Finished Japanese From Zero. What now?

23 comments

1. Hey! Fellow similar level as you. I finished all JFZ books and I m now going through Tobira. Tobira takes some getting used to as it is different. It has audio online and even some short conversation videos (not a big fan of the latter). I am level 60 on wanikani so I cant advice on kanji difficulty but so far it looks doable. I am currently chapter 3 in Tobira and on a hiatus as I am currently on holidays in Japan!

   I say give it a go as it is a good step forward and if you feel you need more support, you can try the genki books

2. I’m not sure what level JFZ gets you up to, but if you enjoyed using textbooks, then just continue with a new series. Assuming JFZ covers the equivalent of both Genki 1 and 2, then move on to Quartet or Tobira.

   As for reading, what I did is buy a kindle and set it up so I can look up unknown words with the dictionary function, and if so desired, export that word to Anki to study later (admittedly I don’t really do that last part. I prefer sentence mining from anime).

   What I think is important is engaging with the language as much as possible in a way that is enjoyable to you. You say you are going there for a holiday, so perhaps focus your time on speaking to native Japanese people on Tandem or HelloTalk. While I will always sing the praises of the effectiveness of Anki, at the end of the day it’s your language learning journey and entirely up to you how you want to go about it. If you’re doing too many new cards a day, or jumping from deck to deck, then yeah, it’s gonna build up and feel like a chore. Limiting your anki time to 15-30 minutes a day is ideal for most learners except for speed-runners.

   Let me know if you have any other questions.

3. Take the JLPT N3 and attempt a passing grade for bragging rights?

4. Congrats!! I am early in book 4 and hope to be done with the series within the new few months.

   I don’t know if my advice would be helpful if I’m not even done yet, but I also just started the Satori reader app and also felt I was looking up a lot of words. But I read on another thread in this subreddit that being able to get through some of these stories will help a lot with reading native material later. So I would say maybe stick with those and push through them.

   I also just grabbed the “Beri- Beri- Shoshinsha for Absolute Beginners of Japanese” bundle from The Japan Shop. And holy cow I am loving it. I do know a bit of vocab thanks to JFZ, but I am learning new words. The breakdowns and audio tracks are fantastic, too.

   They have more bundles at higher levels too.

   So, maybe see if those will be helpful.

   Also, do you like video games? Maybe try playing games in Japanese. I tried to earlier (Zelda links awakening, Famicom detective, and Japanese Rural life adventure). I had to stop because I couldn’t even understand the grammar when looking up all the words. But maybe you’re at a higher level and that will work for you? ゲムげんご on YouTube has some videos to help.

5. I am reading on LingQ right now and it has helped me get through reading when I don’t know all the words. I can actually get through youtube videos and tv shows too with it. There are probably other similar products.

6. if you want reading to not feel like a chore you need to increase your vocabulary. One way to do this is by simply reading more as you’ve already said, although this might be a very slow and inefficient way to learn more vocabulary. Another way would be to grind vocabulary with anki.

   I didn’t start really enjoying reading until I had gone through the full core 6k deck, and even then working towards 10k has consistently made immersion easier and easier. There’s no way around it if you want to reach any degree of fluency in Japanese you will need to know at least 10,000 words

7. I feel like you might benefit from a little bit of joining in with a (non traditional) class or community of learners, and also from listening to podcasts. Nihongo con Teppei is always a favorite, but two podcasters who also have experimented with creating classes/communities that you might check out are Learn Japanese With Noriko (her community is Japanese Together) and Kotsu Kotsu Nihongo’s Sunshine Japanese. It helps to have the variety and spontaneity that can come from those environments, and they’re more approachable than plunging into the deep end and just joining a Japanese-Japanese community.

   I think Noriko-Sensei has free transcripts for her Season 2 episodes, and she has some that cover topics from Tobira and the Quartet textbooks- I’d go with one of those series next.

8. If you enjoyed working with textbooks and your goal is general language acquisition, then I suggest you move to one that covers N3 topics like “An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese” or “Quartet”.

   Your progress feeling slower is natural at this point. You will soon hit the intermediate plateau where you know the basics but don’t have a lot of chances or need to practice more advanced grammar. It’s not just you, everyone feels like that at some point.

   I can assure you that what JFZ covers is enough to survive and have simple conversations while traveling to Japan. A common mistake people make is they study a lot from textbooks but neglect speaking practice which makes them feel like they don’t know as much as they do as soon as they try talking to Japanese people. So I suggest you also pay attention to that part, maybe partner up with another learner or do language exchange with Japanese people.

9. I did the JFZ to WaniKani route, too! I finished at level 50, and honestly, I feel like you should keep at it. Every 10 levels I looked back and thought, “Man, I’m glad I stuck with it an extra 10 levels, because I ended up learning so many vital kanji.”

10. Get the English and Japanese on opposite pages readers. Often when you are fighting to decode words and kanji, you forget that reading happens when you do not decode, you just read.

    And when you are decoding, you miss all of the nuance, which using the paired readers helps with. Because you already know what the story is, you are just reading it in another language.

11. Practice with other learners to start. Native speakers have too deep a vocabulary and need to slow down and dumb it down and too much pressure for you to be perfect.

