I have been learning Japanese for quite a while now. Looking back at that post now I notice that I have made more progress this year than I realized.

What happened since my last progress post

  • I immersed a lot. I have now seen 822 episodes of anime and read 106 volumes of manga and 8 books. I have played VNs and games a bit, but didn’t really finish any. The fun ones are just incredibly long and feel like they need long sessions to enjoy properly.
  • I know a lot more vocab now. About 15k now vs 8k nine months ago. All the additional vocab was mined.
  • Unknown kanji aren’t such a big hassle anymore. I encounter way less of those and can learn words containing them far easier.
  • I still haven’t done any deliberate grammar study and still feel like learning more vocab gives me more comprehension bang for effort buck. I predict this will change once I reach lofty coverage numbers.
  • I don’t get a lot of new vocab out of watching normal anime anymore. I still get a couple, but I can add and rep those effortlessly while I ignore OPs and EDs. Difficult anime are still challenging for me and need my full concentration, but normal ones I can watch with my eyes closed without paying a lot of attention. I use subtitles for most of what I watch to make mining easy; if I wanted to train listening specifically I’d listen to podcasts and audiobooks, but I think specific listening training is overrated among my peers.
  • My time spent on SRS has been nice and low (5-10min per day) these last few months. Unfortunately since I started focusing on reading books a month ago it has increased again, as you can probably guess from figure 1.
Figure 1: known vocab count on jpdb (not including redundant vocab)

Figure 1: known vocab count on jpdb (not including redundant vocab)

Why take the JLPT?

First of all I know I don’t need the JLPT certificate for anything. I’ll just be doing it for vanities sake. And of course to get some external validation in.

I kinda planned to get to that level in 2024 anyways and since some of my Japanese learning peers will be taking it I just joined in.

How do I plan to prepare?

In some ways I feel like things haven’t fundamentally changed in how I consume Japanese media this year. (Is this the fabled intermediate plateau?) What I am lacking the most is vocab and experience with stuff that isn’t dialog (Manga and Anime are mostly that).

To remedy this I am planning to read 100 books in Japanese. The plan is to read one book per week for 4 months, then 2 per week for another 4 months, then finish what remains in the last 4 months. Currently I am halfway through my 9th one, since I already have started with this endeavor about a month ago. The JLPT is held in the beginning of December after all.

As you might guess I am betting on my reading speed and the ease with which I read improving a lot in the coming year. Doing extended multi-hour reading sessions as I would in English or German is possible, but not sustainable for me right now. Instead I have taken to reading in the mornings immediately after waking up and in the evenings before sleep as my last action of the day. Having a dedicated ereading device helps a lot with that.

I especially struggle with the beginning 20% of books. Once I get to the halfway point its smooth sailing. The cause of this is mostly my lacking vocab. I mine a lot to remedy this, so I hope it gets better in the near future. More narrow reading (excellent post by morg on the topic) would help a lot. I am mostly reading fantasy stuff, but haven’t found a series I really like. It feels like fantasy is mostly lightnovels which are somewhat lighthearted. In English I preferred stories which had a sterner atmosphere and more focus on verisimilitude. So currently I am reading book 1 of various series until I find the one I want to consume in one go. I am not that picky in what I read, but I am picky in what I like.

The books I liked the most so far out of what I’ve read are:

  • kino no tabi: a series of darkish short stories, not really something to binge
  • 雨の日も、晴れ男: a fairly short novel about immature gods messing with a middle aged man who takes it like an absolute champ

Once my reading has become smooth, I’ll probably start doing some light grammar study and some deliberate listening practice. Guessing that will be about half a year from now. This is also when I will start working on mock exams.

That’s all I have to say for now. Happy new years!