Following the trend of people posting their Japanese learning experience, I thought of also showing mine. I see people achieving N1 in 2 and a half years, so it might be interesting to also show the side of someone who’s been taking it really slow.
Following the example of [this other post](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/19eabtr/10_year_slow_learner_who_once_gave_up_on_anki/), I’ll post what I did each year.
**2014** \- Started to prepare for an exchange program in Japan. I did Minna no Nihongo 1 and started the Core 2k deck. I always hated grammar and I regret not putting more effort into it.
**2015** \- Did Minna no Nihongo 2 and finished the Core 2k. I then started the Core 6k and moved to Japan for an exchange program in September. I also looked for Tobira Gateway to Advanced Japanese online, but couldn’t find it. I stumbled upon someone on Pirate Bay saying they could scan the book for me and that wonderful soul did precisely that! I sent them my reddit username and they sent me the scan. For a long time, I received a bunch of DMs in Reddit of people looking for that Tobira scan and I have been sending it to them since then. I studied the book and it was one of the best things it happened to my Japanese.
I took some Japanese lessons in Japan, but didn’t practice much speaking to natives, since I lived in an international dorm and spoke mostly English. I kept doing daily flashcards, but started to get fed from it. I abandoned Anki for a while and as a result, my reviews piled up. It took me a long time to get back on track. I stopped studying grammar and jumped right into Visual Novels. I started playing [White Album 2](https://vndb.org/v7771) with aid of [Visual Novel Reader](https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/1nav1f/vnr_visual_novel_reader_really_handy_program_for/) and managed to finish the Introductory Chapter after a huge struggle. However, it was extremely hard for me, so I started other Visual Novel: [Aiyoku no Eustia](https://vndb.org/v3770).
**2016** \- It took me a really long time, but I managed to finish Aiyoku no Eustia. After that, I went back to to White Album 2 and advanced a little bit, but ended up giving up because it was so hard. Looking back at that time. I participated in a voluntary program called “Let’s Talk in Japanese”, in which some Japanese elders from the neighboorhood would come to the dorm and talk to us in Japanese. That helped me improve a lot my speaking, but grammar was still a great bottleneck. I went back to my country and tried to keep my Japanese studies for a while. However, I brought with me over 50 Japanese novels and reading all of them is still one of my greates motivations for keeping studying.
**2017** \- I tried keeping up with the studies, but life happened, other priorities showed up and I stopped Anki all together, along with the grammar studies. I read the book Norwegian Wood in Japanese and even though it took me a really long time, it was really enjoyable. I also got back to White Album 2 and tried playing it for a little bit more, but gave up after finishing a single route.
**2018-2022** \- No Japanese studies whatsoever. I kind of gave up. I consumed however some native media, like watching Full Metal Alchemist in Japanese.
**2023-2024** \- Started taking remote lessons with a Japanese language teacher. At that time, I was sort of functionally illiterate. I had a good vocabulary, but sometimes I would read a sentence, know all the words, but not be able to understand the meaning of the phrase. She helped me build a strong grammar base, and also how to parse sentences.
Back in October, I switched to an in-person Japanese language course and that gave me a huge motivation. Because of an assignmet at the end of the course, I had to read a book in Japanese to present to the rest of the class. I chose [Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Chapter One: Onikakushi-hen](https://07th-expansion.fandom.com/wiki/Higurashi_no_Naku_Koro_ni_(novel)#Higurashi_no_Naku_Koro_ni_Chapter_One:_Onikakushi-hen), a book I had brought with me from Japan. It was REALLY hard. I was reading about 4 to 5 pages in a single hour, and spending a lot of time in the dictionary and trying to make sense of the sentences.
I bought a Kindle and downloaded the ebook version for that same book. I also used [Furiganalyse](https://github.com/itsupera/furiganalyse#run-as-a-cli) to insert furigana in the e-book. Reading it in the Kindle was much easier, since I could just translate the unknown words and even whole sentences. I also found JPDB and that was the single best thing that ever happened in my Japanese learning journey. I did the [Higurashi JPDB deck](https://jpdb.io/visual-novel/8/higurashi-no-naku-koro-ni) and after getting 90% of coverage in the book, reading it became so much easier.
After finishing the whole book, I presented it to the class and was really impressed of how well I could express myself in Japanese.
After that, a surge of motivation got a hold of me. I’ve been listening to the podcast [4989: American Life](https://www.youtube.com/@Utaco-wr4dx). I’m currently on episode 37. I also got back to reading White Album 2 and it has been awesome! I had some days-off from work and managed to read White Album 2 really fast and understanding it really well. I finished the Introductory Chapter again, finished all 5 routes in Closing Chapter and just got to the final chapter in the game: Coda. I also have 90% of vocabulary coverage in JPDB for the game. According to the website, I have a total vocabulary of around 7k words.
My learning journey has been really bumpy from the start. I learned thousands of words at first with Anki, but didn’t build a strong grammar foundation. That’s why I wasn’t able to understand well sentences in which I knew all the words, but lacked the grammar.
I can read native material today, like NHK News and my motivation has been through the roof. I aim to keep reading Visual Novels and one day take the JLPT N1 test.
If I could give an advice to everyone it would be: don’t take grammar lightly. It doesn’t matter if you know thousands of words if you don’t understand the basics. Also, don’t be afraid with jumping into native material. It will be really hard at first, but things will start making sense at some point.