12. > I still struggle a lot with reading and breaking down sentences, so I’m not sure what to do to improve this. The usual advice is “read more” and I’m trying…I got the Todoku graded readers and have tried Satori reader as well, but my vocabulary is so limited that I have to stop at almost every word. Is this normal?

    Yes, very normal. It sucks, I know, but trust the process and keep reading. You _will_ pick up common vocab and grammar naturally over time and before you know it you’ll be looking up a word a sentence, then even less.

    Also, word of advice, get comfortable with giving up on understanding a complicated sentence. Try to understand it, by all means, but if it’s giving you a lot of trouble just move on. Exposing yourself to more sentences is a better use of time. You’ll find more examples of the grammar in that complicated sentence later, in easier to understand pieces, and it’ll build up your intuition better than intense study of that one example.

    > I’ve also tried the 2k/6k Core Anki deck, Bunpro and some sentence mining with Migaku/Yomitan but to be honest, going through flash cards is a chore. Should I try to push through it anyways?

    It’s undoubtedly effective practice, but if it’s a slog then you run the risk of burning out, and you don’t want that. You could try reducing the number of reviews per day, ie. limit yourself to 10 minutes of reviews, or 50 cards. Or hell even 5 minutes or 20 cards. You may fall behind the pace Anki wants but that doesn’t matter, you’re you, not an algorithm.

    But if it still isn’t fun for you, you can certainly get by with just more exposure (reading/listening) and looking stuff up as you go.

13. Here’s what I did after finishing “80/20 Japanese”: Skim through Genki I & II and learn all missing grammar and vocabulary, then move on to Quartet. It’s less thank you think and I feel that especially in the beginning it’s a great way to build up foundations to smoothly get through Satori, NHK Easy, most Tadoku readers and – for sure – Quartet since it heavily relies on that fact you know the basics from the previous Genki books.

    I personally didn’t enjoy Tobira at all, but that’s just my opinion and you maybe want to give it a try as well.

    Good luck!

14. I recommend reading simple manga till you can do it without struggling. Then reading a combination of simple manga and more difficult manga that keeps you struggling, just keep struggling, struggling is improving.

    If you run into grammar or words you don’t know, look them up and then keep reading. If you don’t get one small part of a page or sentence move on. If you don’t get a whole page or sentence, stew on it a bit then move on.

15. Woah, congrats! I’m currently halfway through the books. I can’t answer your question, but can I ask how much you now understand of native content? More specifically, japanese streamers? My personal goal is to understand enough to watch them, I’d like to know how far the JFZ books get me

16. read visual novels with textractor, using yomichan you can see the definition of any word instantly, it’s a cheat code

17. Fellow Satori and WaniKani user here, I got to WK level 15 before deciding to go another route (RTK) which I’ve recently finished. I haven’t studied any other vocab besides day 1 intro stuff.

    FWIW, I can tell you that Satori *absolutely does* get easier the more you do it. I still have to look up a fair amount of words but it’s definitely added to my vocab and understanding of sentence structure, don’t expect results quickly, you’ll notice them over time. NHK Web Easy has also gotten easy for me. Don’t worry about looking up lots of words – that means you’re learning!

    It’s been said before and it’s absolutely my experience that you can’t wait until you’re “ready” to read, watch, etc., because you’ll never be ready until you do it – you have to try and fail, and that’s how you get better.

    Good luck!

18. I’m learning Japanese too, and I signed up for the JLPT exam[N2] in July this year.🙃 I finished 标准日本语初级 上&下. I am in trouble now. My Japanese teacher told me remember more words(required at least 100 words per day!), listen to the test audio often, but my time is limited! I’m late this morning.😢 Luckily, my boss didn’t say anything about me.

19. now do something that will actually give you progress

20. > but my vocabulary is so limited that I have to stop at almost every word. Is this normal?

    There’s expected when you start reading with a vocabulary of 3000 words. You can either wait longer or just bite the bullet and learn by looking up words.

    > I’m probably somewhere between N4-N3 (though I don’t feel that’s the case).

    You should be around lower-intermediate level, top of N4, after finishing JFZ, just like after Genki 1+2. So these people are probably right. 

    > or maybe jump onto Tobira?

    If you wanna continue with text books, Tobira is the best choice. 

21. Japanese From One

22. This was an interesting read. I’m currently on chapter 4 of book 5. I know all first and second grade kanji, but I can read third grade as well mostly.
    I feel I’m opposite of you though. My read and writing is actually fine (outside of unknown words of course), but my speaking is non existent. Well, maybe not that bad but it’s definitely at lower N5 level.

    My plan was to move to tobira next.

    Something I done recently and might be worth doing is this. I hit chapter of book 5 a long time ago. Instead of continuing on though I decided to go back to book 2 again. I started over from there to make sure I still understood everything fine. I was shocked at myself. Somethings I didn’t fully understand properly first time, but going back and doing it again has helped me learn it better. The first time through I was struggling with the difference in 気がする and 感じがする。only after going through it again I feel I grasped it fully.
    There were some verbs I had forgotten as well. This was good to relearn.

23. How long did it take you to finish all the books and reach this wanikani level, if you don’t mind? I’m finishing the first book now, and I’m level 3 on wanikani!