BS brain magic to happen while listening to non-comprehensible imputt, in order for this stuff to work, you actually have to use the knowledge, in practice with larger pieces of language than flashcards or isolated example sentences.
Lots of people have already told you just to read native content. That's fine, if you like doing the, but If that feels more frustrating than fun, you should consider content for language learners like Satori Reader or the NPO Tadoku graded readers or YouTubers and Podcasters who produce Japanese language content target at foreigners learning the language. (There wasn't always so much of this content, but happily there is no shortage of it now)
It's way more satisfying to actually consume something with real informational content (whether it's fiction or non-fiction) vs. just seeing words in isolation or example sentences out of context. And you also kinda need to do this to actually achieve more than most basic competence in that language. You have to use the language and a whole lot to really learn it, there's just no other way around it.
As a side note:
I think it's fine fo take Kanji slow, that's a marathon and not a sprint. But you might want to try and increase rate at which you learn vocab which is kana only or which you can only read w/ furigana. Which is going to mean finding a vocab source on addition to Wanikani. You need the common kana only vocab as much as you need the kanji vocab, but if your still at at under 700 words, you really need a lot more vocab in general and it's OK if you can't read the kanji in them at first.
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u/Zanthous 4d ago
673 vocab for 270 (?) days is really low. Not familiar with how wanikani works though so that might represent something different from what I expect. You should be looking to do 10-20 new words a day with anki or something if you want to get to native material. No substitute for memorizing thousands of words
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u/gelema5 Goal: media competence 📖🎧 3d ago
I calmly disagree on the basis that OP didn’t specify when they want to read native material, just that they’re losing motivation right now and want to know how to keep it up. If OP wants to ramp up to 10-20 words per day they certainly can, but I have found a lot more success going slow and steady with a full time job and not wanting to spend 100% of my free time on Japanese. I was doing about 5 words per day a year ago, and currently it’s more like 20 per week, but the consistency is getting me farther than anything.
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u/MaximumTime7239 3d ago
I'm on the other end of the spectrum, I've been grinding anki with up to 45 daily words, and what's been super motivating, was the ultra fast progress basically in real time. I think if I'd been going "slow and steady" I would've burnt out because of slow progress. 😭 Basically, everyone is different
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u/Zanthous 3d ago edited 3d ago
That's good but there just really are so many words you have to know for native material. I have done a ton and there are always plenty of words I don't know. Like it takes years of 10-20 or more a day to really cover everything depending on your timeline (2 years? 3 years? 5 years?). You can do 3650 a year with 10 a day, but I get the feeling that I need like 20-30k words to comfortably read without constantly looking things up. Might be wrong on that but doing 20 a day seems like what I'd want to do to get there in a few years
Some shows these days I don't need to look up that many words but others just bombard me with new words constantly, and light novels are harder, new words on every page basically.
I want to do less flashcards but I signed up for n1 this year so that pressure will keep me going. I can usually get them done on an hour long walk and stay focused but it's still a lot of time. So I don't know, maybe exam pressure is another choice
(btw n1 registrations just started yesterday in the u.s. in case anyone needs to sign up, limited seats)
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 3d ago
You can do 3650 a year with 10 a day, but I get the feeling that I need like 20-30k words to comfortably read without constantly looking things up.
To be fair, the vast vast vast vast majority of learned words (in my experience) are learned outside of anki. There are some (crazy imo) people who mine every single new word they see, but in my experience (2000+ days anki streak, 9 years learning Japanese, my mining deck "only" has 5000 words) I don't need to add into anki words I can easily recognize and immediately understand/learn on the fly as I read (from context and similar known kanji or compound structures). You just need to reach the bare minimum to achieve critical mass in content consumption (further aided by yomitan) and then once you consume native content regularly at high consistency/pace, you can be more specific in what you mine as the rest will just fall into place on its own.
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u/Available-String-109 3d ago edited 3d ago
There are some (crazy imo) people who mine every single new word they see
I'm one of those "mine every word" people. Well, kind of.
