I'm a software engineer nearing 30. My first language is Italian and I moved to the USA for university and eventually work, where I stayed for almost a decade. I officially started studying Japanese in April 2023 because an opportunity came up to transfer to the Tokyo branch of my company.

Thought I'd share my study journey, since I thought it was a totally doable even for a ordinary person like myself!

April – August 2023:

Started anki, and made a deck for vocab (10-20 words per weekday). M-F, for about an hour after work I'd spend reviewing and adding new cards. Weekends, I'd double the vocab I'd add, and go through at least one chapter of Imabi's grammar per day. Sometimes I slowed my pace, sometimes I sped up, but I didn't skip a day.

In my free time I started rewatching all the favorite anime in my top 10 multiple times. By the end of July I could recite many scenes perfectly from memory, that's how much I rewatched them lol.

By June, I started to read Yotsuba and One Punch Man in Japanese, mining words as I went along. But I got lazy with reading after that, and that'd bite me later on.

September 2023:

Officially relocated to Japan. Work was entirely in English and even outside work I found myself in an english-speaking bubble. I think I overestimated how beneficial being in Japan would be to my study. There's a limit to what you learn through passive osmosis if you're aiming for N1/N2.

So I started Italki for speaking practice, initially 1 hour per week. Got lucky with a great teacher who'd guide my output. Having memorized dialogue from anime greatly boosted my listening and speaking.

December 2023:

Reached ~5600 words on my Anki and roughly N3 for grammar. Started taking online N3 grammar quizzes.

April 2024:

Reached ~7900 words in my Anki deck and halfway through N1 for grammar. I could speak/listen comfortably at a N2 level with some N1, but I finally hit a brick wall with how bad my reading was.

Studying flashcards in isolation isn't the same as reading, and I was lazy about reading. Got some advice from this sub and I switched to using Twitter exclusively in Japanese w/ a new account. Also played White Album 2.

My vocab review also started to take an unreasonably long time, so I slowed down adding new cards from here on.

I set a goal to take N2 in December.

December 2024:

Reached 10,122 words in my Anki deck and felt comfortable stopping adding new vocab as well as pausing my Italki lessons by this point.

Greatly improved my reading compared to April but it still hurt my time management on N2 practice tests where I'd barely finish the reading section. Listening was consistently my best section, near perfect every time.

Took the N2, and passed with a 153/180! Felt like I could've taken the N1 but my reading is still not where I want it 100%, and my vocab needs improvement. My N1 practice test results were borderline because of those sections.

In the end, this was just ~1.5 hours of dedicated studying on a weekday, ~4 hours on a weekend, and slowly replacing parts of my life from Italian/English to Japanese. I slowed down halfway through in order to better absorb the material I'd learned up to that point. I also wasn't the best about reading, focusing initially instead on speaking/listening.

But even if it wasn't optimal, I got lazy and slowed down at times, it was still perfectly doable under 2 years for someone working a regular fulltime job. Don't be intimidated by the entire road in front of you, take it bit by bit. Speed up when you feel motivated, but don't be ashamed about slowing down when you have to. The key is just to never skip a day!