There are a ton of stories on this sub of people who have pursued an immersion-heavy learning approach and gone on to pass the JLPT N1 without so much as even glancing at a "JLPT Prep" textbook or anything of the sort, but I have not seen many such stories about the BJT (which is admittedly a lot less popular than the JLPT). I have never actually taken a JLPT (planning on trying N2 this Dec. just as a proof to myself), but for my purposes of learning Japanese, I think the BJT would represent a more relevant achievement, since my ultimate goal is to be able to use Japanese to get a consulting gig in Japan at one of the big 外資系 firms (ideally in my "super-hot-right-now" specialty of Supply Chain). I know that the BJT tests a different type of language than the JLPT, and passing N1 does not necessarily beget a high score on the BJT (some people say scoring >600 on the BJT is even harder than acing N1), so there must be some target-specific strategy BJT-passers have used.
My question is whether anyone here managed to get a good score (basically 480+, considered equal in points to N1 when applying for a HSP visa) on the BJT as a direct result of pursuing an immersion-heavy approach, rather than just grinding away at BJT-prep textbooks. I have to imagine that if it's possible to speedrun N1 by crushing VNs (a weirdly common success story around here), it should also be possible to score highly on BJT by similarly ingesting gobs and gobs of situationally-relevant (ideally interesting?) native content. I admit I may be totally misguided here and maybe the language used in the BJT is so stiff, inorganic, and formal as to be never used in fiction, and thus really does warrant traditional, deliberate study approaches. If that's the case, then so be it—textbook grind it is. But I just wanted to know if anyone here did manage to immerse their way to a good BJT score, and if so, how?
by Deer_Door