On the 27th of January 2025, I knew no Japanese aside from a few morsels I'd picked up by watching subbed anime for the past 4 years. A little over 10 months later, I attempted the JLPT N2, and passed with a score of 110/180. I'd like to write a bit of a reflection of the methods I used to get to this point, as well as going over a few statistics. Back when I was starting out , I loved reading reflection posts from the greats who made it (Jazzy, Doth, Orixa1). Of course, I'm still far from their level when it comes to the language, but I'd like to think that my rambling here would be helpful for anyone else wondering what an immersion-based approach towards the N2 from 0 looks like. I would like to preface that I've done essentially 0 output, so this reflection would likely be more interesting if you're looking to get into Japanese to experience media in Japanese (for now at least!)
If this post is too long for your taste, my condensed stats, thoughts and a TL;DR are at the bottom.
Background
When I started, I was a 19 year old university student. The only languages I knew were English (my first language) and barely conversational Kannada (my mother tongue). I took French in middle school and a bit of high school, but barely remember anything by this point. My only exposure to Japanese prior to learning it was anime, which I'd been into since 2021. 2 years after that I played my first visual novel, The Fruit of Grisaia, which gradually led to me falling in love with the medium. A year after that I read Subarashiki Hibi, which deeply impacted me. I was so desperate to read the sequel サクラノ詩 that I decided to learn Japanese for it.
The outset
I had no idea how to learn Japanese at first. I found a Reddit post that linked the TMW guide and decided that was as good of a place to start as any. Looking back, this guide set the tone for my Japanese learning journey, and there's no chance I'd be here without it. I spent 3 days each learning hiragana and katakana using the JapanesePod101 mnemonic videos, which I reinforced by brute forcing a kana quiz. I only moved on after getting 100 in a row right for each script. I wasted a lot of time after this hung up on what to do next, but ultimately decided on repping Kaishi 1.5k with Anki and doing some basic grammar study. I tried a few common grammar resources (Genki, Cure Dolly, Tae Kim) but they bored me greatly and I didn't spend longer than a few hours on any of them, believing my subbed anime experience would carry me (clueless). I also tried out the Remembering the Kanji textbook, but eventually decided it wasn't for me (I had no interest in writing and wasn't ready to do it for kanji study) and stopped after Lesson 6.
Beginning to immerse
After a month or so of this, I ran out of patience and really wanted to start immersing. I'd read a ton of Reddit posts online at this point about how it's best to start reading at N3 with a vocabulary of 1.5k-3k, but I couldn't take doing only Anki for much longer. I don't know why I didn't immerse in anime at this point, probably a way better idea. I decided to start immersing with visual novels even though I'd only repped around a third of Kaishi at this point, and proceeded to spend another few days agonizing over what I would read. I was far more worried about difficulty than whether or not the content would actually interest me. After much deliberation, I finally chose Amairo Chocolata. I liked the artstyle and it was pretty easy, judging from JPDB's visual novel difficulty database. The first few weeks of reading were… really brutal to say the least. I looked up nearly every word I came across and had no idea what a sentence was saying if it wasn't a super basic SOV sentence. My lack of grammar study was really showing here. I persevered though, and kept reading as much as I could every day until I got sick of it. I wasn't mining words at this point. I gave up on this visual novel after a few weeks because I was mind-numbingly bored. The abundance of cafe-related vocabulary that constantly threw me off didn't help. Around a few days after I started reading, I found a Reddit post on this sub of a dude who passed an N5 mock test after a month of studying. Since I was at the same point, I decided to try the same test and scored a 92/180 — ギリギリ but it seemed like what I was doing was working, just not well enough. After my disappointing run with visual novels, I decided to go back to the basics and give Tae Kim a full read. I read the whole thing over a couple days and never touched it again. After a break of a few days from Japanese, I decided to pick up a new VN, 銀色、遥か. I liked a couple routes in the predecessor well enough and was confident in my ability to get into this one too. My reading around this period was kinda stunted because of exams but I still put in as much as I could every day. The more agonizing hours I put in, the more I could feel my comprehension steadily increasing, with lookups becoming ever so slightly less common. My basic grammar gaps were filled up pretty well too with all the reading I was doing. With an abundance of free time awarded to me by the arrival of summer break, I continued doing my daily reading and Anki reps for the next month or so. Sometime in the middle, I ran out of new cards in Kaishi 1.5k and started mining using a mining setup from TMW. Unfortunately, I didn't know about frequency dicts yet and spent my first few weeks mining a bunch of random stuff. This wasn't too big of a deal though, since 銀色、遥か is a great VN for beginners with the abundant everyday vocabulary and simple scenarios. After finishing my first route in 銀色、遥か (ベスリー is great), I thought I was ready for other VNs. I wasn’t. I bounced between a few popular titles that I completely failed to comprehend, before giving up and returning to 銀色、遥か, which I continued reading until my summer break ended.