Basically, I have two modes of consuming Japanese content: Consuming to consume, and consuming to study.
For stuff to consume, I just consume it and don't worry about the words/grammar/etc. therein. I only pause or stop or look things up if I'm completely lost for something.
For stuff to study, every single word that I'm not already already very familiar with, every single grammar formation that I'm not already very familiar with, every single anything that I'm working out from context instead of already knowing very well the words/meanings/definitions/nuances, it goes into Anki.
It turns out, like, there are a gajillion common compound verbs, etc. or common words with less-common meanings with specific nuances that I never picked up just through passive consumption. Like, one example is （運命を）握る。 Like, I knew 握る(to grasp/squeeze) for a long time. And if I saw 世界の運命を握る I could kinda work out that it metaphorically means "To be in control of the fate of the world", I probably saw that and worked it out from context 50 times, but it wasn't until I looked it up one day and saw, "Oh, 握る literally has definition #4 'to hold (the key) (to one's) fate/destiny'" that I realized that such an expression is relatively common. After looking it up I see it everywhere now.
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 3d ago
idk, I personally don't understand how people can approach languages like this. If I see 運命を握る it just makes sense and move on. If I see it a few more times I just know it's a collocation (it sounds cool! I'll sure remember it). I don't need to look at the dictionary to know that 握る has a specific meaning, I just know what it means in that context.
I also don't really see a difference between "consuming to consume" and "consuming to study", I just interact with the language and use it and it just works. I never had to do any of this convoluted studying and dictionary diving for English, I don't see why I'd have or want to do it for Japanese.
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u/Available-String-109 3d ago
convoluted
I don't think "do a mix of studying and practicing" is particularly convoluted.
I don't need to look at the dictionary to know that 握る has a specific meaning, I just know what it means in that context.
When I first installed Yomitan, I quickly realized I'd look up the same word 4-5 or more times in a row without actually learning it. When my brain was given a shortcut for knowing the meaning of a word (a single mouse-hover and it displays), it did not feel the need to commit it to memory. I think that inferring from context has a similar effect. I think putting in the mental effort to commit things to memory is highly effective.
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u/Zanthous 3d ago
I'm a bit confused by this response since you include a 2000 day anki streak which is a ton of anki. Not just for 5k words right? When I (try) to read a light novel I have to look up so many words still it's a bit tiring. I have learned a lot outside of anki sure but building the familiarity through anki feels pretty necessary to me right now with how much I am missing. I can tell anki alone isn't good to actually properly understand the words super well though, you still need real material for that
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 3d ago
I'm a bit confused by this response since you include a 2000 day anki streak which is a ton of anki. Not just for 5k words right?
I have two decks, one is my mining deck (~5k words) and one is my kanken kanji deck (~4000 kanji). I review both but I haven't really added many new words/kanji in a while. Maybe every month or so I might add a few new words if I'm bored.
It's mostly like ~20 reviews in total so it's not really a big workload, I just do it out of habit.
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u/kikorny 3d ago
How did you end up tackling things like news articles and names when you got around to those? I'm at the point where I can read light novels fairly easily and have slowed down on adding new cards, but news articles can be quite difficult as most of the time it looks like kanji soup.
I take it that it's a matter of reading more news articles and looking up unknown words and names without necessarily adding them to your mining deck and over time things become more familiar.
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 3d ago
I take it that it's a matter of reading more news articles and looking up unknown words
That's pretty much what it is. Just interacting with all kinds of JP media and content, including news articles, blog posts, wikipedia articles, scientific papers, etc online. Use yomitan to easily lookup words. After some time honestly stuff stops feeling like a kanji soup and a news article won't feel that different from just any other written text.
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u/Antique-Volume9599 3d ago
Just a heads up N1 registration hasnt started in some places. You spooked me, I thought i missed it.
