Hi, I’m moving to Tokyo in 2 weeks for graduate school (evenings classes) and only know hiragana and katakana. My program is 2 years long and I’d like to get a job in Japan by the time I graduate, so my goal is to at least hit N2 by then (Is N1 in 2 years even possible?). I have the Genki textbooks but haven’t been able to hit them hard yet since I’ve been dealing with moving preparations.
​
Should I try to enroll in a language school asap or is self-study good enough?
​
Money is a little tight so I wouldn’t prefer to spend it on language school unless it’s absolutely worth it over self-studying. Either way, I think I can manage to spend about 6-8 hours a day studying Japanese (including class time if I do language school).
​
I’m probably too late to join language school for April this year but maybe I can join in June. I can hit the Genki books hard until then and hopefully finish both in 3 months on a full-time study schedule.
​
Any advice is appreciated. Would love to hear about personal experiences with language school or self-studying as well. Thank you.
8 comments
I’ve met some people during my year abroad that managed n1 in 2 years but going for that means studying JLPT not studying Japanese. I’d say aim for n2 without language school, get a book to work through for the grammar, grind anki for the vocab starting from n5 and get some language exchange partner.
Spend a bit in the morning to review grammar, do like 2 hours of vocab and the rest conversation practice or other studying, as soon as you can somehow read any kind of longer story or a book spend a lot of time there, the only thing that stops you os motivation which is unarguably the most important part.
Edit:
I personally did this for 1 year and reached about 100% N3 and lower N2 passing rate before my motivation burned out, end result was what I consider conversational fluency (take this with a grain of salt since definitions vary here) and mediocre reading skills for what its worth
Here are some examples of people who did something similar:
[N1 in 18 months](https://youtu.be/CRbdTNLUi9k)[N1 in 438 days](https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/l51r3d/my_500_day_journey_to_a_160180_n1_score_w_tips/)[Perfect N1 score in only 9 months](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/sedr0m/how_i_got_180180_on_n1_in_85_months/)
Then there is this dude who [did it in 2.5 years](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/10j0upn/jlpt_n1_after_25_years/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). He also made [this document](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LH82FjsCqCgp6-TFqUcS_EB15V7sx7O1VCjREp6Lexw/edit#) which i would recommend you to follow. He also made two progress reports documenting his [1 year](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/ndw70e/2200_hours_of_japanese_in_1_year/) and [2 year](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/ujac5e/4000_hours_of_japanese_in_2_years/) progress, respectively
Good luck. you will need it.
I’ll preface this by saying that I have never been to a language school in Japan. However, if it’s anything similar to how I studied English in high school, I imagine you’ll get to practice speaking Japanese with other people learning the language and the teacher will correct mistakes you make while doing that. Your classmates can also be a support group for you if you manage to form a close relationship with them and you get together to study and socialize in Japanese. That kind of experience you can’t really get through self-study. You’ll also probably get tons of relevant homework to do. You can also supplement that with self-study in your free time, as well as watching TV and movies without English subtitles.
I think that your goals with Japanese mean that you will need to advance faster than the course will progress, so at some point it won’t really be worth the effort.
I lived in Japan for a year and the best thing I did was make friends with native speakers who don’t speak English. I would learn 10 words every morning and then make a point of using them in conversation. Of course at some point, because you have a specific goal, you will have to be more structured and will have to study kanji. My goal was just to be able to converse, so while I learned the kana right away I only learned a couple hundred kanji, and that was mostly through osmosis rather than study.
If you’re in Japan, and your goal is to work in Japan, you should prioritize having a functional ability in Japanese.
There’s not a single best answer, but if you are going to get a job in Japan you are going to need the one skill that the JLPT does not test at all: Speaking. And an interview isn’t going to be 寒いですね levels of conversation, you are going to need to be able to hold an adult level conversation.
Perhaps most importantly though, only a subset of companies will even ask about the JLPT. It doesn’t hurt to have it on your resume, it may get you past the initial screening (but also may be irrelevant and it is meaningless to many Japanese people), but ultimately, your ability to speak is what will get you through a business interview.
Ok so here’s the thing, there are totally people on here who have speed ran the JLPT and passed N1 in crazy short amounts of time. That’s not really something you’ll want to do. Why? Because the JLPT does not test output. It’s mostly just a reading test, with a little bit of much easier listen section thrown in. It doesn’t test speaking or writing at all. **If you want to get a job at a Japanese company, you will need to be able to fully function in Japanese, which includes reading, writing, speaking, and listening**
Honestly if you’re also doing a Masters (which I assume is taught in English) I’m not sure how feasible it is to try and go from zero to N1 in 2 years. You said you can spend 6 to 8 hours a day studying Japanese, but have you factored in the time you’ll need to study for your program outside of class? Time to live your life outside of school/work? Are you sure that’s a pace you can sustain for *two years*
People generally tell me I’m pretty good with languages, but I had a friend who blew me out of the water. We both lived in Japan, working jobs that gave us opportunities to use Japanese throughout the day and opportunities to study in our down time. She was able to go from 0 to about N3 in about a year. Keep in mind that when I refer to a level, I’m talking about across all 4 skills of language, not just reading. She ended up giving up on Japanese after that, but even if you could hit N3 by the one year mark, going to N3 to N1 in a year is a lot. Personally, it took me about 2~2.5 years while living in Japan and using Japanese every day at work.
So is it possible to pass the N1 exam after 2 years? Sure. Is it possible to get to a level where you could work in a Japanese office after two years? Hm, not sure about that. Is it possible to get to that level while also doing a masters degree? I think you should maybe start thinking about backup plans. I think a more sustainable option might be to improve as much as you can while on your masters program, work as much as you can to save money, then enroll in language school after finishing your masters to do that final push to N1
Given the choice I’d go with attending a language school because the feedback, peer support, and opportunities for learning are much broader than anything you could do alone in your apartment. You can learn vocabulary and kanji and grammar points by yourself but it’s harder to teach yourself stuff like cultural context.
Passing n2 in two years and having functioning Japanese for a job in two years are two different goals. You can achieve a level of functional spoken Japanese in 2 years, that’s a doable goal imho. Passing n2 is maybe doable too, but I’m not sure if they are both doable. I’d also question how well you actually know the Japanese you crammed in two years to pass the test. I know people who have passed n3 for example that can barely read stuff and their listening and speaking are barely there. They were only studying the example sentences and audio so they had zero experience with real Japanese in the wild.
If your goal is to work in Japan long term, I think you want to do a balanced study. Set aside time for reading practice, set aside time to do conversation practice with italki or something and also study vocab, kanji and grammar. Don’t rush through them and make sure you understand things well before moving on.