Reading Novels
At the beginning of August, I started reading my first novel: また、同じ夢を見ていた, a popular recommendation for beginners. Reading this novel made me feel like I was a beginner at Japanese again for a good minute. The considerably longer sentences with completely different grammar structures really threw me for a loop. Vocabulary wasn't too much of an issue, which makes sense since I had already read a ton of slice of life content prior to this. It took me a few hours to get used to reading novels, but after a while I started getting more comfortable. I suspect that my avid reading habit (in English of course) helped me get used to reading novels, though I'm sure it helped me get used to reading Japanese at first too. By the end of the book, I had almost regained my reading speed while reading my visual novel. The next few novels I started after this all went pretty much the same way — I would struggle for a few hours, eventually getting used to the vocabulary and such that the author commonly employed and then settle into a consistent pace. My mining philosophy was to only mine words if I couldn't guess the reading of at the glance and if the frequency was below 20k (30k later). Bonus points if the word had a new kanji. This led to my passive vocabulary eclipsing the cards I had in Anki by a considerable amount. It was around this point that I finally started passive listening immersion. I listened to a few podcast episodes meant for natives on Spotify, only comprehending around 30-40%. I started active listening immersion the following month by watching anime. I also listened to the Silent Witch audiobook when I didn't feel like podcasts.
N2 Preparation
I spent the next couple months with the same daily schedule: novels/light novels on weekdays, VNs on weekends and Anki every day. I tried spending at least 2 hours a day reading, which I admittedly didn't maintain a lot of the time, but it's the thought that counts lol. I also tried fitting in as much passive listening immersion as I could. I took my first N2 mock on Bunpro in October and got a 53%. 読解 went pretty smoothly — no surprise there, my reading speed at this point was so high (relatively for N2 at least) that I had ample time to read the passage, think about it and answer the questions, even if they were wrong half the time lol. 聴解 wasn't bad either. I took two more mock tests on Bunpro that month, and got a 67% and 74.5% respectively. My language/reading was initially low but quickly shot up, and my listening stayed fairly high consistently. I knew my vocabulary was lacking (around 3k-4k in Anki at this point) but it couldn't be helped, I just had to mine more. I also had a few grammar gaps which caused me to consistently fail the same types of questions, so I decided to start repping a Bunpro N2 grammar Anki deck I found online. This helped a bit, since it helped me reinforce a majority of the points which I already knew, while introducing me to a few new ones. The next month I started taking past tests instead of Bunpro mocks, which I suspected were too easy. I got a 60% on my first try, with a consistent ratio between language/reading and listening. There was a definite difficulty jump in listening and especially reading. I still ended up finishing with around 15 minutes left, but my lack of vocabulary was causing serious problems during reading. I decided to try out Shin Kanzen Master N2 読解, which I'd heard was a great resource for JLPT prep. I tried out the technique that the book suggested of looking for keywords and marking answers based on that, but I couldn't get into it, preferring my current technique of reading the whole passage and then choosing answers instead. I got through around 30% of the textbook before I started getting a fair amount of answers right, which bored me and I gave up on it. My second past test mock was at the end of the November, and I ended up getting a 58%. This scared me shitless and got me to start working on Shin Kanzen Master 文法 too lol. At this point I only had around 2 weeks before the test, so I had no choice but to cram. I would screenshot every page, paste it into ChatGPT and ask for an explanation, skim that explanation and answer the following passage questions. I managed to finish the entire first section using this method (26 chapters or something iirc) but didn't like the format of the following sections and gave up on this textbook too. Despite all the cramming, I didn't really feel like it helped besides helping me understand a few grammar points I already knew, but maybe that was my imagination. I took my last past test the day before the real JLPT and got a 68% overall. My language section score was way better than usual, which helped my nerves. My reading was still hovering around the 50% mark, which did disturb me but I chalked it up to nerves. My listening score was great so I wasn't too worried about that anymore.
Attempting the N2 & Results
The actual test went alright. I remember fumbling the vocabulary section hard, but I made up for it in the grammar section. Interestingly, all my mock attempts involved the vocabulary being easier than grammar, so the switch up was interesting to say the least. I thought reading definitely went worse than usual. A couple of passages really tripped me up, and I ended up almost running out of time even though my mock attempts always left me with at least 15 minutes of leeway. Listening went pretty well, better than a lot of my mock attempts. Luckily I didn't lose focus and felt like I attempted almost every question in good faith. The wait for the results was pretty nerve-wracking. At times I was certain I would pass and at other times I was certain I would fail due to failing the 読解 section. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I checked my results and I got a…
110/180! Honestly I was a bit miffed that I missed the B2 cutoff by 2 points, but I was too relieved about passing to care too much. I was also really surprised that my 読解 score was as high as it was. I got a B in vocabulary, which made sense to me, but the A in grammar despite the overall low language knowledge score surprised me.