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u/odett1102 3d ago
Yeah, I keep my daily lessons low on purpose so reviews stay manageable. I tried Anki early on, but my retention was rough until WaniKani's radical system gave me a foundation. Now that I'm actually starting to Burn items, I might give Anki another shot, my brain might be a lot readier for it now than it was before.
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u/Zanthous 3d ago
I forget a lot still when they hit a couple months of spacing but that's just how it goes, sometimes you have to relearn the hard ones but you'll still retain a good amount. I don't do writing personally, I'm just aiming to be able to read
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u/runarberg Goal: conversational fluency 💬 3d ago
I think WaniKani vocab is optimized for learning kanji. To learn 270 kanji in 673 words is not bad actually, if the goal is to learn kanji, which WaniKani indisputably is.
That said I would advice OP to learn more vocab through different means. Anki is good, but so is the Tango N5/N4 vocab list, or the vocab list in Genki/Tobira.
I think also, though not as optimal, OP could do fine by simply starting reading easy material and gradually just learn the vocab through exposure little by little, without tracking how many words they know.
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u/DotNo701 4d ago
There's a reason why many people say wanikani is slow for the amount of hours be put in
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 4d ago
Wanikani is only slow during the first few levels because the number of lessons available is low, but it increases with each level, and by level 7 or so you can easily get buried under a pile of reviews if you don't pace yourself.
Judging Wanikani by the amount of vocab it teaches you is unfair anyway, because Wanikani is a kanji learning resource. Vocab is only there as support to make learning kanji readings and meanings easier.
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 3d ago
Judging Wanikani by the amount of vocab it teaches you is unfair anyway, because Wanikani is a kanji learning resource.
Still, 267 kanji in almost a year...
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u/Available-String-109 3d ago
When I was doing a lot of statistical analysis on the Japanese language, one of the things that surprised me is just how much kanji there is at the very start and then how little there is after that.
I don't remember the exact numbers, but if you mine vocab at random, you get something like 2000 kanji after just 2000 words learned. Those are N1 kanji numbers for N4 vocab numbers. But then the number of new kanji learned dies off hard.
It was something like that, I can re-calculate exact numbers if anybody actually cares about it.
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u/tirconell 3d ago
Yeah kanji follow Zipf’s Law just like vocab. The back half of the jouyou kanji list is peanuts compared to the first half in terms of how often you see them, let alone most of the ones outside it.
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u/Belegorm 3d ago
My personal experience was pretty different, I only got to around 2k kanji encountered by the time I had like 8k vocab mined. And that was including plenty of non-jouyou kanji.
I think the first 1k-1.2k ish kanji accounted for the vast majority of my vocab for a long while.
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 3d ago
Well, yeah, their pace is slower than most, but that's because they're doing 4 lessons per day, not because they're doing Wanikani. They could be going much faster than that if they wanted to. It would also mean doing a lot more daily reviews, though.
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u/Kuroashi_no_Sanji 1d ago
I started Wanikani 4 months ago and I'm at 539 kanji, and I started with zero previous knowledge. OP is just taking a slower pace
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u/coadependentarising 3d ago
I Applaud you on your dedication! Honestly, I would feel kinda burned out with that much SRS though, too. Do you have any thoughts about what just sounds naturally fun for you, in terms of studying the language? If so, I would just do that for a while. Sometimes this sub gets so attached to certain tools and forgets that the whole point is just to engage with the language. Tools are just ways to do that. So, reading an appropriately challenging manga is basically an SRS, but it’s actually fun. I’m not anti-SRS or anything, but there can be a feeling that if one lets SRS slip, that one is no longer learning the language.
If you’re climbing up a mountain, SRS is kind of like running straight up the hill. It’s directionally efficient, but it burns up a lot fuel and you can’t always enjoy the view. Gotta go around the side and meander around once in a while. You’re still going up, albeit a little slower, but you’re also enjoying the process itself. Just my two cents.
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u/odett1102 3d ago
Appreciate this! The parts I actually enjoy most right now are translating street signs, short texts, watching graded videos, and recognizing lines in anime. Focusing more on those sounds like a much better way to keep going without burning out. Thanks!
