This year I decided to take the JLPT N1 in December. To prepare I planned to read one hundred books, but that did not happen of course đ
Books and Audiobooks
I finished a total of 33 books in 2024. 32 of those before the JLPT (1st of December). 5 were audio books.
So I did only manage to do about a third of what I intended. I blame real life. I had a very stressful time in the second half of the year and just could not summon the willpower to also push myself to immerse more than what comes naturally.
Learning Grammar
While stress wasn’t great for immersion it caused a great need for procrastination. I funneled my anxiety into finally learning the higher level grammar points. For that I used the excellent nihongo kyoushi deck found on tmw.
I added most grammar cards in 5 non consecutive days from May to July. After that I just had to do reviews. FSRS was set to 70% target retention, then I gradually upped the target retention by 5 percent points each month until I hit 90%. I did this to keep the review load to a minimum. I think it worked.
Immersion Content 2024
Here is an overview over everything I finished in 2024:
Anime are in green, manga in light purple, novels in darker purple.
You can open the image in another tab to zoom in, its rather big.
These were my favorites:
- “NHK ni youkoso” (non stop otaku action! shies away from nothing)
- “baccano 1” (masterful pacing)
- “rokka no yuusha” (flawed, but had some really cool twists)
- “suicide girl” (Great, expressive art. Edgy without being cringe.)
My comfort read when I need something easy atm is denyuuden. The 6 books I read of that so far went down smoothly and were lighthearted fun. I plan to read this series to the end.
This year I also started listening to Japanese audio books. The first one was a real struggle, but after pushing through things got much easier. I started with “æćŒ±ăă€ă”, which is extremely easy but also super boring. Being boring might’ve been a good thing, since I did not care if I missed stuff. An audio book I liked on the other hand was konosuba. The voice acting elevates the comedy to an actually funny level.
Pure listening is still a bit of a struggle at times, especially when I listen for more than 20-30 minutes in one session. But I found its my favorite way to squeeze some immersion in while on the go or doing menial tasks.
A lot of people enjoy listening to an audio book while simmultanoeusly reading the corresponding book (novel sonic). I never found that idea enticing. It’s a lot of setup to get something that is already covered by watching anime with subtitles or playing a VN. When I want to listen to an audio book I just open audible.jp on my phone and hit play.
Trip to Japan
I spent two weeks in Japan in September 2024. I met Luna, Kitu and Tris there. All amicable people I hope to meet again in the future.
Overall the trip was pretty enjoyable, language learning wise it didn’t do much though. Maybe traveling solo would’ve changed things, but having a friend with me was just nice. Wouldn’t want to miss it. I don’t really have any plans for learning output so I guess it does not matter much.
I was surprised how much English signage and guidance was in the cities now, when I went in 2017 there barely was any. I guess they added all of that to prepare for the Olympics.
Taking the JLPT
I took the JLPT on the 1st of December in DĂŒsseldorf. That’s a 7 hour train ride from Dresden. đ© I arrived a day earlier to account for possible Deutsche Bahn mishaps and to have some time to relax before the test. Little Tokyo in DĂŒsseldorf and the Königsallee were pretty nice, the rest of the city not so much. Running around chatting with Ale was fun though.
I made sure I was in peak condition for the test. No alcohol or late caffeine, plenty of walks, even meditation. No exhausting stuff, no programming, no immersion. Basically just chilling beforehand.
The test was held in the early afternoon. Regulations were strictly enforced. Not even putting a water bottle on the desk was permitted (below the desk was fine though, lol). Language and Reading were tested together (110min), then we had a 30min break to eat and chat. The listening part took another 55min. I heard horror stories about the test length before but honestly that wasn’t so bad. I had longer exams in uni or even in high school. I did some quick breathing exercises a couple time when I noticed my focusing swaying, that helped a bit.
I think that if actually was good at Japanese this test would have been a cakewalk. I had a pretty good feeling about the reading section. It was not so different from my usual reading, just without lookups.
In the listening section I just straight up did not understand some parts. Longer sections were easier, rapidfire context switches were very hard. That is not something I ever practiced.
For the language section I just prayed I’d get the required minimum of points. I had been hoping on getting easy points from vocab that I knew via SRS, but I had terrible luck there.
JLPT Results
Almost two months later, on 31.01.2025 the results finally arrived:
You need at least 19 points in every category and at least 100 points total to pass.
I was really worried about failing on grammar and I guess I did, just not in the way I expected.
The reading section was for the most part fairly easy. The tricky bit were the answers. They were phrased in a way where you needed to pick up on subtle nuances with little context, something I am apparently very bad at. When I am immersing I usually have lots of context and meta knowledge. I may rely a little too much on that, versus actually parsing what is said from the grammar. Nothing more immersion can’t fix I am sure.
I don’t regret signing up even when I knew chances were slim. If I didn’t I might have never found it in me to actually push through higher level grammar.
I estimate I have spent around 2500 hours on learning Japanese so far, if you care about numbers. This includes all types of immersion and study.
Future Plans
After I finished writing the JLPT it felt like closing a chapter in my life. Like I am done grinding so hard now. Now all that is left is chilling and casually immersing.
Of course I did not actually pass đŹ If I needed the N1 for anything this would be the time to really grind practice exams, something I explicitly decided not to do before (I just did one to get used to the format).
But I don’t want “learning Japanese” to be my main hobby for now. I did it for 3.5 years already and I yearn for something else. And I don’t mean swapping to another language either. I started learning Japanese because I was already consuming lots of Japanese content (with English subs) so I thought “might as well just learn it while I am at it”. There isn’t another language where circumstances are similar.
Instead what I want to focus on is mastering my craft as a programmer. I think I am decent now, but with more experience I could be better. One of my interests is game development. This is an all-consuming hobby. While learning a language takes years it is dwarfed by the amount of time gamedev can eat up. Especially if you aren’t pragmatic about it (I sure ain’t).
Other things I want to learn are pixel art (I want to make my own sprites for my games) and music theory (similar story). I have slowly started practicing art lately, but music unfortunately has to wait.
I am not dropping Japanese, just relegating it to a normal hobby for now. I am still doing SRS and still immersing when want to. I’ll try the JLPT again if I feel confident in 2 years or so. Banking on the spacing effect making everything easier.