After seeing a post on someone achieving N4 in 4 years, I decided to share my experience and how it took me over a decade before I could comfortably read, listen, and speak Japanese.
**TLDR**
It took me 4 years to get to N1 (even with Kanji knowledge), and many years after that before I arrived to a consistent studying schedule. I’m still working on improving my speaking and writing.
I started learning Japanese in the summer of 2013 around age 18.
**Breakdown**
* Year 1: Went to Japanese lessons once every week. Passed N5 and N4.
* Year 2: Tried Anki (with my own cards) but gave up after 2 weeks. Passed N3. Stopped going to Japanese lessons.
* Year 3: Tried reading some Japanese novels but couldn’t finish them. Read Somatome N2 for grammar and vocabulary. Passed N2.
* Year 4: Moved to another city and started a full time job. Finished a few Japanese novels. Read Somatome N1 for grammar and vocabulary. Passed N1 (160/180).
* Year 5-6: Got busy with real life events and stopped learning Japanese. Didn’t read or hear a word of Japanese almost completely for 2 years.
* Year 7: Found out about Yomichan. Tried out Wanikani to see why some people like it.
* Year 8: Restarted Anki as a new year goal. Finished all levels of Wanikani. Wanikani experience was a good baseline of what I like and don’t like. Started mining with Anki, averaging 15 new words/day, from novels.
* Year 9: Did interviews in Japanese. Moved to Japan for full time work. The first few weeks of speaking at work improved my listening and speaking tremendously.
* Year 10: Spent at least 15 minutes per day on reading as a new year’s goal. Hit 700 day streak on Anki and 10k mined words. Passed a Japanese technical exam in 5 days, and a Japanese national exam (FE) in a month.
* Year 11: Started writing Japanese articles. I hope I can finish 40 articles by the end of the year.
**Thoughts**
Japanese started out as a hobby I would spend 2 hours on every week. To be honest, that is the amount I would probably give to any new hobby, so I don’t regret not putting in 6 hours a day back then. I’m aware not everyone can just pack their bags and move to Japan, but that has been the most significant decision that has helped me stay consistent and integrate language learning as part of my daily life. It would definitely have taken me a lot longer to improve otherwise.
When I first tried Anki back in 2015, I wasn’t aware of this community or all the available premade decks. I made my own decks by typing in vocabulary and example sentences from the textbooks. I didn’t fully understand the point of SRS and dropped it. In retrospect, I recommend someone to try out premade decks as well as other SRS platforms just to get a feeling of what they enjoy and dislike, and then customize their own in Anki.
3 comments
Thanks for the writeup! I wouldn’t call you a slow learner, considering you achieved N1 in 4 years with no SRS 😀
youre not necessarily a slow learner, you just didnt put in enough time per year. You know these guys who learns it to N1 and fluency over a couple of years literally studies 90% of their time awake, every single day. you probably spent same amount of time, but spread out over 10 years instead
n4 in 4 years is nothing to be proud of. I would be ashamed if it took me that long, regardless if you work full time, or have other responsibilitys…
It seems a lot of time has been wasted in these 4 years of “studying”.