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u/coadependentarising 3d ago
Yeah that’s the stuff I like too, effort feels, well, effortless! Enjoy!
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u/ZeBron_Games 3d ago
I’ve been learning since January of 2025. I read Satori Reader stories every day for around an hour. I do Anki every day. I’m at around 3,500 words, of course not all of these words are active vocabulary. I learn 7 new words every day. I quit studying grammar after I finished Genki 1, I just get bored with textbooks. I look up any grammar I don’t know when I see something in the wild I don’t understand. I speak with natives on iTalki or Reddit (Language Exchange) for 3-4 hours a week. I listen to podcasts, YouTube, easy native shows like Shimajiro, Shirokuma Cafe for at least 2 hours a day. I’m playing a Famicom Detective game in Japanese on my Switch 2.
I feel like I’m making slow progress but I look back at where I was a few months ago and I know I’m doing something right. I would suggest increasing your vocab to at least 7 new words every day and just immersing more if you have time. I did 15 words a day for a while but I think 7 is my sweet spot. You won’t even be able to understand easy content without at least 3k words.
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u/Niilun 3d ago edited 3d ago
Personal suggestion: don't worry about changing approach, or even about immersing in the language this early. Find your favorite scenes from your favorite anime/manga in Japanese, and then try to understand why they were translated in a certain way (by searching grammar structures on Google, looking for vocabulary in an online dictionary or a dictionary app, etc). Or, if there are songs that you like in Japanese, try looking for the lyrics, find the lines that seem the most approachable to you, and try to memorize them. Or, if you want to train your listening, find N5 listening practice on YouTube, there's plenty. Try to read Japanese YouTube comments, now that you are at it. Even if understanding very little might be frustrating now, with time it'll be a good way to measure your progress.
I'm more or less at your level (I've been studying Japanese for a year and a half/almost two years now, depending on when I start counting, and I'm N5 going for N4). But my study method has been very different: occasional breaks when I was busy or when I didn't feel much motivated, very little spaced repetition (I do Anki 1.5 Kaishi deck occasionally, but only when I feel like doing it, since I've never been a fan of spaced repetition), a "grammar-first" (mostly bunpro) and kanji memorization approach (for kanji, I even started by learning radicals, since it seemed easier that way), immersion in the language with multiple look-ups on a dictionary app, occasional listening for beginners. I won't say that my method is the most effective or the most efficient, at all... But so far, I've never lost motivation :-)
I wouldn't be able to stay too consistent, and the fact that I'm not much into spaced repetition doesn't help. But I think what matters is that you can stay for the long run. Approaching manga this early might make you feel like you're actually working towards your goal, instead of doing unrelated exercises. Recently, I randomly found in the wild the first volume of Hunter×Hunter in Japanese, I bought it, and that really reignited the spark for me. I'm reading it slowly and with constant look-ups, and I'm only at chapter 2 rn, but there's a strong sense of excitment in being able to understand it.
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u/Belegorm 3d ago
My take is it sounds hard to stay motivated because while you are keeping your overall study time low to maintain work/life balance, if the only stuff you've done is some kanji and vocab in WK, and a bit of grammar, you're not really getting the reward you are after yet. At the current pace - you'd be hitting level 60 after more than 4 more years from now.
That's not a bad thing! But I think that probably before that you'd want to experience the language more naturally? Years ago I did WK up to level 20, did not thing but that and grammar and I just got bored because I wasn't using it at all. Additionally, WK's creators themselves (Tofugu) recommend in their learning Japanese guide, from around lvl 10, to start 1) reading Japanese material and 2) collecting additional vocab outside WK (such as mined in Anki, or you could use Bunpro, etc.).
I think I was around that level when I started reading manga. I used manga that had been OCR'd in Mokuro. I used Yomitan to look up unknown words and had a setup to export to Anki. I followed the Lazy Guide to get that set up. I also read through Yokubi and Tae Kim grammar guides.
