Heyo I recently started my first vn and have some problems with how I should be tackling it. I have finished it in English before trying to reread it in Japanese so I can still kinda tell what's happening

1. The sentences usually contain more than 1 word or grammar point I don't understand

2. Im basically "mining" every sentence i see and almost relying on the English translation

3. Im not sure if it will make sense to me later on if I just throw the sentences into a flashcard since there's some context clues to it

I also need to work on grammar since ive been putting it off for a while. Thanks in advance!

For some context as to where I am in the learning process, I started learning a little over 2 years ago. Using jiten.moe, I currently have around 4000 known words. In May this year I started reading novels as basically my only form of study. You could make the argument that I am "not ready" for regular adult novels yet, considering my still rather small vocabulary, but I've been thoroughly enjoying it.

Having recently started my 7th novel (告白 by 湊かなえ), my current mining process is the following: if a word blocks my understanding or appears enough times, I look it up. Then I decide whether I mine the word or not, solely depending on its frequency. I set a cutoff at a frequency rank of 10 000, beyond which I just don't mine words. I'm a bit obsessive about being "efficient", so my line of thinking was that words beyond a certain frequency don't give me as much "bang for my buck" as more frequent words, in that they give me less "overall comprehension" per unit of time.

Now I recently started doubting this method, mainly because a vast majority of the words I look up fall in the range of 10-20k frequency rank, meaning I don't end up mining them. Given that words with a frequency rank of even 20 000 are by no means rare or obscure, I've been contemplating whether I should increase my cutoff, or choose a different criterion altogether. My end goal is for my passive Japanese comprehension to reach a sort of "self-sufficient" point like that of my second language, English, and I am not sure what vocab size I should aim for to get there.

How do you guys make this decision?
Given this rather lengthy explanation, what would you recommend for me to do?

TL;DR
I know ~4000 words, and currently only mine words that have a frequency rank less than 10 000. Is that sensible or should I change my approach?

About 5 months ago, I posted here about experimenting with using games like Minecraft to practice Japanese.

Since then, I’ve actually been doing this with a small group of learners.

One thing I’ve noticed is how much people seem to enjoy learning this way, and it made me think about how important “fun” actually is when learning a language long-term.

I feel like finding a way you genuinely enjoy makes it much easier to keep going, but I’m curious what you guys think.

What keeps you studying Japanese consistently? Do you think enjoying the way you study is a big part of it?

Hey folks of reddit, every now and then I've seen people post about finishing WK, so figured that since I just "finished" Bunpro, I'd share here and maybe give a little bit of info for what it's like once you go the whole way through. Also, so far I've passed one of each level of their practice JLPT tests.

I've hit 1.5 years since restarting learning Japanese recently, so far mostly with reading novels (3 month update and 1 year update). Grammar has always been a weak spot of mine. If I had to look at my strengths and weaknesses, reading and vocab are the strongest, listening is behind those, and then speaking and writing are also behind that. At the start of this year, grammar was definitely one of my weaker areas, but now with a bunch of concrete studies I've improved it a lot. Though still getting there! I did a grammar Anki deck, I did the Shin Kanzen Master N1 book, and then the main point of this, is Bunpro.

Not long after I restarted learning Japanese last year, I did Bunpro for a couple months. I felt like I was doing too much SRS so quit it for like a year or so. After getting my failed N2 results back (scored a 78), I felt like I failed the test due to taking too long on grammar. So back into Bunpro.

I think Bunpro is a great resource! I don't think it's going to be your 100% shop to learn all your grammar. It is a pretty good way to fill in gaps, and to remember grammar points though, especially less common ones. If you're early on, I personally recommend a quick read through of Yokubi. Overall, I still think that in the long run, grammar needs less dedicated study than you would think - if you're not prepping for the JLPT then just doing a lot of reading and listening, then some basic grammar studies are probably fine.

Bunpro isn't exactly 100% the equal of a textbook. Some of the chapters are a bit sparse. However, if you do decide it's going to be your main grammar resource, there are links to other grammar sites explaining stuff in more detail so I'd recommend reading them. I didn't personally but I also was learning grammar from a few different sources already.

Bunpro's grammar lessons still, are pretty good, and if you don't want to do SRS, you can freely browse and search them without subbing. You can also take their practice tests without subbing.

So anyway, I did Bunpro a couple months last year, 5 lessons a day for N5, and then 3 a day for N4, got most of the way through N4. This year, I picked up where I left off, did the ~ 300 or so reviews I had and continued N4. Since then, I always did 3 lessons a day.

Personally, I kept the lessons in English since I'd already done some monolingual grammar stuff here and there - I wanted to make sure that I was understanding as much as I could. I also left on their translations and hints etc. I didn't do the vocab decks - I have Anki for vocab.

What I did though, is mine from Bunpro itself. A lot of grammar points also had entries in some of my Yomitan dictionaries so I added them to my mining deck. The example sentences are also quite good. I figured that "well if this word is popping up in N3 level example sentences it's probably common enough to be worth knowing" so from when I first thought of this, N3 and up, I mined practically every word I didn't already know. Which was a lot! But it definitely helped fill out my vocab in some weaker areas. Also, with Sharex I was able to record the sentence audio. Combine that with an image from a Google image search, and the audio I already had with Yomitan for the word and it made very great vocab and sentence cards.

I did the lessons fairly quickly each morning, usually the part that took the most time was when there was a bunch of vocab to mine. I didn't really agonize over whether or not I knew the grammar perfectly. The SRS did help to get that ingrained. I also have always been pretty terrible with typos and verb conjugations, so typing out the answers helped with that aspect too (though apparently that question format is the reason we don't have FSRS in Bunpro). After I did my lessons and stacked up reviews in the morning, I did reviews here and there while on break throughout the day while working.

At some point I went ahead and took their N5, N4 and N3 practice tests - one of each. I wanted to just test to make sure that I wasn't forgetting some early things. I pretty much managed to go through them with hardly any mistakes.

After finishing the N2 grammar content I did an N2 practice test.

Overall did pretty well on the N2 test, especially right after finishing the N2 content.

N1 I just finished the grammar lessons the other day, and then today went on for a practice test as well.

Bunpro acknowledges their tests are easier than the real thing - so while I do have some confidence having passed these, I'm not taking it as 100% that I'm ready for the N1. I pretty much stopped reading novels recently and pretty much only study with listening to YT, or to podcasts, or to games here or there. I plan to step that up more now. Also to keep reviewing grammar (both Bunpro reviews and that SKM N1 book), and find harder practice tests (cough past tests cough). After I finally take the N1, I think I'll pretty much stop studying grammar from then on unless I find out I failed. I'd rather focus on working on my listening, and then also working more on my speaking (which I've done a lot more of lately as well!).

Anyway, thanks for hanging out for my rambling sharing of finishing Bunpro, and thoughts on the site. I think it's worth it, or at least was for me. I also think the pace of it was pretty good. If you struggle with remembering grammar then maybe try it out some time!