Learning Japanese 3 year progress report as a very busy adult.

Hello again, last year I made [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/12ml6il/learning_japanese_2_year_progress_as_an_adult_a/) about my 2 year progress and after reading u/lee_ai post and their impressive [progress](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/1c1yxh7/ive_read_50_books_in_japanese_since_starting_3/) I realized it’s been a full new year for myself and inspired me to provide an update.

I thought I would read many novels like this person that posted, but due to very soon plans to go to Japan I pivoted to speaking/listening full time with what I feel are great results.

My goal is to have this not be too long, though it likely still will be. You can read about a lot of the tools, methods, time spent and my history in my previous post.

The company I work for has grown significantly since my last post and in so doing has made me much, much busier but I still maintain my immersion time as much as I can.

**DISCLAIMER:** I work from home so roughly 2 hours DURING work of immersion is possible for me, while my schedule is absolutely nuts and I spend all my time on Japanese, I enjoy it, I put my friends and family first and I have this capability because I work from home. My situation would be much different if I didn’t work from home.

# TLDR:

* My wife and I decided we wanted to go to Japan in June 2025 for our first time so I switched hard from reading to speaking/listening.
* iTalki, VRChat and my friend have helped me overcome so much to be able to speak well at the best of times and passable at the worst.
* I’ve made so much progress in speaking its almost unbelievable, but at the same time I feel like I need to get so much better, its a strange feeling.
* Don’t let toxic people ruin your enjoyment and progress, haters are just that. Improve yourself and don’t listen to people who put you down. They aren’t worth it.
* I still think reading is a very powerful way to learn a language.
* This next year (after my trip to Japan in Jun 2025) will likely be the last year I submit this much effort to Japanese, I think I will be at a level I wanted to get at and frankly I want to pursue other things. I’ll still maintain my Japanese but will basically only immerse an hour a day on average on stuff I enjoy doing instead of going so hard on what is “efficient”.

# MY OVERALL GOAL:

To be able to talk to natives easily, not necessarily without errors but without fear that messing up a vocab or grammar will derail the interaction… and I feel so close and yet so far.

# WHAT I DID EVERY DAY: (THIS YEAR)

Since I’ve tracked my time with toggl for my focused immersion time I can actually tell you this year what I’ve averaged.

**Anki:** Not to exceed 30-45 minutes of my day. I do 15 cards a day now but I’ll flucuate up to 20 if I feel like it. The amount of TIME is the goal to keep down.

**Grammar:** Not to exceed 30-45 minutes. I now watch [nihongonomori.com](http://nihongonomori.com) grammar series. Some days I do not get to it and this is the first to drop, for instance I’ve been so busy I’ve barely done this step in the past month. It comes and goes.

**Immersion:** 1001 hours I’ve spent focused immersion. That’s 2.75 hours a day. That’s mostly been youtube/Netflix or reading novels, but mostly watching.

**Talk to my Japanese Friend:** 2 hours on weekdays, I speak Japanese he speaks English and we correct each other, its a bit of a slow process as we are mostly just chilling. I can’t believe I’m still talking to him, I’m very lucky. Though some weeks we barely get to talk, most weeks we average talking 3-4 days out of the week I’d say.

**iTalki Conversation Classes:** Twice a week 1 hour, all Japanese. I found an instructor that was very nice and gave soft corrections and was easy to talk to for the past 9 months.

**Passive:** 30min – 1 hour a day at best, while cooking dinner etc… not as much this year. Most days zero passive is normal.

**VRChat:** This varies but my strategy was to get on VRChat an hour a night (time willing, some weeks I can’t), build up a Japanese friend roster during that time and keep building that roster so I always have someone to talk to on advanced topics (something beyond “Hey where do you live?”). This is also the first to drop if I’m too busy.

# WHAT CAN I DO?:

This will mostly be about listening/speaking as I haven’t read as much as I thought I would and pivoted hard to speaking as noted for reasons above.

**LISTENING:**

**Videos:**

This is so hard to describe. Given a random slice of life show or a youtube video there is a chance I will understand everything that is being said or at least 99 percent where the remainder doesn’t matter. There are shows I have watched seasons of without subtitles with almost full comprehension.

On the flip side there is also a decent chance I may not understand a good chunk of a show or youtube video. Here is an example of a video I opened up and understood everything he said on first viewing:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bvhxVqiUIM&t=736s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bvhxVqiUIM&t=736s)

These are the types of videos I watch now on youtube (I’ll give some recommendations below) and so due to the speed of speaking and the lack of subtitles (though Youtube/Migaku try their best they can be wrong quite frequently) there are plenty of videos I dip in and out of being able to understand what is going on. In those videos where I’m not even understanding 70+ percent I don’t watch. So there is certainly media that is out of my reach.