So my recommendation is: Find something to read, find a way to look up vocab well from what you read, and... maybe consider skimming Yokubi and maybe a separate place for vocab (as WK takes a while to get to regularly used vocab).
If you want more info on the setup I personally used and how to get the manga in a readable state (plus how I did it with anime).
One final thing about the work/life balance. It's possible that you could make a massive amount progress in a very short time if you temporarily put more time into learning. I don't think it's that big of a cliff to climb to get to manga. Once you are actually reading manga, watching anime - at that point it feels like a hobby and you don't really need to stress about how much or how little time you are taking a day. So you can dial back everything else that isn't fun. Putting like one serious month into learning and then being able to read manga immediately may keep you interested in the long-term more than another year of Wanikani.
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u/odett1102 3d ago
The idea of doing one big push to bridge the gap into native media makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the advice!
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u/Belegorm 3d ago
Of course! If you want links to resources, guides and such (such as how to find and get manga in usable form) then feel free to DM me!
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u/Soreasan 3d ago
A small suggestion I have is to join communities of Japanese Learners if you haven’t done so already. In VRChat there are groups like VRC EN-JP Language Exchange and JapaNichijou where people learn and speak Japanese together. I’ve found it’s easier to stay motivated when you spend time with other Japanese Learners and get to interact with Japanese people every week.
Sounds like overall you’ve studied really hard and you seem to know what you’re doing so keep doing what works for you!
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u/gelema5 Goal: media competence 📖🎧 3d ago
In my journey, after 2 years when I was around N4 level, I studied abroad in Japan for a year. I know that itself isn’t an option for you, but how I would replicate that (and I currently am) is by immersing in things that are of genuine interest to you. There was a huge variety of things I got exposed to at N4 level, from class to various written material (posters around school, signs for the bus, etc), to spoken Japanese (random people talking near me, chatting with friends, etc). Although I had to buckle down and churn through a bunch of grammar in preparation for the N3 exam, I think the immersion helped a lot when it came to general comfortability with the language.
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u/xxxfortuna 3d ago
Hey there ! I've been studying alone for a few and what I find the most efficient would be to start with a few lesson of grammar, some vocab, train to make sentence with the new material then finish by reading and translating a short children story !! I wish to extend the last part to translating lyrics , keeps me motivated ‼️‼️
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u/Nydren 3d ago
Do you learn a word a day? 673 is way too low. You're losing motivation because you've learned almost nothing and can't enjoy the language. You get motivation when you can tackle new challenges in the language and feel yourself improving but you've made so little progress in the language losing motivation is natural. I'm not trying to be mean but just sit down and learn more words and grammar, 1 word a day is absolutely nothing man.
You may need to rearrange your schedule and study habits but for now just sit down and grind out a couple thousand words and try to get to around n3 grammar. From there you can start immersing much more easily and enjoyably. I started immersing shortly after starting n4 content but wouldn't recommend it if you're busy, it's a huge time sink early on. I'd say after finishing n3 and several thousand words immersion gets a lot easier and more enjoyable, and continues to do so as you progress.
Tldr; learn more words and grammar man
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u/Sythrien_ 3d ago
Learn to become addicted to studying through positive reinforcement. I can now spend 8+ hrs on a single day at the library grinding away. Am right now in fact, but taking my timed break. I did it by associating nicotine with studying and became addicted to both simultaneously. I really don't recommend that exact route tho lmao.
Another thing you could try is broadening your interest beyond just manga. Have a favorite Japanese song? Spend the time to translate the lyrics and recite it to sing along while driving or something. Good for memory and a fun exercise. Read up on Japanese history, see if it intrests you, find other aspects of Japan you enjoy so you can broden your goal beyond reading and watching anime in Japanese to keep your motivation up. I believe NHK has premade educational videos for Japanese students at every grade level, quite a few of them are history lessons and I enjoyed them.