Stats
Total time spent immersing = 324:37:21 hours
Total time spent on Anki = 61.75 hours
Total time spent learning Japanese ~ 386 – 400 hours
Total time spent reading = 286:20:33
Total time spent listening = 38:16:48
Total 文字 read = 2,434,855
Visual Novels = 1,229,344 文字 for 159:23:32 hours
Light Novels = 670,691 文字 for 67:32:42 hours
Novels = 467,812 文字 for 42:42:49 hours
Manga = 17,008 文字 for 1:41:30
Anime = 72 episodes
Podcasts = 5:51:23 hours
Audiobook = 5:07:48 hours
Anki retention ~ 75%
Total cards ~ 4186
Total 漢字 in Kanji Grid ~ 1850
(don't have any other stats because I forgot to screenshot before the test, sorry!)
Detailed immersion stats – Immersion Spreadsheet (warning – I swear a lot in the 感想 section)
Thoughts
I'm pretty happy with my result, and I'm satisfied with how far I've come in these 10 months. Reading visual novels and (light) novels is still pretty fun. I don't have much trouble reading easier novels (isekai slop, romance slop) or moeges. I can still read stuff at a higher level at a decent speed (just finished SWAN SONG, great vn) but my lookup frequency fluctuates depending on the scene. I attribute most of my gains and the speed in getting them to reading a lot even at a low level. I strongly feel that all those hours of reading native content in several focused sessions, even at a very low level, paid off in the long run and helped me get used to the language even quicker than usual. I recognize, however, that my Japanese is extremely lopsided. My reading ability outpaces my vocabulary and my listening comprehension could use a lot of work. My output is non-existent outside of writing a few book reviews on Bookmeter. If I had to do it all again though, there are a few things I would tell past me:
- Mine more and do more Anki
- Read more native content
- Do a bit more grammar study before starting to immerse, just so that you get a feel of the language
- Read whatever you want, don't worry too much about difficulty and just plough through
- Do more passive listening
- Don't over-research study methods, experiencing the language is better than nothing! The stuff I did also leaves some clear gaps, as I talked about above. If your primary goal is communication rather than media consumption, this approach would need significant adjustment.
Future
I initially planned on trying the N1 in July but now I'm having second thoughts since I doubt I'll be satisfied until I get a C1, which definitely won't happen by July. My current plan is to hopefully get a good score in December, but that might change after checking my score in a mock test when registrations roll around. I still immerse a lot, even more than before the test if anything, seeing as I just hit 4 million read 文字. My current goal this semester is to read 20k 文字 every weekday and read as much as i can on weekends, along with Anki of course. I've been getting more into watching anime with hidden jp subs too. As for my original goal, I'm still eagerly looking forward to reading サクラノ詩 one day. The reason I haven't read it yet is because I want to wait for uni to cool down so that I can fully immerse myself in it, and because I want to reread 素晴らしき日々 before then. I also have an extensive backlog of 神ゲー just waiting to be played, so I'm sure that'll keep me occupied for a very long time. I do plan on practicing output at some point, but not for a while. Maybe in a few months.
If you made it to the bottom of this post, thank you so much for reading it! I put a lot of thought into this post, so I really hope this helps even one person find clarity on how they can improve their Japanese. I did try to make this as small as I could but I inevitably ended up rambling lol. I'd love to answer any questions anybody has about anything I did, so feel free to ask in the comments. I've also linked my immersion spreadsheet above, where I've tracked everything I immersed in for the past 10 months. I'll probably end up writing a small update post if/when I pass the N1, so I hope people will be interested. ありがとうございます！
Resources
(I'll leave out the most common ones like Anki and Yomitan since I imagine everyone is familiar)
TMW Guide – wouldn't be here without it
Donkuri's Guide – a more well rounded guide I found a while after I started, but I wish I started with this
VNClub – guide for learning Japanese with visual novels
Kaishi 1.5k – undoubtedly the best beginner's deck IMO
ッツ reader – web based reader, great for reading books since you can use
Yomitan to lookup words
Jiten – great tool for checking stats and coverage of Japanese media etc.
TL;DR
- Heavy immersion with VNs, novels, LNs, anime
- Tip – read as much as you can when starting out, even if it's really hard
by tesladawn