Some recommendations for non-scripted clarity of voice channels: Big plus is some tend to play the same popular games so you can watch the same game and build up vocabulary just with a different voice/experience each time.

https://www.youtube.com/@lantanch

https://www.youtube.com/@uszw

https://www.youtube.com/@KIYOisGOD

https://www.youtube.com/@doskoi

https://www.youtube.com/@Kojisetomini

**Conversation:**

HOWEVER, strangely talking with people in real life when someone talks to me directly I understand them 95 percent of the time with no worries. There are likely reasons for this. 1) I’m simply getting better at listening, this is a fact 2) People are talking slower for me, which I’m 100 percent cool with hey we’re talking man! 3) It’s real life engagement and very focused because I’m participating in the situation.

But even in a group setting (VRChat) I understand most of all that is happening/being said when I’m invovled in the conversations. Youtube/Netflix etc is so much harder and I find the difference strange to me.

The first class I had with my instructor she talked all in Japanese (we still do every class, zero English is spoken) and I understood her completely. In VRChat when people talk to me I don’t notice that they slow down, but its possible they do once I start speaking and they notice I’m not Japanese.

**Lurking/Listening in to live conversations:**

When in VRChat, its hard to say but I’ll be listening to a conversation and there is a 60 percent chance I’ll understand everything people are talking about or to the point at least to where I feel I could jump into the conversation mix. There is a good amount of time where either they are talking fast, talking about subjects outside Slice of Life or simply just too advanced for me to understand.

**SPEAKING:**

This is also so hard to describe. I am so much better then I was last year, but also recognize I need a good amount of work to get to my goal. I can have full on conversations (depending on the topic, everyday life etc is fine) with a high degree of proficiency. I still get tripped up on conjugations on words I don’t use often (Yesterday I was trying to say I stepped in something and my brain froze). I still at times struggle to find words, but grammar is really not an issue for me. I still make grammar mistakes but I recognize them the second I make them and then resay the sentence correctly so that’s mostly a nonissue now.

I can tell stories of my past or of things that have happened in long format. I can speak to how someone was speaking to me or others without real issues and keep a long story dialogue going to its conclusion.

I have zero problems expressing what I want, why I want it or what I think about something to a decent level of detail. Going into extreme detail is still a challenge but for example I can express my feelings on guns, why I don’t like people to have them or why I don’t own one. But if going into more detail (perhaps what the government should do etc.) then I may not be able to express myself well enough. In summary, most things I can go into some detail about but when pushed further I may have trouble with very specific things.

My current challenges right now is bringing passive knowledge into active recall which will be a problem forever. Bringing words I know to the for-front of my mind and then speaking them. If I have never used the word I may use it out of its intended context, or I may say it incorrectly.

There are still times I go full blue screen and don’t know how to say things, though this has reduced over time and I’m not sure this will ever go away. Just some days you question if you can speak at all, other days you feel fluent.

# SPEAKING, PRONOUNCIATION AND DIFFICULTIES THIS YEAR:

**HATERS:**

I’ve spoken to over 100 native Japanese people via VRChat, with the backing of corrections from my friend and iTalki I have been very well understood in these live interactions. I still certainly sound American, but no one has ever told me I’m hard to understand. The areas I have to be careful are on spacing of my sounds etc.

Despite being clearly understood, being told I speak well with/without asking. I’ve had two interactions out of 100 that made me feel like crap. First was an American guy that told me “I had a long way to go” to be understandable to natives when I talked to him. Another was a Japanese guy making fun of me because I was clearly learning the language and they were mocking me and the way I spoke. Both times, despite the positive reinforcement of all my other interactions, tore me up inside. Both times those people were on VRChat and they seemed immature. But I spend so much time on this hobby that it hurt and I’m very conscious on wanting to be better so I take this at face value and search like crazy to see “How could this be”.

I typed all this long thing out to basically say don’t listen to the haters. Certainly if 5/10 people were asking “can you say that again?” or get confused you should probably listen to it. I have to take my own advise here and not listen to the 2 percent of people who could just be mean spirited or tied up in their own stuff and judge me. And heck, if 98 percent of the people understand me, that ain’t half bad.

My takeaway is listen to critiscm, try to improve, but realize there will be people out there that will actively try to hurt your feelings, at least online.