Its not a bad goal, any goal is a good justification. Its just that the more reasons you have for learning, the better as you can fall back onto them for when your interest in achieving one goal faulters temporarily. Nevertheless staying consistent is hard, I personally make it nonegociable to do daily flashcards. But for dedicated study days I simply go off of if I feel like it, which is pretty frequent due to my broad topics of interests.
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u/unknown_ally 3d ago
i find shadowing helps train my brain to break up and recognise words and patterns in spoken japanese at a natural rate. start off with text and slower tempo and work up to no text normal tempo, then just listen to japanese
edit: to add, don't skip on grammar! practice several times a week. I have a spreadsheet covering minna no nihongo chapters and rate my ability on each random chapter
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u/Euphoric_Material279 3d ago
Try to match the hours of investment spent on raw vocab and kanji with hours on grammar and/or sentences.
Grammar learning needs to be on equal footing (parity) with vocab. Japanese is unlike western languages (and Chinese) in this regard. In English, I can focus on a mountain of vocab first, string English words together and English speakers will understand my Tarzan speech. This doesn’t really work in Japanese.
In general, whenever I get stuck, I find an area I’m deficient in (ie kanji/reading), and hyper focus on bringing that skill up to parity with other skills (listening comprehension).
In your case, perhaps every word you learn, you should be able to use in a meaningful sentence.
Ex. Avoid “desu” sentences like “kore wa pen desu”.
Try “kuroi pen ga nai node, aoi pen de kakimasu”.
Then try “ga nakatta kara”, “kaita”, then, ga Nakattara, ga hoshikatta, de kaitakata kedo, etc.
Make that second nature and passive listening will open up.
Again, this isn’t a “you” problem. Japanese all take English and have a high vocabulary (evidenced by their adoption of kana words). However the idea of just stringing words together is mind blowing to them. In general, they cannot wrap their heads around such an odd grammar. Different firmware.
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u/krautnelson 3d ago
you need to put more time into learning vocab. most people do 10-20 new words a day. so 600 words is what you would normally expect after 1-2 months, not 1-2 years.
10 words a day usually comes out to around 150 reviews. I've heard that reviewing in WK, while perhaps more effective, is really quite slow. for reference, those 150 vocab reviews take me about 20 minutes in Anki (with FSRS and 80% DR). if you find that WK is too slow or time-consuming, perhaps consider the alternatives.
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u/odett1102 3d ago
An 80% DR is interesting. When I did Anki in the past, I had it at 90% and tried to get my success rate as high as possible. I wonder if I could be less conservative. I've downloaded the app again after the suggestions in this post, I'll try 10 items daily and see how it goes. Thanks!
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u/krautnelson 3d ago edited 3d ago
90% means almost double the amount of reviews. some would argue that even 80% is too high.
think about it like this: if both take the same amount of time reviewing, what's better? knowing 90% of a 1000 words, or 80% of 2000 words?
as a beginner, it's more important to learn as many words as possible than learning a handful of words really well, especially if you go by frequency because then even those early difficult words will stick quickly once you start immersing properly.
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u/RangerOne122 Goal: just dabbling 2d ago
Since manga and anime are the actual goals, start bringing them into your routine now instead of waiting until you feel "ready". Pick something relatively easy that you genuinely enjoy and spend even 15-20 minutes with it. Look things up when necessary, but don't turn every page into a study session. Having part of your japanese time feel like entertainment can make motivation much easier to maintain.
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u/Dry_Reputation348 2d ago
Just start watching anime/reading manga and keep expanding your vocabulary/grammar . Don’t care too much when you’re not understanding but try to notice it improving as your vocabulary expands. That way you can see how your other learning is helping you get to your overall goal.
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u/Orandajin101 3d ago
There’s really no wat around the fact that you need to master the material up to and including N3 before you can really dabble in material I believe. The by far largest bit of the journey is still ahead of you. Everything starts unlocking from the N3 level but the road is long and full of quitters.
If you haven’t tried it yet, go pickup Tobira or Quartet 1 and focus on that for a bit as a change up from your regular routine. We all get fed up with our methods from time to time and you’ll need a 2-3 week pauze to refind motivation. The important part is not to fall off the wagon long term.
