How I Accidently Passed N1 in Two Years

TLDR; I started learning Japanese because of a stupid misunderstanding. In 500 days, that misunderstanding spiraled into an amazing opportunity to pass the JLPT N1, meet amazing people, and maybe learn a bit of Japanese on the side.

My results: [https://imgur.com/a/kqOk3X0](https://imgur.com/a/kqOk3X0).

Sorry if the writing is bad; I’m writing this only an hour after the JLPT results came out. Because of the impromptu nature of this post, I may come back and add more details as I remember them.

My purpose in this post is to tell my story of how I learned Japanese. When I started “learning” Japanese, I thought reaching a proficient level was near impossible for a non-native speaker. I hope this gives someone in a similar position inspiration that they too can become, if not native, at least 日本語上手.

I should preface this by saying that my Japanese journey isn’t especially amazing or unique. There are people who have gotten higher N1 scores in less time. Nevertheless, I think my journey has been unique enough to (maybe) justify this sort of write-up. I intend not to focus on specific resources (for that, I recommend Doth’s and Jazzy’s posts) but on how my attitude towards Japanese learning has changed over time.

First, a bit of background about me. I’m a first-year university student studying a field that has nothing to do with Japanese. I grew up in a Viet household but came out understanding only English and learning none of my second language (a lot of people joke about this, but I legitimately understand next to no Vietnamese). At school, I took French for 2 years, Latin for 4 years, and attempted to learn both of those languages and Vietnamese on Duolingo. Despite finishing all of the French Duolingo tree and most of the Vietnamese tree, I learned essentially nothing. (I got a B in French 1). Basically, before learning Japanese, I believed that I was uniquely bad at languages and that I could never learn any language other than English, let along something like Japanese.

I started learning Japanese on accident. I’m a big otaku, so you probably won’t be surprised that one of my big motivators in learning Japanese was to consume content that wasn’t available in English. At the time, there was a visual novel that I violently wanted to read. For some inexplicable reason, after a bit of research on the Japanese syllabary, I believed that all you needed to do to become fluent enough to read Japanese was learn to read hiragana. Alas, to my unending chagrin, that was not the case. Once I learned Hiragana and (gasp!) realized I didn’t magically understand Japanese, I convinced myself that if I learned katakana, I would be able to understand Japanese fully. Then, after learning katakana, I thought I only needed to learn the most common 100 kanji.

Essentially, my decision to learn Japanese was a series of self-delusions. Because of this, I gave up on the idea of learning Japanese very quickly. At the time I was invested in other hobbies as well so I didn’t really have a lot of time for another.

So I quit for six months. Another failed language. Another reason to believe I just didn’t have the talent to learn another language.

This all changed when, one and a half years from today, I saw a reddit post titled “My \~500 day journey to a 160/180 N1 score.” When I read that post by Doth, I became so inspired that I promised myself (mostly as a joke) that if I ever passed the N1, I would write a similar post in the hopes that someone would get something out of it. And now, well, here we are.

It was this reddit post that convinced me that I had the ability to learn Japanese, that it wasn’t me that was wrong but my methods. It was because of this post that I decided to learn Japanese.

My methods are primarily immersion-based. I relearned hiragana and katakana and learned to recognize the 500 most common kanji. I spent an hour reading one chapter of manga. I struggled through the first chapter of Nekopara. I meticulously added every word I didn’t know into my anki deck. I am ashamed to say that I pulled a Matt vs. Japan and bought three mp3 players so I could listen to Japanese every second of the day, even as I slept. I played more and more visual novels. For one and a half years, I became immersed in the Japanese language, and I loved it, despite my できない-ness.

One highlight I should mention during this time are two visual novels that kinda changed my life: 素晴らしき日々 and サクラの詩 (henceforth sakuuta). I’m a bit of a lit nerd as well, and I have to say, these are legitimately the two greatest works of media I have ever read. It was because of these two works that I started to understand the unique beauty of Japanese writing through exposure to different poems and works. Reading sakuuta in particular made me realize the rhythm and strangeness of Japanese prose and verse. Sorry if I sound like a nerd, but sakutoki is hype, what can I say?

Despite my increasing proficiency in Japanese, I had no speaking experience or any friends that I could share my hobby with. I found it embarrassing to admit that I was learning Japanese because people, at least in my experience, tend to look down on that because they just associate that with being a weeb. I personally find it infuriating that anyone should be looked down upon for learning something they care deeply about, but that’s just me. For some reason, this only happens with Japanese and Korean. Before college, most people reacted with annoyance or slight ridicule when I told them I loved learning Japanese.

This started to change in college, where I began to find a community of other learners at my university’s Japanese club. I really consider this a turning point. Before, I had just focused on consuming media and kept Japanese as a personal hobby. However, through meeting several people at my university, I realized that Japanese was also a great way to meet other people. (Shoutout to my national speech champion friend). Because of these friends, I realized that there was more to Japanese than just consuming media. Through them I had more chances to speak, learn about pitch accent, and increase my appreciation of Japanese in ways I hadn’t considered before. I’m very thankful to be in a very weeby university and an even weebier club.

Then, last month, I took the JLPT N1. I did next to no preparation and decided to sign up pretty much on a whim. I just wanted to test my Japanese skills and I came in pretty much expecting to fail. Aside from a single practice test (which I barely passed), I had no idea how I would do on the test.

So I booked a flight across the country, and prayed.

And, I passed! What’s more, I passed with an 128/180, something I could have never imagined two and a half years ago. It’s hard to believe that I spent so much of my life wishing and wishing that I could learn Japanese, and it took me so long to finally take the plunge. I’m honestly astonished by the progress that I’ve been able to make (of course, through the help and resources of many, many people).

Of course, there’s still many areas of Japanese that I want to improve on. I’m hoping to study abroad in Japan for the summer for a month. I also want to improve my speaking skills and read at a native level. I’m also involved with my local Japanese club at my university where I hope to meet more Japanese learners and help others do what I thought was impossible only a few years ago.

I also still have a lot of doubts about my Japanese. Could I have done something more productive with this time? I don’t know. Maybe I could have been a genius coder, a licensed architect, or even just learned several Indo-European languages in the same time frame. Has Japanese changed the way that I think? I don’t know. My thinking certainly doesn’t feel different than before. I still primarily think in English, though there are times I struggle to communicate a Japanese word or concept in English. Then, has learning Japanese “changed my life”? Again, I don’t know. I don’t know.

But did Japanese lead me to some of my favorite media of all time? Did it make me more curious about another culture? Did it allow me to meet some really cool people I never would have had the chance to meet otherwise? In essence, was learning Japanese worth it?

Hell yeah. Hell yeah it was. And I hope it’ll be worth it for you as well.