Hi everyone – this is an update post to last year’s post (which you can find \[here\]([https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/rmcwa4/one\_year\_of\_studying\_japanese\_as\_a\_busy\_college/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/rmcwa4/one_year_of_studying_japanese_as_a_busy_college/))). I know post-JLPT there’s a lot of progress posts going around, so let me explain quickly I made one:
1. Like most people on this subreddit, I’m a full time college student, have \~25 hours a week of work spread over several part-time jobs (why is college tuition so expensive) and run several clubs at my school, so suffice to say I don’t have a lot of free time.
2. As you may have guessed from part 1, I am also broke, so I have essentially no money to spend on Japanese materials. I also double-major in two STEM classes, so I don’t have access to our school’s Japanese department resources since I need to focus on major requirements.
Current Level: So first off, what is my current level? First, my N2 results: [https://imgur.com/a/YCr12hg](https://imgur.com/a/YCr12hg)
I redacted the scores to avoid doxxing myself, but I scored approximately the same on all 3 sections, doing slightly better on language knowledge and slightly worse on listening. I didn’t score as close to full points as I hoped but ended up scoring well above the pass mark, so all in all I’m not too unhappy about my result.
Similar to last year, my vocab is probably still my strongest area, in practice tests I was able to knock through most N1 vocab tests with ease. My grammar and listening are definitely still weaker. Overall, I’d say my vocab is probably \~N1 level at this point and my grammar and listening are \~N2.
Utilizing Downtime: In terms of methods, I continued utilizing many of the methods from last year to squeeze in whatever study I could since I’m pretty busy. The most important thing during the day was utilizing downtime. I would generally have two types of downtime during the day:
1. Short downtime – <5 minutes of downtime: finishing worksheet in class early, rest time between sets at the gym, toilet, etc.
2. Long downtime – 10+ minutes of downtime: Leaving class early/class being canceled, meals, showers, commutes, slow days at work, waits (such as for trains, buses, long lines), etc.
My short downtime happened several times per day and usually exceeded 30 minutes, more than enough time for me to finish my daily anki reps. In fact, funnily enough, I was so used to doing Anki during downtime that the only days that I would miss reviews would be vacation days, since I would be free the whole day and it would never occur to me to finish my reps.
My long downtime was mostly used for reading, since it was annoying having to break focus/lose spot on your page during short downtime. Since my commute back and forth from class usually already added up to around \~40 minutes a day, combining the two downtimes guaranteed that I would squeeze in an hour a day at least of study. Any active study I did outside of that (usually 1-2 hours a day) would be pure reading.
One more note was that I would always keep earbuds in listening to Japanese content whenever possible. I generally cycle between four times of content: 1) anime episodes converted to mp3 files, 2) Japanese conversation videos on youtube converted to mp3, 3) podcasts, 4) music, in decreasing order of effectiveness. I would keep this on in the background when I was doing something that didn’t require a lot of thinking, like working out, walking, eating, etc. Unfortunately, only one of my part time jobs is a desk job and the others are customer-facing, but if you have a desk job/something that doesn’t require you to talk to people you can definitely do this while you work as well.
Cheap/free reading material:
As an extremely broke person I was always scouring for cheap/free reading material. There are a couple of good ones that I used:
1. [https://syosetu.com/](https://syosetu.com/) – this is a site that aspiring LN authors post on, it’s useful because many famous anime/LNs are published here first and you can read the whole thing for free. I was surprised by how many there are, for example, you can read Mushoku Tensei, that time I reincarnated as a slime, finest assassin, re:Zero, etc. all for free.
2. Free/Discounted VNs – Steam has a lot of free or discounted VNs that can provide hundreds of hours of free reading. If you check [https://steam250.com/tag/visual\_novel](https://steam250.com/tag/visual_novel) a lot of VNs are free or dirt cheap (<$10), just make sure it’s available in Japanese.
3. Libraries – this doesn’t apply to everyone, but sometimes your local library (uni or public) carries some JP books/manga.
4. Hoist the sails ye scallywag! If you know you know.
Unfortunately though, at the end of the day if you are broke then you can’t be too picky with your reading material. Unless you use #4.
Anyways, don’t want to drag on this post for too long, if you have any questions drop em below and I’ll probably stick around for 24 hours or so. Good luck and happy learning!
Miscellaneous Anki Stats:
Total Cards: \~9000, 8000 of which are mature
Total Reviews over last year: \~30,000