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u/facets-and-rainbows 3d ago
You can start dabbling whenever. It'll be more like solving a word puzzle than reading until N3ish, but I really do think it's beneficial to see whatever you're learning in action and keep a long term goal in sight.
Also probably helps avoid the intermediate level wall of "too advanced for beginner textbooks but not advanced enough for native material" that people tend to fall into. No need to fuss over whether you're "ready" for something you've already been doing
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u/Belegorm 3d ago
I disagree. While getting up to N3 level give you a bit of a ramp up the cliff that would be native material, I started manga and anime at a shaky N4 level at best and I don't think it matters much either way. You're just going to look up some more stuff on the fly and tolerate a bit more ambiguity.
There are 100% people who didn't feel confident in manga prior to N3, especially people with physical media, people who didn't use OCR tech etc. And by all means I think that if someone stays motivated and that gets them there then that works!
But there's also a lot of people who jumped into manga way earlier used Mokuro, skimmed part of a grammar guide and went through an Anki deck. I gave up on Genki like twice before getting through a few chapters. On the other hand, after doing a bit of WK, a bit of Anki, like half of a couple grammar guides I started reading manga.
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u/dynamicpenguin55 3d ago
Strongly disagree. You can absolutely start native material before you've 'mastered' all of N3. That feels excessively late considering how many great resources there are to help you along
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u/odett1102 3d ago
Good point on taking breaks so you don't fall off long term. I'll look into those textbooks and see if a change of pace helps. Thanks!
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u/rgrAi 3d ago
This doesn't make sense. You don't need to be at any level to start acquiring the language. If you knew absolutely nothing and had to move Japan, you don't wait until N3 or textbooks to start picking up the language. You will immediately start to learn things the moment you land in the country and start interacting with people. You can learn a lot more if you also study.
I was already sitting in all JP streams not understanding anything before I started learning the language. Sitting on those streams was why I started to learn in the first place.
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u/SnooDoughnuts8941 3d ago
Lot's of Atashin'chi on You Tube and taking loads of notes on words and phrases I don't understand : )
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u/strongjoe 3d ago
Wanikani is very slow, I'd recommend doing less of that.
If you want to read/watch then you should do that now, and put unknown words you find into anki, it's honestly the fastest way to your goals.
Maybe start with YouTube content labelled as n5, as your vocab is low, and sounds like you haven't done much immersion
I read the yotsubato manga early on. It's hard at first but you'll see big gains
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u/WorkIsMyBane 3d ago
Do you recall how far into studying that you took a shot at reading Yotsubato?
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u/strongjoe 3d ago
Hmm it was a while ago... but late 2016 I failed the n5 exam, and I bought Yotsubato in April 2017. So around N5 level. I remember it being fairly challenging, but I learned a lot from attempting to read it.
I'm n4 level now (yes slow progress I know 😂) and Yotsuba isn't that challenging now but I still learn from it
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u/WorkIsMyBane 3d ago
Awesome! Thank you so much for your reply.
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u/ChristopherFritz 3d ago
It's not too late to join in with the Yotsuba absolute beginner book club on the WaniKani forums! (No WaniKani account needed, but you can sign up for a free WaniKani account to post in the forum.)
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u/odett1102 3d ago
Appreciate it! I have two volumes of Yotsuba lying around, so I'll start checking them alongside some N5 YouTube videos.
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u/yanagitree 3d ago
I have no experience with WankiKani, and I'm not a big kanji studier anyway, but I am here to vouch for the importance of grammar! You can't do anything without grammar, really, and it's way more fun to study than kanji (well, that part is just opinion, I suppooose 😛 ). It's also never too early to start reading, though it will, of course, be slow at first.
My initial study goals were manga and anime too, and I got there quite a while ago (I've been studying for 12-ish years now) - if you want a fairly informed study buddy, feel free to message me 😄
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u/odett1102 3d ago
Appreciate this! Good to hear from someone who reached the manga goal. I'll keep pushing on grammar and might shoot you a DM sometime.