**JUMPING THE GAP FROM BEGINNER TO INTERMEDIATE VRCHAT:**

Going from the welll-known world EN-JP Langauge Exchange to 日本語話者向け集会場「FUJIYAMA」JP world is such a large leap and I still don’t know the best way to go from one to the other. The first world, mostly people talk about “Where are you from” “Why are you learning Japenese” etc, and those topics are beaten to death for me. At the same time, the other world is so high that going into advanced topics can be challenging if not impossible.

Nowadays I spend all my time on the second world because I’ve built up a friend list of Japanese people and am at a level where I can have long form conversations with natives (with mistakes or freezes of course). I have a more constructive time nowadays on the Japanese focused only world now, I don’t quite have my “footing” yet as I still have challenges but that jump from the exchange world to this one has been brutal and I wish I knew a better way.

I think iTalki has helped a lot in this regard as its given me a safe space to make tons of mistakes if I wanted and has built me up to be in that level, even if its not perfect. Which is why I’ll be doubling down on iTalki classes soon.

**GROUP vs ONE on ONE:**

I thought VRChat was going to provide a lot of value, it does to a degree, but due to its group nature it doesn’t provide as much speaking time for myself as I thought… which is kind of obvious now. But just an observation.

For this reason I’m likely going to build up my iTalki sessions to every week day instead of twice a week. I get a lot of great direction and long term fixes its been phenominal but VRChat does provide an important live conversation practice in the wild.

**I’VE JOINED THE LOCAL CITY SOCIETY OF JAPANESE:**

Nothing much to note here but there are very few Japanese in my large city, so I joined the society as a member to meet them. We don’t meet but 3-5 times a year but I feel its enriched my experience more in the culture.

# NEW TOOLS OR REPLACEMENT TOOLS FROM LAST YEAR

[https://nihongonomori.com/](https://nihongonomori.com/) – For semi-daily grammar, I watch 3 videos a day on the days I study. I’m at a level where I understand the explanations just fine.

**VRChat** – Great for live native interaction, not always great for the speaking practice during group settings, but can be lots of fun which is the point.

**Calibre** – I take my Kindle books, export them to Calibre and leverage [https://jisho.hlorenzi.com/](https://jisho.hlorenzi.com/) as a dictionary. I can literally double click on a word and it auto searches a word. This was perfect for Novels.

**Toggl** – Not a replacement, but wanted to once again speak its praise. Its not about tracking your time. Its about “Ok my goal is 1 hour a day, after I’ve tracked that I can either do more or give myself license to do whatever” type of mentality. Its been great for consistency. There are times where the 2 hours (my personal minimum) is super focused and times where its not at all, but its CONSISTENT.

All the other tools from last year I still use to varying degrees.

# GOALS I’VE ACHIEVED:

Last year I wanted to be able to watch Slice of Life stuff without subtitles the majority of the time. I wouldn’t say I can do it the majority, but half would likely be accurate if the bar is understanding the entirety of an episode/video. During live conversation I understand speech spoken to me directly 90 percent of the time which is frankly my main goal. Next year I want to see a large improvement in this space around videos/content as well as faster/harder speech.

I wanted to read 5 novels last year, I actually read 6 novels. I found I could read a novel a week “easily” (with the tools I use) due to the amount of time I immerse but due to my pivot stopped reading altogether (despite me feeling its still the best way to learn) and focused on speaking/listening. My reading isn’t novel level, but given a sentence from any slice of life show I have zero issues reading it (certainly there are new words even in spoken context though).

Grammar is a nonissue for me now, which is fantastic. Certainly in book-form there is likely heavier text/grammar usage, but for shows/everyday conversation its a nonissue when it comes to listening which is fantastic and ultimately my goal.

I can play video games in Japanese with very little issue now. There are still tons of words that will be new or game-specific but by in large I have the knowledge and tools to look things up with ease. Though frankly I have very little time for video games ironically to enjoy this with.

I feel very confident in expressing myself in an assortment of ways in speaking, though still work is needed.

# FOR NEXT YEAR:

* This will be the last year coming up that I submit this much time to Japanese.
* Firstly I think this time next year I’ll be at a point I desired to be at or at least so close it doesn’t matter. I’ll be fluent enough in the language to confidently say that I’m passably bilingual, not perfect, not fluent but can speak/listen in a lot of scenarios which was my goal. We’ll see if I’m right.
* There are other things I’d like to pursue that Japanese immersion just makes difficult at this pace.
* I want to better refine my speaking, continually get more reflexive on sentence creation and responses and find new ways to express my thoughts.
* I want to be able to watch majority of Slice of Life shows with no subtitles, though frankly there will always be new words so having subtitles isn’t a downer for me and probably inevitable in my opinion.

#

by Bardlebee