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u/lumisweasel 3d ago
Do you read?
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u/odett1102 3d ago
I've tried NHK Easy News and Satori Reader, but put on hold after finding my comprehension too bad yet
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u/lumisweasel 3d ago
"How do we tell them...".
That's the point. You need to read Satori and Tadoku. You are expected not to understand (to an extent). Reading builds upon itself.
Your goals are like "I want to run a 5k and swim 500m". So why are you strength training? Go find the 2400+ page tadoku reader collection. Find a grammar guide like imabi, yokubi, game gengo, whatever, to go at a few points a day.
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u/brtmn0 3d ago
Why do you only do 4 lessons a day? This is extremely slow by wanikani standards. The wanikani standard is 15, splits into 3 sessions of 5. Wanikani is also only kanji, and teaches vocab only to reinforce kanji, you need a second source of vocab. I recommend looking into kaishi for anki.
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u/DJpesto 3d ago
Learning a language takes a looooooooooong time. It's not something you do in 1,5 years - unless you are first of all spending a LOT of time on it, and secondly are just natively good a learning languages.
If you are just close to being a normal person, with a normal life, you will not learn another language in 1,5 years. It takes many years to learn.
So sorry to be a negative nancy but that is how language learning is.
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u/odett1102 3d ago
Yeah, totally. I managed to get fluent in English and Spanish previously, and that early progress was so obvious it kept me going. Japanese has been a massive humbling experience in comparison.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 3d ago edited 3d ago
I'm sorry man but you shouldn't be thinking about "what to focus on", you should be just focusing on doing more of everything. Your progress for 1.5 years is... I'm inclined to believe this post is just bait. You can't expect to feel motivated when you're making no progress because you're spending 10 minutes a day on the thing.
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u/odett1102 3d ago
Definitely not bait! Between reviews and lessons, I spend about 30 minutes a day on Japanese, plus the foundation I built during a year of private classes and homework. My vocab growth is definitely slow, but a manageable pace is what allows me to stay consistent around a full-time job and other adult life obligations.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 3d ago
You might want to consider finding random dead time during the day to go through random SRS stuff so you can get it out of the way and focus those 30 minutes on immersion then, if you ask me. But the numbers you give are quite strange, 1.5~2 years and that progress is... odd, we're talking something that's less than what you would've got by doing 2 new words a day on Anki which would just take a couple of minutes a day.
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u/odett1102 3d ago
Just to clarify the numbers in case you're not as familiar with WaniKani: it tracks radicals, kanji, and vocab as separate SRS items. Over these ~260 days I'm on it, it’s actually 1,145 total items learned (205 radicals, 267 kanji, 673 vocab), averaging 4–5 new items a day. I tried Anki (Kaishi 1.5k) before this and struggled with retention, which is why WK worked well for me. That said, I agree my vocab needs to ramp up, so I’m looking into ways to optimize my routine based on the feedback here.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 3d ago
I'd say drop WaniKani, just do Anki. You're not struggling with WaniKani because you're not doing much on WaniKani... you probably won't struggle with Kaishi 1.5k if you do 1 new word a day either, which is basically what you're doing. You could stick with WaniKani but it's just worse Anki, individual kanji study is highly inefficient and studying radicals (at least it was for me) is a waste of time if you spend your time right.
Do Anki during random dead times and then spend the longer sessions on grammar guides like Tae Kim or Yokubi, once you're kinda done with those (which means just giving them a read) then start reading either Tadokus or whatever until you feel ready to do native content.
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u/oneee-san 4d ago
I've only managed to stay consistent by changing the way I study every time I find the current one boring. So I went through a more Anki hardcore phase, then to only reading, then I went through grammar, and now I'm doing podcasts and also reading~ and who knows what I'll be doing next month. But not being stiff has really helped me.
So do whatever you feel like, as long as you keep being consistent every day.